Please pass me some of the dimethylpolysiloxene and tertiary butylhydroquinone!

The following is an article I recently read in "Early to Rise", an on-line newsletter which I have read for years and highly recommend in your subscribing. Here's some info on the site:

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.

Industrial Strength Food: Not for Human Consumption By Jon Herring

I often advise ETR readers to eat a diet of whole, organic, unprocessed foods. Not only are these foods healthier - without the added sugar, fats, and sodium prevalent in processed foods - but you also know exactly what you're getting. An apple is an apple. A steak is a steak.

Not so with processed foods. For example: Did you know that a McDonald's Chicken McNugget contains 38 ingredients? In fact, about 56 percent of a McNugget is derived from corn, not chicken. But that's not all. In his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan points out that this "food" also contains several synthetic ingredients that come not from a plant or an animal but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant.

Two of them - dimethylpolysiloxene and tertiary butylhydroquinone - are known to be harmful. According to the Handbook of Food Additives, the former is an established carcinogen. And more than a gram of the latter is known to cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." More than five grams can be fatal.

Doesn't exactly sound like dinner, does it?

I'm not trying to pick on McDonald's. Just about any processed food is bound to have a label full of incomprehensible ingredients. In his book Twinkie, Deconstructed, Steve Ettlinger decodes the ingredients in those little snacks. He also asks the question: "If we can bake a cake at home with as few as five ingredients, why does a Twinkie require 39?"

The answer, of course, is that most of those ingredients contribute to a Twinkie's "shelf life." Do you really want to eat something that can stay "fresh" on a shelf for a decade? Certainly not. Stick to whole, unprocessed foods.

I couldn't have said it better myself.
God bless you,
Steve