by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I've been paying attention to what I eat lately and trying to become more conscious of dietary food additives.

There are people out there who are very health conscious and avoid additives. I find this irritating because I have a habit of embracing what people who seem uncool campaign against. I also figure that if I eat preservatives there's a chance it'll preserve my body in the same way it preserves the food.

My favourite food additive these days is polysorbate 60. This vitamin, well, technically it's a "non-ionic surfactant," is available in Jos. Louis cakes.

Polysorbate is safe. We know because health officials feed such preservatives and artificial colouring and other chemical agents to rodents to see how much it'll take to kill them. Even significant amounts of polysorbate couldn't fell a rat. They appeared unharmed. Their conversational or math skills might have decreased but it's hard to measure. At worst they suffered a minimal dropoff.

I'm no gourmet but I enjoy silicon dioxide, which I get in my Nestea iced tea mix. This is the same stuff that makes window glass and is used in computer chips. I called the Nestlé Nestea 1-800 line to compliment them on this and the agent reported the silicon dioxide is a "defoaming, anti-caking agent" and "it's been approved." But then she tried to persuade me into revealing my home address. I got a bad feeling. Maybe I was asking too many questions.

I have containers of maple syrup and fake syrup in the fridge. There's no difference. They sometimes call the fake stuff "table syrup," as if every spring they put little taps on table legs and sap drips out. Dora brand table syrup uses a large font to celebrate its main ingredient: "glucose fructose," two types of sugar that share the same molecular structure. It tastes damn good and it's cheaper.

Health Canada allows some packaged food to go without labels, which is why nobody can identify those mysterious yummy white flecks on salami. Our federal overlords require no written justification on anything with more than half a per cent of alcohol. Other legally unlabelled items include "one bite confections" and "a variety of cow and goat milk products sold in refillable glass containers."

One food ingredient that has fallen into a little disfavour is transfatty acids. A few months back, Winnipeg NDP Member of Parliament Pat Martin tried to get a private member's bill heard in the house to ban this stuff that arrives in partially hydrogenated foods or foods that contains shortening. Parliament wouldn't even hear Pat Martin's initiative. But he has a petition in which he describes transfats as "deadly, manufactured fats, which cause obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, all of which are on the rise in Canada."

Martin's petition only got 1,460 names. Honestly, what a flop! Give me a girl in a tight shirt and a rainforest badge and I'll get more signatures in five hours at Alexis Nihon.

A lot of these chemical food additives sound unnecessarily scary. Milo, a breakfast drink powder, offers disodium phosphate, thiamine hydrochloride and pyrophosphate. The first makes the chocolate less acid, the second is vitamin B1, and pyrophosphate… well, the customer rep wasn't sure, but she promised to call me back with some explanation and then tried to get me to reveal my home address again.

Sometimes chemicals can make it on an impressive name alone. Dextromethorphan hydrobromide has long masqueraded as a cough cure. Only last month did a study reveal it to be no more useful than a placebo. The media reported this but should have kept a lid on it. Cough syrup reassures those who believe in it. Besides, media hushes up all sorts of stuff. Detaching Siamese twins is big news but lung transplants aren't news at all. Where's the line?

If you feel uncomfortable with food additives, then don't read labels. That's why they print them so small. Who needs to know? God doesn't care. Nature doesn't mind. There's no scoreboard keeping track of what happens.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca