If you’re not a serious ingredient label interpreter, you are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to consuming packaged foods or supplements. The reality is that 97% of foods and supplements have toxic or synthetic ingredients that are harmful to our bodies and will cause health consequences over time, or will greatly exacerbate existing ones.
And just when you think you knew it all…you discover that there are still toxic ingredients you are consuming because you didn’t interpret or read the label well enough, or got stuck on the relatively useless nutrition facts box, which only distracts you from knowing what is REALLY inside the package.
There’s a long list of ingredients to look out for in food, but if you find any of these 5 on the label and put the product back on the shelf, you’ll have avoided the worst and done yourself a serious favour.
1. GMO flours and oils – any flour or oil created from non-organic corn, soybean, cottonseed, or canola oil, which all of them can also be disguised as vegetable oil, is immediate grounds for putting back on the shelf. Consuming these ingredients is a sure fire way to give you diabetes, heart problems, and liver disease.
2. Sodium benzoate – synthesized in a lab using chemicals, this preservative is derived from a reaction combining benzoic acid with sodium hydroxide, and is a known carcinogenic additive that deprives mitochondria of oxygen.
3. Artificial sweeteners, colours, and flavours – it just makes sense to avoid anything that has artificial in the name, but if you needed more direction, avoid any product that has aspartame, sucralose, neotame, saccharin, or aminosweet on the label. Brands that may disguise these ingredients include Splenda, and Sweet N’ Low. Also, avoid anything that has red, blue, green, and yellow with a number behind it, like red 40, yellow 5, blue 1 and green 3. All of these ingredients are dangerous neurotoxins, and can have a serious effect on your liver.
4. MSG – used as a flavour enhancer, monosodium glutamate is another synthetic lab creation that is cloaked in many different names, including autolyzed or hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, textured protein (including textured vegetable protein or TVP), glutamic acid, and even in the generic labels of “spices” or “seasoning”. MSG is linked to kidney and liver damage and is an excitotoxin that leads to many types of neurological diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and MS.
5. Citric Acid – often misconstrued as a natural form of citrus, citric acid is most commonly a form of black mold grown from a GMO sugar substrate, unless otherwise explicitly stated. It’s used as a flavour enhancer and preservative, and it’s safe to say, GMO black mold is never something your want to ingest, no matter how small the dose.
Now, some seem to think that as soon as you take something in supplement form, it automatically has passed the test of being natural and safe. However, nothing can be further from the truth.
Supplements can often be worse than food for contamination, and this is why organic AND lab-verified is a must to ensure you side step the agricultural chemicals, metals, and biological contaminants that can get in food that are concentrated into a tiny capsule.
But beyond that, there are many ingredients added to most supplements that are synthetic and not biologically appropriate, which neuters some of the effects of the supplement effectiveness, and adds a toxic component to boot.
In the industry, these add ons are often called excipients, and are binders, fillers, and “glues” that don’t have nutritional value and are synthetic to the human body. 5 of the more biologically inappropriate excipients found in many supplements include:
1. Magnesium stearate – a cheap lubricating agent.
2. Silicon dioxide – a cheap flowing agent.
3. Methylparaben – a preservative and benzoate family member.
4. Maltodextrin – unless otherwise stated, often derived from genetically modified corn.
5. Polyethylene glycol – a cheap lubricating agent.
Not only are these ingredients a problem, but when you get long lists of vitamin and mineral extractions, these supplements are typically synthetically created in nutrient combinations that don’t exist in nature. A great example of a toxic ingredient that shows up in many multivitamin and B-complexes is cyanocobalamin, a toxic form of B12. When created from whole foods and concentrated into a capsule, you avoid these ingredients and get a biologically organized formula with beneficial cofactors and appropriate ratios for optimal assimilation and balance.
The good news is, there are companies that avoid these ingredients and focus more on whole food based nutrition. My clients get to enjoy these supplements through the THRIVE Academy.
Derek Henry
Derek Henry, Founder of Healing the Body and the THRIVE Academy, used nutrition, supplementation, and a holistic lifestyle to naturally unravel 13 chronic disease conditions that conventional or alternative medical professionals couldn't help him resolve. As a result of this one-in-a-million health transformation and the knowledge acquired in the process, he now educates, coaches, and inspires others to transform their health through a natural and holistic approach. Since 2014, he has helped his THRIVE Academy participants heal over 20 different chronic disease conditions, primarily related to digestive and autoimmune concerns.
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