Skip to main content

Coated Caution

The application of shellac is wide-ranging than most people think it is. And one of those applications is as glaze on fruits and vegetables sold in your fruit stands and grocery stores.
 
“IT'S easy for Americans,” says former US Sen. Christopher Dodd, “to forget that the food they eat doesn’t magically appear on a supermarket shelf.” That may also be true for Filipinos.
 
While the use of shellac in pharmaceutical products may have ebbed in the last few decades, its use in food, particularly as a protective coating for fruits and vegetables, has not. Its use has the specific advantage of extending shelf life, which is critical in ensuring that they are sold before they start to get overripe.
 
The previous article (“Glaze of the lac bug”) noted that shellac is a natural form of plastic. On apples, for example, this “wax” coating increases the resistance of the skin from gaseous diffusion, particularly oxygen, which speeds up the ripening process.
 
It was mentioned in the same article that the autopsy of a cabinet maker, who died at age 55, showed a hardened mass of shellac in his stomach. It was not known how shellac got into his stomach without him having to drink the furniture finishing liquid he used in his work. Inhalation was an unconfirmed mode of intake.
 
The Andrus study in 1983 demonstrated how shellac, accumulated in the stomach, can cause bleeding or perforation in the stomach lining. The Food and Drug Research Laboratories reported in 1984 that rats fed with 13.2 grams per day for 90 days had enlarged cecum or swelling proximal colon (without cancerous changes). This swelling or enlargement can be an earlier stage before bleeding or perforation occurred.
 
Unlike the use of shellac as glaze in pharmaceutical products, its use as coating in fruits and vegetable implies less sophistication in the formulation of the coating solution itself. Farmers who transport their fruits and vegetables may use the same light blond shellac used in furniture finishing, which is generally considered not food-grade shellac.
 
In addition to that, shellac is not removed through... [READ MORE]
 
 This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 20 March 2013.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

The "Lungs" of Our Homes

As trees slowly disappear with growing urbanization, the Rooseveltian lungs are replaced with more dangerous electrical lungs at home, many of which can damage the genetic materials of the human lungs. FRANKLIN Roosevelt said: “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” In Cebu today, however, people may have given up “fresh strength” for the material conveniences of an urbanized province. Even the more far-flung towns in the province of Cebu have already shown signs of urbanization. And it will not be long when even forests will cease to be. Nonetheless, the “lungs” have been replaced with electric air fresheners, with all the varied approaches to freshen the air—at least in the cities and the suburbs. But four Japanese researchers—three from the Iwate University (Ueda, Morioka, Iwate) Department of Veterinary Medicine and one from the National Institute of Health Services (K...
2 comments
Read more

Dealing with TURP

As we age, a lot of things we easily can do when we were younger get harder to do as our bodily systems start to show problems in functioning. That's the case with TURP; and if you add the inevitable side effects of drugs used in treating it, you can only imaging how difficult old age can be.   A CERTAIN practice has been common in synthetic drug treatments (so common it may be considered a cliché).   You start taking a prescription for one health problem and you end up having a new one. Of course that is not true for all synthetic medications. But given lack of long-term studies in most pharmaceutical drugs today, who knows what’s going to happen in the next 20 to 30 years after taking a particular regimen.   In history, many drugs have been pulled out from shelves because they later turned out to be potential killers, if not already one.   The classic case is that of finasteride, a treatment used against certain complications that transurethral ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sex Industry Weathers Financial Crises

Varmus Christopher Forbes.com 12/29/08 14:00:05 GMT The sex industry traces back to 500 B.C., when traders from the Greek port of Miletus sold olisbos, an early version of the dildo. Today, the business of sex (including pornography) now runs into the tens of billions of dollars. (No official estimates are available; Wall Street analysts don't tend to track this stuff.) And while print and video sales are ebbing, as more free adult content has become available online, sales of un-reproducible sexual aids are still healthy. "Of course, there's concern about the economy, but right now our sales are growing," says Michael Trygstad, founder of Wet, a lubricant manufacturer in Van Nuys, Calif. "We've grown 30% this year alone. We've had to completely automate our factories to meet the tremendous demand. People are deciding to stay at home and engage in inexpensive entertainment.'' Slick marketing--and the ability to shop anonymously online--helps, too...
5 comments
Read more