Fun Holidays - Label Reader's Holiday

Studying food packaging in a store or supermarket allows you to learn about its composition and calorie content. Many people ignore the information on labels, which negatively affects their health. Eating empty carbohydrates leads to obesity, allergens lead to urticaria, angioedema and other negative reactions, preservatives and harmful additives lead to cancer. Americans Thomas and Ruth Roy decided to draw public attention to the need to study the composition of food products and came up with an unusual celebration. April 19th is Label Reader's Day. The packaging of a cookie or the wrapper of a chocolate bar contains a lot of useful information. It indicates the shelf life of the product, requirements for its storage conditions and other information that is important for the consumer. Thus, for people with nut allergies, after the list of ingredients it is indicated that the cake or frosted cheese may contain a small amount of foreign raw materials due to the fact that the factory produces products with peanuts. The rapid development of the chemical industry has led to the creation of additives marked with the letter "E". Among them there are both natural dyes, stabilizers and emulsifiers, which improve the appearance of products and are practically harmless, as well as substances that are dangerous in large doses. Such additives include a taste sweetener (cyclamate), a preservative formaldehyde (E240), propyl ester of para-oxmbenzoic acid (E216), etc. A responsible person who cares about the health of his and his family members will definitely read the label on sausage, cookies or a carbonated drink and draw the appropriate conclusion about the benefits of the product. The Committee on Food Additives was created under the WHO in 1956, and the European Food Safety Authority - in February 2002. These organizations monitor the composition of semi-finished products and other food produced on an industrial scale, confirming the harmlessness of preservatives, dyes, and sweeteners to the body. and other substances. Thus, palm oil, rich in vitamins A, E and Q10, has a melting point higher than human body temperature. Therefore, its addition is quite justified in animal feed, whose body melts and absorbs this plant product well, but is harmful to humans. The modern environmental agenda brings to the forefront the problem of reducing the consumption of meat and other products of animal and plant origin through the inclusion of additives based on larvae and chitin of crustaceans and insects in food. Not all consumers are ready to switch to sausages, milk and baked goods with ground-up cockroaches, flies, locust and shrimp shells. Moreover, until recently, there was no study of the effects of long-term consumption of insects on the human body. An allergy sufferer or a buyer who is wary of various innovations should carefully study the product packaging. Thus, the presence of shellac additive (a processed resin secreted by aphid-like lac bugs) is indicated by the E904 marking. The presence of dried cricket flour in cookies, spaghetti and sports nutrition is indicated by the warning printed on the label: “Contains entomoprotein.” Spouses Thomas and Ruth Roy came up with a lot of funny and sometimes ridiculous holidays. These include No Housework Day, New Meow Year for Cats, and Bathroom Party Day. For the Label Reader's Day, this American couple is sincerely thanked by everyone who cares about the quality of the food they eat and adheres to the rules of a healthy diet.