I think label reading is essential in order to avoid HFCS, sugar, MSG, artificial dyes, flavors, and hormones.
I strongly agree.
One of the worst and most pervasive additives being
HFCS: "
high-fructose corn syrup". It's apparently not only cheaper for manufacturers than traditional cane &c. sugar (e.g.: original Coca-Cola formula), but is also cheaper than the ingredients that really
belong in products. It infests numerous U.S. food products in which any form of sugar plainly does
not belong, e.g.: peanut butter, mayonnaise, and oil-&-vinegar salad dressings.
I'm curious, what kind of additives do we have that you folks do not? I had assumed that prepared and packaged foods were pretty much the same in any western country.
The U.S.A. allows compounds of the iodine-displacing element
bromine, e.g.:
brominated vegetable oils (BVOs) as an "emulsifier" in
citrus-themed industrially manufactured "
soft drinks" (e.g.: "Mountain Dew").
potassium bromate in "
enriched flour", thus in the vast majority of
bread (I've read that Pepperidge Farm is among commercially successful exceptions); this ingredient is not even claimed to be a "preservative"; instead, it's used only to improve the physical behavior of dough in industrial baking equipment.
There are undoubtedly quite a few other such additives, but I singled out bromine because it's an issue I encountered this past week.
The most insidious recent U.S. legal development is our federal government accepting a
World Trade Organization ruling that labeling products, including food, with
country of origin, is
discriminatory (or some such word) and thus
illegal. As a paying customer of groceries & markets, I strongly believe that I am
entitled to discriminate: To know the origin of food, especially imported food, so I can make personal choices, including the option to refuse to purchase food from such notoriously unhealthful sources as China, Mexico, and Vietnam.