Diet

8 Unsettling Facts Food Companies Don't Want You to Know

Find out where wood fibers, bugs and other strange ingredients are lurking in commonly consumed foods.

by Diana Kelly | COMMENT

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Even if you try to eat as healthy as possible, unless you do all of your shopping at a farmer's market and have a butcher and a dairy farmer you trust and rely on, chances are you're eating packaged foods to round out your meals. Unfortunately, there are a ton of ingredients in packaged foods to help make them look appealing, taste better, and withstand travel and shelf life. While the FDA has approved the foods on this list as "safe," some of them may make you think twice before you eat them again.

"Today, our foods and our ingredients come from thousands of miles from different countries already prepared for us," says Kantha Shelke, PhD, Chicago-based food scientist at Corvus Blue LLC, a food science and research firm specializing in industry competitive intelligence. "That is a very tall order for something that exists in nature because the minute it is harvested, it's on its way to decay and dying." Because consumers expect food to look unblemished and freshly picked or slaughtered, processing plants and manufacturers have to do more and more to make the food look like it was freshly made for you, and to help make it last longer, says Shelke.

Translation: Even foods that you think of as unprocessed have been manipulated in ways you might not expect. The best thing you can do is try to educate yourself about what you're eating, and, when in doubt, eat whole, natural foods whenever possible.

Here, the most surprising ingredients in the food you eat -- and how to avoid them.

Image via Harper's Bazaar

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