Ever wish we could go back to the simpler way our forebears lived? It's a pretty good idea... if you want mercury in your hats and anal leakage. It turns out some food ingredients aren't as harmless as we used to think.
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00:00Ever wish we could go back to the simpler way our forebears lived? It's a pretty good idea,
00:05if you want mercury in your hats and anal leakage. It turns out some food ingredients
00:09aren't as harmless as we used to think. In 1911, soap company Procter & Gamble introduced a culinary
00:16marvel — a thick, white, buttery substance that looked and acted like lard but was made entirely
00:22of cottonseed. Crisco was the first product made through hydrogenation, a process that
00:26involved saturating vegetable oil and hydrogen at a high temperature. The result is a solid
00:31mass of fat rather than an oil. Americans went wild for the new product, which had none of the
00:36animal odor of lard or perishability of butter. And perhaps most importantly, according to ads,
00:41it was digestible. Five years after it hit the market, America was buying more than 60 million
00:46cans of it each year.
00:47What did I tell you? With Crisco, it's a cinch.
00:50Though released a few decades prior, margarine began to soar in popularity, too. Originally
00:56made with beef tallow, the butter substitute was eventually made with hydrogenated vegetable oil
01:00as well. Its profile soared alongside Crisco's. By 1958, it was more popular than butter,
01:06and in 1976, Americans were eating about 12 pounds of it per capita each year.
01:10Then, in the 1990s, everything changed. Unfortunately for fans of these alternative
01:15fat products, hydrogenated oil is the manufactured version of a trans fat,
01:19which doctors eventually identified as the worst type of fat. Heart disease,
01:23diabetes, and colon cancer are just a few of the risks it poses.
01:27Even though Crisco eliminated trans fat from its formula in 2007, and many similar brands have
01:32opted to use the word spread instead of margarine, neither product is as popular as it once was.
01:38If the word Olestra or its brand name Olene mean anything to you,
01:42chances are you came of age before the 1990s. And if you haven't heard of it,
01:46it's probably because its reign on American food labels was extremely short.
01:50Created by Procter & Gamble, Olestra is a synthetic fat molecule that's too large to
01:54be absorbed by the intestine, boasting a miraculous zero grams of fat and not a single calorie.
01:59It takes the junk out of junk food.
02:02After 25 years and over $200 million of development, it was approved by the FDA
02:08in the mid-'90s and became the hero ingredient of the low-calorie,
02:11low-fat craze sweeping the nation. Olestra Pringles debuted in 1996,
02:15followed by Lays Wow Chips in 1998. Consumers went wild, buying more than 100 million bags
02:21of the salty snacks within six months. But the love affair fizzled quickly,
02:25with sales of Procter & Gamble's products falling steeply within only seven months
02:29of their release. The problem boiled down to one pesky little disclaimer on Olene products.
02:33Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools.
02:36I'd be careful with those fat-free chips. They cause anal leakage.
02:40You cause anal leakage. Says so on the back.
02:44For the lucky ones, cramping and gas were the only symptoms,
02:47but others were afflicted with days of explosive diarrhea and fecal incontinence.
02:54I need to be alone for a moment.
02:56Not surprisingly, Olestra became a pariah, and although the FDA has never banned it,
03:01it's much harder to find on food labels than it was in the 90s.
03:04People have been enhancing the color of foods with natural dyes such as turmeric and beet
03:08juice for millennia, but it wasn't until the late 1800s that synthetic dyes entered the scene.
03:13The invention changed the food industry, ushering in an era of products that tempted consumers as
03:18much for their color as their taste. Until Congress passed the United States Food and
03:22Drugs Act in 1906, it was a largely unregulated industry, with some dyes featuring toxic
03:27ingredients like arsenic, lead, and mercury. Despite the law banning poisonous dyes,
03:32one product slid under the radar for nearly a century. Red Dye No. 2 was created in the 1870s
03:37using a byproduct of coal, and was one of the most common food colorings throughout
03:41much of the 20th century. Found in soft drinks, candy, sausages, dairy products,
03:46and baked goods, to name a few, it was present in about $10 billion worth of foods by the mid-70s.
03:52I haven't seen this much artificial color since Ted Turner got his hands on Catsablanka.
03:55Despite its prevalence, Red Dye No. 2 was the subject of hot debate for decades,
04:00with some scientists arguing that it posed health risks. Although it was shown to give
04:04rats cancer when consumed in large doses, other scientists believed it was one of the
04:08safest food colorings on the market. In 1976, after facing increasing pressure, the FDA banned
04:13the dye. It became such a hot-button issue that Mars, Inc. briefly stopped making red M&Ms,
04:19even though it had never used Red Dye No. 2 to color them.
04:22From high-fructose corn syrup to monk fruit extract, it seems like there's a new sweetener
04:27bursting onto the market every few years. Some of them have staying power, others have a bumpier
04:31track record. Saccharin, also known under one of its trade names like Sweet'n Low and Nectisweet,
04:36is one of the latter. Discovered way back in the 1870s, it's 300 times sweeter than table sugar,
04:42and has zero calories. It became a popular ingredient during the First and Second World
04:46Wars, when sugar was in short supply, and exploded in popularity in the 1960s as artificial sweeteners
04:52became popular among dieters. By the late 70s, an estimated 44 million Americans used
04:58saccharin every day. Around the same time, government regulations on food processing
05:02became stricter, and saccharin was caught in a lengthy public battle. It was briefly banned in
05:071977 due to findings that high doses caused cancer in rats, but these results were deemed irrelevant
05:12to humans in another study in 2000. These days, the FDA asserts that saccharin is safe to use,
05:18but many brands have replaced it in their formulas with more natural-tasting aspartame,
05:22and it seems unlikely that it'll ever regain the status it held in the 70s.
05:26When you think of vegetable oil, you might think of its uses in baked goods, fried foods,
05:31and salad dressing. But one of the most widely used oils in recent years is known for its
05:35presence in soft drinks. Brominated vegetable oil, which is usually derived from corn or soybeans,
05:40is used by beverage companies to help emulsify flavoring oils and keep drinks from separating.
05:45The FDA officially approved its use in small quantities in 1970 as a way to keep citrus
05:50flavorings from floating to the top of certain soft drinks, stipulating that it must appear in
05:54ingredients lists. Health concerns about brominated vegetable oil have been widespread for decades,
05:59with health experts warning that it can cause irritation to the skin, nose, mouth, and stomach,
06:04and can even cause neurological symptoms in people who consume a lot of it.
06:08Many brands removed brominated vegetable oil from their products voluntarily,
06:12including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, but in 2024,
06:15the FDA chose to revoke its 1970 regulation and ban the substance outright.
06:19The vegetable oil contains bromine, which is also found in fire retardants.
06:26Yikes.
06:28We've all heard the advice, if you can't pronounce an ingredient, don't eat it. A lot of the time
06:32that's a load of crap, but it might apply to azodicarbonamide. In food, azodicarbonamide
06:38is used as a food coloring, a flour improver, and a bleaching agent, especially in bread products.
06:43It's also, as many critics have pointed out, used as a foaming agent in rubber products.
06:48It's found in both shoe rubber and yoga mats, and soon it will be missing from the bread.
06:53Food manufacturers love azodicarbonamide because it helps proteins bond and form gluten,
06:58thereby making it easier to use cheaper flour that would otherwise struggle to form the right
07:02elasticity. Some of the first research on the chemical was published in 1959, and by 1962,
07:08it had been widely adopted by bread makers. In 2014, it was being used in hundreds of products,
07:13including Pillsbury dinner rolls, Little Debbie cakes and pastries, and Wonder Bread.
07:18Now, just because the same ingredient is used in both food and industrial applications
07:22doesn't intrinsically make it a bad thing. Just as an example, ascorbic acid,
07:26a.k.a. vitamin C, is also used as a catalyst in some forms of plastic manufacturing.
07:31That doesn't automatically turn your vitamin C supplements into garbage bag pills. Either way,
07:36there's still disagreement among scientists over whether azodicarbonamide poses a health
07:40risk when adjusted in bread. In its raw form, azodicarbonamide is not believed to be toxic.
07:45However, some health experts, including the Independent Consumer Advocacy Organization,
07:50the Center for Science in the Public Interest, argue that it poses a cancer risk when heated,
07:54such as when it's baked in bread, and due to the buzz of calling it the yoga mat chemical,
07:58public pressure to remove the product mounted. The FDA maintains that it's safe,
08:02but many brands, including Subway and Nature's Own, have phased it out.
08:07Some controversial ingredients receive a disproportionate amount of criticism.
08:11Cyclamate is another story. The sugar alternative has been around since 1937,
08:15when a graduate student at the University of Illinois was taking a smoke break while
08:19working on a fever drug and tasted something sweet on his hands. It was about 50 times sweeter
08:24than sugar, calorie-free, and cheap to produce. In the 1950s and 60s, when diet sodas were becoming
08:30all the rage, products including Tab and Diet Pepsi used the sweetener, and it was the main
08:34ingredient in the early formulas of Sweet'n Low. Many products paired it with saccharin,
08:38which has a slightly metallic flavor on its own. The love affair ended in 1970,
08:43when cyclamate was banned in the U.S. due to studies showing that it caused bladder cancer
08:47in animals.
08:48The announcement about artificial sweeteners adds cyclamate to tobacco,
08:52alcohol, and a list of other things that aren't good for you."
08:55Although the study was later deemed to be unrelated to human health,
08:58there are still concerns that it may amplify carcinogens in the body.
09:01It remains a banned food additive in the U.S., though it is still legal in Canada,
09:05Europe, and elsewhere.
09:07Around the time scientists were discovering synthetic food dyes,
09:10another branch of the profession was uncovering artificial flavors. As early as the 1850s,
09:15scientists had managed to chemically recreate various fruit flavors, and by the end of the
09:19century, artificial flavors were found in candies, beverages, and foods sold around the world.
09:24With the rise in processed foods in the mid-20th century, artificial flavors abounded.
09:28"...and 2% butterscotch ripple."
09:31"...that's 105%!"
09:33"...any good?"
09:36"...yes!"
09:36Even as other food additives fell afoul of increasing scientific study and public health
09:41concerns, artificial flavors escaped largely unscathed. The FDA even exempted them from the
09:46testing standards imposed on most other ingredients since such small quantities
09:50of the flavorings were required. But the tide began to turn as low-fat and low-calorie crazes
09:55evolved into increased consumer demand for natural ingredients.
09:58The difference between natural and artificial flavors is not a simple binary, nor are the
10:03health implications, but brands like General Mills have moved to phase out the latter category
10:07in favor of the former. A further blow arrived in 2018 when the FDA, facing a lawsuit from various
10:13environmental and consumer groups, banned seven artificial flavorings after they were found to
10:17cause cancer in lab animals. The agency stressed that it was delisting the ingredients in accordance
10:22with the 1938 law, requiring additives to be banned if they are found to cause cancer in
10:27animals or humans. Still, it argued that extensive testing had shown they were not
10:31harmful to human health. High-fructose corn syrup is old school the way breathing is old school.
10:36It's been around for a while, yeah, but it's not like it went away, either.
10:40Invented in the 1950s and used widely by the 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup is made by
10:46turning cornstarch into syrup and introducing an enzyme that converts some of the glucose
10:50into fructose. The result yields a syrup with a similar level of sweetness to sugar,
10:54which came in handy as sugar costs escalated. It quickly took over the food industry and spiked in
10:59the late 90s. In 2003, Americans were consuming roughly the same amount of high-fructose corn
11:04syrup as sugar. By the late 2000s, however, sentiments about the corn-based sweetener had
11:09begun to sour as scientists suggested that consumption of fructose might lead to obesity.
11:14The decline was part of a larger trend of consumers turning away from sugary products
11:18such as soft drinks. But even as rates of table sugar consumption remained relatively stable,
11:22high-fructose corn syrup consumption began to slide in 2006.
11:26Is it really the boogeyman it's made out to be? It isn't structurally much different from
11:30table sugar, and studies suggest the metabolic action of both is similar.
11:34When we consume these, the body does not really distinguish what the source is.
11:39At the moment, the FDA recognizes it as generally safer consumption.
11:48you