Eight Men Out: One Man’s Poison (Part IV)
Author: Lee Ann Rush
It’s time to continue through the alphabet soup of suspicious substances that the FDA allows into the American food supply. You’ve no doubt seen the following phrase in small print on countless food items that you’ve purchased: “BHT added to packaging for freshness.” What you may not know is that BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) and its counterpart BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) are petroleum and coal tar-based fat-soluble chemical compounds that have antioxidant properties. They are useful to food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical manufacturers as preservatives that prolong shelf-life by preventing the oils in their products from turning rancid. BHA and BHT are added to a myriad of items including, but not limited to: boxed potato products, cakes, cheese spreads, chewing gum, cookies, cosmetics, ice cream, margarine, medicinal drugs, packaged nuts, potato chips, shortenings and sodas.
Why, then, were BHA and BHT banned in Japan, England, and other European countries? Research on the effects of these substances, conducted in laboratories and on research animals, indicates that BHT has been linked to increased cancer risk, and that low doses of BHA can be toxic to cells. Accepting that the available information is sketchy but not favorable, many countries have wisely chosen to avoid gambling with the health of their citizens by removing BHA and BHT from the food supply. Not so the United States, where the FDA uses yet another of its acronyms to categorize them: GRAS (generally recognized as safe). To translate, BHT and BHA are considered “safe for their intended use in specified amounts,” although, according to Report No. 55 of the FDA’s own Select Committee on GRAS Substances Reviews, “studies on the tissue levels of BHA attained in man by chronic ingestion … should be assessed…. While no evidence in the available information on butylated hydroxyanisole demonstrates a hazard to the public … uncertaintied [sic] exist requiring that additional studies be conducted.”
In other words, we’re not sure what this stuff is really doing to people, so status quo is the answer. Why rock the boat and tick off the chemical companies and food processors? Well, maybe because the Center for Science in the Public Interest has listed BHA as an additive to avoid and placed BHT in its “caution” category, while the National Toxicology Program has found BHA to be “reasonably anticipated as a human carcinogen,” and determined that BHT is linked to an increase in cancer among animals. It’s not as though either of these substances are at all essential; other preservatives such as vitamin E are readily available, although they probably cost a bit more and thus aren’t as widely used in food processing. Bottom line: it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s healthier to eat foods that don’t contain any artificial preservatives!
