BHA (320) belongs to a class of additives known as Antioxidants. They are incorporated into numerous sweet and savoury foods to prevent spoilage, thereby giving the product a long shelf life.
Antioxidants 300-309 are all safe. However, antioxidants 310-312 and 319-321 are very suspect and should be avoided at all costs.
The difficulty here is that these additives are often not listed as they are present in amount less that 5% of the ingredient and are therefore not required by law to be listed.
You can call the manufacturers and ask, or even better don't purchase products that have oils & fats listed on their ingredient list. For example, most frozen chips, potato gems & hash browns contain BHA (320) or BHT (321). These are known animal carcinogens and acts as a xeno-oestrogen stimulating the growth of breast cells in laboratory cultures.Unlike some additives, 319 & 320 have a cumulative effect as they are stored in body fat.
So although most hash browns have a small number of ingredients rest assured that the oils in such product lines are not safe.
BHA (320) is also found in both sweet and savoury biscuits as well as margarine, some mayonnaise, peanut butter and other frozen foods ( i.e. frozen meals).
No comments:
Post a Comment