E-Numbers: an edible adventure

[mrsflibble]

ok, i'm watching the second programme on bbc iplayer right now. the first one; colourings; was interesting but annoyed me a little. As a person who has a severe allergy to azo dyes, i was slightly annoyed at his brushing over the reactions some people can get.

otherwise, very interesting lol!

[grahamhobbs]

Yes perhaps there needs to be a reasoned debate about these things, but somehow I was left with a feeling that this wasn't a balanced review as much as trying to convince us tha E nos. are all rather natural and beneficial.
Personally I prefer to avoid processed foods, so avoiding these problems.

[mrsflibble]

i am an avid label reader, but in a household with 3 lactose intollerants, 1 gall bladder problem sufferer and a woman who is allergic to azo dyes, apricots and can't eat beef i have to be lol.

[123sologne]

I only looked at it a few minutes of the second episode to be fair, but it was better I got out of the room otherwise I would have been throwing something at the television... In the bit I saw the presenter was talking of the e-numbers that are actually some natural products. Well my thought was: They already have a name, lets use it and not hide it under another one!! The e-numbers I want him to talk about are all the ones which do not have another name, therefore they have been made up by human technology. Then he went on to getting some bits of his body as they are also e-numbers. I really thought that was stupid, what was he trying to say: You can eat e-numbers because you can eat human bits?! The fact that I produce certain things in my body does not mean I can/want to eat them, no? Stupid, totally stupid! So I walked away......
For a program by the BBC I thought it was so biased!

[wulf]

Surely the point is that SOME e-numbers are derived from natural substances, some are synthesised and some can even be extracted from a human body (although I doubt that happens on a commercial scale... I wonder what the e-number is for Soylent Green?). The E system is simply a way of registering them and actually makes it easier to avoid ones you can't or don't care to ingest yourself.

Wulf

[Green Aura]

But that's the whole problem with using E-numbers instead of names - it masks the source of that particular substance - if both natural and synthesised versions have to be labelled identically you have no choice.

If you look elsewhere, chemically synthesised substances cause problems because they have been isolated - the classic example being aspirin. It rips through stomach lining like a knife through butter. But tea made from white willow bark contains the natural, stomach-protecting mucilage and does the same thing without causing damage.

As virtually everything has to be classed by an E-number there must be harmless ones as well as the problem-causing substances. I'm sure the E-numbers that occur naturally in food are much less problematic if they're left where they belong and not removed, isolated and put into something else. Or wholly synthesised in a lab!

[123sologne]

I agree with you Green Aura. I think actually that masking/blurring is the issue here. So when the BBC comes along and tell us about the good e-numbers it blurs the all issue even more. I am sure the food manufacturers know that most of us will not go and look for a full list of e-numbers to see what they really are... And that way they can introduce whatever they feel like it. For most people it will only be another e number...

[jampot]

for those that do want at (partial ) list of E nums http://www.ukfoodguide.net/enumeric.htm is one ive found