Food for thought

I REFER to a letter from Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato (Showing Sensitivity, Gazette 14 July).
She is misleading and creating doubt and insecurity in the minds of readers. To begin with she refers to the Southampton study on certain food additives – food colourings and preservatives and their side effects. It is a pity she is not as rigorous in disseminating opinions as the authors of the Southampton study were in writing their report.
Tammy, you seem to believe that something has to be ‘natural’ to be healthy and of value to people – in particular it must not be a chemical and it must not be sourced from petroleum products.
What we eat and the materials we come in contact with are all likely to have an effect on us. While we readily accept the primary purpose of these items, we refer to any incidental effects as ‘side effects.’
Such side effects may have serious consequences for some people, minor effects on others and perhaps no effect on many other people. Understand that the decision to use a particular material for a particular purpose is based on a careful evaluation of the benefits versus the side effects.
When science finds an alternative to a particular material with a better ratio of benefit to side effects then the former product is replaced – that does not mean it was necessarily bad, it may well be that it is just no longer the best available product for the purpose.
Tammy, down through the ages mankind has endeavoured to store food – prolong its shelf live – extend its use by date. They dried food, salted food, smoked food and added all sorts of things to food.
Advances in food preservation allowed people to survive the winter without starving, it allowed people to enjoy food transported from places further away, it allowed food producers to produce food in bulk and distribute it widely. Food preservation is the basis of the food distribution system we enjoy today and it is essential to our life style.
Before you decry the benefits of today’s food distribution system, stop and think of what life was like as little as 80 or 100 years ago. Most housewives had to shop every day, or almost every day, and most carried the family’s food requirements home from the store, or else they grew their own food in the garden.
Tammy, this involved many hours per week just to get the raw food into the kitchen, let alone prepare it – and it was food produced within a small radius of where it was consumed. No avocados from Queensland and no tomatoes out of season in Melbourne.
Enough – let’s turn to your next problem – your hang up about chemicals, particularly petro-chemicals, I suggest you read the words of Thomas Hager of the University of Oregon in his book ‘The Demon Under the Microscope’ where he tells the story of the first anti-biotic – ‘Sulphanilamide’ – developed by a German chemist who specialised in coal tar derivatives and artificial dye stuffs. His name was Gerhard Domagk and he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. Today I doubt if one person in a thousand knows his name.
This chemical – this ‘Sulphanilamide’ – came into general use in the late 1930s. Before then the medical profession had no cure for infections – nothing to treat any bodily infection at all, not even an infected cut or wound.
Doctors could only make the patient as comfortable as they could and hope the patient’s immune system could beat the infection.
By 1956 American doctors reported that the mortality rate from childhood diseases had dropped by more than 90 per cent and the life expectancy in the US had increased by more than 10 years – and that was achieved in less than 20 years. I commend Hager’s book to you and to all the readers of this letter – it is the most exciting book I have ever read.
While we are on the subject of chemicals you have not said a word about the one pure chemical produced in greater quantities than any other chemical of such purity and it’s side effects, yet you/we continue to use it day after day. White sugar is a pure chemical – extremely pure – and it is produced and consumed in incredible quantities. And – forgive me for starting a sentence with ‘and’ – it has side effects – like it contributes to obesity, diabetes, tooth caries etc
Enough! Tammy study your subject before you leap into print and stop frightening people with simplistic claims that have little if any foundation in fact.
Graham B Jackson,
Upper Beaconsfield.