Welcome to the third installment of our HEALTH HORRORS series!

We're breaking straight into a terrifying tale this week, with the chilling truth about...

CHEMICALS!

Everything is dark.

Your head is pounding.

You groggily open your eyes, and your surroundings swim hazily into view.

“Where….where am I?”

Your last memory is of crossing the road on the way to a job interview. Now, you’re in a low-lit, high-ceilinged room, filled with row upon row of workbenches covered in all sorts of elaborate glassware, containing...questionable substances. The walls are lined with cabinets, the air smells damp and sour, and you appear to be alone.

“Hello?” You try to stand up. You can’t. You’re tied to the chair.

Panic kicks you in the chest like a horse. Just as you take a breath to shout for help, somebody enters the room.

A very tall, slender, slightly hunched somebody, wearing a long white coat covered in a variety of stains and burn holes. A shock of silver-white hair sits on top of a disproportionately large head, along with a set of sharp yet curiously ageless features, and not one but three pairs of spectacles fanned across his forehead.

“Ah! You’re awake. Excellent. Oh yes, this is excellent!” 

“Who are you? What is this place?”

“Who am I? HA!” The strange man adjusts his multiple pairs of glasses. “I am the Scientist, of course. This is my laboratory.”

“What are you doing?”

The Scientist erupts into laughter. The room somehow seems to get suddenly darker. “THAT, my dear, is a secret, a very closely guarded secret, for me to know….and for you to find out. But first, it’s time for you to take your medicine.”

Medicine?

“My what??”

The Scientist laughs again, his shadow cast long and spider-like on the wall beside him by the eerie blue light emanating from a large flask of glowing liquid nearby. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough! Yes…you’ll find out.”

He picks up a bottle containing some kind of liquid, peers at it momentarily, sniffs it, and tips it into a beaker mounted over a Bunsen burner. As it begins to bubble he seems to become increasing agitated, his long fingers fidgeting and tapping the worktop impatiently.

Eventually, the bubbling seems to have reached an acceptable level, as he pours the now-fuming liquid into an opaque beaker, before rummaging through his dastardly cabinets once more.

“What are you doing now?”

“HA! Asks a lot of questions, this one. You’ll see….ah yes, you’ll see!” He suddenly rips into that awful maniacal laugh again, having apparently found what he was looking for. He opens a canister and dips his finger in it to taste the contents. A slow smile spreads across his face, and he tips some of this mysterious powder into the beaker. You strain at your ties, trying to see what’s in it, but you can’t see over the edge of the beaker. You can only see the fumes spilling over the edge and curling away into the air.

More weird substances get added to the mix, until he eventually seems content with his concoction, gives it one last stir and presents it to you.

“I’ve made this SPECIALLY for you,” he says, with a sly smile. “I suggest you drink it quickly. If not, the effects can be….undesirable.”

Your heart racing, your eyes darting from his wild expression to the beaker and back, you wonder what he could possibly be trying to give you.

“What’s in it?” you blurt out. “I won’t drink it until you tell me what’s in it!”

“Oh, more questions.” The Scientist rolls his eyes. “I wonder whether you would understand, even if I told you.”

“Try me,” you say defiantly.

“Very well.” He stirs the beaker again. “This perilous potion contains a plethora of potent ingredients. The dilactone of hexahydroxydiphenic acid! Trihydroxybenzoic acid! Glutamic acid!”

“That’s a lot of acid.”

The Scientist cackles. “That last one is used as a growth enhancer!”

“What else is in there?”

“Dissaccharides, astringent polyphenolic molecules, transferrin, dihydrogen monoxide…so many chemicals, too many to name.”

“Wh…What’s it going to do to me?”

“Well, with any luck, once the hepatic demethylization kicks in…it’ll TRANSFORM you into my new assistant! MUAHAHAHA!”

“Dare I ask what happened to your OLD assistant?”

“Due to some….shall we say “unfortunate” circumstances, Igor is, ahem…no longer with us.”

Enough is enough. You start to scream for help. But as you open your mouth, the Scientist takes the opportunity to tip some of his dreadful potion into your mouth, and -

Hold up.

That tastes….familiar.

“You…you’ve made me a cup of tea?”

“Of course! Wouldn’t be much of a host otherwise, would I?”

“Why didn’t you just say that?! Why did you use all those long, scary, chemical names?”

“Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. Force of habit, I suppose.” The Scientist scratches his head. “I must say, since they cut my research funding, I work alone a lot of the time. Can’t afford as many staff now, you see. I wondered if I might be going peculiar.”

“But why all the hysterical laughing?!”

The Scientist blinks. “I was happy to see you!” He says, slightly hurt.

“You said your last assistant was “no longer with us” due to “unfortunate circumstances”!!”

The Scientist peers at you sternly over his spectacles. “Igor’s mum fell off a roof ladder taking the Christmas lights down and has to use a wheelchair now. He had to move back to Transylvania to help look after her. I would say that’s pretty unfortunate.”

“You said you hoped your potion would “transform” me into your new assistant!”

“Well, excuse ME if I happen to make a cracking cuppa! I hoped once you had a bit of caffeine and sugar in your system you might calm down and realise staying here might not be such a bad gig!”

You realise that this is, in fact, the job interview you were travelling to before you blacked out. Vague memories hazily begin to assemble of a red-faced delivery cyclist yelling at you to get out of the $%#&ing way…Oh.

“What about the “undesirable effects” if I didn’t drink it quickly?”

“Who wants to drink a COLD cup of tea?”

“YOU TIED ME TO A CHAIR.”

“…Alright, I admit, that one’s on me.”

The fearmongering around chemicals has been going on for decades. 

“Don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce” was a mantra amongst certain wellness influencers online for a good while, and we still see it pop up now, along with lots of reading of food labels and disappointed head shaking by people filming themselves in Tesco.

Here’s the thing though…EVERYTHING is chemicals! 

Those long names are just the way substances are named in order to describe their molecular structure. Someone who understands chemistry can look at the name of something, and know how the molecules of that substance are put together and, thus, how they may react with other chemicals.

BUT THERE ARE SOME CHEMICALS THAT ARE DANGEROUS, RIGHT?

Absolutely.

There’s a particularly dangerous chemical that we know is heavily present in acid rain, and is used in large quantities in nuclear power plants.

It kills you rapidly if you inhale too much of it - in fact, almost a quarter of a million people die every year from this.

It can cause brain swelling, stroke, and even death by total organ failure if you consume too high a dose of it.

It is used across a huge range of industrial processes and is even found in cancerous tumours.

It’s used so much in the modern world that it’s even found in the blood of newborn babies.

Awful, right?

It’s water. That chemical is water.

There’s a saying you might have heard before: “The dose makes the poison”.

Nothing is inherently toxic or damaging to you, it’s all about the quantity you’re exposed to.

There are chemicals used in large quantities in industrial manufacture that are also used in tiny quantities in food production. There are chemicals used in pesticides that are also found in medicines. What matters is the formulation and the dosage.

BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE STUFF THEY ADD TO FOOD?

We’ve come a long way from growing our own crops and grinding our own grain for bread.

Larger populations, and developments in large-scale farming and distribution of food, have changed the way most of us access food. We have come to expect consistency, conformity, and longer lifespans from our foods.

Maybe a handful of you exclusively source your food like this, but even for those of us with access to an allotment or a vegetable garden...you still have to nip to Morrisons for some bits, don't you?

Preservatives stop harmful bacteria and moulds from taking over so quickly.

Stabilisers help keep things tasty and edible in our cupboards for longer.

Caking agents and emulsifiers maintain the textures of foodstuffs. 

Flavourings and sugars make things taste good - and at a chemical level, your body has no way to differentiate between a molecule of glucose from a piece of fresh fruit and a molecule of glucose from a spoon of refined white sugar. As far as your pancreas is concerned, it’s the exact same stuff.

Sure, some people can experience adverse effects to some food additives, like colourants or flavourings.

But some people can experience adverse effects to completely untouched and unprocessed foodstuffs (just ask anyone with a peanut allergy!).

What’s important in these cases is knowing that you have a problem with a given substance, so that you can avoid it.

But E numbers are definitely bad, right?

Despite their reputation, E numbers are not some dark food industry secret lurking in your food.

In fact, they're quite the opposite - the E number system is a universal reference for listing food additives, in order for food manufacturers to be able to be transparent about their ingredient list, no matter where in the world their products are sold.

E300? Vitamin C. 

E901? Beeswax. 

E392? Rosemary extract. 

If you'd like to see what all the E-numbers are and what they're for, you can see the list here.

BUT SHOULDN'T WE BE EATING 'CLEAN'?

Foods that aren’t processed aren’t “clean” compared to others. They’re just “unprocessed”. 

And processed food isn’t “dirty” or “toxic” in comparison (bearing in mind that by taking a fresh vegetable and chopping it into your salad, you are - by industrial standards - processing it!). 

Salad does tell the best jokes, though, apparently.

Remember, just as there is no “good” or “bad” when it comes to food, there’s also no “clean” or “dirty” - it’s just unnecessary moralisation of something we need in order to survive.

Unless you drop it on the floor. Then yeah, don’t eat that.

It's always jam-side down, innit 🙁

We hope this has helped to allay any fears you might have been holding about these spooky, mysterious chemicals you’ve been told are lurking in your food.

If you have any questions, drop us an email.

And we’ll see you next week for our final Health Horrors blog!