A Bad Week for Chemicals

It hasn’t been a good week for those hard to pronounce chemistry class sounding “things” that we find in our food, things that are deliberately added into our food through processing or through the growing process. Of course, I’m talking about things like pesticides and chemical preservatives.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there’s been an estimated 4.5 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 that have been diagnosed with ADHD, a number that’s risen about 3% a year between 1997 and 2006. A new study in the journal “Pediatrics” is connecting exposure to pesticides, found in our foods, to cases of ADHD. The study also found that these chemical influences may combine with such things as video games, DVD’s, and “hyperkinetically” edited TV shows to further increase the risk of ADHD.

As a parent, this all makes too much sense. We’ve been reading for decades about the dangers of pesticides in our food and don’t we all know that too much time in front of the tube can’t be all that good for you?

Another study by the Harvard School of Public Health, whose study is in the journal “Circulation”, is finding that meat alone does not necessarily increase our risk of heart disease and diabetes, it’s the chemical preservatives that increases the risk. It doesn’t mean that steaks and burgers are all of a sudden “risk free”, but it seems to indict the preservatives found in things like bacon, salami, hot dogs, etc. Of course, the American Meat Institute (is this a school?) isn’t too happy about the report and has little good to say about it. Their disapproval may be grounds for trust in the report!

The bottom line is that reports of this type only add substance to what most of us have always suspected about the food we eat. Once again, we need to encourage each other to use our common sense about what we eat and what we feed our families. Sure, the kids in the Oscar Mayer ads were cute, but let’s get real about what’s inside that tube steak! If you can’t read it, you shouldn’t eat it!


LouAnn Good
Fitness Together Fort Myers