I would like to start out by all means avoid specific additives if you know you react to them, this isn’t about you guys. This is more about scaremongering and worst case possibility that would be very rare. Just like someone reacting to gluten, strawberries, nuts, shellfish etc….doesn't mean the food is bad, just means it’s bad for YOU.


I think this kind of food shaming is not helpful as the person reporting might think it is, I actually hate seeing people do this because everything gets taken out of context. It ends up not even being relevant.

You may have noticed many well-meaning people taking a product and saying things like these are linked to cancer! Will mutant your cells! “Chemical cocktail”, science experiment for your cancerous mix of ingredients! “neuro-toxicity and allergic reactions!” inflammatory bowel disease & gastrointestinal cancers!

But…is there any truth to this? I am assuming this is just taking from an additive website and I wonder where they have gotten their info from because when I looked up on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) they seem to think after all the testing for that particular additive it is deemed safe at the levels typically used in each specific product. What is going on here is either misinformation depending on where they looked up their info or what happens at high doses that you will not be having. So then I think what is the point of telling us this? If you have something that is not a dose deemed to be toxic then it is not a poison at all! I have said this before, everything is “toxic” at the right dose! It doesn’t make it a poison unless it is at a dose to be harmful. Like alcohol, nicotine, salt, water, formaldehyde in pears and cyanide in apples. Chemicals are in everything.

If an additive actually causes these things in the dose that they are consumed why are these companies not getting sued for damages, why are the products not be taken off the shelf? Because you don’t consumes them in a high enough dose to be harmful. The dose is what people are not understanding, you can't take something at a very high dose and broadcast this to everyone as dangerous and cancer causing without some context and perhaps the whole truth might be a good idea too.

We are talking about a shop bought chocolate milk, you may have never seen chocolate milk broken down like this. This person claims she and her children are not science experiments! 

The main uses with the products were the colours E133 and E155, the gum E407 (carrageenan) and of course the milk solids “these are also highly inflammatory to the body so will exacerbate any aches and pains in your joints.” (Possibly true for some?) With some added “If you have this in your fridge it belongs in the bin NOT in your body.” Talk about suck the fun out of chocolate milk!

E155 (brown)

With regard to the colour Brown HT (E 155) – which can also be used in soft drinks, bakery products and confectionery, as well as sauces, seasonings and pickles – the Panel has halved the previous ADI to 1.5 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight (mg/kg bw).

Based on the maximum permitted use levels for this colour, together with food consumption data from several countries, the Panel concludes that exposure to Brown HT could be above the new ADI for adults and children who regularly consume large amounts of foods containing the colour. For example, a child weighing 15kg consuming more than 1.125 litres (around 3.4 standard-sized 330ml cans) of soft drinks containing Brown HT at the maximum reported use level every day would exceed the ADI of 1.5 mg/kg bw.

Long term toxicity and carcinogenicity studies with Brown HT are available with rats and mice. No carcinogenic effects were observed in either species. No adverse effects were reported in rats at dietary dose levels up to 425 mg/kg bw/day (highest dose tested).

Currently, Brown HT is an authorised synthetic food colouring substance in the EU, with a maximal allowed use level of 50 to 500 mg/kg food for various foodstuffs

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) conducted an ad hoc survey in which artificial colours were analytically determined in 201 retail ready-to-drink soft drinks selected for being distinctly coloured (FSA, 2003). Brown HT was found to be present at a level higher than 0.1 mg/L (Limit of Detection - LOD) in 2 products, with levels ranging from 2 to 18 mg/L.

E133 brilliant blue

The Panel concluded that the present data set on the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, genotoxicity, subchronic, reproductive, developmental and long-term toxicity, and carcinogenicity give reason to revise the ADI of 10 mg/kg bw/day allocated by SCF in 1984. The Panel considered that the NOAEL of 631 mg/kg bw/day from the chronic toxicity study in rat can be used to allocate a new ADI to Brilliant Blue FCF. By application of an uncertainty factor of 100, the Panel established a new ADI to Brilliant Blue FCF equal to 6 mg/kg bw/day.

In the case of Brilliant Blue FCF, the maximum permitted use level in beverages was 200 mg/l

The default proportion (25%) of beverages and solid food that could contain the additive was considered adequate. In fact, even though Brilliant Blue FCF may be used in a variety of solid foods that could represent more than 25% of processed foods, it is unlikely that a person would systematically choose all processed foods with the same colour added even considering brand loyalty. This assumes that a typical adult weighing 60 kg consumes daily 1.5 litres of beverages and 375 grams of solid foods containing Brilliant Blue FCF.

Reported typical use levels mg/l for flavoured milk products were found to be 0.1mg/l

E407, carrageenan

Carrageenan is derived from several species of red seaweed that is used for the textural stabilization of foods.

This is one that gets confused, what is happening here is the studies are using molecularly degraded form of carrageenan called poligeenan, which has never been used in food applications. Unfortunately, the broad term "carrageenan" is often used in error to describe both poligeenan and food-grade carrageenan, which causes confusion between the two.

Poligeenan was previously known as "degraded carrageenan" in scientific papers and is considered a possible carcinogen to humans; FOOD-GRADE carrageenan is not. The only relationship between food grade carrageenan and poligeenan is that carrageenan is the starting material for creating poligeenan. Poligeenan is not an inherent component of carrageenan and cannot be produced in the digestive tract from carrageenan-containing foods because the production process for poligeenan requires high temperature treatment of carrageenan with strong acids for an extended period of time. This completely alters its molecular structure and molecular weight and renders it useless for food applications.

“Dietary CGN has been shown to lack carcinogenic, tumor promoter, genotoxic, developmental, and reproductive effects in animal studies. CGN in infant formula has been shown to be safe in infant baboons and in an epidemiology study on human infants at current use levels.”

“Food-grade carrageenan is a safe natural product prepared from seaweed. Its addition to food imparts many desirable characteristics which have allowed it to be used continuously for centuries. The long safe history of this natural food additive is confirmed by negative results in subchronic and chronic feeding studies in many animal species, mutagenicity studies and reproductive toxicity studies.”

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/doc/1536.pdf

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/doc/1853.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12389870

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24467586

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058470

Who saw the SBS program on “What’s the right diet for you?”

I have popped the link at the bottom so you can watch it, it was really good and gives a pretty good insight to different ways why people overeat and are overweight and the best diets for them. I watched it and typed up a rather long summary, but I didn’t want to miss out too much!

After reading or watching what type of the 3 eaters do you think you are? Can you think of any other groups?

“Genes, hormones, psychology to find out what kind of eater they are”

“People overeat for many reasons and it may be due to our individual make up. The answer could lead us to the perfect diet to lose weight.”

Many people yoyo diet all their lives and you end up going back to their old ways, but why?

“Diets are about habits, you can’t will yourself to lose weight”

What is the right diet for you?

The first of the study was a dinner where they served sushi, the study has already begun, and the experts are watching what is going on.

They wanted to find out if this group overeat for the reasons suggested in their assessment.

The first group were called the feasters

This is the group that when they start eating they can’t stop. Gut hormones were tested and the people who had the smallest rise were in the feasters group. These are the hormones that tell us we have had enough and we should stop eating. This hormone called GLP1 or glucagon-like-peptide 1 is weaker in the feasters group. For the average person 5-6 of these sushi plates would be enough but many of the feasters had eaten 12 or more, one person was up to 17 plates of sushi. This is almost the amount of food you should consume in 1 day for some. The plates varied from 9 plates to as high as 19 plates eaten.

Gut hormones are a fairly new field and is pretty exciting :)

So what we all want to know is why GLP1 is low? And better still can we increase it, what kind of diet is right for the feasters?  Keep reading!

The 2nd group of eaters are the emotional eaters due to psychological issues.

These people turn to food when depressed, stressed or anxious. This test they did here was a driving test to see if this affected the way they ate after, this test has been used to induce high levels of stress. The driver instructors were not friendly and failed everyone, no chit chat etc…it worked, and they were stressed! So they come back from the test and there are 2 groups- the non -emotional eaters and the emotional eaters. They knew they were stressed as cortisol was tested, this is a stress hormone. They compared the plates of food they ate. The emotional eaters ate 4 times as much chocolates, crisps, biscuits (sugary/fatty snacks) as the non-emotional group. People respond in different way to stress and the emotional eaters respond by using food to manage their emotion. So here we can find new ways to manage them. This group is at risk of gaining weight.

The 3rd group are the constant cravers. (K.D Lang group, lol)

This group want to eat all the time. Within the human body there are keys genes which if you have them that make you constantly want to eat. For most people when our fat stores are at a sufficient levels signals are sent to our brains and tell us we don’t need to eat. But in some people they have genes which disrupt these signals and trick their brain into thinking their fat stores need replenishing, they are hungry all the time.

For the constant craving group they were fed a hearty lunch and were then invited back 2 hours later to test their response to different foods. They had a gripforce meter which they had to squeeze to show how much they wanted that food. The higher the number is the amount you desired the food, it was calibrated to represent their different strengths. Despite just eating lunch 2 hours earlier some of the people were pretty keen to have some of the foods. 8 foods were high in fat/sugar which are classic snacking foods. This constant craving group prefer the foods high in sugar and/or fat.

Now none of these people knew at the beginning which group they were in so after these tests 3 groups were revealed as to which group they were placed in.

Now the fun part how to address the issues and which diet is best for each group!

The feasters group with the low levels of the gut hormones that tell you that you are full. This group needed a diet that would fill them for as long as possible. High protein low GI diet, this boosts your gut hormones to you don’t feel as hungry. Meat, beans, lentils, veggies, fruit- most rice, breads and white potato to be limited. This group were split into 2, one team had the low protein high gi group and one had the high protein low gi group with the same number of calories. What do you think happened?

The high protein low gi group held off much longer in their hunger levels than the low protein high gi group. It was discovered that the GLP1 gut hormone continued to rise 3 hours after lunch for the high protein group, the low protein group was half the amount!

The constant craving group were put on an intermittent fasting diet- for 2 days were to eat a small amount of food- no more than 800 calories- no carbs, just meat fish and eggs pretty much and the other 5 days to eat normally but healthy food. This should shock their bodies into burning fat. Some of the group really struggled with this. They did a pee test to test for ketones to see if they were burning fat and therefore losing weight, if they eat carbs they will go back to burning sugars not fat. They revealed how much they lost in 48 hours- minimum was ½ kg lost.

The 3rd emotional eaters group were put on a low calorie diet, they develop habits that can be hard to break. Breaking habits and establish new ones. One way is through group support, email groups, weight loss meetings and comparing food dairies. One hard thing about weight loss is that the goals seem so far away and unattainable. This group were to absail down a really tall structure and the expert wanted to show them how to support each other to get through it. In their brains it shows that when the brain perceives the stress it increases your heart rate, raises blood pressure and releases glucose to your muscles this can make it harder to overcome the challenge you are facing- group support can help you overcome your emotion and feel in control again. The absail was pretty cool, they were freaked out but so happy they did it, when they always told themselves they couldn’t, they now felt they could do anything they wanted! Very cool!

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We can be very hard on ourselves.

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/473114179533/What'sTheRightDietForYou?S1Ep1