Superfoods in BIO quality - why we should avoid chemicals

Why we should avoid chemicals?

At BoraTree, we produce products from purely natural substances. They do not contain any added preservatives, emulsifiers, dyes or other chemicals. See why we bet on the purely natural composition of our nutritional supplements.

Why are various additives added to foods?

The additives, i.e. added substances, are added to foods for various reasons. They are used, for example, to improve the taste and colour or to maintain the consistency of food. In the case of fruits and vegetables, care is taken for their pleasant appearance, in the case of meat, the colour arousing taste and for dairy products, for their long shelf life.

All of this can be nice at first glance and is often sought after, but these added substances can have an adverse effect on our health. What substances are we talking about?

Chemicals in food

Food safety check personnel and food and drug control authorities consider a number of chemicals to be safe. They can improve certain product features, but they also have their downside. There are permitted values and set standards, but when you think about it, these chemicals are already found almost everywhere, and we are accepting them in larger quantities than we would probably admit.

Designation of additives and their meaning

Each manufacturer is obliged to visibly mark all added additives directly on the product packaging. They usually indicate them with a capital letter E and a three-digit number. This labeling assigns the additive to a specific group.

E 100 to E 199 – food colors
E 200 to E 299 – preservatives
E 300 to E 321 – antioxidants
E 322 to E 495 – emulsifiers and stabilizers
E 500 to E 619 – acids and bases
E 620 to E 637 – flavour enhancers
E 900 to E 925 – artificial sweeteners, polishing agents, …

Some of these substances are harmless, but they can start to oxidize if stored or treated improperly. Other substances can damage health or cause allergic reactions. And we are not talking about those that are also referred to as carcinogenic.

At BoraTree, we therefore try to avoid all additives and use only the pure power of natural products in BIO quality.

	Common foods	Superfoods in BIO quality
preservatives	✔️	✖️
emulsifiers	✔️	✖️
food colors	✔️	✖️
aromatizers	✔️	✖️

The other side of chemical additives

You can find a complete list of emulsifiers, for example, on the ferpotravina.cz website. But let’s look directly at some of the commonly used additives, their meaning and especially the negatives they bring with them.

Food colors

Take tartrazine as an example of a food colouring. It is a light orange powder that is used to colour food. It is talked about in connection with the induction of allergic reactions and is also associated with the formation of acne. You can usually find it in food, such as bakery products, chewing gum, ice cream or juices.

For example, this study points to the adverse effect of tartrazine with another dye, red carmazine, on biochemical markers in several vital organs. In the liver and kidneys, the negatives of these dyes have been shown not only at their higher doses, but even at low doses.

Preservatives

Among the preservatives we can mention butylhydroxyanisole (BHA) and propyl gallate (PG). BHA is often used in conjunction with propyl gallate to protect against oxidation and to extend the shelf life of foods, especially cereals, chewing gum or potato chips.

BHA may support the effect of some carcinogens, but its ability to scavenge free radicals is also mentioned. For example, in rats and hamsters, it causes tumors. That is why it is advisable to read the composition of animal feed. Propyl gallate, in turn, is referred to in connection with the possible ability to disrupt hormones in the human body, which can lead to reproductive or neurological problems.

Other additives

Very often we can also meet with sodium nitrite, which is used as a preservative, or it is used to colour sausages and various meat products. Sodium nitrite is one of the substances that also occurs naturally in some vegetables. But it is commonly found in conjunction with ascorbic acid, which protects nitrite from conversion to nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic to humans. This is one of the reasons why some companies add sodium nitrite to their products along with ascorbic acid.

There are also safe additives

We must not forget the most commonly used additives, which are sugar, salt, citric acid or baking soda. Not every additive poses a threat.

Silica, for example, is a known additive. Its purpose is to prevent the product from getting wet, so we often find it in dried soups, coffee creams or other bulk foods. Studies have shown that, as an E 551 food additive, silica has low toxicity and therefore its use in food does not pose a risk to human health.

One way or another, at BoraTree we avoid all chemical additives and focus purely on the best of what nature has to offer.

Superfoods in BIO quality – why we should avoid chemicals