5 Ingredients You Never Want To See On Nutrition Labels

With so many types of food products flaunted beneath our eyes, it can be rather difficult to dedicate the right amount of time into studying the labels on each of them.
In the US, almost every package containing food features a label that indicates the serving size and other nutritional information.
Upon a close check, you will discover that, for each “typical portion”, facts related to the content of fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, protein, vitamins, and minerals are calculated.
Nonetheless, one might not be always highly trained to read these labels to their full advantage. To protect yourself, you need to distinguish the good additives from the bad ones. Here are the top 5 most harmful ingredients that scream BEWARE!

BHA

BHA stands for butylated hydroxyanisole. This is a preservative used to keep away rancidity in the foods that include oils. So far, so good. But studies point out that this ingredient is harmful. When ingested by mice and rats, they were the cause of cancer. This has made the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) ban this ingredient, which was “reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen”.

Parabens

Like me, most of you must have heard this word mentioned in the news or media. Parabens have been defined as synthetic preservatives. Their role would be to inhibit the spread to mold and yeast in food.
But there is a problem with parabens. A recent study performed by the Food Chemical Toxicology has shown that ingesting daily foods enriched with parabens can lead to a staggering decrease in sperm and testosterone production.

Caramel colouring

This ingredient consists of sugar treated with ammonia. This combination is not healthy because it can produce nasty carcinogens. This type of colouring, which is typically found in soda, account for more than 15,000 cancer cases in the US every year.

Castoreum

This is one of the many other “natural ingredients” used to provide flavor to food. Castoreum is not as harmful as the other additives but it is still dangerous. As you may have guessed from the denomination itself, castoreum is a substance made from beavers’ castor sacs, or anal scent glands. In the food industry, they are used to give foods, vanilla or raspberry flavored, a distinctive musky flavor.

Sodium Nitrite

The FDA allows the use of this ingredient only because it inhibits the bacteria that caused botulism and also maintains the pink hue of the processed meat. Nevertheless, once ingested, nitrite can fuse with aminoacids and form nitrosamines. The latter are powerful carcinogenic compounds. So, the best way to reduce the risk of getting sick is to limit your intake.