Author Topic: Top 10 Most Common Ingredients in Fast Food  (Read 1434 times)

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Offline Chris

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Top 10 Most Common Ingredients in Fast Food
« on: May 14, 2009, 02:39:09 AM »
10. Citric Acid: The Most Common Preservative
Salt has been used for centuries to preserve meats and fish. It works to inhibit the growth of bacteria cells, which lose water and become dehydrated in salty environments. Over the years, food scientists and manufacturers have discovered that other chemicals also can serve as preservatives.

Citric acid, an organic acid found in many fruits, especially limes, lemons and grapefruits, is one of those chemicals. It increases the acidity of a microbe's environment, making it harder for bacteria and mold to survive and reproduce. It can also be used to bind to and neutralize fat-degrading metal ions that get into food via processing machinery.

What's great about citric acid is that it does all of this without harming the organisms that ingest it. It occurs naturally in all living things and is an important intermediate chemical in a metabolic pathway known as the citric acid cycle, or Krebs cycle. As a result, citric acid doesn't cause side effects in 99.9 percent of the population and is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in foods and beverages. Maybe that's why the chemical appeared 288 times on the fast-food menus we surveyed.


9. High-fructose Corn Syrup: The Most Common Sweetener
High-fructose corn syrup is easily more popular than sucrose on fast-food menus. Why? Price and preservation.

So what is it and why is it controversial? The process to make HFCS involves changing one simple sugar -- glucose -- in cornstarch to another simple sugar known as fructose. The product, a combination of the two simple sugars, is just as sweet as sucrose, but much cheaper to process. It also acts as a preservative, extending the shelf life of foods. No wonder it's one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in fast food.


3. Mono- and Diglycerides: The Most Common Emulsifiers
People harvest kelp for the emulsifier algin that's in beer, ice cream and toothpaste, among other items.

Cooks and food preparers have been working with emulsions -- two or more liquids that can't normally be mixed together -- for a long time. Fortunately for our taste buds, they've discovered several substances that encourage liquids to overcome their unwillingness to combine. These substances are known as emulsifiers.

Egg is commonly used as an emulsifier, but most food manufacturers today use glycerides obtained from palm oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil or tallow. Vegetable oils and animal fat contain mostly triglycerides, but enzymes can be used to break down triglycerides into mono- and diglycerides. These are the ingredients you see so frequently on fast-food menus.


2. Xanthan Gum: The Most Common Stabilizer or Thickener
Produced by a bacterium -- Xanthomonas campestris -- xanthan gum is widely used by the food industry as a thickening agent. It's especially useful in salad dressings to help keep components like oil and vinegar from separating. Xanthan gum is not an emulsifier, however. It works by stabilizing emulsions, increasing the viscosity of the mixture so that the oil and vinegar stay together longer and so that spices stay suspended.

Xanthan gum also creates a smooth, pleasant texture in many foods. For this reason, it appears in ice cream, whipped topping, custard and pie filling. And the really good news: It's not associated with any known adverse effects.


http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/10-ingredients-fast-food.htm
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