FOOD TOXICITY AND SAFETY
Keywords:
foods, toxic constituents, additives, ingredients, microbiological contamination, pesticide residues, clostridium botulinum.Abstract
Very few of the foods that we commonly eat have been subject to any toxicological testing and yet they are generally accepted as being safe to eat. However, all chemicals, including those naturally found in foods, are toxic at some dose. Laboratory animals can be killed by feeding them glucose or salt at very high doses and some nutrients such as vitamin A and selenium are hazardous at intakes only a few times greater than normal human requirements. Even very common foods such as pepper have demonstrated carcinogenic activity. Toxicity testing of a food or ingredient can tell us what the likely adverse effects are and at what level of consumption they may occur, but by itself this does not tell us whether it is safe to eat in normally consumed amounts.
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