5 ms·

The Chemicals in Your Mac and Cheese

37 points by brandonhall 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago
To pre-empt the inane pedantic reactions that always seem to accompany discussions on such articles: yes, water is a chemical too, as are vitamins, etc. When people talk about "chemicals in food" they mean additional, lab created stuff added to the food, like artificial sweeteners, additives, preservatives, coloring, remains from the production and transportation process, etc. Those against "chemicals" in food obviously don't advocate for food made without any kind of molecules and chemical substances. Amazingly not only functions can be overloaded, but words too.
- chemicalscare 9y ago
  those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about. the overloading is a rhetorical attempt to associate fear and lack of knowledge with everyday experience. your defense of this practice is vastly more inane than any objections to it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about No, but they clearly have an idea that they don't mean water or salt.
  - _jal 9y ago
    I ignore anyone who makes pedantic word-choice arguments when everyone is clearly capable of understanding what's going on. At best, it is more obsessed with their own cleverness than actual discourse, but more usually is just dishonest.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title? The article is clearly talking about phthalates, first mentioned in the second sentence.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title? You'd be surprised.
- dpratt71 9y ago
  When people refer to "chemicals" in food, without distinguishing what type or category of chemicals, I tend to assume that they have an agenda of frightening an uninformed populace or that they are a member of that uninformed populace themselves.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Well, first there was the agenda of food companies to put as much crap can increase their profits (e.g. by making food more addictive, sweeter, longer lasting, etc) in there as legally (and often beyond legally) possible.
    - dpratt71 9y ago
      Here is something I think we are close to agreement on. Companies have made food more addictive, cheaper, more shelf stable in a variety of ways, to the detriment of nutritious food and consumer health in general. But unless we put the focus on the real issues with modern food, I don't think we will see much if any progress. In fact, I suspect that food companies and food scientists are up to the challenge of making food that is just about as cheap and addictive and shelf stable as the current stuff is without using any "artificial" chemicals. I mean, when "nitrate free" bacon can be sold that is, in fact, chock full of nitrates, the possibilities are endless.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
plandis 9y ago
Misleading title. Should be "Chemicals in boxed mac and cheese". It's entirely possible (and way more delicious!) to make mac and cheese from scratch in a very little amount of time
- zzalpha 9y ago
  Misleading summary. Should be "Chemicals in fatty foods that come in contact with plastics, particularly cheese, and especially cheese powder." As the article (eventually) notes: Since they bind with fats, they tend to build up in fatty foods, including not just cheese but baked goods, infant formula, meats, oils and fats, and fast food, studies show. So these chemicals are present in concentrations four times higher than in block cheeses (probably due to all the extra processing), but they aren't absent in real cheese (or other products).
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It's not realistic to expect exhaustive detail in a headline.
flunhat 9y ago
Every time I read an article like this, I'm reminded of Michael Pollan's writings on food. His advice, even though I read it years and years ago, has stood the test of time for me: > Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....
- savanaly 9y ago
  That's about nutrition though, and this is about contamination from packaging. The article would still have been written if mac and cheese were an entirely untreated plant product.
  - flunhat 9y ago
    I don't follow what you're saying?
    - coldtea 9y ago
      He's saying that the advice you mention "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not very relevant to the article, because even if you mainly eat plants, the kind of chemicals that the article talks about can still be present in them (from the process of packing, transporting them, etc -- plus of course all the crap they put on them to make their grow faster and bigger). In other words, your advice is about "eat less processed food" while the article is about how all kinds of food (processed or not) can have those chemicals. Plants can still come wrapped in plastic, with labels attached, pass through conveyor belts, etc.
      - flunhat 9y ago
        If I'm reading the article correctly, it says that the phthalates in mac and cheese are in the cheese mix, not the plastic packaging.
        coldtea 9y ago
ravenstine 9y ago
When I was a child, for various reasons, I was quite a chow hound. I've long wondered if whether or not things like phthalates and BPA had significant effects on my growing body; I had a lot of less-than-masculine features to my body, some of which is correctable and some not. It could very well be that being an overweight adolescent meant that excess body fat caused me to have too much estrogen, but perhaps there was more going on. Maybe I'd have more androgen receptors by now and I'd be able to work less for the same muscle mass. IDK At the same time, I don't think I can really say that the amount of any of these chemicals in mac-n-cheese would make me avoid it outright. Really, you should only be occasionally eating junk food link mac-n-cheese, and the amount of anything you would have in a box every week or two is not going to make a lick of difference to your endocrine system. Perhaps it's particularly bad for the poor who eat lots of cheap junk like Kraft products, but there are also far cheaper and healthier ways to get your nutrition – rice, beans, real butter, and actual cheese alone are much more cost effective than buying boxes of mac-n-cheese; just visit a Mexican market and you'll see what I mean.
refurb 9y ago
“The phthalate concentrations in powder from mac and cheese mixes were more than four times higher than in block cheese and other natural cheeses like shredded cheese, string cheese and cottage cheese,” As a chemist, I have to ask, how much phthalate was actually found? Telling me it's 4x higher than block cheese tells me nothing since block cheese may have barely detectable phthalates. The dose makes the poison. Our ability to detect chemicals has vastly improved over the years. It's not hard to detect chemicals in the parts per trillion (ppt) at this point in time. You can't say "the chemical is there, let's be scared". The levels need to be quantified. That's why drinking water has acceptable levels for things like cyanide, lead and mercury. No matter what water you test, you'll find those things. But if the amount is well below toxic levels, then it's not a big deal.
- hammock 9y ago
  From the article: >Although the concentration of phthalates in food may be quite low, measured in parts per billion, they are still present at higher levels than the natural hormones in the body, said Heather B. Patisaul, a professor of biological sciences at the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University in Raleigh
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >they are still present at higher levels than the natural hormones in the body This still doesn't mean anything. How does the body process said chemicals? Is there evidence that it's actually unsafe at the levels published? There's probably a reason this study wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal.
  - refurb 9y ago
    Ok, but what is the potency of these phthalate? Natural hormones are very potent. Everything I've seen says phthalate aren't that potent.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    Isn't that true of nearly everything in food? It would be really weird if what you were eating were the chemical equivalent of homogenized humans. Like, what exactly are you eating??
trumpownsyou 9y ago
lolnytimes
bharrison 9y ago
Am I incorrect in assuming that any study not submitted for peer review is questionable at best and bad science at worst?
- icelancer 9y ago
  There's a fair number of case studies that aren't suitable for peer-review. But in those cases, just publish the data openly for analysis. This "study" didn't do that, and had a lot of other issues mentioned in the comments here. So your intuition wasn't wrong here, but overall, you may be discarding a lot of relevant case study work due to over-reliance on the peer-review process.
  - vectorpush 9y ago
    I agree and I appreciate the nuanced tone of your answer.
    - icelancer 9y ago
      I unfortunately submit stuff for peer-review and do case study work, so I know a lot about both sides of the garbage aisles. Lot of crap makes it through peer-review, and a lot of good work never does because of cronyism and single-blind review.
fpgaminer 9y ago
On a related note, I've spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for good, creamy mac and cheese, including from-scratch recipes. So far, this has been the winner: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/01/3-ingredient-stovetop-mac-and-cheese-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/01/3-ingredient-stov... It's three ingredients, stupidly simple, and you pick the cheeses you want. I'd argue it's as easy as boxed; you don't even have to drain the pasta. (P.S. if you've never cooked pasta the way the recipe instructs, you'll be blown away by how much more rich the flavor will be!) We use sharp white cheddar from the grocery store, mixed with a little bit of American. Add a dash of dijon mustard and Frank's hot sauce. Feel free to experiment (but stick to good melting cheeses)! I also add a dash of sodium citrate before adding the cheese. It helps the cheese remain completely smooth and more tolerant of careless cooking. You can buy a huge bag off Amazon. EDIT: Also, when we have friends over for this, we've started cooking it in a large dutch oven. Sounds crazy, but it actually turned out even better. The heat regulation and retention of the dutch oven I think helps the cheese melt more evenly and consistently. Plus you can keep it warm for longer after cooking.
- js2 9y ago
  I still prefer making a proper cheese sauce: roux, add milk (béchamel), add cheese. Pour over boiled and drained macaroni, then bake. I'll sometimes also long cook broccoli and diced garlic, mush that all up with a fork, then add it along with the cheese sauce to the noodles before baking. Years ago that was the only way to get my son to eat his broccoli. :-) (Aside, you can peel and dice the stems and cook them in too.) However, I have a family recipe that's a bit different: boil and drain macaroni, mix in a container of cottage cheese and one or two eggs along with as much shredded cheddar as you like, then bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
- sunsetMurk 9y ago
  Seriouseats / Kenji Lopez has some of the best info on the web when it comes to making tasty food. Here is the video for the mac and cheese you're talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaYdGQqxQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaYdGQqxQU

37 points by brandonhall 9y ago

To pre-empt the inane pedantic reactions that always seem to accompany discussions on such articles: yes, water is a chemical too, as are vitamins, etc. When people talk about "chemicals in food" they mean additional, lab created stuff added to the food, like artificial sweeteners, additives, preservatives, coloring, remains from the production and transportation process, etc. Those against "chemicals" in food obviously don't advocate for food made without any kind of molecules and chemical substances. Amazingly not only functions can be overloaded, but words too.

chemicalscare 9y ago
those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about. the overloading is a rhetorical attempt to associate fear and lack of knowledge with everyday experience. your defense of this practice is vastly more inane than any objections to it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 9y ago
  >those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about No, but they clearly have an idea that they don't mean water or salt.
- _jal 9y ago
  I ignore anyone who makes pedantic word-choice arguments when everyone is clearly capable of understanding what's going on. At best, it is more obsessed with their own cleverness than actual discourse, but more usually is just dishonest.
khedoros1 9y ago
What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title? The article is clearly talking about phthalates, first mentioned in the second sentence.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title? You'd be surprised.
dpratt71 9y ago
When people refer to "chemicals" in food, without distinguishing what type or category of chemicals, I tend to assume that they have an agenda of frightening an uninformed populace or that they are a member of that uninformed populace themselves.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Well, first there was the agenda of food companies to put as much crap can increase their profits (e.g. by making food more addictive, sweeter, longer lasting, etc) in there as legally (and often beyond legally) possible.
  - dpratt71 9y ago
    Here is something I think we are close to agreement on. Companies have made food more addictive, cheaper, more shelf stable in a variety of ways, to the detriment of nutritious food and consumer health in general. But unless we put the focus on the real issues with modern food, I don't think we will see much if any progress. In fact, I suspect that food companies and food scientists are up to the challenge of making food that is just about as cheap and addictive and shelf stable as the current stuff is without using any "artificial" chemicals. I mean, when "nitrate free" bacon can be sold that is, in fact, chock full of nitrates, the possibilities are endless.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

plandis 9y ago

Misleading title. Should be "Chemicals in boxed mac and cheese". It's entirely possible (and way more delicious!) to make mac and cheese from scratch in a very little amount of time

zzalpha 9y ago
Misleading summary. Should be "Chemicals in fatty foods that come in contact with plastics, particularly cheese, and especially cheese powder." As the article (eventually) notes: Since they bind with fats, they tend to build up in fatty foods, including not just cheese but baked goods, infant formula, meats, oils and fats, and fast food, studies show. So these chemicals are present in concentrations four times higher than in block cheeses (probably due to all the extra processing), but they aren't absent in real cheese (or other products).
anigbrowl 9y ago
It's not realistic to expect exhaustive detail in a headline.

flunhat 9y ago

Every time I read an article like this, I'm reminded of Michael Pollan's writings on food. His advice, even though I read it years and years ago, has stood the test of time for me: > Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

savanaly 9y ago
That's about nutrition though, and this is about contamination from packaging. The article would still have been written if mac and cheese were an entirely untreated plant product.
- flunhat 9y ago
  I don't follow what you're saying?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    He's saying that the advice you mention "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not very relevant to the article, because even if you mainly eat plants, the kind of chemicals that the article talks about can still be present in them (from the process of packing, transporting them, etc -- plus of course all the crap they put on them to make their grow faster and bigger). In other words, your advice is about "eat less processed food" while the article is about how all kinds of food (processed or not) can have those chemicals. Plants can still come wrapped in plastic, with labels attached, pass through conveyor belts, etc.
    - flunhat 9y ago
      If I'm reading the article correctly, it says that the phthalates in mac and cheese are in the cheese mix, not the plastic packaging.
      - coldtea 9y ago

ravenstine 9y ago

When I was a child, for various reasons, I was quite a chow hound. I've long wondered if whether or not things like phthalates and BPA had significant effects on my growing body; I had a lot of less-than-masculine features to my body, some of which is correctable and some not. It could very well be that being an overweight adolescent meant that excess body fat caused me to have too much estrogen, but perhaps there was more going on. Maybe I'd have more androgen receptors by now and I'd be able to work less for the same muscle mass. IDK At the same time, I don't think I can really say that the amount of any of these chemicals in mac-n-cheese would make me avoid it outright. Really, you should only be occasionally eating junk food link mac-n-cheese, and the amount of anything you would have in a box every week or two is not going to make a lick of difference to your endocrine system. Perhaps it's particularly bad for the poor who eat lots of cheap junk like Kraft products, but there are also far cheaper and healthier ways to get your nutrition – rice, beans, real butter, and actual cheese alone are much more cost effective than buying boxes of mac-n-cheese; just visit a Mexican market and you'll see what I mean.

refurb 9y ago

“The phthalate concentrations in powder from mac and cheese mixes were more than four times higher than in block cheese and other natural cheeses like shredded cheese, string cheese and cottage cheese,” As a chemist, I have to ask, how much phthalate was actually found? Telling me it's 4x higher than block cheese tells me nothing since block cheese may have barely detectable phthalates. The dose makes the poison. Our ability to detect chemicals has vastly improved over the years. It's not hard to detect chemicals in the parts per trillion (ppt) at this point in time. You can't say "the chemical is there, let's be scared". The levels need to be quantified. That's why drinking water has acceptable levels for things like cyanide, lead and mercury. No matter what water you test, you'll find those things. But if the amount is well below toxic levels, then it's not a big deal.

hammock 9y ago
From the article: >Although the concentration of phthalates in food may be quite low, measured in parts per billion, they are still present at higher levels than the natural hormones in the body, said Heather B. Patisaul, a professor of biological sciences at the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University in Raleigh
- icelancer 9y ago
  >they are still present at higher levels than the natural hormones in the body This still doesn't mean anything. How does the body process said chemicals? Is there evidence that it's actually unsafe at the levels published? There's probably a reason this study wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal.
- refurb 9y ago
  Ok, but what is the potency of these phthalate? Natural hormones are very potent. Everything I've seen says phthalate aren't that potent.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  Isn't that true of nearly everything in food? It would be really weird if what you were eating were the chemical equivalent of homogenized humans. Like, what exactly are you eating??

trumpownsyou 9y ago

lolnytimes

bharrison 9y ago

Am I incorrect in assuming that any study not submitted for peer review is questionable at best and bad science at worst?

icelancer 9y ago
There's a fair number of case studies that aren't suitable for peer-review. But in those cases, just publish the data openly for analysis. This "study" didn't do that, and had a lot of other issues mentioned in the comments here. So your intuition wasn't wrong here, but overall, you may be discarding a lot of relevant case study work due to over-reliance on the peer-review process.
- vectorpush 9y ago
  I agree and I appreciate the nuanced tone of your answer.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    I unfortunately submit stuff for peer-review and do case study work, so I know a lot about both sides of the garbage aisles. Lot of crap makes it through peer-review, and a lot of good work never does because of cronyism and single-blind review.

fpgaminer 9y ago

On a related note, I've spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for good, creamy mac and cheese, including from-scratch recipes. So far, this has been the winner: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/01/3-ingredient-stovetop-mac-and-cheese-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/01/3-ingredient-stov... It's three ingredients, stupidly simple, and you pick the cheeses you want. I'd argue it's as easy as boxed; you don't even have to drain the pasta. (P.S. if you've never cooked pasta the way the recipe instructs, you'll be blown away by how much more rich the flavor will be!) We use sharp white cheddar from the grocery store, mixed with a little bit of American. Add a dash of dijon mustard and Frank's hot sauce. Feel free to experiment (but stick to good melting cheeses)! I also add a dash of sodium citrate before adding the cheese. It helps the cheese remain completely smooth and more tolerant of careless cooking. You can buy a huge bag off Amazon. EDIT: Also, when we have friends over for this, we've started cooking it in a large dutch oven. Sounds crazy, but it actually turned out even better. The heat regulation and retention of the dutch oven I think helps the cheese melt more evenly and consistently. Plus you can keep it warm for longer after cooking.

js2 9y ago
I still prefer making a proper cheese sauce: roux, add milk (béchamel), add cheese. Pour over boiled and drained macaroni, then bake. I'll sometimes also long cook broccoli and diced garlic, mush that all up with a fork, then add it along with the cheese sauce to the noodles before baking. Years ago that was the only way to get my son to eat his broccoli. :-) (Aside, you can peel and dice the stems and cook them in too.) However, I have a family recipe that's a bit different: boil and drain macaroni, mix in a container of cottage cheese and one or two eggs along with as much shredded cheddar as you like, then bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
sunsetMurk 9y ago
Seriouseats / Kenji Lopez has some of the best info on the web when it comes to making tasty food. Here is the video for the mac and cheese you're talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaYdGQqxQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaYdGQqxQU