5 Common Food Additives That Are Toxic to Your Brain

- By Deane Alban - May 9, 2014

Eating mostly whole foods as nature intended is the best recipe for a brain-healthy diet. This minimizes consumption of food additives, some of which are bad for your brain. But most of us, even with the best intentions, eat food that comes in a can or a box at least once in awhile!

The FDA allows 3,000 additives to be used in the US food supply. Reading labels is a good place to start for avoiding dangerous additives, but this can be confusing.

Not all additives are unhealthy. You will find everyday items on the list like salt, vitamin C, and acetic acid (vinegar). You’ll also find long-winded names like Eleutherococcus senticosus which may sound suspicious, but is actually the healthy herb ginseng.

And some of the worst health offenders aren’t required to be on the label!

I’ve ferreted out a handful of additives that are known for harming the brain. Here is my “Hit List”, plus ways to easily avoid exposure.

Aspartame

This artificial sweetener is bad news any way you look at it. Currently, there are 92 categories of complaints filed against aspartame with the FDA. And ironically, it is highly suspected of making people who use it fatter!

Original studies were falsified to hide the fact that animals fed aspartame developed seizures and brain tumors, but the FDA approved it anyway. The FDA has a history of caring more about big business than your well-being.

Aspartame is made up of three brain-damaging chemicals — aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol.

Formerly known as Nutrasweet, but now called AminoSweet, this is one of the easiest brain-damaging chemicals to avoid since it is clearly labeled.

Sucralose

While the affects of aspartame have been well-publicized, those of the artificial sweetener sucralose are not as well known. Sucralose is marketed as Splenda whose ads say “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar”. What the ads don’t tell you is that sucralose is sugar bonded to chlorine, making it a toxic chlorocarbon.

Some common neurological side effects are headaches, migraines, dizziness, brain fog, anxiety, depression, and tinnitus. Another side effect is weight gain which rather defeats the purpose.

Sucralose prevents nutrient absorption and reduces the amount of good bacteria in your intestines by 50%. This leads to an overabundance of bad bacteria which has numerous negative effects on your brain including damage to the hippocampus, the part of the brain where memories are stored.

Stop drinking diet soda or eating foods with this or any other artificial sweetener. You’d be better off going back to sugar! My favorite healthy sweetener is stevia. This naturally sweet herb can be used to sweeten foods and drinks with zero calories, naturally.

Diacetyl

Americans love their popcorn, munching down 17.3 billion quarts of popped corn each year! But home-popped microwave popcorn usually contains butter flavoring with the additive diacetyl. It’s already established this chemical causes a serious condition called “microwave popcorn lung”.

Diacetyl is able to cross the blood-brain barrier, a defense which prevents harmful substances from entering the brain. It causes beta-amyloid clumping which is a significant indicator of Alzheimer’s.

You won’t see the word diacetyl on the label, but if you see “artificial butter flavor” or “natural flavors” on the label assume it contains diacetyl.

I’m as bummed about this as you are. But you can eat popcorn safely.

The best way to get healthy popcorn is to pop your own. It’s fast, fun, and highly economical. Kids of all ages will get a kick of out making popcorn the old-fashioned way. If you like butter flavor, just use the real thing. Turns out there is nothing wrong with using a little butter, anyway.

Butter is a particularly good source of vitamin A and the fatty acid butyrate. Butyrate reduces chronic inflammation and counters neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Monosodium glutamate

Monosodium glutamate, usually referred to simply as MSG, is ubiquitous in processed foods. It breaks down in the body into glutamate, a known excitotoxin — a substance that literally stimulates brain cells to death!

A truly alarming thing about MSG is that it is in just about everything, yet it is not required to be on labels. This makes it very difficult to avoid.

It is required to be listed on a label only if it’s 100% pure MSG. Spices, flavorings, and natural flavorings can all contain up to 99% MSG with no mention on the label!

Generally the saltier the food, the more MSG it will have, with worst offenders including canned soups, snacks, and ramen noodles.

And don’t think that shopping at a health food store will protect you. Health food items are not immune, especially refined soy products like soy burgers.

Top MSG Sources

Here are some ingredients to watch out for that always contain MSG:

• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
• Hydrolyzed plant protein
• Hydrolyzed protein
• Plant protein extract
• Calcium caseinate
• Sodium caseinate
• Yeast extract
• Textured protein
• Autolyzed yeast

These ingredients can contain MSG:

• Malt extract
• Malt flavoring
• Bouillon
• Broth
• Stock
• Flavoring
• Natural flavoring
• Beef flavoring
• Chicken flavoring
• Seasoning
• Spices

Another huge source of MSG is fast food restaurants. MSGTruth.org has a list of the worst offenders with KFC being at the top of the list. Even their salads and green beans contain MSG!

Aluminum

Aluminum is an additive in baking powder and anti-caking agents, but it is used as much more than just a food ingredient. It is the most abundant metal in the the earth’s crust so is hard to avoid. It’s in drinking water, antacids, deodorant, cans, foil, and is commonly used in cookware.

Aluminum is suspected of contributing to Alzheimer’s. In the 1970′s, autopsies revealed that people that had Alzheimer’s had a larger than normal concentration of aluminum in the brain. This understandably began a scare that aluminum was the cause of Alzheimer’s.

Many people consequently stopped using aluminum cookware. This soft metal leeches into food especially when cooking acidic foods like tomato, lemon, or vinegar.

Stainless steel is the better cookware choice. It is more durable, scratch-resistant, and less reactive than aluminum. It’s easier to keep looking good for the long haul, too.

You can also find aluminum-free deodorants, baking powder and antacids. You can cook on parchment paper instead of foil. But is all this necessary?

Scientific proof can come slowly. It’s been 40 years since the aluminum-Alzheimer’s correlation was made, but science has still not determined for certain whether ingesting aluminum contributes to this disease for sure. But since it is a known neurotoxin, it only makes sense to minimize your exposure.

Avoiding these five chemicals is not that difficult. There are healthy alternatives, so you can reduce exposure with little effort. Taking action will help you reduce exposure to brain toxins, a key factor in keeping your brain mentally sharp for a lifetime.

SOURCES:
Aluminum & Alzheimer’s Is There a Connection? at Student.Biology.Arizona.edu
Bronchiolitis Obliterans at Popcorn-Lung-Disease.com
List of Food Additives (US) at Wikipedia.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Deane Alban holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and has taught and written on a wide variety of natural health topics for over 20 years. She teaches the best ways to stay mentally sharp for life at her website BeBrainFit.com. Learn how to protect your brain and optimize your brainpower – sign up for her free e-course 21 Days to a Brighter Brain here.

Smoke Signals: Martin Lee on Growing U.S. Movement to Legalize Marijuana

Transcript

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the look at the outcome of the historic votes in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Even before this, 18 states and the District of Columbia allowed the medical use of marijuana. Now, many are asking whether the passage of these latest measures could be the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition.

All of this comes as the federal government continues to consider marijuana an illegal drug, and the Obama administration has supported police crackdowns even on medical marijuana. Meanwhile, it has ignored studies that show the plant can be useful in treating everything from depression to cancerous tumors.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on what will happen now that Colorado and Washington have made history by legalizing marijuana for adult use, we’re joined by Martin Lee, longtime investigative reporter and author of several books, his most recent, the newly published Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana—Medical, Recreational, and Scientific, and also wrote Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond.

Martin, thanks so much for being with us. He’s co-founder of FAIR, the national media watch group. In these last few minutes of the show—and then we’ll do part two right after the show—talk about the significance of what is happening in Colorado and Washington. Washington state, next Thursday, the law will go into effect.

MARTIN LEE: Well, the take-home message from the votes is significant. America woke up after the elections and looked itself in the mirror and realized two states had voted to legalize marijuana for adult use.

But there’s caveats in the proposition, the ballot measure that passed in Washington state, in particular, that are quite troubling. And it has to do with driving under the influence of drugs. There are stipulations in the ballot measure that’s passed that state that a person who has over a certain amount of metabolites, marijuana metabolites, in their body, can be charged with driving under the influence of drugs. The problem here is that the metabolites for marijuana can stay in the body for many weeks after one uses it. One can take a few puffs of a marijuana cigarette four to six weeks ago, and it’ll still turn up in a drug driving test. So I don’t know how this will hold up in a court of law. The science is very clear on this. The fact that metabolites are in the body is not an indication necessarily of one driving—has been driving impaired.

What’s most troubling of all, however, is for people under 21, drivers under 21 in the state of Washington, there’s a zero tolerance for any indication of marijuana use, so that if a person is pulled over, a 17-year-old driver, and is given a drug test and is found to have marijuana metabolites in their body, they can lose their license, and they could be severely penalized for having any level of the metabolites in their system. And the reason why that’s so troubling is because there’s been a long history of racist law enforcement patterns with respect to marijuana, not only in Washington state, but throughout the United States. And there’s really nothing in the law that would prevent the selective targeting of—particularly for black and Latino youth, for continuing for arrest and harassment by law enforcement. In fact, if anything, the new law might encourage that. And other—officials from other states are already saying that Washington may be a model for the law they’d like to see in their states for marijuana to be legalized. So this is troubling. If the past is any prologue for the future, there’s no reason to be—feel confident that these racist law enforcement patterns won’t continue. And that’s not to say that definitely will continue; it remains to be seen.

What we saw in California in 1996 after Californians passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, that law enforcement was essentially given a free hand to basically respond to Proposition 215 in the way they saw fit from county to county. So in certain areas, like San Francisco or Sacramento or—and particularly Santa Cruz, Oakland, they had more lenient policies. Law enforcement took a hands-off attitude. But in other counties, particularly in what we call "red state California," the rural counties, the law enforcement were very vicious with respect to medical marijuana usage after 19—after 215 was passed.

AMY GOODMAN: Martin Lee, we want to thank you very much for being with us—we’re going to do part two online at democracynow.org—author of Smoke Signals. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Marijuana Refugees: Virginia Family Moves to Colorado to Treat Epileptic Child with Cannabis Oil

Last year, Dara Lightle and her nine-year-old daughter, Madeleine, became "marijuana refugees" when they moved from Virginia to Colorado. At the time, Madeleine was suffering from hundreds of seizures a day. Her doctors in Virginia recommended brain surgery. Then Dara heard how cannabis oil had treated children suffering from similar conditions. The oil worked. But since the oil was considered an illegal drug in much of the country, they had to move to Colorado, where it is legal, to continue treatment. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, at least 115 "marijuana refugee families" from 43 states have left jobs, homes and family so they could obtain the cannabis oil to treat a variety of ailments. We speak to Dara and Madeleine in Denver.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Today we look at marijuana refugees—people and families who have uprooted their lives and moved to Colorado with the hope of obtaining medical marijuana to treat various illnesses. Many are families with young children who suffer from epilepsy and relentless seizures. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, at least 115 marijuana refugee families from 43 states have left jobs, homes and the rest of their family so they could obtain oil made from a special strain of cannabis that have repeatedly quelled the seizures in a handful of kids in Colorado Springs.

AMY GOODMAN: The Colorado Springs Gazette recently published a piece about nine-year-old Madeleine Lightle and her mother Dara, who moved from Virginia to Colorado. In a moment, Madeleine and her mother will join us, but first let’s turn to this video about their story produced by the Colorado Springs Gazette.

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Hi. My name is Madeleine.

DARA LIGHTLE: When I think of a child who has seizures, I think of a very low-functioning child. So, to see my high-functioning child and imagine her losing function was very scary. There was hope that she wouldn’t have any more, that that would be it, she would just have one. And then she had another one about a month later. And then it’s like you go through all those emotions again. You don’t know what’s going to happen. And, you know, earlier that year, I’d been wondering: Why can’t she do math anymore? You know, I am trying to teach her the same grade over and over again, and nothing is sticking.

So, that is when they told us that she was a candidate for brain surgery. What we didn’t know is that what they wanted to do was take out the entire left side of her brain. And to look at your daughter and imagine half of her brain being taken out, it was probably the hardest point in my life. It could make her better, or it could not. It could take away seizures, or it could not. Still, again, it was our only hope. It was our only hope.

This is when I saw a video about medical cannabis and how it could help with seizures. And it was about two weeks after that, that it was like: I think we need to move to Colorado; I think I need to bring Madeleine to Colorado. And then, within the next week, it was like: We’re moving, and we’re not coming back. It’s been six months. She began reading, she began writing, she began doing math—and remembering.

Yeah? Two plus two is?

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Four.

DARA LIGHTLE: You got them all right, Madeleine!

Some days I just feel like: What a blessing that we were given this opportunity! I don’t feel worthy, but I do believe my daughter is worthy to have a chance at life and to live, and I’m so grateful that this simple oil from a plant is giving her that.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dara Lightle in a video produced by the Colorado Springs Gazette. For more, we go to Denver, where we’re joined by Dara and her daughter Madeleine, or Maddy.

Thanks so much for driving in a couple hours from Colorado Springs to Denver for this conversation. Dara, why don’t you start off by talking about where Madeleine was born and when she had her first seizure?

DARA LIGHTLE: Well, Madeleine was born in 2004, and she actually was born prematurely and had a stroke in utero. And then, actually, we did not see any seizures until she was five years old. She had her first seizure when she—in 2010, in the summer of 2010. And we were actually not expecting it, even though she did have brain damage on the left side of her brain due to the stroke in utero. We thought, by that age, we would not see any seizures.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And once those initial seizures began, what kind of medications did you use at that point?

DARA LIGHTLE: We used pharmaceutical medications—Trileptal, I think, was one of the first, and Vimpat—started with, you know, low dosages, but she continued to have seizures. More were added on. Some were taken away because they were—had adverse effects, such as anger. We saw a lot of—she’s actually very—normally very calm and very sweet. We saw things in her like personality changes. And so they would take some away and add some more. And we would still continue to see issues, but we would have to deal with them because sometimes her seizures would stop for a time, and then her seizures would come back, and they would have to keep adding more medication on.

AMY GOODMAN: Maddy, thank you for coming in with your mother. It’s good to have you with us. Hi.

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Hi.

DARA LIGHTLE: Say hi.

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Hi.

AMY GOODMAN: Madeleine, Maddy, can you talk about how a seizure feels for you?

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: It feels, um, pretty not good, but I have—but I usually tell my mom that I’m having a seizure and that I have—that I have a good life with seizures and that this medication is helping me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Dara, can you talk about what the—what that trajectory is from having gone through the seizures and then ultimately coming to Colorado, the drugs you used before and what you’re using now?

DARA LIGHTLE: Well, basically, last summer, the medications she was on, by the end of last summer, she was on three medications. Her emotions and—she was kind of like what I would call a zombie. She was a shell of a person. There were times where she couldn’t even find the bathroom in the house that she grew up in. And that’s how bad things were during that time. Whether that was from pharmaceuticals or seizures, we’re still unsure. I think that the pharmaceuticals actually exasperated her condition and made her worse. We decided—when we saw this video about medical marijuana and how it was helping children with seizures, we decided the best thing for Madeleine was that we needed to move out to Colorado. And my mother joined me out here in Colorado.

When we came out here and Madeleine started the medical cannabis, it was—as you heard in that video, it was—our only hope before was brain surgery, taking out the whole left side of her brain. And to look at my child and imagine taking out the left side of her brain is very difficult for any mother, for any parent to see that. So, when we heard that medical cannabis could help, at first it was scary, because you’re like, "Well, I don’t want my child getting stoned. I don’t want my child smoking pot." But once we realized that it really was an oil that is given—you know, was given to her at first three times a day sublingually, in her mouth, and that it wouldn’t get her high or anything like that, we slowly started to realize that actually the pharmaceuticals were making her high and that the cannabis was helping her get better. And she was off of all pharma—we started the cannabis oil in October, and she was off of all pharmaceuticals by the end of December.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the change, the frequency of the seizures previously, before you started this treatment, and what life is now like for your daughter and your family?

DARA LIGHTLE: Yeah. She had three days of video monitoring and testing at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the summer. During that time, we were actually told—and we didn’t know this—that 80 percent of her sleep was seizure activity. She was having so many seizures that she could not learn. She could not add. The neurologist put two fingers up and said, "What’s one plus one?" And she said, "Three." She couldn’t even add. And at this point she was eight years old. And she couldn’t read. She couldn’t do anything.

And so, basically, when she started the cannabis, it took some time. It was a little roller coaster. You know, there was periods of time where she would have more seizures, and there were periods of time where she was very cognitively clear, is the best way to show it. She was coming out of her shell. She had—starting to have a quality of life. It wasn’t until she was totally off the pharmaceuticals. Now she sleeps through the night. Her EEGs have drastically changed. From what they were to what they are now, it’s miraculous, because, like I said, she’s on no pharmaceuticals. She’s only on cannabis oil, and her EEGs have drastically changed. She reads now for the first time. She is able to add simple addition and subtraction for the first time. She wants to learn, and that’s huge, as well. So there’s a lot of positive changes, that we weren’t expecting. We were just expecting a decrease in seizures. We had no idea that we would see all the things that we’re seeing with her now.

AMY GOODMAN: Maddy, what does your medicine taste like?

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Charlotte’s Web.

DARA LIGHTLE: What does it taste like?

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Oil.

AMY GOODMAN: It just tastes like oil? And how do you feel living in Colorado? Have you made new friends? Do you miss your friends from home?

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: I made new friends. I miss my friends in Virginia where I used to live. And—but I also like my friends in Colorado.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dara, this whole issue of having basically to uproot yourselves to go to another state to be able to have access to this kind of treatment, your thoughts on that?

DARA LIGHTLE: Not everybody can get up and just leave like we did. We were blessed to be able to do so, but there are so many families who can’t just get up and go. And we are happy to be here. We feel blessed that we are one of these pilot families to be able to be trying this out to show the world that this works. At the same time, the fact that we had to leave everything that we know, and people are stripped from their families in order to do this, is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank—Maddy, I want to thank you for coming on. And, Dara, I’d like to ask you to stay when we bring Dave Philipps on, as well—

DARA LIGHTLE: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: —the reporter who’s been following you and Maddy and other families who are doing—who have come to Colorado. How does it feel to be called a "marijuana refugee," Dara?

DARA LIGHTLE: In some ways it’s painful, and in some ways it’s a blessing. So it’s painful that we have—are stuck here, and we can’t go to Disneyland, we can’t go to a funeral, we can’t go to a wedding, if it’s out of state. But at the same time, it’s a blessing that we are able to do this oil, and it’s doing great things for our child.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you take the oil with you?

DARA LIGHTLE: No, it’s a Schedule I drug. It’s federally illegal. It’s legal here in Colorado, but we can’t leave the state.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dara, stay with us. And, Maddy, thank you so much for coming on Democracy Now!

MADELEINE LIGHTLE: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Dara and Maddy Lightle are with us in Denver, Colorado. They can’t leave the state, because if they took the drug that Maddy is using now to prevent her seizures, marijuana, they would be arrested. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll continue with marijuana refugees in a moment.