Be informed about the dangers of your food
Macaroni and cheese dish image Tony Zhu
The power of commercials
In our modern world, the pretty pictures of food often fool us or of cheerful people eating food. In general, those pictures make our mouths water, as that is what these pictures are supposed to do. By the next possibility, being it shopping in the supermarket or going to a fast food place, we have this picture engraved in our brain and buy it or immediately go and eat it.
Let’s face it, we are being brainwashed by commercials completely forgetting what we are putting into our mouths.
In our modern world, they often fool us, and we think we are eating healthy things, but most of the time this is not true. Man-made foods are often made up of unbelievable ingredients of which we cannot pronounce the name and have never heard of before. Have you heard of Phthalates? Hard to pronounce, right? And it is even harder to digest. I will try to explain and keep it as simple as possible.
Cheese shop image djedj
Certain foods contain plastics
Phthalates are esters of phthalic acid and are used as plasticizers. To make plastics more flexible, transparent, and more durable, this is added. It is used in a big variety of products and one of the bad things is that it will find its way into our environment.
People even seem to have metabolites of multiple phthalates in their urine. It is said that our diet carries part of the blame as fatty foods like milk, butter and meats are a major source.
Plastics in your food? Well, it seems so. Rodents that were exposed to high doses of it showed hormone level changes and it even caused birth defects. There seems to be a relationship between obesity, endocrine disruption, and metabolic interference.
Blue cheese and figs image Free-Photos
We should take a closer look at the food we are eating, which might contain certain levels of plastic. Not a very appetizing idea, I must say. Do you also like macaroni and cheese? I think there will be few people who will say no. I grew up in Holland and my dear Mother would sometimes make this dish. It used to be a real treat and I would love it.
This dish from our childhood is not the same anymore as one ingredient, cheese, nowadays, might have phthalates in it. The Coalition for Safer Food Processing and Packaging has been doing a test. They went shopping for 10 different varieties of macaroni and cheese, these products were made with cheese powder.
Then they also bought 5 different types of sliced and processed cheeses and then on top some 15 different natural kinds of cheese like hard, shredded, string, and cottage. They shipped this whole lot off to VITO (the Flemish Institute for Technological Research) The results were not encouraging at all. In the natural cheeses were even higher levels of phthalates than in the processed ones.
Have a look at the following YouTube video, I would call it eye-opening.
Conclusion
You may now ask how serious is all this. I think it is very serious. You might not eat macaroni with cheese every day, and perhaps neither once a week. Still, if you should eat it let’s say once a month it accumulates, and together with all the other dangerous and bad things floating around in our modern world it adds to the list of health hazards.
Every day this list gets longer and there are things we cannot avoid. At least with food, we have the possibility to eat or not eat it and look for healthier options.
Last year, being tired of all the plastic in the supermarkets, we bought these cotton cloth bags. We use it for fruit and vegetables. Any small thing you can do to reduce the plastic overload in the world is worth doing. Luckily now many supermarkets provide biodegradable plastic bags. In my house, I give those a second use.
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Plastic has become a big problem in the world. It is in the oceans killing marine life, visible in the environment, as micro-small pieces mixed in beach sand, and even in your salt. The salt you eat every day is polluted with plastic. I just wonder why we do this to ourselves.
Before you leave, you might care to look at Recommendations. This is a page I especially made for you, with a collection of things I find interesting or useful. I hope you will also find something you like.
Source: NaturalHealth365
Photo Source: Pixabay
What we eat has not only an effect on our health but also on our environment. We definitely can do better if we take some time to think about the consequences of our actions You might care to read the following post. I would be happy to hear your opinion.
Comments
Taq'uee
Whoa! That is a very scary thought and motivation to start paying more attention to what I am putting into my body.
Taetske
Good evening Taq’uee,
That is definitely a good idea as the food we put into our mouth has long-lasting effects on our health.
The more we turn away from nature the higher price we will pay. Nature provides nearly everything we need to stay healthy but we humans always think we can do better and try to “improve”. Thank you for your visit, I hope to see you again.
Regards, Taetske
Daniel
This should read every person in the world. We really don’t know what we eat although sometimes we think that we eat something healthy. Processed food is on every corner and waiting for us. Why is so many obese people in the world? Instead of exercising we run to buy some corn flakes for weight loss which is full of sugar. Very informative article which is a sad truth.
Taetske
Good afternoon Daniel,
Thank you for your comment and you are right. Processed food should be given the blame for our unhealthy society. We have part of this blame as we make unhealthy foods. The best thing one should do is go back to nature and eat natural things which are grown in a clean environment.
One should read the label of products one buys. Natural things do not need labels. When you do not understand what the things are on the label it is best to leave it standing on the shelf of the supermarket.
Regards, Taetske
Emmanuel Buysse
This post is of conscience because well as you say it, most of the time we do not know what we really eating, and knowing this ingredient that you mention, very few people know about it including me. Thank you for making this kind of post, from now and on I will surely pay more attention in what I buy and eat.
Thanks.
Taetske
Good afternoon Emmanuel,
Thank you for visiting my website.
It is very important to know what we put into our system. You would not want to drive your car with the wrong petrol. The food we eat has a big impact on our health, short, medium, and long-term.
All the nasty stuff accumulates in our body and will cause serious ailments in years to come. Often we have no say on the air we breathe nor the water we drink. The food we put into our mouth is our decision.
Regards, Taetske
Brian
You know I just never really think, as most people do, what is truly in the food that we eat. Worse still, you don’t think about the consequences of what some of the things in the food we eat, can do to us. I never really heard of phthalate before until I read this article and it just blew my mind that this is also used to make plastics! It makes you wonder what other hidden dangers are in the foods we eat. I’ve pretty much stopped eating macaroni and cheese mainly because of the diet I’m on, but this is now another big reason not to eat it anymore. Do you maybe know when it was decided to put phthalate in foods?
Taetske
Good afternoon Brian,
Thank you for your comment on my post. You tell me you are on a diet. If you allow my opinion try and eat as close to nature as possible. Do not eat man-made foods and neither drink soft drinks of any kind. Too much sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. Even the so-called light or 0 drinks one can buy nowadays contain Aspartame, very bad for your health and it makes you put on weight.
I do not know when Phthalates was put in the food, I suppose it was a kind of evolution. The more man-made foods appeared on the market the more plastic, additives, artificial taste intensifiers etc and etc were put in.
I do know that Phthalates appeared in the 1920s and you will find it in shampoos, conditioners, house dust, wall coverings, and the list goes on. As we are surrounded by it makes it even more important to take care of what we eat.
Regards, Taetske
Steve Crozza
What a horrible thought, eating plastic! Wow, and I love cheese, mainly because as a child my father worked for a cheese maker. I still like cheese to this day, until now I guess!
This is something I did not know about, what else are we eating that needs to be made public?
I know about GMO crops and foods which are now getting close to total pest resistance, do these crops have unwanted, unhealthy products like plastics in them?
Now that I am getting closer to retirement my decision to go and live in the country and grow my own vegetables has suddenly taken on a greater meaning.
On that point, I often go to my mothers farm where they grow their own vegetables, kill their own cattle and all of the food that they feed us with tastes so different to our normal food. The difference is like chalk and cheese.
Thank you for bringing this topic to our attention and keep providing us with more information.
Taetske
Good afternoon Steve,
Thank you for your visit and leaving a comment.
There are a lot of nasty things in our food and that is because we have turned away from nature. Crops are sprayed and the Glyphosate in the herbicides is later in the food you eat. Then we have GMO, this is the futile try of man to make nature better, well, it is not better, especially our health suffers because of man’s invention.
To go and live in the country will be a good decision. There you can mostly control what you put into your mouth and the air will probably be cleaner too. Wishing you all the best on this new adventure.
Regards, Taetske
cjciganotto
Hello Taetske,
I really did not know that many of the foods we consume contain “pftalatos” a substance associated with plastics. I eat many cheeses in my daily diet, I will now have to “limit or reduce” eating that food. Milk, meat and butter also contain pftalatos? The truth has not been good news for me, thank you very much for informing us. Regards!!
Claudio
Taetske
Good afternoon Claudio,
Thank you for leaving a comment on my website
The news is not good, there is plastic everywhere. The Arctic Sea Ice in Greenland has now been discovered to hold 12.000 partical of micro plastics per liter.
To come to your question there the news is also bad. Milk, meat, and butter all contain some phthalates.
What can one do? substitute milk for unsweetened coco nut milk, butter for extra virgin olive oil, and meat has to be from happy cows. What is a happy cow? A cow which does not get GMO food and is allowed to live big part of its life on a clean meadow.
Regards, Taetske
Jessie
Thank you for the awesome post! I did not even know that plastic in food was a thing! I’ve been looking up healthier lifestyles and what I buy to eat is obviously an important factor.
I was shocked to see some Mac n Cheese was on the list here! I will be sure to start looking for that ingredient for now on!
Taetske
Good afternoon Jessie,
It becomes very difficult these days to buy healthy food. The moment men interfere food is being abused, things are added which are bad for our health, let’s face it it is a mess.
The closer you eat to nature the safer one is. One should always read labels to be sure. Anyhow wrapped food and made in a factory should be avoided if possible. Do not get me wrong I also eat cookies now and then but I avoid fast food.
Thank you for your comment.
Regards, Taetske
Cathy
I once saw a documentary about microplastics in our food and it was shocking. Water bottles, package food and even to the daily plastic that we used. It’s already bad that we are putting in unhealthy food into our diet, now we’re adding plastics to it. In my home, we practice using plastic containers – I mean those really good ones – whenever we do any takeaways, especially with drinks. People may find it weird, but honestly, we feel safer that way.
Taetske
Good afternoon Cathy,
Thank you for your visit and for leaving a comment. I hope you downloaded your free PDF? Tulip widget.
The link Plastic in my post talks about that. It seems that taking plastic out of your life can make you clean up completely. Otherwise, if we continue as always the plastic will accumulate in our system and over time can start to cause problems.
The less we are in contact with it the better it will be for our health.
Regards, Taetske
Phil
I sure do not like the idea of eating plastic
Do you think that Phthalates in our food can kill us? I read the side effects, but wonder if it could actually kill us.
Do you know how this stuff gets into our food? Is it because the food is stored in plastic containers?
Is there a way to detect if these Phthalates are in our food before we eat them?
I saw that there seems to be a lot of these Phthalates in cheese, do you know how they get there?
Taetske
Good evening Phil,
Thank you for your comment on my website. I hope you downloaded your free PDF? Tulip widget.
To answer your first question I will say the following. Can plastic in our food kill us? I think it can as during a lifetime we can accumulate so much plastic that we will get all kinds of ailments. Plastic will be the underlying cause. Look at marine life. Plastic has shown to be a killer, be it seabirds, turtles, whales and more types of animals.
I am not a scientist so I think I will give you this link and when you read it I hope your other questions will be answered. https://www.edf.org/health/phthalates-food The closer we live to nature the better our health will be.
Regards, Taetske
Moi MOI
Hello Taetske.
Wow, this is terrifying as an article, luckily for me that I have not supported cheese or dairy products since my childhood, I grow and consume vegetables that I can grow in the garden and I choose to always exclude canned food of my nutrition.
It is better to spend more on healthy consumption than to end up in the hospital with incurable cancer. Thank you for your criticism that it opens the consciousness of many on the global scourge of food poisoning.
Taetske
Good evening Telex,
Here at home we do eat some cheese, drink Kefir and full-fat Greek yogurt. No milk as that is for babies. For quite some years I take coconut milk which I really like, I even put it in my coffee.
There is a nice vegetable garden and lots of fruit trees on my green farm. We try to avoid plastic and have substituted the shopping bags for cloth bags. We could do better of course but having clean air and water and taking care of our diet we are in good shape.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you have downloaded your free PDF? Tulip widget.
Regards, Taetske
Jay
I totally agree with everything that you write here and I also want to add that what we really eat I’d something that we need to pay more apt attention to because if we don’t do that we might be eating wrongly and now know that. Like you said here, some foods are laced with plastic which could be a very big reason for us to be prone to cancer. This is good stuff.
Taetske
Good afternoon Jay,
Thank you for your comment on my post. I hope you downloaded your free PDF? Tulip widget.
Not only in cheese, plastic seems to be everywhere. I just wonder what we are doing. Did you look at that short but good video? Rather worrying to see what is happening in our world. We would do good going back to eating like nature intended. The more you can eat something in its natural state, the better it is.
Regards, Taetske
Sylvia Mann
Taetske,
This is unfortunate and I think it won’t go away anymore, meaning, being reversed, instead it has become a part of our reality.
On my first website (which is not live anymore) I wrote an article about the “hidden” plastic in our daily lives which messes with our hormone system and has created a false hormone which is mimicking the estrogen hormone.
This false hormone is called Xenoestrogen. Unfortunately our body can’t see it as an intruder.
So sad but it will stay with us. Perhaps due to evolution future generations will have adapted to it.
I know scary to just think about it.
Greetings from Canada
Sylvia
Taetske
Good Morning Sylvia,
Nice to see you again. Your visit and comment are appreciated.
This surplus of female hormones everywhere have made our men less manly. In the future we might end up having only one sex, a mix between female and male. That is not a good thought either.
Let us see where all this will lead us but as you say it is rather scary.
Regards, Taetske
Linda Frankson
It is sad because the greater population, especially our younger generation, like young mothers, don’t have the time to research what is happening in our world. As a young person, I was in the same position, and as I got older, I suffer from the consequences.
You might say we were not to blame because we placed our faith in marketing and thinking that plastic was a useful invention.
When I was young, it was more affordable than glass. That small child became a health mater with broken glass, so we used plastic cups for our children and plastic baby bottles, plastic things like Tupperware.
Plastic became a norm, then came food-grade plastic, But are they?
Where ever we look, we find plastic. Only a very small percentage of food in our supermarkets is eatable; not everybody can move to the countryside or have the time to build a garden. We want to preserve our food line on the shelves, so we have plastic in our food.
This doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I could go on and on. The more we look, the worse it gets. It is disheartening, but others are looking for a better way. Just maybe there are things we can change to make a better world for the coming generations. We can’t lose hope. there is Always A Better Way is my moto
Taetske
Good afternoon Linda,
I should give you a medal as you are one of my most faithful visitors. You remember you can download a free PDF? Tulip widget. Thank you for your visit and for your comment.
When now one looks back plastic was not a good invention so we have to find solutions before we drown in the plastic waste. There are countries where people build houses with plastic bottles. Also little boats can be made with bottles. I am happy that the big supermarkets here have changed their plastic bags for bio-degradable ones, it is a step in the right direction.
No, we do not lose hope. One can see that a lot of young people become more aware of the problems that exist in our world. I hope they will be more active in finding solutions than we are.
Regards, Taetske