>You can probably imagine what happened when I left home for college and my
>diet became full of preservatives (institutional food, fast food,
>restaurant food). Yes, for almost two years I was unable to keep most food
>in my system and became a target for every flu and cold imaginable. A
>lesson I've never forgotten.
So why do you think it was the preservatives? The consumption of
preservatives has soared in this century but the rate of colds and flu
have remained constant. The highest rates of flu in the world are
from South China, where preservates are few. Flus and colds have
many causes, but preservatives aren't one of them.
Epidemiologists have been trying to link health problems to
preservative consumption for decades and all they've come up with
is that eating preservatives appears to *reduce* the chance of stomach
cancer. This was thought probably a fluke for many years, but now
that Heliobacter pylori has been linked to stomach cancer it's
thought that preservatives work through the rather prosaic method
of killing the main cause of cancer in your stomach.