Toxic Chicken for Your Kids

 What chemicals are you allowing your children to eat? When we were kids, going to a 'restaurant' of any kind was a huge treat. Fast food restaurants were new and we visited them maybe once a month.

Today - not only are we eating at Fast Food Restaurants on average 2.5 times a week, but the schools have adopted many of the popular fast foods for school lunches just so kids will eat them. However, that's a whole different subject. . . .

This report just came out about what is actually in the food served at a popular fast food restaurant. What they found was the the chicken nuggets were only 50% chicken, and the oil they were fried in contained some seriously toxic stuff like a type of silicone used in some cosmetics called
Dimethylpolysiloxane which is added as an antifoaming agent and TBHQ (see below) as a preservative.

At its 19^th and 21^st meetings, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives determined that tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) was safe for human consumption at levels of 0-0.5 mg/kg of body weight. However, more recently, the Codex commission set the maximum allowable limits up to between 100 to as much as 400 mg/kg, depending on the food it's added to. (Chewing gum is permitted to contain the highest levels of TBHQ.)
That's quite a discrepancy in supposedly "safe" limits!
So, is the safe level zero, or 400 mg/kg? Who knows?!
According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, one gram of TBHQ can cause:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
• Delirium
• Sense of suffocation
• Collapse

Based on animal studies, health hazards associated with TBHQ include:

• liver effects at very low doses
• positive mutation results from in vitro tests on mammalian cells
• biochemical changes at very low doses
• reproductive effects at high doses

The good news is that it is not suspected to be a persistent toxin, meaning your body is probably able to eliminate it so that it does not bioaccumulate.

So what can we do when the kids won't eat anything else. Try something better like Coleman's Organic Chicken Nuggets  or make your own. Check out this great recipe for homemade nuggets. You can make them ahead and freeze them. Why not make your own fried potatoes too. I bet your kids will love them.

We have to start getting smart about what we feed ourselves and our kids. I know you've heard that our children will be the first generation in recorded history to have shorter life-spans than their parents. PLEASE wake up. It's not too late. It's much too important to ignore.

You can make a difference starting with your family - your example for your kids.

If you want more help making a lifestyle change, call me. It's what I do.

Be well ~
Mary
TheJoyofLivingWell.com
608-245-9308