Have you ever wondered what all those ingredients really are?

Hi everyone,
I have been wanting to write about this for a while now. I have gathered some helpful information to give us a little clue as to what all the ingredients in our foods are. I have a list of the most commonly found food additives and I will list a few at a time on different postings. Let's start, and let me know if any of these sound familiar to you.
1. Sodium Benzoate: A food preservative made from chemicals and is also used to make fuel for fireworks. Cool, ha?
2. Soy lecithin: One of the top ten ingredients in food. An oil that is chemically or mechanically extracted from a soy bean. It is a by product of soy and used as an emulsifier which means it holds the ingredients in the food together. Although it may have some health benefits, it is made through genetic modification which changes the structure of the original food. Also, eating too much soy or soy by products can be very unhealthy. (More on soy later.)
3. Soy protein isolate: A highly refined form of soy protein. Its used as an emulsifier, retains moisture in food, and commonly used as a cheap, unhealthy source of protein, substituted by real proteins.
4. Citric acid: A natural acid found in fruits. Used as a food additive to flavor and preserve food. It is also used in many cleaning agents! If you want to preserve your food, I would rather squeeze some real, fresh lemon juice onto my food, wouldn't you?
5. Cornstarch: Used as a thickening and anti caking agent. The corn is steeped and fermented and starch is removed from the germ and endosperm. So, you are left with a starch, which in simple terms means sugar. We definitely don't need any more of that in our foods. In general I prefer to stay away from corn, mostly because the majority of corn in our country is genetically modified and doesn't provide many health benefits.
6. Modified food starch: A starch is taken from any grain and modified either chemically, enzymatically or physically with a non organic acid. It keeps food and its texture stable when frozen or microwaved, among many other things and is a heavily processed ingredient!

I think that's enough to think about for one day. Get to those cabinets and see what's hiding in your food. Even though many of these additives may be natural, they are full of chemicals and modified so much, that they can have such a negative effect on our bodies and minds over time!