At any given time your body is exposed to multiple types of chemicals in the air you breathe, the water you drink and even the food you eat. Some of these chemicals are harmless -- as far as research is currently concerned -- while other chemicals may not be as harmless as they seem. If you are worried about the chemicals you are introducing to your body, you may want to consider a diet that helps reduce these chemicals through the foods you choose to make part of your diet.
Function
The purpose of the chemical-free diet is to only consume foods that are as close to their natural form as possible. There are many ways in which you can follow this diet. For example, you may choose to only eat organic foods. You may take this a step further and only eat raw foods. Packaged foods create another layer to this diet, which involves removing foods with preservatives, or other chemicals used for flavoring or increasing a food's shelf life. In general, a chemical-free diet favors fresh foods that are free from additives and were not grown or raised using chemicals such as pesticides or hormones.
Food Additives
Avoiding food additives makes up one large portion of the chemical-free diet. Additives are often included in packaged foods to help increase shelf life against spoiling and to add additional flavoring. Examples of food additives that may be avoided on this diet include sodium nitrite, food dyes, caffeine, olestra, aspartame and saccharin.
Growing Practices
The way a food is raised or grown can also introduce chemicals into your body. For example, growth hormones or large levels of antibiotics are used by some food businesses to accelerate animal growth and to fight off diseases that can run rampant when animals are kept in large numbers within close quarters. For example, in cows, recombinant bovine growth hormone -- or rBGH -- may be used to increase the development of cows in order to harvest them sooner. Fresh, non-organic produce may also be affected by chemicals through the introduction of pesticides and insecticides. For example, the Food and Drug Administration lists the following chemicals that are often used during food production: organophosphate pesticides, carbamate pesticides and pyrethroid pesticides. Some of the most controversial insecticides, the so-called organochlorine insecticides, include chlordane and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT.
Advantages
The obvious advantage to adhering to a chemical-free diet is that you are reducing the amount of foreign substances being introduced to your body. Although not all food additives are harmful for you, removing chemicals from your diet now may prevent future health problems or side effects from occurring as more research is performed on the effects of both additives, pesticides and food industry chemicals in general. You can do this by purchasing fresh organic produce and sticking to meats and dairy products that are free-range and free of growth hormones.
Disadvantages
There are some disadvantages to living a chemical-free diet. The most common problems revolve around availability. Unless you live in a larger city, your choices of chemical-free foods may be limited. However, the growth in Internet food delivery may help increase your choices, at least with non-perishable items and frozen foods. Price can also be a problem, as organic and chemical-free foods often come with a higher price tag.
