While the blog was dominated by LFTB last month, many interesting “kid and food” news items came and went without coverage here. I won’t try to recapture most of these for you, but a few are important enough that I want to share them now, even if they’re a little dated. Here are two such items:
Nestlé UK Drops All Artificial Food Additives – Why Not Here?
Nestlé announced last month that it’s discontinuing in the UK the use of all artificial food additives — preservatives, flavors and food dyes — from its entire confectionery line.
That’s great news, but what about here in the U.S.?
Well, I called Nestlé USA customer service this morning and was read a canned statement assuring me that all the artificial ingredients used by Nestlé in this country are “safe and FDA approved.” I was also told that “no changes of this kind are planned for the U.S. market at this time.”
How frustrating is this? A huge conglomerate has demonstrated it can replace artificial ingredients with those derived from natural sources such as “carrot, hibiscus, radish, safflower and lemon.” Yet Nestlé and others companies continue to sell our children candy with ingredients that were found by an FDA expert panel to be implicated in behavioral disorders in some children. (Robyn McCord O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth, once guest posted here on that exact question, a post well worth reading if you missed it the first time around.)
I’m all “petitioned” out, people, but if someone wants to get the ball rolling on a campaign to get Nestlé and other big candy companies to bring their all-natural EU formulations over to America, I’ll be the first to sign.
Chewing Gum, Titanium Dioxide and Possible Disease Risk in Children
On a related note, a recent study assessed the risks of titanium dioxide, a food additive used to make the hard white coating on chewing gum and other candies and therefore consumed by children more often than adults. According to the study, titanium dioxide is “possibly carcinogenic” and has been implicated in Crohn’s disease and asthma. It’s important to note that none of those links are conclusive, but still, why risk it? I’ve told my kids (sometime gum-chewers) that from now on we’re buying gum in sticks rather than in “Chiclet” form.
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Now seems like a very good time to remind everyone of the awesome online Natural Candy Store, a great website for sweets without any questionable ingredients.
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