3 Creepy Things In Your Drink

Pop open that drink and take a sip. Curious about that artificial taste? Perhaps you should be. Should you glance at the ingredients you might see a list of names that seem purely chemical or obscure, their origins clearly not from a plant or a tree. However, some people are curious about the contents of their drinks, and upon investigating learn that all kinds of disturbing ingredients have been placed in them. Such as bug juice, seaweed and the same kind of alcohol that’s found in anti-freeze, bacteria that grows on rotting vegetables, and more. Don’t believe me? Then read on as we examine three of the most disturbing ingredients in modern drinks.

Let’s start out with my favorite: carmine. What’s that? Bug juice. No, it seriously is. It’s the extract from a tiny insect and is used to make the food dye carmine (carminic acid, cochineal extract). While not techinically bad for you, the fact that you’re drinking bug juice has a high ick factor. The carminic acid is produced by an insect called the cochineal as a means to dissuade predators, and when their dried bodies are crushed, becomes the red dye used in various popular drinks available today.

Propylene glycol can be found in hair dye, antifreeze, and fast food shakes. Go figure. It’s used as a solvent for food colors and flavors, and that’s another indication why those massively artificial drinks are bad for you–they require that a special alcohol be used to help dissolve the contents into a more liquid form. Disturbingly, a study in Toxicological Sciences revealed that rats that inhaled this alcohol had smaller litters and hit puberty later.

Carregeenan is basically a seaweed extract, and can be found in a variety of creamy beverages. Its purpose is to thicken the drink, make it creamier. What’s the problem? Studies have shown that a degraded version of carrageenan is linked to digestive cancers in animals. A University of Iowa study found that carregeenan can degrade in human digestive tracts, which means that it is potentially bad news to drink this, despite the FDA giving it a thumbs up.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Phil_Tucker
http://EzineArticles.com/?3-Creepy-Things-In-Your-Drink&id=5211284

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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