--- title: "[OT] What's inside the food we eat?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/16/ot-whats-inside-the-food-we-eat.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/16/ot-whats-inside-the-food-we-eat.html" published: "2005-07-16T21:02:00" updated: "2005-07-16T21:02:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "My wife is doing a paper for university on Morality in business. She's decided to explore the wonderful world of food additives and how they kill us slowly but surely(a lot of them, anyway). One of the articles we…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # \[OT\] What's inside the food we eat? By Roy Osherove July 16, 2005 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published July 16, 2005; technical details may be outdated. My wife is doing a paper for university on Morality in business. She's decided to explore the wonderful world of food additives and how they kill us slowly but surely(a lot of them, anyway). One of the articles we stumbled upon when searching for articles on dishonesty by food companies talks about the dishonest/misguiding labeling many food manufacturers put on food products in order to make customers think better of the product, or at least not be alarmed at the junk they are going to eat. Here are a couple of phrases from that article. You can [read the rest here](http://www.newstarget.com/001529.html). Enlightening. "..As a good example of the kind of ingredients that are hidden on food labels, let's take a look at MSG, also called monosodium glutamate ([_see related ebook on monosodium glutamate_](http://www.truthpublishing.com/grocerywarning.html)). MSG is an excitotoxin -- an ingredient known to cause nerve damage by overexciting nerves. This is exactly how MSG enhances the taste of foods: by overexciting the taste buds on your tongue. While MSG is sometimes listed directly on the label, it is more frequently hidden in other ingredients, such as [yeast extract](http://www.newstarget.com/005778.html), autolyzed vegetable protein, or hydrolyzed vegetable protein. All three of these ingredients contain [monosodium glutamate](http://www.newstarget.com/001528.html), and yet they are designed to mislead consumers by avoiding mentioning MSG directly on the label..." "...Other ingredients may be misleading without necessarily being dangerous. One such ingredient is [carmine](http://www.newstarget.com/002043.html) -- a red coloring frequently used in yogurt, candies, fruit drinks and sweets. Carmine is actually made from the dead, ground-up husks of female red beetles. These beetles, which are typically raised in the Canary Islands, are dried and ground up to create a red paste. This red paste is then exported to the United States and other countries where food is produced. It is added to foods to give them a rose-like color, something similar to a strawberry color. It's listed on the label as "carmine", not as "ground-up red beetles." And while carmine doesn't necessarily pose a health risk to American consumers, it is still an example of dishonest labeling, because people have the right to know when ground-up insects are being used in their foods. There are probably 100 items in your grocery store right now with carmine listed right on the label. You can go to your store right now and check it out, and verify that what I'm relating here is true. (Pick up practically any strawberry yogurt...) " ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Jul 26, 2005 ### [\[OT\]The Friday Page](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/26/otthe-friday-page.html) - Jul 20, 2005 ### [\[OT\] If you can't stand the heat, take your ThinkPad out of the oven](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/20/ot-if-you-cant-stand-the-heat-take-your-thinkpad-out-of-the.html) - Jul 15, 2005 ### [Open for work during September(L.A or Bellevue)](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/15/open-for-work-during-septemberla-or-bellevue.html) - Jul 15, 2005 ### [My contests actually make a difference :)](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/15/my-contests-actually-make-a-difference.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/