The pork chops at the meat counter were injected with solution. The tray reads up to 12% solution of water, salt and sodium phosphate. It's not just the store brand. Hormel Always Tender tenderloin is up to 12% of water, potassium lactate, sodium phosphates, salt and sodium diacetate, and a Kroger cook-in-bag tenderloin is up to 15% plus a rub. At the plant the loins go through a bank of needles that pump the brine in, then into a tumbler that spreads it through the muscle. The phosphate raises the pH of the meat so the proteins grab water and hold it, and the salt helps them hold more. The pork comes out heavier than it went in, it won't dry out on a grill, and the water expands margin. The lactate and the diacetate are there for shelf life. Check the sodium for the tell. A plain tenderloin is about 60 mg in 4 oz, the 12% ones run 290 to 320, and the 15% one with the rub is 710. Since 2016 the solution line has to be part of the product name on the front of the tray, at least a third the size of the name, and the word enhanced isn't allowed.

The hard boiled eggs at the hotel breakfast weren't boiled there. They came peeled, in brine. The foodservice case is a 25 lb tub. The label reads hard cooked eggs, water, citric acid, sodium benzoate and nisin preparation as preservatives. Shelf life is 56 days in the cooler. A plant cooks the eggs in a continuous boiler, cracks and peels them with rollers and water jets, and floats them in the tub. The kitchen opens it, drains a hotel pan's worth and sets it out. A peeled egg is wet, high in protein and sits at a pH bacteria like, so the acid drops the pH and the benzoate stops yeast and mold. Nisin is a peptide made by a dairy bacterium, and it's in there for Listeria. A 2019 Listeria outbreak traced to a Georgia plant that peels eggs made 7 people sick in 5 states, hospitalized 4 and killed 1.

Veggie Straws are potato starch. The vegetables are powders, and most of them are there for color. The bag reads potato starch, potato flour, corn starch, cane sugar, sweet potato powder, salt, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, spinach powder, tomato powder, then beetroot, turmeric and beta-carotene for color. The spinach and the tomato come after the salt. An ounce of straws is 140 calories, 6 g of fat, 200 mg of sodium and 1 g of protein. An ounce of Lay's Classic is 160 calories, 10 g of fat, 140 mg of sodium, 2 g of protein, more fiber and more potassium. It's basically a potato chip pushed through a die instead of sliced. The green straws are spinach powder and the red ones are tomato and beet, all of it listed below the salt.

The citric acid in your food is grown on a black mold. Pfizer figured out how to mass produce it and it's how Pfizer learned to make penicillin. Nearly all of it, about 2 million tons a year, comes from a fungus called Aspergillus niger fed sugar in steel tanks. The mold eats the sugar and gives off citric acid. The acid gets filtered off, crystallized and sold as a white powder. A Pfizer chemist named James Currie got it running at scale in 1919, and by 1939 a pound had gone from $1.25 to 20 cents. The deep tanks Pfizer built for citric acid are the ones it used for penicillin in 1941, when it was the only company making it by fermentation. About 60% of it is made in China, and the US has had tariffs on Chinese citric acid since 2009 at the request of ADM, Cargill and Tate & Lyle. Sprite, Gatorade, Hunt's tomatoes, Kraft mac and cheese, Pillsbury frosting and the liquid eggs on a hotel line all have it. It's the most used acid in food because it's cheap, it's sour, it keeps cut fruit from browning, and it holds pH where bacteria don't grow. A 2018 paper described 4 people who reported joint pain and swelling after eating foods with manufactured citric acid, but the authors wrote that nothing had been proven. No large scale controlled study has been run since.