August 12, 2010- With fruits and vegetables being the main ingredients, fresh salads definitely make for healthy food in general. But the same cannot be said about the salad dressings. Salad dressings usually contain a number of artificial food additives for enhancing flavor and extending their shelf life. For those who shift to fresh salad meals for their low calories and health benefits, actually consume more calories with the heavy food dressing. And not just calories, a lot of other dangerous food additive substances that nullify the goodness of fresh fruit and vegetable salads.
Artificial flavoring agents are used for enhancing the food flavors. Salad dressings and a lot of other packaged foods use artificial food flavor enhancers like Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), Disodium Guanylate & Disodium Inosinate MSG is one of the most dangerous chemicals to look out for, as it is often disguised under different names. All three together are quite notorious for their harmful effects. They are known to cause and aggravate problems like kidney stones, nausea, headaches, obesity and burning sensations.
PreservativesPreservatives are a basic additives in salad dressing, as they are manufactured to have a long shelf life. But even after adding artificial food preservatives, early consumption of salad dressings is advised. Calcium Disodium EDTA is one of the majorly used preservatives for a number of packaged foods, It has multiple negative impacts and associated allergy and reaction stories. Though use in a lot of food products and cosmetics it is known to cause skin allergies and reactions, besides aggravated asthma problems and kidney damage.
Artificial sweeteners are also added the salad dressings. Usually a cheap and inexpensive artificial sweetener. High fructose corn syrup is used in a lot of processed and packaged foods. But the heavily used corn syrup sweetener was in trouble, sometime time back, courtesy a few studies that revealed some mercury content in the syrup.
Last but not the least are the thickening gums used in salad dressings that are responsible for the viscosity of the dressings. Used for stabilizing effects in salad dressings, most of then are vegetable gums that are purely natural. But then there are allergic reactions and intolerances related with the thickeners and vegetable gums like guar and xanthan, They have often been related to allergies reactions and intolerances like headaches, diarrhea and gastrointestinal syndromes.