"If it tastes sweet, spit it out and never eat anything from a window or package."
...otherwise, you're going to be exposed to "pharmafood."
The Pharmafood Threat
I can still vividly remember walking into my laboratory at grad school for the first time. Instead of learning to be a chemist, I had become one.
I felt a sense of excitement at the thought of finally applying my passion for chemistry to real life. Like an astronaut admiring the dials and controls of the space shuttle, I scanned the intricate glassware designed to with- stand the temperature and pressure extremes that come with the harsh environments of manipulating matter with chemistry. Hundreds of chemicals with biohazard labels were stored safely in dark brown bottles and jammed into tin cabinets. A shower and its activation cord dangled nearby in case of a chemical spill—a constant reminder that chemistry doesn’t give second chances.
Using the 119 elements of the periodic table—indivisible particles that form ever more complex molecules and porous substances—I was set free to yield a bounty of valuable products, whether they were brighter paints, stronger soaps, better whiskey, or new medicines. Anything was possible.
At the time, I had no idea that the food industry would be using this same type of caustic laboratory environment to create addictive flavor mimics. This newly devised chemical conspiracy—driven by chemists known as flavorists—has empowered the food industry.
Flavorists use state-of-the-art drug design methods to manufacture flavors stolen from nature—what I’ve term “pharmafoods”—that yield dependency, overeating, and brand preference among consumers. The overall goal is to use the pharmafoods to train your brain to crave more.
Former FDA commissioner David Kessler admitted that these hidden chemicals “hijack our brain.” He was referring to their ability to circumvent our innate ability to know when we are full.
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Health Marketing Claims Are Not Your Friend!
Health marketing claims such as “low fat,” “organic,” “gluten-free,” “natural,” “reduced sugar,” “low salt,” or even “MSG-free” make it possible to sneak these flavor mimics into your shopping carts. That’s because each additive can be cloaked as a natural product, since they’re technically derived from them and used in small quantities!
Procter and Gamble became one of the first companies to put unap- proved drugs into our food for profit. They failed to obtain FDA approval for a cholesterol-lowering drug called Olean because of its side effects of leaching essential vitamins and minerals from the body. Millions are now eating it as a low-fat substitute under the brand name Olestra, which is a key ingredient in snacks such as Frito-Lay’s light potato chips.
The bait-and-switch is incredibly lucrative. Today, pharmafoods are worth an estimated six billion dollars. When questioned about safety, the industry boasts that “tiny quantities” are harmless. Yet, they lack the studies to prove it.
Microwave Popcorn
Another example of the danger of food additives involves a seemingly harmless snack: microwave popcorn. In the 1980s, purportedly low-fat microwave popcorn was made using the pharmafood known as “diacetyl” (diacetyl-2,3-butanedione). The low-fat chemical tasted just like butter and was designed not to “linger.” In other words, the fake buttery taste disappeared from taste buds faster than real butter. Naturally, this forced people to eat more, quicker.
As a result, even with ultra-low doses, diacetyl not only made people fatter, but also gave rise to “popcorn lung” (bronchiolitis obliterans). This is an irreversible, life-threatening lung obstruction that can lead to slow suffocation. When diacetyl is inhaled (such as upon opening a freshly popped bag of popcorn), diacetyl dismantles the lungs’ ability to carry oxygen into the body.
Barbara Materna, the chief of the occupational health branch in the California Department of Public Health told the New York Times that “the airways to the lung [among factory workers] have been eaten up.” Scientists studying the long-term effects of diacetyl also identified a possible link between diacetyl and Alzheimer’s disease, as reported in Chemical Research.
If It Tastes Sweet Spit it Out!
Despite this and numerous other instances, food mimics are still being used, and more are on the horizon. In addition to sugar mimics like high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, and sucralose, newer types of flavor-enhancing drugs known chemically as nucleotides, ribotides, and alkamides strengthen addictive properties and increase the profits of the pharmafood industry.
Thanks to the alchemists of flavor, tens of thousands of other chemical flavors are cooked up and added to everything from Scotch to chicken, peppermint, and kumquat in an attempt to get us hooked. Not a single one is listed on food labels.
There are currently 80,000 chemical flavor mimics registered within the United States! Yet under FDA regulation, none of the pharmafoods are required to be listed on labels. Moreover, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency only requires testing for about two hundred of those chemical flavors and has succeeded in banning only five of them.
Exposing the flavor industry and creating public awareness about how we’re being chemically seduced are the only ways to curb the threat that food mimics can pose to our health. If it tastes sweet spit it out, and never eat anything served out of a window or package...
Dare to live young,
The People's Chemist
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