realicra
Reality cracking
courtesy of Fravia's page of reverse engineering
15 June 1998
Dangerous food additives (reversing labels)
by Maxine+

(version 0.1 ~ in fieri)


Well well well... what d'you eat actually? I'll tell you. In this society, whose only aim is profit, you are probably eating foods that may kill you. No, I'm not speaking of the most evident problems, like the 'mad cow' disease (more profit for the nice master if he does not kill or denounce his ill animals)
And, no, I'm not speaking of the hormones either, commonly used both in the States (legally) and in the European Union (illegally) to mast cows, pigs, whatever can be thus made to grow (and produce profits) more quickly.
And, er no, I'm not speaking of the pesticides residuates in many food products either (since the nice peasants want to make a little profit too, don't they... and, man, there are so many cheap pesticides on the markt!).
And -see- I'm not sepaking about the dangerous lurking future either, with nice big pigs with more ribs and legs than nature cared and six legged genetic engineered chickens that eat cloned fat blue worms before being roasted for your kids (I'm afraid that we'll have to genetically reverse engineer our food :-)... (btw... allergenicity of foods produced by genetic modification has been already scientifically proved, see Critical reviews in food science and nutriton Vol. 36, Supplement, 1996)
No, gentle readers, I'm speaking today of LEGALLY AUTHORIZED killer agents. I'm speaking of dangers that you can SEE and AVOID, if you just reverse (and study) a little the world around you.

Food labelling has always been object of fierce struggles between regulators (that at times wish to limit, at least a little, the 'licence to kill' of the big food processing corporations) and the food producers and resellers, that want -obviously- just to make profit, if necessary over the dead bodies of their own customers.

Reading the European Union's directives on food labelling, it is pretty easy to see how much any proposed increase in 'transparence' on food labels annoys the 'market forces' and the 'experts of the concerned sectors': these pigs don't WANT you to know what's inside their products... since -to make just an example- if you really knew what's inside -say- the 'Jucca' cheese (produced by Kraft) you wouldn't dream to touch such a garbage with a badger pole, 'geschweige denn' to buy it.

In fact the 'market forces' are annoyed by the food labels themselves: I remember that when the 'end date' on food products became compulsory in Europe they tried to avoid this and had success in delaying the introduction of the compulsory 'end date' labelling for years.
Nota bene that this same compulsory labelled "End date" which is calculated BY THE PRODUCERS for obvious commercial reasons at the very limit of deperibility is eufemistically called 'best before' in many (stupid) States... as if the producers had any interest in leaving you graciously some more days 'allowance' instead of putting as 'end date' the (already thin stretched) maximal time duration before their product begins to make worms or worse.

Here a list of food additives allowed by the European Union (which has among the BEST standards on the planet, you can imagine what for additives you'll find in -say- Kuala Lumpur or Ulan Bator :-(

Some of these additivies are QUITE DANGEROUS for ANYBODY. Others are QUITE dangerous for kids. (In which case I would say you better stop eating them as well) Others are QUITE dangerous for anaphylactic (allergic) people. Others are moderately dangerous, once more, for everybody, for kids and for allergic people. Others cause adverse reactions: urticaria, angioedema, asthma.

Well, here's the list... next time pay a little more attention at those little "E 114" warnings on the labels...

The laws in the European Union:

Dangerous Additives


There have not been many studies in the area of additives and allergy (and it is easy to guess why, in our awful society where only the interests and whims of the big corporations are supinely and routinely served and the interests of consumers are almost NEVER defended, since consumer should -as their name implies- "consume" and else shut up :-(
Therefore much of the evidence for specific links between substance and reaction is anecdotal. Those additives that have most often attracted the attention of the few investigators in this field can be grouped into about seven substances or families of substances: dyes, parabens and benzoates, BHA and BHT, nitrates, aspartame, MSG (monosodium glutamate) and finally, sulfites. This DOES NOT mean, of course, that the remaining additives are safe. I repeat: There have been only few studies in the area of additives and allergy

(...to be continued)
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