March 12, 2008

Nasty food additives

Food labelling has always been a bit if a mystery to many people, the basics are fair enough we can all follow the listed ingredients but when it comes to the end of the list things become a little sketchy. So what exactly are some of those mystery ingredients?

Shellac - wood-finishing product, used in sweets and derived from the excretions of the Kerria lacca insect.
Bone Char - produced using the bones of cows, makes sugar white.
Carmine - ground-up cochineal insects, can be found on food labels as Crimson Lake, Cochineal, Natural Red 4, C.I. 75470 or E120
Bacteriophages – a group of six viruses, to fight a microbe that kills hundreds of people a year.

So we all thought that E numbers were complicated, now there is something else to worry about when we go to the stores to buy our food.

Source [Cracked]