The saying” ignorance is bliss” originated from a 1742 poem by Thomas Gray. When he wrote
his poem, chances are Gray wasn’t thinking about the ingredients used in marshmallows.
Sometimes it's just better not knowing what goes into the process of making your favorite
foods. You’ve been warned. Now, come with us as we shatter that ignorant bliss with
these 10 Products You’ll Never Consume After Seeing This Video.
Gum Do you know what helps keep sheep’s wool
waterproof? You don’t? Well, you might not know what it is, but if you've ever chewed
gum before, then there's a high chance you've consumed it. The substance is called Lanolin,
and sheeps secrete it in order to condition their wool (and it also has the added benefit
of keeping it waterproof). Well, after their wool is sheared, it is put through a centrifuge,
which removes the lanolin, which is then used to make gum base, which is what makes gum
amazingly chewy and rubbery (maybe they should think about renaming your favorite gum to
Hubba BaBa or BaBaLicious). Now, while this might not sound all that bad, what if we told
you that lanolin was also used in lotions and moisturizers. Now, it should be said that
lanolin is pretty safe, but it's not recommended that you swallow lots of it - which can lead
to lanolin oil poisoning (in case you needed another reason not to swallow your gum). Also,
if you are allergic to wool, you could have an allergic reaction to lanolin - which is
not what you want when you throw a stick of gum in your mouth. You want to blow a bubble,
not become one! Marshmallows
Marshmallows are a staple of campfires everywhere, and of course, who doesn’t love a good old
S'more? Oh, and don’t forget the fluffer-nutter (a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich)!*
Marshmallows have had an important role in many childhood memories, so I guess we can
all be thankful we didn’t know what was really in them when we were growing up: Gelatin!
Yup, the main ingredient in everyone's favorite puffy white treat is also the one thing that
you really don't want to know how it’s made. There’s a common misperception that gelatin
is made from animal hooves. And while the good news is that that isn’t true, the bad
news is that the truth really isn’t any more appetizing. To make gelatin, you need
to take the hides and bones of cows and pigs, boil them and dry them out. Then you need
to combine this dried product with some sort of base (often acidic), which is filtered
to get rid of all the connective tissue and collagen. Yes, collagen, that stuff that some
people inject into their lips to make them look fuller. However, in this case, it’s
dried then ground up, and voila! Graham crackers and chocolate are pretty yummy all on their
own, so maybe you don't need the added dried up bones to make your campfires memorable!
Who are we kidding - pass us another S'more! Jelly Beans
Nooooo! Not Jelly Beans. Sure, we knew there was tons of sugar in them and they weren't
exactly the picture of health, but come on! What could be in these little nuggets of deliciousness
that would make us walk away from a bowl without grabbing a handful or two? To make this answer
simple, one word: shellac. They get that sweet, glossy, clear finish coating on most jelly
beans the same way they get it on hardwood floors and wooden tables. Shellac! And if
that wasn’t enough to keep you from ever eating another jelly bean, let us give you
a quick lesson on how shellac is produced. It all starts with the lac bug. This bug eats
tree sap, produces a resin, and secretes it back on to the trees. It’s that same resin
that's harvested to make shellac (after some processing which involves being dissolved
in ethanol). And that's what gets sprayed on your floors... and your jelly beans. We
aren’t sure if the biggest gag factor is the bug secretion or the fact that the same
exact product is used in woodworking. Famous for his love of jelly beans, I wonder if Ronald
Reagan knew this little tid-bit? Packaged Bread
If you eat out at a restaurant and find a strand of hair on your plate, would you immediately
call the waiter over and send it back? If so, you might want to stop buying packaged
bread. What does one have to do with the other, you ask? Well, a whole lot more than you know
- until now, of course. You’ve probably noticed that when you buy freshly made bread
at your local bakery, even if it's delicious, it doesn’t stay fresh for more than a day
or so. However, the packaged bread at the grocery store sits on the shelf for days and
is still good for quite a bit longer after that. What’s the difference? Human hair.
Yup, most large-scale produced packaged bread contains something called L-cysteine. And
although L-cysteine is indeed “all-natural,” it's also most commonly found in human hair.
And in fact, much of the L-cysteine used by large-scale bakeries making packaged bread
comes directly from the floor of Chinese hair salons. The clippings are swept up, dissolved
in acid to remove the L-cysteine, and are then shipped to commercial bakeries. So, eating
hair? It’s up to you to decide how important a longer shelf life is for you when it comes
to your bread. “Enhanced” Meat
While we have all gotten a lot better at selecting quality meats and purchasing beef and poultry
raised properly and naturally - without the use of antibiotics and hormones - we now need
to look beyond the raising of the animal and start paying more attention to the way it's
processed and packaged. This means looking for a few keywords on the package, such as
“enhanced,” “brined,” and/or added “natural flavors.” While they don’t
sound too scary, what they indicate kind of is. It happens a lot in the meat packing industry
that the meat or chicken is injected with a solution (saltwater with a bunch of other
ingredients) in order to plump it up and keep it fresh longer. The problems with this are
two-fold. The first is that the price of these items at your grocery store are determined
by weight. So, by plumping it up, you are getting charged for a “heavier” piece
of meat without actually getting more meat. So, that sucks. But it also sucks in that
you are getting a whole lot of added sodium without even knowing it. One study estimated
that a 100-gram piece of beef treated with a salt solution could contain up to 1800 mg
of salt. To put that in context: You should only be consuming around 2000 mg of salt per
day! So, you could be taking in most, or all, of your sodium without even knowing it, with
only one steak dinner. Not cool meat packers… Not cool!
Cheez Whiz When it comes to Cheez Whiz, the biggest problem
isn’t so much what they put in it, as opposed to what they don’t… Cheese! Sure, if you've
ever worked up the nerve to ingest this creamy concoction, you probably already guessed by
the color that there was no actual cheese in Cheez Whiz - without even having to turn
the jar around and read the list of ingredients. However, you might be surprised to know that
when Cheez Whiz was first invented, it contained - according to one of the scientists on the
original team - a reasonable amount of actual cheese. So, when did that change? When did
they decide to remove any actual cheese from Cheez Whiz? We don’t know for sure (and
the company claims there is still some real cheese in there - but they won’t say how
much). What we do know is that these days, Cheez Whiz is filled with a bunch of additives
and preservatives, including trisodium phosphate - which is a compound that fights oil and
is one of the reasons why you can use Cheez Whiz to remove grease and oil stains from
your clothes. Given the product’s fake and sometimes questionable taste - maybe removing
stains is a better use for that jar of Cheez Whiz you have in your fridge anyway.
Orange Juice This might be the most disappointing one on
this entire list. Orange juice! This one should be easy to make, right? Just pick some oranges,
squeeze them, and that’s it! It says it right in the name - orange - juice. The
juice of an orange. Well, unless you are picking and squeezing the oranges yourself, you are
probably getting a little more than you thought - and not in a good way. You see, part of
the process in making orange juice in large quantities involves squeezing the juice from
the oranges and then removing the oxygen from the juice in order to preserve it for longer
before it’s bottled. The problem with this is that by removing the oxygen, they also
remove much of the smell and taste. So why does the orange juice you buy at the store
still taste and smell so wonderfully of oranges? Well, it's just like in The Big Bang Theory
when Penny discovered the incredible value of the “flavor pack” when making Ramen
noodles. These orange juice flavor packs are made up of oils and essence of oranges and
to quote an expert on the subject, Alissa Hamilton (author of the book, Squeezed: What
You Don’t Know About Orange Juice), “Flavor fragrance houses break down orange essence
and oils into the constituent chemicals and then reassemble the individual chemicals in
configurations that resemble nothing found in nature.” If anything we consume should
be exactly as it’s found in nature, shouldn’t it be orange juice?
Packaged Meat When you pick up some packaged meat at the
grocery store, what is one of the most important things you should look for? Most people would
probably answer a nice red color. That color that tells us the meat is fresh and still
safe to consume. Well, unfortunately, we can no longer count on that color test to tell
us whether or not our meat is fresh. And that's all thanks to Carbon Monoxide! The
most commonly known fact about carbon monoxide is that it's a dangerous colorless and odorless
gas - and that we're told to put a carbon monoxide detector in our homes. Yet, this
is what is used to treat packaged meat. Nonsense is an understatement, to say the least. Now,
before you ask why your CO detector doesn't go off every time you make hamburgers, it's
because there's not that much CO present in the meat. It is so minute that it doesn't
get picked up by your "supposed super duper detector" and is apparently, no danger to
your health. But that isn’t the end of it. Because companies use the CO to keep the red
color of the meat after it's been exposed to oxygen, that also means that it can cover
up the color of meat that has gone bad. A word of advice? Be wary of that seemingly
perfect red meat you see at your local grocery store. You may never know its true expiration
date anymore. Potato Chips
Potato chips are easily one of the greatest snacks ever created, and, out of all the items
on this list, they're probably going to be the hardest ones to quit. It's safe to say
that even if we know what's in potato chips, we're still going to be very tempted to grab
a bag, or two, or three on our next grocery store run. Yea, that's not something we're
very proud to admit, but, hey, that doesn't mean we won't think twice about it! And the
reason for that is sodium bisulfite. Sodium bisulfite is a compound that releases sulfur
dioxide gas and, in so doing, inhibits bacterial growth and prevents discoloration - two things
no one wants from their potato chips. However, while the sodium bisulfite is doing good work,
it is also the answer to the question, “what do potato chips and toilet cleaner have in
common?” Yup, sodium bisulfite is also used in toilet cleaner products. Now, it should
be pointed out that the amount used in potato chips is very small and is an amount that
is considered “safe” by the FDA. But it should also be pointed out that, while the
FDA is cool with its use in potato chips, they have banned its use in meats, raw fruits,
and vegetables. They say it’s because of how the compound reacts with those items,
which still doesn’t make us feel great about it being in our potato chips. How about you?
Oh and pass the dip! Bright Red Foods
Bulls aren’t the only ones attracted to red. We humans also have a fascination with
this color. If something is said to include strawberries or another “red” flavor,
then we don’t want the product to just be red; we want it to be really red! But have
you ever asked yourself how they get spreads and syrups and other “red” food items
so wonderfully bright red? Well, on a positive note, the way they do it isn’t harmful or
bad for you. But on the other hand, it does mean you are eating bugs. Check the ingredient
list on your favorite bright red food item. Do you see cochineal extract on the list?
Then you are eating bugs! The cochineal bug, to be more precise. This bug was discovered
to have another purpose by the Aztecs, who used it to dye fabrics over 500 years ago.
The bugs are harvested in Peru and the Canary Islands, and they are then dried and crushed
up. Then they are made into a dye by treating the dried and crushed up bugs with alcohol.
Some people are allergic to it, but if you aren’t, then there are no real issues with
consuming it - except for the fact that you now know you are eating bugs. Oh, and if you
don’t see cochineal in the ingredients, you aren’t out of the woods just yet. Note
that it can also be listed as Natural Red 4 or Carmine. Something to think about next
time you're browsing the back of your red candy package!
We’ve got more great videos - just tap that screen. First time here? Then hit that subscribe
button and ring that notification bell.