According to Food and Drug Administration studies involving
regular market basket sampling, foods available at ordinary groceries and
supermarkets contain ample quantities of vitamins. Many food additives are now
in use. Times and distances involved in getting products from farm to consumer
are often great, and additives are used by processors to maintain quality. In
some cases, they are used to improve quality or add some advantage not found in
the natural state. Thus, some foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
Flavoring agents may be employed to add taste appeal.
Preservatives have to be used for some foods that would otherwise be spoiled by
organisms or would undergo undesirable chemical changes before use. Emulsifiers
may be added to bakery goods to achieve fineness of grain; and stabilizers and
thickeners, such as pectin and vegetable gums, may be used for maintaining
texture and body. A federal food additives law requires that additives be
tested and proved safe for consumption before they may be used. Much remains to
be learned about additives-and much, too, about safe use of pesticides, but on
a realistic basis, with a growing population, we need both additives and
pesticides and must learn to use them to best advantage.
FADS AND
FALLACIES
Perhaps no other area of human concern is as surrounded with fads and
fallacies as nutrition. We have had blacks trap molasses and wheat germ offered
as virtual panaceas and, more recently, vinegar and honey. Although no food has
any special health virtue all its own, it would be hard to find any that at
some time or other has not been touted as such. Do oysters, raw eggs, lean meat,
and olives increase a man's potency?
Hardly, they have their nutrient values but confer no
special potency benefits. Are fish and celery brain foods? The idea could have
arisen because brain and nerve tissue are rich in phosphorus, and fish provides
phosphorus-containing materials. But so do meat, poultry, milk, and eggs. And
celery, it turns out, has relatively little phosphorus.
Are white eggs
healthier than brown? The fact is that the breed of hen determines eggshell
color, and color has nothing to do with nutritive value. Some magical powers
once attributed to foods have been explained by scientific research. For
example, lemons and limes were once considered panaceas for scurvy; it is their
vitamin C content, of course, which did the work. Rice polishing was indeed
fine for preventing beriberi, but solely because of their vitamin B1 content.
Goiter was once treated with sea sponge, and the seeming magic stemmed not from
something unique about sponge, but from its content of iodine. Food myths arise,
too, from distortions of scientific fact. Thus, carrots considered to be good
for the eyes.
They are-in cases of vitamin A deficiency. The yellow
pigment of carrots, carotene, is converted by low body into vitamin A, which is
needed to produce a pigment for the retina of the eye. Incidentally, carotene
is plentiful, too, in green vegetables where the yellow color is masked by
chlorophyll. Food fads and fallacies might be amusing were it not for the
danger that they can interfere with the selection of a proper diet.
