What’s In Your Food?

It’s lunchtime. You are hungry. You’ve got a chicken burger and a strawberry milkshake.
Yum! But have you got any idea what is inside the food you’re eating?
Of course, in the chicken burger, there’s some chicken. There’s also some tomato and some cheese, and there’s even some healthy salad with it. But there are also some extra ingredients in the chicken. For example, there are at least seven or eight chemical additives. They include salt and sugar, but also preservatives (to stop the food from going bad) and antioxidants (to protect the food from the oxygen in the air). The people who make burgers can also choose to add chemical flavours. Chicken meat can sometimes contain hormones. These hormones make chickens get big quickly. And, don’t forget the water! Chicken burgers are 45% water. They add extra water to make the chicken burgers look big.
And what’s inside that strawberry milkshake? It’s got strawberries and milk, right? Wrong! There is some milk and sugar, but there aren’t usually any real strawberries in strawberry milkshakes. Strawberries are expensive and they go bad. The solution: scientists create special flavours in laboratories, and then they add their secret ingredients – E129, cinnamyl valerate, benzyl isobutyrate…
Mmmmm, delicious!