What's in Your Food? You Might Be Surprised.

[DainBramaged]

Folklore has it that in the 1970s, McDonald's used Styrofoam balls as a filler in its milkshakes, until customers began to notice the fuzzy floating substances and complained. While the story is not true, several other McDonald's products are full of ingredients you might think twice about eating. Take, for example, the Chicken McNugget. Among the 30-plus ingredients in each bite are dextrose, wheat starch and sodium phosphate -- and that's just in the meat!

Unlike in Thailand and the United Kingdom, where food manufacturers must disclose specific percentages for main or "important" ingredients on food packages (e.g., exactly how much chicken is in chicken noodle soup), American regulations require that labels list only ingredients in descending order by weight. As a result, consumers are left with a much vaguer picture of what is (and is not) in their food. A quick glance at a box of Ritz Bitz cheese sandwiches, for instance, would tell you that cheese is the ninth ingredient, but you'd have no way of knowing that the crackers are only 3 percent cheese.

The package for Gerber Graduates for Preschoolers' juice treats pictures a bounty of fresh fruits -- oranges, grapes, peaches, cherries, pineapples and berries -- yet one look at the ingredient list will tell you there's no orange, peach, cherry or pineapple in the food and there's less than 2 percent raspberry juice concentrate. What you do get is four teaspoons of refined sugar in every serving, thanks to a hefty dose of sugar and corn syrup. Gerber isn't the only culprit, though. Plenty of food companies serve "made with real fruit" claims that they can hardly back up.

In 2001, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group, measured the amount of shrimp in Nissin Cup Noodles With Shrimp. The result? Just zero to four shrimpy crustaceans in each cup. Nearly a decade later, the instant soup mix hasn't changed its recipe, but the box still pictures five plump shrimp.

Assume that your bowl of strawberries and cream Quaker instant oatmeal is full of strawberries? Think again. In truth, the "strawberries" are dehydrated apples that are dyed red. Similarly, the peaches and cream variety has dehydrated apples that are dyed a peachy hue and doesn't contain any real peaches.

http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/12/21/whats-in-your-food-you-might-be-surprised/

[shraby]

1. Bout like canned pork and beans...2 little pieces of pork in

each can. One time I found none..figured the person who put the 2 pieces in each can had the day off. :rofl:

[Pharaoh]

6. and the pork

I have always found is a chunk of fat!

[shraby]

14. Yup.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Until you open the can, the pork is both there and not there.

When you open the can, the fatback wavefunction collapses to a single value.

In contrast to the classical worldview, quantum mechanics tells us that the possibility of finding two pieces in the same can is very small, but nonzero -- approximately 10^-178. You just lucked out.

[Incitatus]

20. meow nt

[Raschel]

2. The ones that bother me most are the juices. The label will claim to be pomegranite

but when you read the ingredients it usually starts out with apple juice, pear juice etc.

[Dokkie]

10. lol

theres was a commercial for an energy drink that said "it is made with 100% real juice". Then you read the label to find out that only 5% of the drink is the 100% real juice :)

[niyad]

13. in one of dorothy sayers "lord peter wimsey" mysteries, lord peter is working undercover in an ad

agency. in talking to a friend, he remarks on the difference between "with" and "from" in labelling. he says (roughly paraphrasing here) "if you say something is made "from" something, it has to be 100%. if you say something is made "with" something, it can have as little as 10% of that ingredient".

things have only gotten worse since then.

[woo me with science]

18. Yes, and the affordable ones tend to be "juice cocktails,"

which are really flavored sugar water.

I went out looking for real cranberry juice for a friend who had a bladder infection, and I ended up having to go to a natural foods supermarket.

[SmileyRose]

3. The government regulates how much rat parts are allowed in organic frozen veggies.

regular frozen veggies too.

[Luminous Animal]

7. Nope nothing about rat parts in frozen veggies...

Though, rat hairs and excrement allowed in a lot of every day food...

http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm#intro

[Cetacea]

4. "Maple Syrup" only requires two percent to be considered such.

[tridim]

5. And real Maple Syrup costs $12 for a tiny bottle.

I haven't had pancakes for years, I can't afford them.

[Trajan]

17. Trader Joe's Grade B

Less than $6 per ...

The 'tiny bottle'

[Richard D]

9. Try Grade B

It's cheaper and tastier.

[L0oniX]

8. The USA is the home of deception and lies. If you came from an honest culture and came here...

you would be shocked. It's no wonder the USA is called "The Great Satan" ...Satan is said to be the father of the lie.

[Dokkie]

11. lol

theres was a commercial for an energy drink that said "it is made with 100% real juice". Then you read the label to find out that only 5% of the drink is the 100% real juice :)

[thecrow]

12. We have started eating "real food"

Real peaches, berries, apples, whole grains (the actual grains, not processed), real fish, real potatoes.
You can still find them in the stores, you know.
Of course we still have to be concerned with pesticides, hormones and antibiotics and the like.

[woo me with science]

19. How is your bill compared to before? nt

[thecrow]

24. Higher of course :)

[delightfulstar]

16. It pays to read labels.

There are also many artificial dyes, fillers, by-products, and hormones in the foods we eat. It's no surprise that there has been such a spike in obesity, heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. The factory farmed and heavily processed foods hawked to modern society are putting things into our bodies that were never intended to be there.

[onethatcares]

21. it pays to read how much sugar and fat are in each serving.

it's no wonder our nation is suffering from obesity and diabetes on a massive scale.

Hell, it used to be a strange occurrence to know someone with diabetes and now it's a prevalent disease,same thing with congestive heart failure and asthma

[Le Taz Hot]

22. My rule of thumb:

If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't put it in your mouth. It really doesn't take THAT much longer to whip up a batch of regular oatmeal, cut up a few morsels of REAL fruit and throw it in there.

And why the hell is ANYONE eating those high-sodium Nissin/Ramen noodles? You can make your own home-made soup from scraps AND it's good for several meals. Not only is it economical but YOU control the ingredients.

[formercia]

23. Made with real ingredients.

from a genuine recipe.