So you wake up in the morning ready to kick your day off. Before you even enter the kitchen you begin craving cereal with French toast, scramble eggs, with a side of sausage and bacon. Your mouth waters and your stomach growls as you prepare for a decadent breakfast.

Well, as soon as you open that kitchen door an organic smell of rotting food clears your nostrils quicker than smelling salt. The milk, eggs, sausage and bacon are no longer good to eat yet would make awesome science experiments. Then you think I still got bread, right? Well that too is the same color as a freshly cut front lawn.

So what happened?

You got all of this food three days ago without any preservatives; it shouldn’t go bad this quickly. Well, non-preserved foods have an extremely short shelf life. Any foods that are organic or have organic ingredients will go bad a lot sooner than later. That said the shelf life of food is not why I brought up the topic of preservatives.

I have recently heard people talking about preservatives as if it’s another reason for America’s health epidemic. I have to say without preservatives I believe we would be at a higher risk for diseases. Most people think preservatives are used to only increase the shelf life of a product when in fact it does much more.

Preservatives attack enzymes inside microorganisms preventing the growth of harmful bacteria. The bacteria’s will not only cause bad smells and taste but can create a serious health risk. One great example is the use of preservatives to prevent the growth of clostridium botulinum which can produce deadly poisons in meat.

Chemical preservatives are regulated so they are not used in excess. There are a couple of chemical preservatives that have been documented for triggering allergies which is miniscule to eating food that has no preservatives and being placed in the hospital due to spoilage.

My thoughts on preservatives is that if it expires in a reasonable time (meats and vegetables a couple of weeks if not frozen) then I am all about munching down. So the next time you think preservatives are killing you, think about being curled up next to the toilet after eating two day old non-preserved food.

-Phil