Hidden Ingredient in Junk Food That Acts as Detergent

the hidden ingredient in junk food that acts like a detergent. I want you to think about what dish soap actually does. You squirt some on a greasy pan and it dissolves the grease by stripping off the protective layer off the surface of the pan. Now, imagine the same process happening inside your gut. And I'm talking about this very delicate, thin layer of mucus on the inside of your gut that is there to protect you. There's a chemical that is so commonly added to our foods that we just consider it normal. And that chemical does the exact same thing to the protective lining of your intestines. That dish soap does to the grease on a pan. And once the lining is gone, things that were never supposed to reach your bloodstream start reaching your bloodstream. They start getting through a leaky gut. I'm talking about bacteria, toxins, partially digested proteins from your food. And most people have never actually heard about it unless they read ingredients. And the bad news is, chances are you've been eating it unknowingly on a daily basis. Let me show you where this ingredient is actually hiding. It's in ice cream. It's in chocolate bars. It's in salad dressing. It's in plant-based milk. It's in bread, protein bars, peanut butter, coffee creamer, mayonnaise, and baby formula. It's estimated that this ingredient is roughly in 60% of all packaged foods on the grocery store shelves. And the wild part is when I tell you what this is, you've probably heard about it before, but had no idea what it really is. It goes by names like polyorbate 80, mono and dlycerides, caroxymethyl cellulose, and something called carrageenan. And I know this sounds like chemistry. Well, it is chemistry. It's chemicals. And these are all collectively called emulsifiers. Emulsifiers force the oil and water to mix so that the processed food looks smoother so that it feels creamy when it's in your mouth and it will last longer on the shelf. That's the only thing they do for the food. And so if they didn't put those in there, they wouldn't mix that well. So this is how it works. Your gut has a built-in defense mechanism. This mechanism is a thick layer of mucus that coats the inside of your intestines. On one side you have trillions of bacteria. On the other side you have your bloodstream. In fact, all of the food that you eat eventually gets through and goes into the bloodstream. But you also have your immune system right there, too. That mucous layer separates those two things like a barrier. And emulsifiers by their very nature dissolve that protective barrier. I mean, that's literally their chemical function. They're there to do just that, to food, but they ended up doing it to your own body, your own intestines. And so many people are unknowingly eating this daily over and over and over for years. And when that barrier gets too thin, the bacteria that are there to protect you end up getting through into the bloodstream. And your immune system is going to look at it like a pathogen and tag it as a bad guy. And now we get what's called an immune reaction aka gut inflammation. And at first it starts as a lowgrade constant simmering inflammation. But over time if you keep inflaming it, it gets worse and worse and worse until it starts to wear down the inside of your colon. And then from there you get scar tissue and then you have problems absorbing nutrients. There are many downstream consequences of this that go way beyond just the feeling of bloating because whatever is going on in your gut, you're going to feel up here as well. So, you might feel brain fog. You might feel very heavy and sluggish and can't really think clearly after you eat. The things that you used to eat now bother you. And so, it's really not always about the food. It's about certain ingredients in food, or if you want to call it that, that can actually start this process. So, a lot of people ask me, "What supplements do I recommend?" Now, of course, I'm not biased of my own high-quality supplement line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you'll find more information. So, in animal studies, one of the biggest common emulsifiers is something called polyorbate 80. In some of the animal studies, they develop metabolic syndrome. They gain weight. They have blood sugar problems and also altered gut bacteria. And I'm going to be honest, a lot of these are animal studies, not human studies. We actually don't have a 20-year human trial. But here's what we do have. We do have a controlled human trial published in 2024 that found just from 2 weeks of eating food with an emulsifier, the participants had altered gut microbiomes and the bacteria move closer to the intestinal lining. That's just two weeks. I mean, even in the last 20 years, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome has doubled. Autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing right now, and a lot of those start in the gut, especially in countries where they adopted ultrarocessed foods. So, is that the proof that emulsifiers cause all of this? No. But it isn't a coincidence that gut diseases are exploding after the exact same emulsifier consumption is also exploding. The next question is why do we have these chemicals in our food? In the United States, food additives can be classified as generally recognized as safe. It's called gross. And the part of this that should bother you is that gross is a loophole. Companies can self-certify their own ingredients as safe. They've never been through third-party safety trials at all. And so when you hear this, oh yeah, they're generally recognized as safe and think, oh yeah, good. I can eat them, don't buy into that. They do not have to submit to the FDA any long-term human trials. They don't even have to test chronic gut exposure. In many cases, the FDA doesn't even review their data. Most of these emulsifiers were approved decades ago based on short-term toxicity studies. The question they wanted to know is, does this create poisoning immediately? If not, it's safe. They never asked a question if someone eats this, you know, three times a day for a decade, what happens? But this is just how our system is right now. Hopefully RFK Jr. is going to get rid of this gross loophole. What really bothers me is children consume ultrarocessed foods the most out of any age group. In fact, we start our infants out with infant formula, which is equivalent to junk food. When your child consumes cereal with milk and a granola bar and crackers and chicken nuggets and an ice cream dessert, just realize they're getting this emulsifier, but they're also getting a lot of other things that are really bad as well. I have a simple solution for you. Instead of reading all the ingredients on the ultrarocessed foods and spending all that time trying to find out if there's emulsifiers, just don't eat ultrarocessed foods. In fact, don't even buy it. Don't even keep it in your pantry or your refrigerator because when you're tired, hungry, or stressed, you're going to be going for it. I'm going to be totally honest with you. I do have an addiction to potato chips. And I have my wife's agreement that we don't buy them. We don't keep them in the house, or else I will consume them late at night when she's not around. So instead of trying to battle this with willpower and discipline, just change your environment and make sure it's not in the house. Because if it's not in the house, you'd have to drive to the store and you probably are not going to do that. Now that you know what destroys the gut lining, let's now talk about what will correct and repair the gut lining in this video right here. Check it out.