Surprising Ingredients Hidden in Everyday Foods You Eat
Peanut Butter Is Notorious For Rodent Hair
If you’ve ever left a restaurant feeling grossed out after finding a strand of human hair in your food, well, you’re going to like this one even less. For real, there is a maximum of rodent hair permitted in peanut butter by the FDA. The threshold: one hair per 100 grams. Which means if you’ve ever eaten peanut butter in your life, you’ve probably eaten some rodent hair.
They likewise contain limits of about 30 insect fragments in every 100 g, although we find rodent hairs a bit more troubling.
Sports Drink Dye is linked to chronic health issues.
Sports drinks seem like the solution here, and they might have some utility for the classic post-night-on-the-town brunch, but really, there are probably better options. Because those things have a solid dose of sugar; as in a whole bunch of sugar. Yes, 36 grams, to be precise, or about nine teaspoons, all in one little bottle. Some sport drinks contain dyes about which researchers have also expressed concerns. And medical papers have come out associating some of these dyes with serious chronic diseases and conditions, including ADHD and hyperactivity.
Then there are the links we haven’t identified, and God only knows what these chemicals can do to Our bodies.
Powdered Soup Actually Uses Sand
Right, that probably wasn’t the most accurate title. To be more accurate, powdered soup doesn’t put dirt in it, not specifically. It’s more like sand. Many companies will simply add a grain of sand into their powdered soup so that they will be fine in the mouth. It’s sort of like how shredded cheese has sawdust in it so it doesn’t stick together. That said, if we didn’t admit that the idea of chewing sand along with our soup was a little scary, well we’d be liars.
Perhaps others won’t be surprised by this one, as numerous reviews for various powdered soups tend to say it tastes just a bit too “gritty.” And that is why, if you have ever thought about the same thing, you now know why.
Shredded Cheese and Wood Pulp
Yep, that pre-packaged shredded cheese you buy in the bags? The pulp, or as you may think of it, sawdust, is added to keep the shredded cheese from clumping in the package. Fortunately, it isn’t meant to be dangerous for humans to consume — at least not in the quantity they are putting in cheese.
However, there’s no doubt that next time we pick up shredded cheese at the store, it’ll be difficult not to wonder about a splinter or two in the process.
Would You Like Some Shoe Polish With That Donut?
When someone mentions shoe or car polish, you’ve probably encountered carnauba wax. Many car washes will even market it as a feature. I guess that is why some donut companies don’t use it as much in their advertising, so it is kind of funny. The stuff that some of them use to ensure their donuts are the proper shine. Not the sort of thing you want to find in your product but they presumably don’t use as much as a car wash.
It might also be worth noting that carnauba wax is derived from a certain kind of tree, so at least it’s kind of natural.
Vanilla Ice Cream And Beaver Butts
As you may have guessed from the title, this is a bizarre one. Just about all brands have this component in the vanilla taste that pursues your olfactories as well as is actually utilized in nearly all your vanilla soft serve– a chemical substance lotion that arises from the beaver butts. Like, okay so technically it’s called castoreum, but let’s call a spade a spade. Other mammals have comparable glands around their butts that serve to mark territory, but the unique flavour of beaver secretion derive from their food.
Castoreum is considered safe for human consumption by the FDA. However, because of the touchy nature of the term “beaver butt” many companies instead go with “natural flavoring.”
Sliced Bread Is Sometimes Made With Human Hair
For instance, if you ever purchased homemade bread from a bakery, you would instantly notice that it gets spoiled much quicker as compared to sliced bread that is available in supermarkets. The reason for it is that L-cysteine and other preservatives are not usually found in homemade pies. Its essentially what enables the slicing and selling of bread in grocery stores across America. But it has a really gross and large secret: it is occasionally formed out of human hair.
L-cysteine is essentially hair boiled down into a preservative and is often sourced from Chinese salons. Yup, people’s hair, the thing that’s keeping some of your bread fresh.
How Cow, Pig, and Fish Bones Factor Into Gelatine
You may not realize Jello (who’s brand name is gelatin) is made from cow, pig, and fish bones, but chances are pretty good you know the name gelatin. Gelatin, a strong ingredient in jello, comes from boiling the bones and bits and pieces of cows, pigs, or fish, and somehow theyre able to process it all the way down to that. Well, whenever you were chowing down on jello as a kid, you were really only chewing on bouncy dead animal skeletons. Yum!
And this is likely one of the reasons one would are available in and replace a few letters so that Jello-O could spell gelatin otherwise. It was, in fact, a brilliant marketing ploy as we would never have connected the dots otherwise.
Watch Out With Imported Shrimp
For any kind of seafood fresh is king. But we learned in recent years that shrimp, specifically, have been found to be unsafe, with studies detecting pesticides, feces, and even cockroaches in these crustaceans. You see imported shrimp from overseas are a hit. Much of the shrimp that we import comes from industries located in foreign nations with lax food and health safety regulations.
This ship was linked to some of the boats using unethical labor as well. So, next time you want some shrimp, know where they come from.
Orange Juice Often Isn’t As Fresh As It Seems
We were always told orange juice was a healthy breakfast food growing up. But now we know that in addition to it being high in added sugar, many companies also pump chemicals into their orange juice. One of the most frequent examples is a substance known as ethyl butyrate, which artificial flavoring companies use. So when companies offer up freshly squeezed OJ, worst case scenario, what they are actually serving up is a chemical cocktail.
So it’s not a total loss, lots of chemicals are just concentrated chemicals. Either way, though, if you want something like orange juice that is better, more highly likely you’re going to have to juicer it yourself.
The Link Between Salad Dressing And Paint
If you’ve ever drizzled some salad dressing on top of a salad and thought to yourself, white paint had cutest boyfriend, I can kind of see the resemblance. you actually weren’t that wide of the mark Salad dressings are packed full of good old chemical one of those chemical is titanium dioxide. It is used to add luster to products like paint and sunscreen. Fortunately, it’s largely deemed edible and is, in fact, a found natural.
Propylene glycol, which is used in anti-freeze, is another chemical that is commonly used in salad dressings. And that probably sounds pretty terrible, but it has only shown deleterious effects at high doses. When it becomes toxic, it can lead to seizures and central nervous system problems and other complications such as cardiac arrhythmia.
Chewing Gum And Sheep
Sure, chewing gum is often one of those candies people hold up and connect to things like bugs, but it turns out there is an even worse ingredient used in chewing gum. Some companies use something called lanolin to give their gum its consistency. This is essentially a wax produced by the wool of a sheep. Think of the secretion humans get leaking from their pores in a crowded room, and you are almost there.
By the way, lanolin is also a fat that can be used as a natural alternative in some skin care products instead of chemical-based skin care products.
The chemicals in hot dogs are linked to diabetes and cancer.
Everyone knows hot dogs are terrible for you; however, we conveniently look past this fact regardless. That’s right: hot dogs are a staple of cook-outs and baseball games, and they tend to taste pretty good. But boy, they are loaded with chemical preservatives. Nitrates are among them, and has been heavily implicated in cancer. They quoted Time magazine linked to processed meats: “Processed meats associated with a whole lot higher rates of bladder cancer.
Similarly, those who ate large amounts of hot dogs and other processed meats were also more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
There’s More Than Cacao In That Chocolate Bar
A chocolate bar often comes in a package with a long list of chemicals. But we are not here to discuss that. We’re going to discuss the bugs hiding in your chocolate, instead. Yes and researchers claim that on average there are eight bug legs in every chocolate bar. Well, we guess it’s not like you can totally prevent food from ever being infected with whatever, but yeah, we’re never going to look at chocolate quite the same way again.
This is a part that we probably shouldn’t mention — the bugs in your chocolate bar are not just bugs. They’re generally cockroach parts, according to a report from NBC News.
The Link Between Potato Chips And Toilet Bowl Cleaners
Potato chips have long been in hot water for being chock full of strange-sounding chemicals but short on, you know actual potatoes. Nevertheless, one specific chemical gets used to produce certain chips which not a lot of people are aware of. That’s Sodium bisulfate. It’s the same chemical that’s found in many common household cleaners you likely have perched throughout your house, including toilet bowl cleaners. But, do potato chips really need this? We aren’t exactly sure.
Even though the amount is nowhere near a toilet bowl cleaner can, it is still rather disgusting to consider.
Some White Flour Actually Contains A Deadly Chemical
Frass-testing lowdown: Plain old white flour looks pretty innocent; after all, it’s one of the oldest ingredients in the game. For centuries, flour made of grains has been produced by mankind. However, humans have only chosen to give their flour a shower fairly recently, and now a few companies even use sodium chlorite to bleach their flour. The consistency of flour means it would be essential to treat this indication, as researchers have found abdominal irritation of the lungs by inhalation of this chemical substance that seriously irritates.
Sure manufacturers add it to their flour so that it can appear even more white but do we really need to be adding an additional chemical into something as simple as flour just to color it to a certain standard?
Canned Soup Of Chemicals
With 20th-century history, canned soups may be both some of the most famous products on the shelf and ones with the most mysterious backstory. You aren’t doing yourself any more favors with it, given its ludicrous sodium quantity. Then there’s also the note that most of the brands of soups have chemicals. They also add a ton of msg to their soups. For instance, a single canned soup may contain almost your entire daily recommended intake of sodium.
Many canned soup containers contain BPA, a substance known to disrupt normal bodily function, not to mention be associated with numerous diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. As a general rule, research any brand’s use of BPA in their packaging before you buy canned soup.
Pork Rinds
For real though, pork rinds are an excellent snack. However, you can fucking taste the ungodly amount of sodium in each bite. But, honey, that is likely no the most shocking thing you will find in pork rinds. The rinds of snack food packingcompanies are packed with preservatives and artificial chemicals and, combined with your sodium, adds up to a lot of troubleXXXX Same goes for commercial companies. But, much like beef jerky, hope still exists for fans out there.
Small batch or small company pork rinds are not required to have an insane amount of sodium or preservatives. They are generally also made out of a higher grade pork.
Beef Jerky Is Dangerously Packed With Sodium
Beef jerky is a nice carry-around snack for nearly any outdoor fun, but there’s one problem. It contains a lot of sodium. Essentially it is part of the way that most companies who produce beef jerky in bulk will go about things. Commercial jerky has about 416 milligrams of sodium on average per piece —which means one-a-day bag (five pieces) adds up to being about half of the daily limit. That said, all hope is not lost for jerky fans.
If you make your jerky at home, you may have very little or no salt. On top of that, it is 20x better than the store-bought stuff and you can call it healthy-ish as it is full of good protein.
Coffee Creamer Is Basically Just Oil
If you like cream in your coffee, maybe all you were doing was putting oil in your coffee. Although this is not true with all coffee creamers, certain types for some reason have used a ton of oil in their blend. There’s more in there as well, including water and syrup solids, but there’s also a lot of soybean oil, too.
A few form brands will generally have some fat or trans fats. And this whole time we thought coffee cream was just practically milk.
Instant Ramen And Preservatives
Instant ramen is a twentieth-century wonder food. Inexpensive, delicious, and unbelievably easy to prepare However, there had to be a downside to it, right? Well, there is. Instant ramen is loaded with sodium, msg (AKA monosodium glutamate, flavor enhancers), and preservatives. All of which, when combined, have been connected to stomach cancer and heart problems. Yeah, nasty biz, huh? But instant ramen is not all doom-and-gloom, though.
Despite being one of the most unhealthiest foods in the world, instant ramen does contain some redeeming qualities in the form of high vitamin B, manganese and iron content.
Milk Can Cause Harmful Hormonal Imbalances
Milk has taken a rather large beating over the past few years, some of it justifiable and some not. On the other hand, since milk is so essential to early development, it’s not so shocking that some studies show milk changes hormones in both men and women. Milk from cows increased the levels of female sex hormones while decreasing sex hormones in men. Weird stuff too → → → It altered estrogen levels.
They wrote that during the study period estrogen levels in men, women and children rose in the sample population and other research found an association between hormonal changes from milk and breast growth and prostate tumors.
Arsenic Loving Rice
Arsenic is likely one of the environmental toxins best known to humanity, alongside mercury. Even its title sounds nefarious. But few are aware of a relatively common staple food that has a nasty little trick of up-taking environmental arsenic. Rice is a staple food in millions of diets worldwide but is infamous for its arsenic content. But researchers believe that most rice does not harbor sufficient arsenic to seriously harm people.
However, they say that eating rice in large quantity daily is not a good idea. Some varieties of rice are also more likely to contain higher levels of arsenic.
Be Careful Which Frozen Dinners You Bring Home
Americans get a bad rap for living off frozen dinners, and it’s not undeserved. As it turns out, all those sodium, fat, and calories we found in frozen foods, and all those chemicals and preservatives we added to them, end up being of no money-saving benefits. All of which are necessary evils, but not in large quantity But if you want to skip the whole making-your-own-dinner after a long day at work thing, there is still hope for some
Frozen dinner manufacturers that use healthier foods have started creeping into the market so you can pick up a frozen dinner that isn’t too terrible for you.
Some Fish Contain High Levels Of Mercury
This is true of fish only, but many have been known to contain excessive mercury, which is very bad for human health. Swordfish are another particularly bad offender as it absorbs a great deal of mercury from its prey. But, there are much more. Mercury generally affects saltwater fish with longer lifespans like sharks and certain tuna, but bass has been known to be high in mercury on occasion.
When in doubt, there is usually a warning on the state or federal website, and state wildlife agencies will oftentimes do a warning when fish is found to have high levels of mercury in a certain area.
Is Margarine Chemically Close To Plastic?
For a couple of years, this was a hot debate, when someone claimed that margarine was just one molecule away from being plastic. It also said that it was originally for turkey feed. That second claim is patently false, but margarine does have a dark past. When French emperor Napolean III was looking for something to replace butter, he offered a contest for the best substitute. About 150 years ago a French chemist invented margarine to take home the prize.
Now that that’s out of the way, is margarine similar to plastic at a chemical level? Not really. From a chemical standpoint, plenty margarine was once structurally just like plastic, but they’ve moved on from that and, in any occasion, had consistently been more similar to spread than plastic.
Can You Guess How They Make Candies so Red?
Have you ever wondered what makes a piece of candy so bright and pleasing? In plenty of cases, firms use dyes that almost certainly is not excellent for your well being. But red candy isn’t commonly plagued by that problem. Most companies instead use carmine to dye their candy red. and though it sounds like a chemical, it’s harvested from the stomach of a female beetle. To some, that sounds disgusting, but to us, we think that is better than using chemicals.
Of course, it still occasionally appears on labels as Natural Red #4, for technically it is simply the pulverized guts of a South American bug. They are also widely employed in the cosmetics sector.
Carbon Monoxide Is Keeping Your Red Meat Red
While packaged deli meat at your neighborhood grocery store may feel like a fresher option than frozen dinners, it may not be the case. Now the truth is, many meat processing plants will inject chemicals into their meat to help it stay looking fresh longer! In order to achieve this, they will typically employ carbon monoxide. This is at very low enough levels that is not illegal and is not supposed to be harmful, but nevertheless the same thing that comes out your car.
It can otherwise be detrimental as meat can spoil, and it wouldn’t be apparent through its appearance. Naturally, the food itself must also smell disgusting and undoubtedly it would if it were not no longer fit for human consumption.
Raspberry Popsicles and Beaver Butts
Raspberry popsicles, despite their name, are not flavored with raspberries. Instead, it arrives most likely from the unlikeliest of sources — beaver bottoms. Believe it or not, castoreum, the secretion from the glands on a beaver’s backside, is used as one of the ingredients in raspberry popsicles. That’s disgusting to think about, but the practice has been around for nearly 100 years. And really, we have no idea how on Earth humans worked that out either.
Since the method of extracting the secretion is so, erm, unpleasant for all involved, only a few drops are harvested annually and acts as a concentrate.
Canned Cheese
We doubt there is a single soul in the world who is going to argue that canned cheese is healthy. All it takes is a name, and your brain goes, “That does not sound natural.” Or, rather, one of the load-bearing blocks in that tower of tinned cheese-turns-out-to-be-actually-a-bit-natural. It’s curdled milk. Not the most palatable, but also not the worst thing on this list.
Curdled milk is commonly thought of as the lumps that develop in milk that has gone bad, but curdled milk can actually happen either from a bad carton or due to thermal agitation.
Canned Tomatoes And BPA
Until recently, all food cans used BPA: canned tomatoes were even more heavily affected by chemical. That’s due to the fact that tomatoes are very acidic, and they have been shown to gradually eat through the lineaer in cans and free the BPA into food. It has been tied to a long list of health problems, from higher cancer rates to neurological diseases.
Still, with heightened awareness of the dangers regarding BPA, some canning companies have been moving away from the chemical. But, hey, it’s worth checking the Internet for your brand of peeled tomatoes before purchasing.
Unnaturally Orange Food And Drinks
Even as children, we had to acknowledge something just wasn’t right with SunnyD’s orange hue. Well, turns out there is. To get the signature color for the drink, the company employs a few proprietary dyes, which have been used to color everything from popsicles to a lot of candies. They’re known as Yellow Dyes 5 and 6. Scientists suspect that some types of cancer may be partially attributed to their activity.
So strong is this connection, apparently, that countries such as Finland and Norway have gone so far to ban the use of foods altogether. Some other countries in Europe demand warning labels when a food has these dyes.
The FDA Is Cool With Bugs Apparently
Like a few of the other posts on this list, there are allowable levels of contamination when it comes to food. But when it comes to some foods, the FDA sets the limit at shockingly high numbers. Frozne broccoli, for example, can have about 60 aphids, thrips or mites, on per 100 grams. That means for every 100g of frozen veg, there is a fair few of these little critters.
It leaves people wondering what they were eating before processing techniques or at least the number counts were a bit lower, right? Either way, aphids are not as lethal as some of the other bugs on this list.
Making Diet Soda Taste Good
And for years Coca-Cola has been trying to provide consumers a “better” version of their famous drink. But how do you do that when you’re mostly stripping away the sugar — the heroin in the delectable flavor of soda? Of course, you mix in another artificial sweetener. This led many companies to go with a substance they deemed aspartame. Lesser-calorie 200 times sweeter replacement for normal sugar. That said, it still has a few pretty major flaws.
It has been associated with diabetes and some forms of cancers. It has even been blamed for inhibiting weight loss-associated proteins.
Microwavable Popcorn
Microwavable popcorn is commonly advertised as a delicious but still nutritious snack choice. And it is, in a lot of respects, but the bags it arrives in are generally laden with non-stick chemicals as well. This wouldn’t matter so much if they used something like cooking oil, but for years numerous popcorn bags have been known to contain Teflon-like chemicals.
Those are the chemicals that researchers have dubbed “forever chemicals,” because when they get into your body, they aren’t leaving.
The Notorious Nuggets
Chicken nuggets are perhaps the first food that popped up in your mind when you hear the word processed food (or the most relevant to the context;)) They just are not instincts at all right? Heck, even McDonald’s boasts an entire section of its website to dispell this myth that they’re made of pink slime. While these are not quite pink slime, they typically do have unhealthy preservatives and various chemicals. The most prominent one being TBHQ (tertiary butylhydroquinone) an obvious chicken nuggets chemical and one known to cause liver and eyesight problems.
Still, the FDA insists that the level allowed in U.S. foods is really not harmful for humans. Not nearly as much damage as the infamous pink slime would do if it were all proven true.
Granola Bars Are A Lie (Sort Of)
This may surprise many but granola bars are almost never as healthy as they are marketed to be. That ripped dude or chick they always have on their box? So they probably weren’t eating granola bars from the store as those are typically loaded with sugar. That isn’t to say that they’re all bad, but definitely read the ingredients list before you purchase!
Better yet, make your own granola bars at home. Although it might sound tricky, it’s really not that complex, as we can find many tutorials in the internet.
Be Picky When Buying Nuts
Nuts are among those types of foods that are not easy to label as healthy or unhealthy. It all really depends on what type you pop for. Salted nuts, for instance, are typically loaded with unhealthy levels of sodium, and other nut flavours are not much better. You can get away with plainest of plain, but even that is oftentimes not enough as mere roasted nuts can be lethal to your health.
In some cases, nuts can also release acrylamide during the roasting process, which is a compound that can cause nerve damage to humans and is believed to be carcinogenic.
We’re Not Loving The Chemicals In Fries
French fries don’t necessarily raise eyebrows when it comes to preservatives and chemicals because they appear to be so straightforward food items. So, funny thing: french fries have approximately 19 ingredients total, and a large portion of it is introduced while the french fry is being fried. This includes tertiary butylhydroquinone and dimethylpolysiloxane, with the second being designed to prevent splashing of oil during frying. Sounds pretty weird, right? No, we weren’t expecting that either, really.
The FDA in U.S. considers Tertiary butylhydroquinone as safe, yet Japan has banned its use. There are also researchers that related it to the liver and several other health ways.
Ketchup Is Really Unhealthy
Ketchup isn’t a U.S. phenomenon, to be honest, it an international phenomenon. However, despite the fact that its primary ingredient is a vegetable (or fruit, as the case may be), it is not healthy. This is because ketchup is loaded with high fructose corn syrup. So we all know about corn syrup, right? Nooooo — it’s the very bad, bad sugar substitute that scientists have been sounding alarm bells about for the past several years.
It was previously linked with problems such as obesity and heart disease as well as toxic contaminants in the brain believed to impair people’s memory.
