The food you ate today was probably disgusting. If yours was a processed meal, it could easily have included a full day's worth of salt, fat, and calories. But this isn't breaking news. Most of us have a vague idea that we're running on junk â€" it's cheap and delicious, yet we eat it anyway.
Would you make the same food choices if you knew some of the secret ingredients of your daily diet? There's only one way to find out. You might not want to read this during lunch.
By Amanda Green.
1. Fertilizer in Sandwiches
That "Eat Here" sandwich sign outside your local diner might as well say "Eat Fertilizer." The chemical fertilizer ammonium sulfate is added to some chain restaurant sandwich breads in order to feed yeast in the baking process. What's a little fertilizer in our food? (By the way, like many of these entries, you should Google the name of the sandwich maker you are patronizing and check out their ingredients list; in this case, "ammonium" may be right there in the fine print.)
2. Antifreeze Salad
Astroglide may be liquid, but you shouldn't drink its contents.
While hot chocolate and whipped cream stand as a testament to the enjoyable combination of food and sex, we're pretty sure no one wants to eat a salad covered in Astroglide. Propylene glycerol is found in antifreeze and sexual lubricants and can cause skin and eye irritation. Fast food places use it in their pre-packaged salads to keep the greens crisp.
3. Sunscreen in Salad Dressing
Fast food salads can't do anything right. In addition to sexy-time lube ingredients in the lettuce, many fast food salad dressings include titanium dioxide. The same chemical can be found in various paints, sunscreen, and a typical semiconductor.
4. Beef and Pork in Yogurt
People love to tout the benefits of yogurt. It can keep you regular, supply some of your daily calcium and protein, and still tastes like dessert. But no one talks about how many popular brands of yogurt contain stearic acid and glycerin, which come from beef and pork by-products.
So is yogurt still vegetarian, kosher, and halal? Maybe not.
5. Yoga Buns
Image: Trollderella
What does a bread bun have in common with your toned yoga buns? Why, it's azodicarbonamide, a chemical found in fast food buns, yoga mats, and the soles of sneakers. But that's just the tip of the plastic iceberg. Some fast food meals are made up of 70-plus ingredients â€" most are hard to pronounce, and some are banned as food additives in Europe.
6. Ammonia in Hamburgers
Tainted beef isn't just disgusting, it's deadly. The fatty, low-quality meat served at fast food joints is more likely to contain E. coli and salmonella, so it's treated in ammonia before being cooked and served. Yes, the same ammonia used to clean ovens and floors, and the same ammonia that can be poisonous. If you think a burger smells gross when it's cooked, imagine the chemical fumes when it's raw.
7. Wood in Cereal...and Everything Else
Most of what you buy at the grocery store, from syrup to cereal, is made of wood. Cellulose comes in a variety of forms, but it all works the same way. It's a cheap, organic filler used in place of real ingredients. Plus it adds fiber to meals, so it can be advertised as healthy. The issue isn't that cellulose is bad for you. It's that you're paying for food, but eating wood.
8. Beef Fat in Snacks
Image: fotoosvanrobin
When it comes to snack cakes, you really don't want to know what you're eating or where it comes from. They're full of ingredients (most have more than three dozen) meant to last at least a month on the convenience store shelf, and can do so because they don't contain any actual dairy products. Unlike, you know, actual cakes. That creamy center is made of vegetable and/or animal shortening that contains beef fat. Yuck.
9. Bread Head
The good news is that L-cysteine, a flavor enhancer and dough softener used in many breads, is all natural. The bad news is that it comes from hair and feathers. If you're still reading this, the great news â€" or maybe it's bad â€" is that the hair usually belongs to humans just like you.
10. Sticky Rice
Image: Jess Lander
Many people think that takeout tacos taste like cat food laced with MSG and artificial flavoring. But it's the rice you should be worried about. It's covered in dimethylpolysiloxane, a clear, non-flammable chemical also found in adhesives and caulk. Talk about sticky rice.
11. Bug Poison in Condiments
Image: bhollar
Love those fast food condiments? What about glazes for fast food salads? Well, in the course of our research through the ingredients on several fast-food chain sites, we found some condiments contain propylene glycol alginate. The additive is commonly used as a food thickener and stabilizer, as well as a killing and preserving agent in insect traps and a lubricant in a bunch of inedible treats, like massage oil. Propylene glycol is safe for human consumption, but illegal to put in cat food. Sounds like cat food has higher standards than might appear.
12. Sandy Wings
Most of the weird additives in our food are designed to keep them edible â€" or at least, salable â€" longer. Some food survives the sands of time, because it contains, well, sand. Silicon dioxide is used as an anti-caking agent for fast-food buffalo wings, so the chili can stay in a heater for days at a time.
13. Shellac in Candy
The shellac found in furniture polish and varnish gets its shine from the secretions of the sap-sucking shellac beetle, Laccifer lacca. That wouldn't be too gross, if shellac weren't also used in stuff we ingest. The polish is used to shine apples and give candy, like jelly beans, a nice gleam. Pills and tablets are also coated in shellac so they're easier to swallow
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