Stephen Colbert enjoys some macaroni and cheese at a taping of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". Try saying that five times quickly instead of "she sells seashells by the seashore." The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website lists many household products that use phthalates such "toys, vinyl flooring and wall covering, detergents, lubricating oils, food packaging, pharmaceuticals, blood bags and tubing, and personal care products, such as nail polish, hair sprays, aftershave lotions, soaps, shampoos, perfumes and other fragrance preparation." The most commonly found phthalate in the VITO testing was DEHP, otherwise known as Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, followed by DEP (Diethyl phthalate), BBP (Benzyl butyl phthalate), and DINP (Diisononyl phthalate). What exactly are phthalates besides a word that is difficult to pronounce without spitting? They're a group of chemicals that help soften plastics.and they're all around us. Is this a lot? That depends on how many boxes of macaroni and cheese you eat per sitting and over time and what other exposures you may have to phthalates.
What's even more distressing was that the average level of phthalates in macaroni and cheese powder (940 parts per billion measured in the fat and 106 parts per billion calculated in the product) was about twice the levels in processed cheese and four times the levels in natural cheese. Rather than simply eat the cheese, VITO tested all of these products and found significant levels of phthalates in all but one of the products.
They then shipped this whole cheese-heavy shopping haul in its original packaging to VITO (the Flemish Institute for Technological Research), an independent laboratory in Belgium. They bought 30 cheese product items from retail stores in the United States, including 10 different varieties of macaroni and cheese with dry cheese powder, five different types of sliced processed cheeses, and 15 varieties of natural cheese such as hard, shredded, string and cottage.
#How do they make dehydrated cheese for macaroni and cheese mac
It turns out that mac and cheese, in the words of Britney Spears, is "not that innocent." Based on some testing done by the Coalition for Safer Food Processing and Packaging, if you are eating the cheese powder for macaroni and cheese, you may be eating phthalates. What the phthalates?! I did not order that with my mac and cheese.