Friday, April 27, 2018

4035 - Are we eating antifreeze?


Is propylene glycol why processed food is not as good for you rather than natural food? But the way the first article (linked below) talks about it, propylene glycol is everywhere.

Salad dressing
Liquid artificial flavoring
Ice cream
Artificial sweetener
Icing
Soft drinks
Soups
Puddings and desserts
Sauces and dips
body care products
cosmetics
medications
aircraft deicing

Oh and antifreeze. But it's not the ethylene glycol that will kill you.

Here is the 'scare you' ARTICLE about it.

And then to counter that article here is the WIKIPEDIA article that calms things down a bit.

From Wikipedia...
The acute oral toxicity of propylene glycol is very low, and large quantities are required to cause perceptible health damage in humans; propylene glycol is metabolized in the human body into pyruvic acid (a normal part of the glucose-metabolism process, readily converted to energy), acetic acid (handled by ethanol-metabolism), lactic acid (a normal acid generally abundant during digestion), and propionaldehyde (a potentially hazardous substance).

Serious toxicity generally occurs at plasma concentrations over 4 g/L, which requires extremely high intake over a relatively short period of time, or when used as a vehicle for drugs or vitamins given intravenously or orally. It would be nearly impossible to reach toxic levels by consuming foods or supplements, which contain at most 1 g/kg of PG, except for alcoholic beverages in the US which are allowed 5 percent = 50g/kg. Cases of propylene glycol poisoning are usually related to either inappropriate intravenous administration or accidental ingestion of large quantities by children.


2 comments:

Mike said...

Oh well, it's posted a little early. I hit the wrong button.

Cloudia said...

I really like to eat as basic food as possible and little prepared, boxed type items. Just me...