And moving on so we talked about pesticides additives are another issue. So food additives are used to either enhance flavor or act as a preservative sometimes in some cases or they can even do both. So food additives include things like preservatives artificial flavorings, Arthur's colorings, certifiers. In recent years, the FDA has banned many synthetic food additives, but it's still best to avoid the ones that are still commonly used and still allowed to be put in our foods based on FDA regulations. So an example of this would be torches, also known as yellow number five, and you can thought you might see that on your ingredient list. So if you see something that says yellow number five, it's actually means Tarcisio.

Now it can be found in any histamines, steroids, antibiotics, and even foods. So it has been linked to in ducing allergic reactions in 20 to 50% of people who already are sensitive to aspirin or may have other allergies, diets eliminating torture scene have been shown to benefit patients who suffer from hives and other allergic reactions like eczema and asthma. So again, just just taking an edited out like again, yellow number five, something easy to see on your, on your ingredient list when you go shopping can have major benefits for people who suffer from some sort of chronic inflammation or have some sort of allergic reactions to things. So just something to watch out for. Also, many still legal synthetic additives in the United States have been linked to things like depression. We talked about asthma allergic reactions, hypersensitivity reactions, learning disabilities and children like a DD and ADHD a big thing with them would be removing food triggers, believe it or not, and also migraines.

So even though we've made progress in removing some food that is from food, there are still a ton still in our food sources. And as you can see here, within 2800 food additives are still approved by the FDA. And it's estimated that the average American consumes somewhere between 1315 grams of additives per day. And since Americans are consuming such high amounts of these, it's important to know which ones are safe and which ones should be avoided. So if you were to consume additives, and again, they are hard to avoid based on food availability, and if you're not buying organic foods, you can almost be sure you are consuming them to some extent. It's important to stick to additives of natural origins.

And that may have some beneficial properties. So you think of things like pickling and fermenting things. These are natural ways to preserve foods, but you also want to make sure you're staying away from artificial or synthetic additives things like torture scene that we just talked about earlier. What's really important is that you read your ingredient labels, and you stick to foods that have few ingredients as few as possible. The ingredients should be things that you know, and you could pronounce when you go and look and read these labels. But ultimately, the best approach would be to stick to natural Whole Foods, especially of the organic variety, and avoid the highly processed foods that have the laundry list.

Ingredient list. Alright, so let's talk a little bit about contaminated food. According to the CDC, an estimated 76 million people get sick 300,000 people are hospitalized, and about 5000 people are killed from a foodborne illness each year. Now many of these issues are mild. It's usually consists of a bacterial strain that enters the GI tract, and it causes a disturbance and these disturbances cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. In many cases, the issues kind of just end and the problem resolved and there's really nothing that needs to be done.

However, in some cases, symptoms can worsen and even lead to death. Now over 250 organisms are known that cause foodborne illnesses, mostly they come from meat and poultry products. They contain microorganisms that are not normally found in the human flora, and that's what causes the issue. So, the reason these animal foods get contaminated is because during the slaughtering process they come, the meats come into contact with contents of the intestinal tract. And also fruits and vegetables can become contaminated if they're washed with or grown from a contaminated water supply. So knowing your water is coming from a safe place is just as important to the most common offenders.

Some of them you might have heard of some of them you might not are salmonella, Campylobacter. Norwalk viruses and Escherichia coli lie or ecola as it's more commonly known. And again, just just to make sure you know, raw eggs or undercooked meat and poultry, unpasteurized milk if not done properly, and raw shellfish are really the major sources of foodborne illnesses. So, the most obvious way to eliminate these organisms is to thoroughly cook meat, poultry and eggs. And what I suggest is you go out and buy a meat thermometer. They're fairly inexpensive and easy to find you could get one in any supermarket.

So when making meat, it's important to understand that ground beef should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. poultry should be cooked to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, and you should cook your eggs until your yolks have firmed up. If you use your hands utensils or cutting boards that have been in contact with raw meat if you're cutting for example, just make sure you wash those surfaces before you move on to touching other foods. And again, this is how things like fruits and vegetables may become contaminated. Now once the meat is cooked, it should be placed on a clean plate, not the plate you originally put it on when it was raw. And if you're using produce and you should be using produce fresh fruits and vegetables, wash them under running water, you can scrub them with a soft brush to remove any contaminants that may or may not have gotten on them.

So another big issue when it comes to choosing foods are pesticides and additives that are used on a very regular basis, especially here in the US. So more than 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides or herbicides, are sprayed onto food crops in the United States alone. So when you break that down, that means the average American consumes about five pounds of pesticides a year and why might that be bad? Well, let's take a look. So, there's developing worry that a significant number of cancers are caused by the consumption of pesticides directly. Now interestingly enough, farmers tend to have higher rates of lymphomas leukemia, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, brain cancer and skin cancers.

And these have been linked to farmers being exposed to pesticides much more so than the average person doing any other type of work. Now, when you're looking for pesticides that could be detrimental to health, you're looking for things like dde PCB, PCP, dl dran clarkdale. These are all very common ones that are used. Now while all people should be cautious and try to eliminate their consumption of excessive pesticides and additives, it's especially important for children and young adults for two main reasons one children and go Adults we're still growing eat more food relative to their body mass, so they're just consuming more food. So if you're just consuming more food overall, chances are you're consuming more pesticides. The other is children just tend to eat more foods containing these pesticides to begin with, and these are things like juices, fruit juices, conventionally raised fruits and vegetables, and processed foods, things like candy and snacks and chips.

These generally tend to contain high amounts of pesticides. So a University of Washington study found 39 children between the ages of two and four years old and compare their eating habits so one group ate organic fruits and vegetables and the other non organic conventionally raised fruits and vegetables now, important here so the children who did not who didn't eat organic, the non organic fruits and vegetables, they found that their urine contained six times the amount of paper Beside residues, then those who ate organic foods, that's a massive amount. Now in what's crazy is as early as the year 2000, the Consumers Union placed out a warning to parents. This is at the time of this recording, it's almost two decades ago. And they stated that they should avoid feeding their children with conventionally grown foods, because they were known to contain a large amount of pesticides.

And the foods they brought up initially were things like green beans, pears, straws, strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupes and winter squash. So now we learned that Yeah, pesticides are bad and they could be really detrimental to your health, especially in younger people in children. So what can you do about it? Well, a good place to start would be to avoid conventionally grown animal products and these include meats, eggs, milk, and cheese products. Why? Because you are what you eat.

Many of the conventionally raised animals that are are used for food purposes, are fed diets they shouldn't be eating including corn based meals and they're pumped with drugs and antibiotics that we ultimately end up eating. So if they're eating foods that contain pesticides based on the feed they're given, we're going to eventually be consuming those pesticide residues as well. Another major thing you could do is start to purchase organic produce because they're allowed to grow without the aid of pesticides and fertilizers, and pesticides and fertilizers on top of being detrimental to our health in their own right. They actually stripped soils of vitamins and minerals. So actually, when you eat conventionally raised fruits and vegetables, you're not getting the same nutrient dense foods you would if you ate inorganic version of the same product. The Environmental Working Group, they come out as you see their their URL, ew, g.org.

They come up with the clean 15 and dirty Doesn't each year. These are two lists that show which foods are conventionally raised use the least amount of pesticides and the most amount of pesticides. So if you can't buy all organic, that's a good list to consult on their website for sure. If it's possible, try to develop a relationship with the owners you go to, or the owners of stores that you bought your food from. Ask them where they source their foods from and that could give you a great idea. And then, if you're buying something that was shipped in, there's a chance that pesticides were used before it was shipped to the US.

So that's something to watch out for as well. And if you're buying produce that's in season, there's a better chance that it might not contain high amounts of pesticide residue. So if you do consume conventionally grown produce like we talked about before, consult the eg wg the Environmental Working Groups website But peel the skin and remove the outer leaves of the produce because that's where most of the pesticides are stored. Unfortunately though, it's a hit or miss because these skins and outer layers tend to include most of the vitamins and nutrients as well. So, unfortunately, you gain a little bit you lose a little at the same time. What you can do is use so surface pesticides and fertilizers can also be removed by soaking your produce in an additive free soap solution.

You can also use all natural biodegradable cleansers and you can use that and scrub your your produce to remove any pesticides and that that'll be a great way to remove them from the foods you're eating but the best thing to do is to try to purchase organic as as often as possible as this will absolutely limit the amount of pesticide exposure you will be limiting yourself and your family to