Horrible food additive

Recently, my daughter developed a rash all over her body. She went to a doctor, who said that she didn't really know but thought it most likely to be heat rash. Well, it wasn't even hot weather at the time, and my daughter has no history of heat rash.

So, she did a lot of research on the Internet, and eventually thinks that she has tracked it down. The day before the rash appeared, she had eaten a Hungry Jacks vege burger. So, you think that you are being healthy by eating a vege burger? Wrong. The lentil patty used in the burger has flavour enhancer 635.

See this report about 635:
http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/factsheets/635/RIBO1.htm




Apart from the rash, what is a real worry is that 635 can cause you to develop adverse reactions to other foods. This could be happening to people, and they don't have any idea why.

For years, I have always looked at the ingredients on the label and avoided artificial additives. But I have been buying pickled cucumbers with this on the label:

Cucumbers (55%), water, vinegar, salt, dill weed (0.4%), mineral salt (509), flavours

...what the @#$!%& are "flavours"!!!!

Actually, I have been buying these pickled cucumbers as the supermarkets no longer have any without this mysterious "flavours" on the label.

After my daughter's report, I am going to be more vigilant, go to a speciality store (?) see if I can locate "natural" pickled cucumbers.

---

Comments

Additives PtI
Username: Sage
In the EU all constituents of food need to be labelled, but for fast food, restaurants and take-away it can be very difficult to find the info. It also helps to have a complete list of 'E - numbers' and probably at least a degree in chemistry! Even so, some unlucky individuals can develop intolerance (as opposed to allergy, which is extremely rare contrary to popular belief and is invariably associated with some genetic factor, etc.). Folks over here get worried by E-numbers unnecessarily. The only one that I've found to be undesirable is tartrazine, an orange dye; it may cause hyperactivity in children, allegedly. Notwithstanding, the balanced diet, and specifically NOT vegan or vegitarian, is the best hedge against any inadvertent health risk. Remember, the Yanks use potassium chloride to kill people, but if you ingest too little potassium in your diet nerve damage occurs. Eating too many tomatoes or carrots can kill. Rhubarb contains oxalic (prussic) acid and so does spinach, one of the most desirable health-giving vegatables. If you think the rash shown above is bad, try the juice of woody and deadly nightshades which grow in the hedgerows on five continents. Solanaceae is a big family - it includes potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines and other common plants. Mango is a member of the poison ivy family. Cannabinoids derive from the hop plant apart from the obvious source; anyone volunteering to stop drinking beer?! There is danger all around!

Rash advice
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"I used to freely dispense advice as to herbs and suchlike against such maladies. But then, two years ago, after getting immersed in floodwater, I suffered an extremely itchy rash similar in appearance to that one. Nothing herbal that I could find totally relieved it, though ginger-licorice-and-sassafras tea helped somewhat (these are well-known as endocrine system tonic herbs). Eventually I went to the (conventional) doctors. They could not identify the causative agent --all tests for bacterial, viral, and fungal infections came up negative, nor could any chemical toxin be found-- and they gave me some kind of corticosteroid tablets, I forget which one. It took about three months for the rash to go away. But corticosteroids tend to shut down the endocrine system, and I have suffered knock-on effects of this ever since. Take in as low of doses as will do the job and for no longer than necessary. If the sufferer has access to either an old-school Western naturopath who knows how to use a synchrometer and pendulum, or else a traditional Chinese doctor (I didn't, at the time), a visit there would be my first advice. Perhaps Ayurvedic medicine might help, but I have no first-hand experience with it.

Re rash photos
Username: BarryK
"Just in case anyone got the wrong idea from my post, those photos are not of my daughter, they are from the website linked-to. Yes, you can read labels in supermarkets, but we are at the mercy of the vendor when we buy fast food or sit down at a restaurant. It is not just my bottle of cucumbers that has vague labeling. I just looked at my bottle of Berri "Morning Start Juice": [i]Reconstituted Fruit Juices [Orange 39%, Pineapple 39%, Apple 20.7%, Mango 0.9%, Passionfruit 0.3%], Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Flavours, Food Acid (Citric Acid), Folate[/i] ...there it is again, that mysterious "Flavours"! As for reconstituted fruit juice, that is opening a whole new can of worms.

Dill Pickles and cortizone
Username: CLAM01
"Barry, The (509) "mineral salt" ingredient in your dill pickles is calcium chloride, a form of lime. It is added to the brine to clarify it, so it is clear, not cloudy. It's similar to adding egg-shell to bouillon, aspic or coffee. Most calcium chloride is produced by adding calcium carbide to water, which produces acetylene gas. "Flavours" on a label should indicate flavouring added as a suffusion. For dill pickles the suffusion should be pickling spices brewed as a 'tea', the tea then filtered and added to the brine, to add 'flavours' without the usual bits of garlic, pimento, mustard-seed, bay-leaf, etc. It is interesting that food-processors are going from chemical names to numbers. I suppose a list of numbers looks less frightening. Best for natural dill pickles is to find a home pickler and arrange to buy/trade for several jars or a barrel. Cortizone is a stearoid, originally derived from sheep's stomachs; I don't know if they synthesize it or not. It is very useful in its place, though, like worming medicines, not particularly good for one except for doing what it does do. Cortizone is best used topically, if possible, as an ointment, not taken internally unless necessary. For general advice, anytime you have anything in you that you don't want there, help it get out: Drink liquids, add 'cleansers' like vitamin C, then sweat, pee, etc., to help the liquids, hopefully carrying the unwanted, to get out.

Telfast 120mg
Username: FeodorF
"Barry, your daughter should talk to her doctor about using the antihistamine Telfast 120mg (not cheap, but very good and without side effects), before trying on cortisone. Regards, FeodorF

Flavors
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"Best advice comes from the recently-departed (at age 96) fitness guru Jack LaLanne: "If man made it, don't eat it." Here in the U.S., the word "flavors" on the ingredients label --no matter whether "artificial" or "natural"-- almost always means "MSG". The book to read is [i]Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills[/i], by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.. Even worse, it has recently been ruled here that "sugar" can mean it contains a certain percentage of sugar substitutes such as aspartame and sucralose, without these poisonous ingredients needing to be separately disclosed on the label.

Pickles
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"As for pickles, the point is to get natural "good" bacteria into one's system. Commercial pickles, all pasteurized, defeat the purpose. Good book: [i]The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity[/i], by Donna Gates and Linda Schatz. Website: www.bodyecology.com. The recipe for fermented green-coconut juice is absolutely delicious. Sauerkraut can be made from any plant in the cabbage family. All naturally contain lactobacteria. Just slice it into thin ribbons and then smash on it with a meat-tenderizing hammer. The usual medium is salt brine. The purpose of the salt is just to impede growth of competing microbes until the natural lactobacilli dominate. Three tbsp. salt per qt. water is what I have found to be the minimum. Four is more reliable for preventing spoilage, but then the sauerkraut tastes too salty. I use one-quart glass jars. I pack the sliced/smashed cabbage tightly, fill to near the top with brine, cover with a folded paper towel, and then I have these Japanese teacups which snugly fit the diameter of the top of the jar, resting on top of the sauerkraut with the paper towel as a semi-permeable gasket, to keep the sauerkraut from floating up. Screw the lid on, but leave it a bit loose because CO2 will off-gas. Fill with brine to within 1/2-inch of the top, and fill the teacup with brine to exclude air. I leave it on top of the refrigerator, at room temperature, but warmer or cooler won't hurt it. It's ready in one week, but improves with age. Some batches will go bad. C'est la vie. Sally Fallon writes, in [i]Nourishing Traditions[/i], that raw-milk whey can be used instead of salt. Using whey, she says, you can pickle sweet fruits such as pears. But I have not tried using whey.

Best wishes to your daugher
Username: Tony
"Hope she feels better soon. My mum had a rash appear, it was very bad and it took the docs 3 months to track it down to..... Coeliac disease, yes wheat! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease All these years before it showed itself in this form (although she had bloating and other problems before.) The human body is an amazing creation but so hard to track down things that have perhaps been "lurking" sub-clinically for years. I must agree with others who have posted, keeping away from processed foods and e numbers is a definite positive step. The other thing is trying to eat as much food in it's natural state I.E. the way we find it in the wild, raw, fresh and unsprayed.

Be careful!
Username: There is some bad advice as well as good advice above.
"Calcium chloride is fine - it is used in cans of red kidney beans as a firming agent. It is extremely unlikely to harm anyone, but rinse it off, anyway. Be especially aware of folks who cannot spell. The difference between stearoids - a non-substance but suggestive of soap and steroids is rather important. Cortisone is spelt cortisone, even in the USA. Best never to visit an American doc! As I said, visit the doc - he/she will decide whether your daughter needs the hydrocortisone jab or a topical cream. The former is immediately effective, the latter will act much more slowly. Forget the herbal mumbo-jumbo; it should be evident from my piece that they are just as likely to cause the problem in intolerant patients. But the advice about washing powders, skin creams is bang on. They use odourants and brighteners which are also aldehydic/ketonic based. As I indicated, the capitalist crooks are busy at work (particularly with the ladies who the ad. pyschologists try to convince, want thinks to smell good). Their latest wheeze is to leave out the irritants, charge a higher price and call it 'hypo-allergenic'. If you use high-priced, heavily advertised, scented washing powders you [b]WILL[/b]get a rash around the knicker-line before age 50, even if you never had trouble before. But find me a lady who will listen - can't accuse the capitalists and their running dogs of being stupid...

Reconstituted juices
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"Another caveat, concerning 'reconstituted' fruit juices: you have no way of knowing whether they were reconstituted using fluoridated tapwater or not. Fluoride in any form is a deadly cumulative poison. It has no role whatsoever in human nutrition. It actively destroys the thyroid gland and contributes to calcification of the pituitary, one effect of which is to blind the victim spiritually. Some countries are more enlightened on this issue than others. For example, water fluoridation is against the law in Israel. They are very much aware that the Nazis fluoridated the concentration camp water, after the Nazis noticed that fluoridating the water dumbs people down and makes them docile. Fluoridation also tends to make people bad spellers and irrationally intolerant of knowledge which runs contrary to their received paradigms. Chlorine is in the same column of the periodic table as fluorine and has a similar, though less aggressive, harmful effect on the thyroid as fluorine. Hence, chloride should not be taken into the body beyond that which comes from table salt. A small amount of chlorine is necessary in order for the stomach to make its digestive hydrochloric acid. But 1/4 teaspoon of table salt per quart of water drunk, is the maximum safe limit, and many people are susceptible to high blood pressure at even this relatively low amount.

Warning on certain steroids
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"Some steroids do not contain fluorine in the molecule, for example prednisone. Others do, such as triamcinolone. During metabolization, the fluorine in fluoridated steroids does become split off, as free fluoride. Consequently, I strongly suggest that one reject triamcinolone in favor of prednisone, if one must take steroids. As I recall, the oral steroid tablets I was prescribed two years ago took effect in under two hours. This delay seems a small inconvenience, when weighed against the potential consequences inherent in getting an injection. You have no way of knowing what is in that hypodermic *besides* the active ingredient! While the same is true of an oral tablet, at least with the oral tablet you have the natural defense mechanisms of the digestive tract standing between you and harm.

Pure BS
Username: Sage
"Fluoridated water is the best thing anyone with children could wish for. It gives strong, healthy, but sometimes mottled, teeth against all the cr*p pushed upon unsuspecting children. It's wonderful stuff. The concentrations used at your water plant are usually a little less than in natural ground and spring waters in appropriate locations that have been ingested since time immemorial, but now bottled up at £1 a pop by the greedy capitalists. I note that our colleague SHS is trying to foist an entirely new chemistry and pharmacy on fellow readers. I wasn't aware of his degrees in this field. Remind me to write to the RSC to commend him for a medal. Doubtless the Stockholm conclave will be writing to him. In the meantime, as a proven professional, I urge readers to totally ignore his claptrap. A little knowledge can be fatal and Googlers need to be circumspect with the information provided them. Be guided by practice in nations with a full NHS, [i]ipso facto[/i] less quacks trying to make a fast buck. Take the injection if it's offered by a qualified medic.

Your gherkins
Username: Sage
"Are you dead yet? Have you grown two heads yet (or two of anything else?!). Probably not. I am a pickled gherkin eater, too. The only deleterious effect I have suffered from them is self-inflicted - I eat too many. The acetic acid (vinegar) attacks my ancient molars causing pain and even greater pain in the wallet when I visit the dentist. I try to curb my passion(s!); sometimes I am successful. Additives - concentrations probably too low to worry about; most are plant derived, anyhow, [i]vide supr[/i]a. Great strategy: grow-your-own provided you can afford the water to keep them alive out in Pernajori.

Beware degreed fluoride pushers
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"Start here: http://www.fluoridealert.org/fluorosis-india.htm Good book: [i]The Fluoride Deception[/i], by Christopher Bryson. Review: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/06/09/fluoride-deception-part-one.aspx

Authoritative
Username: Sage
"I guess if you aren't in the field as a qualified practitioner it is difficult to detect the quackery. Hence my warnings. As for 'fluorosis-india' and 'mercola', never heard of them. I only read peer-reviewed journals.

Authoritative indeed
Username: Sit Heel Speak
"@Barry's daughter: I beg and plead with you: don't take the "jab". @Sage: As Climategate shows, all a professional degree proves is that one has consented to undergo years of indoctrination in a the axioms and terminology of professional culture of profit --in the climate scientists' case, a culture of profitable fraud. Old saying: B.S.=Bull S**t, M.S.=More S**t, Ph.D.=Piled Higher and Deeper. All six of the references in this article are from peer-reviewed journals: http://tinyurl.com/6gsx5ls The 2006 [i]Lancet[/i] article is especially interesting: http://www.fluoridealert.org/bulletins/lancet.html "I am quite convinced that water fluoridation, in a not-too-distant future, will be consigned to medical history." --Dr. Arvid Carlsson, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine. In a nutshell: the proponents of water fluoridation have been fighting, for more than 70 years, with government connivance, the same sort of public-relations fight as British Petroleum is fighting, and for the same purpose: that is, to issue under color of authority sufficient disinformation as to stave off personal damage liability awards in the multiple billions of dollars.

Greed kills everything.
Username: capoverde
"@Sit Heel Speak: second all you say in full. All our problems come from the widespread greed for money and power, which degenerates everything -- not just the world of Operating Systems, sadly! We all care for price, which can be seen at once; but we must find a way to make real quality be as readily obvious. Not that easy... Best wishes to your daughter, Barry.

Re daughter
Username: BarryK
"I should have explained something. My daughter had the rash for about a week. It is gone now. The doctor recommended calamine lotion, which she applied. It was a one-off thing, so she tried to think of any one-off exposures that she had in the couple of days prior to the rash appearing. The Hungry Jacks vege burger was a strong contender as the culprit as it is not something that she buys, it was a one-off.

Good News
Username: Sage
"Glad to hear daughter OK. Judging by your further information and the docs' advice, there is as much chance that her rash was caused by something she touched as something ingested. As intimated, the garden (in the widest sense) has developed a robust method of biting back. But so has the healing power of the human frame. Calamine is to suppress the itch, it's the antibodies that do the biz. Plants as apparently innocuous as a bunch of flowers can cause the level of attack you now describe. For more serious attacks medics hold in reserve topical steroids and injections; having worked with so many natural products, I've personally been the beneficiary of all these things, although I have no known intolerances. Rejoice in living in a land with good education, a decent health service and lack of reliance on quackery and $$$. As you can see, if you don't have those things, the homespun nexperts will jump out of all the cupboards. Most have no idea about significance of the first ionisation potential of fluorine, nor the important difference between inorganic fluoride salts and organic fluoro-compounds. Must dash to cook my polyester-covered sausages in my ptfe-coated non-stick frying pan!

That's the spirit.
Username: Cogitus
"[i]"As for 'fluorosis-india' and 'mercola', never heard of them. I only read peer-reviewed journals."[/i] That's the spirit. Let us not see things from a different angle, e.g. [i]outside the box (matrix)[/i], as it might free us from our invisible thinking prison, and we wouldn't want that; it's warm and fuzzy inside, and the sociopaths in power are loving, well-meaning people. [i](note to self: insert an uncommon Latin phrase somewhere in the text, so as to sound more educated and smarter than those I disagree with)[/i]

Fluoridation is mass medication without consent
Username: Tony
"To add some thing to the water supply (Be it fluoride, Asprin (It may reduce heart problems) or whatever) is a violation of basic human rights. Secondly when is a medication prescribed when the dosage received is as variable as "Depends how much tap water you drink"? And finally, lets face it most kids drink little water compared to adults! Barry glad to hear your daughter is feeling better, lets hope it was a one off.

Rash
Username: Barrys Daughter
"The doctor seemed to have no idea what caused my rash - and I don't know for sure, either. It could have been a number of things. We assumed it was just heat rash, as that is what it looked most like. I took Telfast and walked around covered in calamine lotion for days. The flavour enhancer information I found quite interesting as it presented similar to symptoms to those i experienced. As for additives such as these, I think it is best to try and consume as much natural non processed foods as possible. Or at the very least, know what the numbers mean. Oh, and I am not the over weight woman in the photos pictured above..

Tags: general