Searching for specifics in labels
One of my daughters has been diagnosed with a medical condition and warned by her doctor to avoid certain foods and chemicals. Never having had to deal with allergies, she is unaccustomed to reading labels for the offending ingredients. So, she gets me, the inveterate label reader, to go shopping with her.
Now, I have no problem with causing gridlock in market aisles to get the information, but on the first trip I forget that I need a magnifying glass to read lists in micro type printed in black or dark blue on a red background. What is it they don’t want us to know?
Where food is concerned, I ordinarily search for organically grown fruit and veggies, at least the “dirty dozen” believed most likely to be laced with pesticides. These include: spinach, bell peppers, celery, potatoes, apples, cherries, peaches, pears, nectarines, red raspberries, strawberries and imported grapes. Tropical fruits are generally safer because they grow so quickly. Even so, washing is important.
Chicken, eggs and dairy products should say on the label: Never given hormones or antibiotics. Fish is best wild-caught from cold waters of Alaska: Halibut, cod and salmon. If one feels compelled to eat beef, it’s better if labeled Organic or Grass fed only.
Anyway, I tell my daughter to avoid processed foods, mixes, snack foods, etc. I take the Michael Pollan approach: Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. If it comes in a box, it should have no more than five ingredients, none of which are impossible to pronounce.
What we find is that almost everything in the store, including some organics, contain soy, forbidden by her doctor. Even seemingly benign and nutritious food like nuts are roasted in soybean oil; all packaged cookies (even Newman’s Own) have soy lecithin emulsifier. When I go to California, I can find soy-less and chemical-less foods at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and PC Greens, where I rarely have to read a label. Shopping this way takes way too much time.
But finding acceptable food is nothing compared to choosing skin and hair care stuff. I remember doing a piece on shampoos more than 12 years ago after reading in a national news magazine that all major brands contained a probable carcinogen with an impossibly long name: methylchloroisothiazolinone (for which my computer has no spelling suggestions). Whew!
At the time, I researched the old fashioned way. I went to PC Greens and several other local stores and asked which shampoos and conditioners didn’t contain the M-word. I was told it would be easier to stick with manufacturers that had spotless reputations than to read the labels. Aubrey was everyone’s first choice. Also Jason and Avalon, available at health food stores and Aveda, found only at salons.
When we return to my daughter’s house, she shows me some bottles with very green, clean type labels that she found at a pricey salon. Looked good on the front but buried among about 50 ingredients on the label were several that have been linked to cancer, reproductive toxicity in women, allergies, and disruptions of the immune and endocrine systems, including the dreaded M-word.
I figured it was time to do some more research, only this time I go first to a wonderful book, “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything” by Daniel Goleman. He recommends a cosmetics hazard-rating Web site, Skin Deep, operated by the Environmental Working Group, which crusades against toxic ingredients in personal care products.
The Web site summarizes where a given shampoo lies along the safe-to-hazardous spectrum by giving it a green light for safe, yellow for moderate risk and red for beware. For those willing to delve further, there’s a list of specific ingredients. For instance, the preservative BHA, which has been linked to cancer, endocrine disruption, organ system toxicity and other disorders, also accumulates in tissue, increasing the risks with every use. BHA rates 10 on the hazard scale of 1 to 10. Since the Web site launched in 2004, it’s had almost 65 million visits, so obviously, some people are concerned enough about chemical toxicity to check it out.
I Google Skin Deep, and get www.cosmeticsdatabase.com where I find all kinds of toxic ingredients with brand names and specific products rated for their hazard. Under nano zinc oxide, for example, 94 products are rated from 1 to 10 with 7 to 10 considered high hazard. Among these are all the brand names we know so well: Almay, Clinique, Clarins, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Olay, Elizabeth Arden, and others, with some products from moisturizers, face powders, foundations and diaper creams to sunscreens listed as high hazard. I am relieved to find my current favorite, Bare Minerals, not listed.
It seems the information is out there and not all that hard to come by, though at times it’s hard to find a product to buy. For the best overview with many specifics, it would be hard to beat Goleman’s book, “Ecological Intelligence” (Hardcover by Broadway Books).