Chemicals in your food? No, you shouldn't be scared.
I'm seeing all these posts on Facebook and Twitter basically telling people to riot in the streets because there are funny sounding ingredients in their food. People basically fear mongering and making other people scared over claims of "chemicals" in their food. Firstly, by very basic definition, what is a chemical? A chemical is a compound or substance that has been purified or prepared, especially artificially. When people see or hear the word chemical they typically think a caustic agent that will definitely kill you. Which is totally wrong. One very common chemical that people consume every day is dihydrogen monoxide. Which is water. The FDA mandates that food companies must put the full organic name of the chemical compound on the ingredient list. Why? Because government, that's why. Lately people have been spreading that trisodium phosphate is in cereal. Which it is. TSP is commonly seen at home improvement stores as a paint thinner and stripper. Thus people see these two facts and quite literally panic. Let me break it down friends: when in high volume and high concentrations, TSP is deadly and can be used to strip paint. However, the amount found in food is very diluted and a teeny tiny amount. In this form it's totally safe and used as a leavening agent. I have another example: sodium bicarbonate. Its other alias is baking soda. Again, in high quantities and high concentrations, sodium bicarbonate is highly caustic and used as a heavy duty cleaning agent. And when consumed like this, it will rupture your stomach. In small amounts and small concentrations, this is one of man's best cooking agents. You'll be hard pressed not to find a baking recipe that calls for this. My last example (and not a very good one) is phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid in a high concentration is deadly and is very dangerous. Diluted phosphoric acid is still not very good for you but is also found in almost every commercial soda. It's horrible for your teeth. In conclusion, most chemicals are safe to consume. And literally anything in large enough quantities and large enough concentrations will kill you. Riot in the streets as much as you want, just please do some research first.
