Consuming Chemicals is a What We Do on a Daily Basis

by Joni Kamiya, Hawaii Farmer's Daughter, August 18, 2014

I’ve read and heard so many people tell me how they are cutting back on chemicals in their food by eating better. I can’t help but shake my head because it it telling about how people do not understand the basic concept that everything is made up of chemicals.  Our body operates on chemicals and is made up of chemicals!

As I was making cookies today, I realized how we forget about what chemicals are and how they play a part of our daily lives. To say that something is bad and dangerous because it’s a chemical is pure fear mongering at best.  Just the world alone invokes fear in those who don’t have a good grasp on the basic science of chemistry.

Take for example two important chemicals in my chocolate chip cookies, baking soda and salt. They are essential to making my cookies good but at the right amounts, they can be toxic. Hard to believe but very true.  If you remove these chemicals from your baking, you get a nice messy goo of dough that will not taste like a cookie.  They are essential for creating that reaction that bakes into a cookie.  Nor can we forget about the delicious chemicals in chocolate called theobromine and caffeine that is deadly to dogs but not to us in the right dose.

It’s also interesting to note that some seemingly “safe” chemicals aren’t as safe as we’d like them to be when you take a closer look at them.  Baking soda and salt are might higher in toxicity than a commonly known weedkiller known as Roundup.  Even the chemical found in those dark chocolate chips (caffeine and theobromine) are much more toxic than the weedkiller! What’s important to note is that the amount is what makes it toxic!  Hard to believe but very true.  Just take a look at a table outlining this.

So when you start to bite in to that delicious crispy chocolate cookie, remember that it is made up of chemicals and the reactions made by mixing them together.  Baking is literally a scientific experiment! Every time your take a bite of your food, remember that you’re consuming CHEMICALS!!!  Hopefully, doing this every time you eat and drink can help to alleviate your fear around it and make you realize that you’ve got some learning to do.

By the way, those cookies pictured above were quite delicious and you might just want to try mixing up your own batch of chemicals and create some reactions!  Bon appetite to chemicals!