On the pull

On average, we each consume 13lbs to 15lbs (6kg-7kg) of food additives a year. For some of us, the figures are even higher. How these artificial additives cumulatively dance with each other inside our bloodstream is, as yet, unevaluated. Health scientists have tried to warn us about the deadly cocktail effect that industrially created additives may pose for our future health, but no one is listening. And cheap-food manufacturers are high-fiving their luck.

Cheer up! For the safety of consumers, every product on our shelves must legally comply with an optimal permissible level. Phew! Wait a tickle-me darn minute. How many of us unwittingly exceed this limit on any given day? Quite a lot of us, frankly. Felicity Lawrence has documented this issue at length in her book Not On The Label, which reads more like a thriller than an informative piece of journalism. So good are Lawrence’s investigative adventures, she makes Inspector Morse look like a precocious preschooler.

And if we’re not eliminating toxins from our water works or our party pipes, we might end up wearing them on our face. The skin is our body’s largest excretory organ. But what if that face serum you like to use every day holds just as many additives as that noxious caramel frappe you tolerated for your coffee break? You’re getting the picture, aren’t you?

Don’t panic — even I, virtuous bitch, chow down preservatives and additives. They are almost everywhere, dammit! So I’m trying to reduce our exposure while simultaneously annoying my husband. This fastens a sense of fun to an otherwise mundane process. Having exorcised his neon mouthwash from our bathroom, I began to research natural methods for oral hygiene and found ‘oil pulling.’ It’s a tooth thang, and thankfully does not involve any pulling.

This is as weird as I get. With clothes on.