inspiration == 0

wincestisthebestputsamtothetest:

icephoenix:

wincestisthebestputsamtothetest:

icephoenix:

Q: What is azodicarbonamide?

It is a chemical whose primary use is “in the production of foamed plastics.” In the United States it is also used as a food additive and flour bleaching agent.

Q: Why is it in my bread?

According to Mark Rubi, the former baker and owner of The Lick Skillet Bakery in Boulder, Colorado, the answer is “I don’t know.” He says, “The necessary ingredients in bread are pretty basic. You need flour, water, yeast, and salt for sure. And then maybe add a little olive oil for dough consistency and a little sugar to get the yeast going. Anything else you add should just be for flavoring.” He goes on to add, “It’s strange, I look at the commercial breads available these days and the ingredient lists are scary. Take fast food, for example, the typical bun at a fast food burger chain has 20 or more chemicals in addition to the main ingredients! Is this really something I want to be eating?”

Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/article/azodicarbonamide-another-reason-to-avoid-most-bread

Yes, let’s ask an artisan baker his opinion on food-additives in mass-produced bread. Of course his answer would be “I don’t know”, he’s a baker, not an organic chemist.

The simple answer as to why azodicarbonamide is used in bread is this: Yeast is unreliable.

Conventional bread recipes hold baker’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a key ingredient. The yeast is a leavening agent: It converts the sugars present in the dough into the gas carbon dioxide (CO₂). This causes the dough to expand and rise as the gas forms pockets or bubbles. When the dough is baked, the yeast dies and the air pockets give the bread a soft, spongy texture.

Azodicarbonamide, the chemical in question, does exactly the same thing. The reason it’s used in place of yeast is because it’s much easier to calculate the exact amount of azodicarbonamide required. Yeasts, being biological entities, can vary wildly in their leavening power. azodicarbonamide, being a solely chemical entity, does not. “Wonder Bread™” and other mass-produced enriched bread products are made to look, feel, and taste a certain way. The Wonder Bread that was made in a factory in Canada needs to look identical to the bread made in a factory in the United States, because this is what consumers have come to expect.

Bread items like this are not harmful in any way, shape, or form. They actually hold a slight advantage over conventional bread products, as they’re ‘enriched’ — meaning that they have added nutrients. When the bread enrichment program started, it became known as the “Quiet Miracle”. It virtually eliminated diseases like Beriberi and Pellagra in the United States, and provided a wealth of nutrients in a product that people were already consuming. Compare the iodization of salt, or the fluoridation of water.

Someone’s inevitably going to come back at me with something like “Well, the ingredients say that there’s yeast, so why do they still have to use azodicarbonamide?”

Before that happens: Yeast is a key flavor component of bread. Azodicarbonamide is used as the leavener, but a small amount of yeast extract (that is, concentrated yeast flavor, with no leavening power) is added to the process to make the bread taste like… well, bread.

To surmise: Ingredient lists are not “scary”, one just has to have a proper understanding of chemistry.

It’s the Bromilated vegetable oils in bread that are causing the obesity. It is used in the food industry as a food additive and a flour bleaching agent and improving agent. When it reacts with flour it behaves as a hydrogen acceptor, and is quickly and completely converted to urea, which is stable even during baking. The reaction occurs only during wetting of the dough.

This chemical additive is produced within the countries of the United States, China, Korea, and in India, possibly other locations around the world. And, this chemical is added to many different bread dough producers around the world. The fast food chains including Subway adds Azodicarbonamide to the dough of their flour. So read the package and stop buying and consuming anything that contains Bromide, and buy the more expensive organic breads, or bake your own. Read the label to see if Azodicarbonamide or Bromide is an added ingredient before buying bread and or beer.

Use of azodicarbonamide as a food additive is supposedly banned in Australia and in Europe. And, supposedly in Singapore, the use of azodicarbonamide can result in up to 15 years imprisonment and a fine of $450,000. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive has identified azodicarbonamide as a respiratory sensitiser (a possible cause of asthma) and determined that products should be labeled with “May cause sensitisation by inhalation.” But what about the western fast food joints?

ADA is characterized by dual oxidations in the maturation of wheat flour. It not only bleaches flour by oxidizing carotene in fresh flour, but also improves flour strength by oxidizing cysteine. The increased strength improves the gas retention of dough and elasticity of bakery products.

That being said, I’d rather eat bread with minimal food additives.

I said nothing regarding obesity or Brominated Vegetable oil. I’m not sure how we jumped to that subject, but I’m game. Brominated Vegetable Oil is simply vegetable oil which has atoms of Bromine bonded to it. This allows us to create an oil with a specific density of approxametly 1.33 g/mL, which can be used as a carrying oil for flavoring agents. The oil will comepletly emulsify in water, rather than floating on the surface. It has been GRAS by the FDA for over forty years. It’s limited to 15ppm in all food products, and as such, with moderate consumption it will not lead to obesity any more than consumption of any other fatty oil products.

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to get at with this reply. You’re all over the map, first talking about the use of BVO and alleged links to obesity, then talking about the use of Azodicarbonamide in other countries.

Both chemical additives are beyond safe. I would rather eat bread with minimal additives as well, just because simply baked bread tastes better. However, products like these meet the dietary needs of a massive population: they allow food products to be cheaply produced with little nutritional variation. Enrichment adds extra needed vitamins and minerals, continuing to fill the gap between dietary need and lack of sustenance. Finally, these products can be cheaply produced, allowing them to reach consumers at low cost. I’ll give that azodicarbonamide is a respiratory sensitizer, but when was the last time you inhaled a loaf of bread? The term “respiratory sensitizer” refers only to the pure chemical product, not to the food products which have azodicarbonamide as an additive. Cocoa powder is a ‘respiratory sensitizer’ too, but I don’t see anyone calling out chocolate cake.

If you don’t eat foods with additives, that’s fine. However, there is a sector of the population for whom foods like this are intended. Enriched food products are not harmful in any way. Like I said earlier, they fill a very important need, and one can compare them to the iodization of salt or the fluoridation of water.

Science’d. 

B.I.T.C.H. by *breathing2004

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