Additives in commercial dehy meals
Original post
Recently I made a breakthrough with regularly occurring allergy symptoms.
My local cafe serves the most divine citrus slice. Every time I shared half with my husband I'd be a mess the next day. It took several months to figure it out but since I have a pretty simple unprocessed diet (and rarely eat out) it was possible to figure it out.
I asked the cook what the slice contained, everything was OK till she showed me the packed of malt biscuits…
Amongst the ingredients were these three additives:
320 Butylated hydroxyanisole (banned in some countries)
321 Butylated hydroxytoluene (banned in some countries)
220 Sulphur Dioxide
All contributors to allergy-like symptoms.
Citrus slice off the menu :-(
All my tramping meals have to be made from scratch because dehy is laced with some pretty horrid additives. Granted you don’t eat the stuff every day but it’s no good for hypersensitive people like me because the resulting reaction would ruin the tramp.
For eg Back Country Cuisine Roast Chicken contains:
320 Butylated hydroxyanisole (banned in some countries)
223 Sodium metabisulfite (best avoided)
150d Caramel - colour (best avoided)
1442 Hydoxypropyl distarch phosphate - thickener (caution advised)
The rest is OK….
471 Mono- and di-glycerides of fatty acids (OK)
450 Potassium pyrophosphate (OK)
304 Ascorbyl palmitate - antioxidant (OK)
451 Potassium tripolyphosphate - acidity regulator (OK)
330 Citric Acid (OK)
Australia & NZ say food additives play an important part in our food supply ensuring our food is safe and meets the needs of consumers. And is the most practical way of extending its storage life.
I’d be interested to know if other trampers suffer the same additive hypersensitivity when consuming commercial dehy meals…
150d Caramel - colour (best avoided)
This is just burnt sugar. Of course they are now saying all burnt food is bad including the humble bbq.
Remember when the best fish and chips were the ones that left the newspaper so transparent you could read it from both sides from the grease. Then they said fat was bad and cooking at a higher temp resulted in less fat and dry paper. Now they are starting to say cooking too hot is even worse than fat. Maybe we shouldnt eat fish and chips.
220 and 223 will be found in more packaged foods than you expect Even non processed foods. Both are common in beer and wine as they are cleaners for the bottles and preservatives. Be certain your sausages contain at least one or the other
As for the others I try to avoid anything I have to take a breath half way through pronouncing
Strawberrys do cause me a few hives so its not uncommon to see me spotty in summer
The one thing that I do class as a food allergy though is black bean sauce. Tried it twice. First time from a chinese take away second cooked at home. Adds a complete new dimension to the term fast food
Really interesting @Geeves...
Unpronounceable words are a strong repellant for me too.
I refer to an app called "The Chemical Maze" (which I used in moderation) and it said of 150d;
"May be GM, may be from sugar beet, sugar cane or corn starch, prepared from carbohydrates, sulphites and ammonium compounds, sulphite ammonia caramel.
Potential effects - Asthma, hyperactivity, gastrointestinal problems, allergic and hyper-sensitive reactions."
Either way, it can turn kids into little monsters.
toluene is used as an insect repellent, it was the active ingredient in Dimp and in Deet...
Ascorbyl palmitate is a fat soluble form of vitamin c, its held well in the body because of its fat solubility and less likely to be excreted, thats not an issue, its usually an advantage as excess vitamin c is usually excreted straight away in the urine..
citric acid isnt the greatest if taken too much, it knocks out your energy production metabolism..
I think I will just carry on giving the inlaws kids yellow caffine enhanced lollypops. That and catering size blocks of chocolate.
Crikey! And I've just ordered a whole lot of this stuff. I don't know why they have to put all this weird crap in the dehy food. I know there are overseas brands that are just dried food.
I don't know either. Considering that others have proven it can be done without.
It appears Absolute Wilderness makes dehy containing a lot less of the nasty unpronounceable numbers. But you pay more...
$11.95 for 100g net weight (one serving)
Back Country Cuisine is $7.74 for 90g net weight (one serving)
@JETNZ "Either way, it can turn kids into little monsters."
This is a myth, there is no relationship between sugar levels and children hyperactivity.
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth#1
Wolraich, 1995:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=391812
"The meta-analytic synthesis of the studies to date found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children. The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association."
Considering this, I doubt this app contains anything useful if the rest is as serious as this.
The topic is about additives causing problems not sugar causing problems but if you had seen what happens repeatedly to kids when you feed them a lot of sugar you would know they get hyperactive. If you talk to a lot of parents who’ve given kids a lot of sugar they will tell you there is an issue. And thre are countless studies that do show a correltion with behaviour and sugar a lot more than the ones that claim there isn’t any, for ever anti study you’ll usually find a study saying the opposite, science often proves very little.
Although scientific studies around additives often put them in capsules and they get broken down in the stomach, various colourings and preservatives can be absorbed through the mouth causing the issues
Make your own?
I've had success with cooking mince in a big wok, once it's cooked wash through with boiling water in a colander a couple of times, drain then cook dry again. Leave the wok propped on a couple of rocks on top of the wood burner over night. If I had a dehydrator I'd put it in there. Sprinkle some salt and a little citric acid on the dry mince. (Bad bugs all like alkali conditions).
Keep it in the freezer perhaps with a packet of desiccant in the bag. Scoop some into small ziplock bags for a trip.
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| Started by | JETNZ |
| On | 6 September 2016 |
| Replies | 25 |
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