Harming People in Order to Improve Revenue is allright???

Disclaimer: by reading the following post you might get upset, or paranoid or aware of you resignation - do NOT blame this on me...

Ok - this is a discussion, but maybe a pointless one...

1 - a) look on your household cleaner ingredients listing... do you find "Sodium lauryl/ laureth sulfate"? ( bad? or not? or bad or not? or bad???
b) look on your shampoo ingredients list... do you find the same ingredient?
c) now look on your toothpaste: do you find this ingredient again?

2 - a) look on the contents of an average Australian wine: do you find a preservative with an "E" in front of it? bad? or not? listing overview
b) take a look at some imported wine from Spain, Italy: do you find any there?
c) look at an Australian wine outside Australia: do you find any preservatives added there?

3 - a) look on the package of your crisps: do you find any ingredient that says: Mono Sodium Glutamate (wich in fact isn't a "mate") bad? disputed? or harmless?
b) ask your waiter/ cook at this restaurant, whether or not he uses "MSG" in his dishes.
c) note the sensation you get while eating chips/ potatoe crisps (Kellys, Pringles, etc): can you actually stop before the package is finished? How much effort does it take you to stop before...?
d) note the sensation when you're eating out at your local fast food store/ indian/ chinese/ thai - restaurant: do you still have cravings after eating a delicious meal?

4 - a) look on your average drinking water listing: how high is the sodium content? concerned?
b) note the sensation of dry mouth/ gums some after drinking regular drinking water: is your mouth feeling dry? do you get thirsty again?

Do you think it's legal that food, or other manufacturers use ingredients that can potentially harm you or cause unease, in order to make you use more of their products or get any kind of addiction from it?

Same as of the above applies to add for say ingredients in certaain products like tobacco/ cigarettes, that increase the potential addiction to it.

I'm not talking about the top-speed of Porsches or Ferraris, which can only be enjoyed on a German Autobahn, or in the Northern Territory and potentially lead to kill yourself and others

I'm talking about the everydays products and their ingredients which are potentially harmful - yet not proven... and studies go back and forth and we'll only know in a 50 years when we're about to die (look at the lawsuits against tobacco companies - and the disclaiming health warning now - pathetic I call it!)

Would it be the government's task to protect it's citizens from industries trying to harm them for the profit?

tell me please

I'm not going to get too deep into this one cuz I can tell it's not going to make me happy but...

The chemicals you posted are not that bad. Even the "bad" links you linked to them don't make it sound that bad.

Consitering I get pages of warnings when I buy SAND or TABLE SALT for my chem classes you really need to be cautious against reacting to obscure warnings. You should always compare whether the chemicals you are damning is better than the alternative.

I mean the fact that you put the SODIUM levels of drinking water is laughable considering how much sodium the average person consumes on a daily basis.

If you really want to avoid some toxic chemicals you should at least start with some of the worst.

Check out DHMO. That stuff is NASTY.

It's very, very difficult to prove that something is safe. You can prove something is harmful but when it comes to proving a negative all you can do is prove that no harm has been observed yet. Look at any mobile phone contraversy.

On a side note I find it hard to stop eating a bag of crisps half way through but I think that's probably more psycological. I've paid for an entire bag, I wish to eat an entire bag. When you look at a plate of food you prepare yourself to eat that amount of food...

Anyways. Despite what fearmongers say we're living longer and healthier than we ever have done in history - we are not in an epidemic of people dieing from MSG or flouride posioning. Check out www.spiked-online.com for interesting articles from the other side.

Such as McDonalds, Dairylee and Cheese strings?

I love that DHMO thing...

@NYC... yes... no intervention reg. sodium...

I'm only trying to point out that some are adding stuff that is potentially harmful just in order to improve revenue...

Sure we cannot really avoid frequencies from mobile phones (but with a headset) and sure the alternative might be even more harmful, but WHY in the first place?

And why is it still legal to sell (for say cigarettes) despite the proven fact that they are killing people? Ja well, now you could say that guns are for sale too... do they have a disclaimer on guns???

I'd like to add that e numbers aren't inherently bad. The e numbers are a list of additives which are considered reasonably safe in the European union. They include a large number of natural (which I expect you all to know that that doens't make them inherently safe either) chemicals. Most of the e numbers have an impecable safety record. The enitire system has gotten a bad reputation due to a small number of e numbers with a questionable effect.

For more information on e numbers as well as a fairly compehensive list check out the wikipedia entry.

Who cares about salt, salt is just bad for you. Whereas sugar will KILL you. Sugar would be banned as an additive if they brought it out nowadays.

I was shocked and horrified by the information revealed on the DMHO website. I am currently drafting a petition calling for a worldwide ban and the subsequent destruction of all existing stores of this dangerous chemical

I just know there's a government conspiracy behind how this stuff just falls from the sky and I can't help thinking it's an attempt to turn us all into mindless consumer robots. I demand financial compensation

what it boils down to is this. there are hundreds of things that we cosume each day, that are killig us in one way or another. we as consumers have a choice on what products we use, what foods we eat and from were, and whether or not we are going to drink/smoke.

i for one am a smoker. have been for at least 8 years. i know the damage it's doing to my body, and i understand that one day it may be my casue of death. but it's a choice i made, and one i will live (or die) with. like unbeaten said "Because of the stupidly high revenue the government makes from tobacco.
And its the same for alcohol" and that's exactly rigth.

Yes, we do have choices and it's up to the consumer to not only read the ingredients on food packaging, but educate himself on what those ingredients actually are, then make an informed choice as to whether he wants to consume it or not. That's why their there.

Failing that ,you always have the option of trusting your government and their determinations on just how harmful an ingredient is. If it was dangerous, they'd ban it. right?

Tobacco and alcohol are two products that are a holdover from days gone by, If both these were poisons were invented today, there's no way they'd ever be allowed as a consumer product.

Str8jakit, I was wondering how that comment would go over as it's purely subjective if one finds humour in it. Many people , like my wife for instance, take that as a truism, hence the boxes of Splenda that I keep finding. Given the track record of artificial sweeteners ( Saccharin, Aspartame ) I'm skeptical about this stuff, but I think it's a case of time will tell.

Sometimes it takes time in that vast beta testing vehicle known as the general public to determine if a product is indeed harmful, or whether a significant percentage of the population has a sensitivity to it. Remember PABA , and just look what's happening with MSG.

It really is all about dosage though.

And about perception.

I'm sure that if I broke herbal tea down into it's component molecules, it would loose a lot of it's appeal.
IUPAC nomenclature just doesn't have the romance that mother nature does,

oh come on IUPAC nomenclature tastes just like tofu.......besides anything you have to say 3 times in your head, just to pronunce correclty, has to be good for you. doesn't it