Preservatives

The first step in producing any long-shelf-life food is the complete elimination of bacteria. This is not incidental to the process but is the explicit industrial goal. Bacteria are responsible for digestion, for the transformation of raw materials into bioavailable nutrients, and for every biological function that occurs on the planet. To give a product a shelf life of one hundred years, manufacturers must destroy all bacterial life completely. The result is a product that is biologically inert, containing no living enzymes, no active bacterial populations, and no meaningful nutrient activity. The body receives it but cannot do anything constructive with it.

Once you destroy all life to achieve shelf stability, you also eliminate the pre-digestive work that bacteria would normally perform before the food even reaches the digestive tract. This is why products with indefinite shelf lives are, in Aajonus's framework, nothing other than plastic versions of real food. The only genuinely safe, health-giving food is raw, unpasteurized, unprocessed, and non-chemicalized.

One of the most extensively detailed chemical preservative and processing agents Aajonus addressed was kerosene and its derivatives, which appear throughout the food supply in roles that consumers are never informed about. Kerosene derivatives are used widely as solvents to fractionate parts of food, to isolate specific compounds, and to extract nutrients from food waste for use in supplements. They are also used to produce the long shelf lives of processed products.

The industrial process works as follows: to isolate a nutrient from a food source, manufacturers must dissolve the food in a solvent to extract the compound they want. The FDA and USDA designate certain kerosene derivatives as "food grade," but Aajonus regarded this designation as meaningless. Diluting gasoline a hundred times does not make it non-toxic. The fact that a regulatory agency approves it as edible does not make it edible in any biological sense.

The practical consequence of kerosene-based extraction is that kerosene residue remains in whatever substance has been processed. If you soak food in kerosene for 22 hours, rinse it for two minutes, and eat it, you would not expect the kerosene to be gone, and it is not. Kerosene penetrates directly into tissue. It does not wash off the surface because it has already been absorbed into the molecular structure of the substance it was used to dissolve. When kerosene or its derivatives are present in food or supplements, they act as solvents inside the body, eating away at tissue rather than nourishing it. Kerosene contracts the adrenal glands and poisons the body at the cellular level.

Aajonus stated plainly that every vitamin supplement on the market, regardless of whether it claims to be natural or food-derived, uses either kerosene derivatives or gasoline-based solvents in its production. Non-natural supplements use gasoline or hexane. "Natural" supplements use kerosene or kerosene derivatives, sometimes in combination with wood alcohol. There is no supplement that escapes this process, because there is no other industrial method fast enough and cheap enough to extract concentrated nutrients from food sources at commercial scale. To do it with only natural food solvents like citrus juices or vinegar would take weeks or months. Industry needs six hours.

Aajonus made this claim publicly at a major convention and reported that the two top sales representatives from the most well-known natural vitamin supplement maker in the audience went back to their corporate office and reported what he said. Their lawyers became involved. He took this as confirmation rather than contradiction.

Monosodium glutamate is used throughout the food service industry specifically as a preservative to maintain the fresh appearance of cut fruits, salad bar vegetables, and prepared fish. Most restaurants buy pre-prepared vegetable and fruit salads sprayed with MSG to preserve a fresh look. Almost all sushi restaurants in Los Angeles, in Aajonus's observation, used MSG on their vegetables, fruits, and fish. He stopped eating at sushi restaurants in Los Angeles nine years before writing about it because every visit produced an MSG headache and poor mental and physical energy for the following 24 to 48 hours. Twice he was lied to when he asked directly whether MSG was used.

MSG is not even proven to be a preservative in any scientifically rigorous sense because it causes numerous physiological imbalances, including headaches, nausea, and intensified hunger. The intensified hunger serves the food industry by driving people back to purchase more food and then, through the resulting health problems, to purchase pharmaceutical products. Aajonus pointed out directly that investors with heavy stakes in food companies like General Mills, General Foods, and Purina also hold heavy investments in the pharmaceutical and medical industries. The chemical additive problem and the pharmaceutical profit problem are not separate phenomena; they are one integrated industrial system.

Sodium benzoate, used as a preservative in products including sauerkraut and soft drinks, converts in the body to benzene, which is carcinogenic. Aajonus mentioned that sauerkraut companies were still allowed to put benzoate compounds into their products. The benzene issue in soft drinks was debated as early as 1990, at which time the FDA indicated that manufacturers needed to remove benzoate, but no mandate was ever actually prescribed. A whistleblower later came forward to confirm this failure. The connection between benzoate preservatives and benzene formation represents one of the clearest documented examples of a preservative producing a known carcinogen as a direct metabolic byproduct inside the human body.

Formaldehyde appears in the food and pharmaceutical system primarily as a preservative and disinfectant. It is a known carcinogen and causes chronic bronchitis, eye irritation, and numerous other diseases. In the context of vaccines, formaldehyde is listed as one of the foundational toxic ingredients used as a preservative and disinfectant, alongside mercury (thimerosal), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), phenol (a disinfectant dye), benzethonium chloride, and aluminum. None of these ingredients are safe on their own, and combining them into a single preparation does not reduce their individual toxicities. Aajonus described experiencing the direct neurological effects of these substances himself after receiving vaccinations as a child, including severe memory impairment, weakness, and loss of associative language faculty.

Food colorings, though not strictly preservatives, are chemical additives that function alongside preservatives to maintain the industrial illusion of fresh, appealing food. Yellow food coloring contains cadmium, a heavy metal that is carcinogenic when not in proper biological balance with other minerals. Cadmium was put into food coloring to make processed food appear visually appealing, including making margarine appear yellow like butter. Without coloring, margarine, which is a petroleum-derived hydrogenated oil, appears as white wax.

Kerosene derivatives are not the only chemicals applied directly to food. Chlorine, fluoride, hydrogen peroxide, and wood alcohol are all used to soak and wash food, including animal products, as antimicrobial and preservative treatments. Aajonus asked directly whether anyone would knowingly eat foods soaked in kerosene, wood alcohol, chlorine, or fluoride. The answer is no, but that is precisely what most commercially processed food represents.

The meat department of supermarkets often smells strongly of chloroform because chlorine-based compounds used as washes produce chloroform fumes that poison both customers and employees. This is not sanitation; it is chemical contamination dressed up as food safety practice.

Soy products require especially intensive chemical treatment. The beans must be bathed in acidic baths and heated at extreme temperatures before they can be consumed at all, because natural substances in soy cause sickness or death to poultry and humans when eaten unprocessed. After the acidic baths and extreme heat, the soy is spray-dried with nitrates to produce protein powder, and then artificial chemical flavorings, MSG, preservatives, sweeteners, and other synthetic ingredients are added to make the toxic matter palatable to both poultry and humans. Nitrates in this context have been directly linked to disease.

Fish oils and cod liver oils receive particular attention in the context of chemical preservatives. According to USFDA standards, fish oils must have all proteins removed because proteins provide substrate on which bacteria can feed. Removing proteins requires heat and chemical processes. Two companies Aajonus investigated claimed to produce their fish oils without heat or chemicals, but both added processed oils as preservatives. Although the preservative oils constitute a small proportion of the total product, those preservative oils have themselves been heat-processed and chemically processed.

The contamination question Aajonus raised is specific: how much of the primary fish oil will be contaminated by the processed preservative oils that are added to it? The answer can be inferred from the fact that the preservative oils are added in sufficient quantity to prevent the entire volume of oil from being pre-digested by natural bacteria. If the preservative oils are present at concentrations sufficient to stop all bacterial pre-digestion of the entire product, then a corresponding fraction of the oil will not be digestible by the human body either. Fish oil from before 1981 was cloudy, had an odor, contained everything the fish contained, and was good substance. After the FDA required purification, it all became, in Aajonus's word, garbage.

The supplement industry deserves extended treatment in the context of chemical preservatives because it operates on the same industrial logic: take a substance from food waste, isolate it using industrial solvents, and sell it as a health product. The food waste itself, sourced from companies like General Foods, General Mills, Purina, and Kellogg's, has already been subjected to 60,000 chemicals through the commercial production process. The supplement manufacturer then applies kerosene or kerosene derivatives to extract targeted nutrients from that already-chemically-compromised waste material.

The cost economics explain why this system persists. To produce a genuinely natural vitamin supplement from clean food sources would require growing your own fields, then processing the crops to extract the nutrients using only biological solvents, a process that would make a bottle of 100 vitamin units cost approximately two thousand dollars. The chemical shortcut using food waste and industrial solvents makes the product economically viable and profitable while delivering kerosene residue into the bodies of people who believe they are improving their health.

Vitamin E represents the most extreme documented case. Ninety-five percent of all supplemental vitamin E consumed in the world is, or is structurally very similar to, the toxic waste byproduct of petroleum-based film-developing chemicals. In the 1960s, a scientist observed that film-developing fluid waste had approximately 70 to 76 percent structural similarity to natural d-alpha tocopherol, which is vitamin E. Rather than paying enormous costs for hazardous waste disposal, film-developing companies diversified into processing and selling this toxic waste as vitamin E. Film-developing chemicals are extremely toxic. This is not a marginal or edge-case situation; it is the dominant source of vitamin E in the global supplement market, including in health food stores. The 5 to 10 percent of vitamin E that is genuinely food-derived comes from soy or corn, which themselves carry their own chemical contamination.

The category of "organic" food does not guarantee freedom from chemical preservatives and processing agents. Thirty years before Aajonus was addressing this, no substance without a food name could be used in any agricultural product and still be labeled organic. That standard has been progressively eroded. By the time Aajonus was speaking about it, organic products were permitted to contain up to 15 percent chemical content and still carry the organic label. The threshold had moved incrementally from 2 percent to 4 percent to 7 percent to 10 percent to 15 percent, and further increases were being prepared. This means that even malathion, gibberellic acid, and other severe agricultural chemicals can legally appear in products labeled organic as long as they do not exceed 15 percent of the total content.

Aajonus had direct observational knowledge of tomato processing from traveling by bicycle through Oklahoma in 1975. He observed that tomatoes intended for soups and sauces were left to sit in open trucks, fermenting, molding, and rotting for weeks, before being hauled to factories where they were processed using industrial chemical methods comparable to the processing of large-factory milk. The natural coloration, fragrance, and flavor of tomatoes are destroyed in this process and are then reconstituted using industrial chemicals that are not food. The bottled or canned sauces that result, used in virtually all fast-food restaurants and most better restaurants as well, bear no biological resemblance to tomato.

One structural feature of the chemical contamination problem that Aajonus consistently highlighted is that contamination can enter products through supplier chains without the final manufacturer having any direct knowledge of it. A supplier producing a preservative or ingredient may apply chemicals at their facility. The company buying from that supplier may genuinely not know this has occurred. When that company claims their product contains no preservatives or chemicals, they may believe that claim to be true while it is factually false because their supplier applied the chemical before the ingredient ever reached them. This pattern applies to salad bars where preservatives are applied before the produce is delivered to the restaurant, to vitamin manufacturers whose raw material suppliers use chemical solvents the supplement company never directly applies, and to food producers who purchase pre-processed ingredients that carry chemical residues from earlier in the supply chain.

The accumulation of chemical preservatives and industrial food chemicals in the body is not easily reversed. These substances store in fatty tissue, in the lymphatic system, and in organs, and the body must undertake significant detoxification work to eliminate them. Aajonus described perspiration as the primary route through which many toxins leave the body. People who eat heavily processed and chemicalized food have body odor that reflects their toxic load. He noted that many people he knew who exercised regularly produced perspiration that smelled of old stinky sauces, particularly tomato sauces, which reflects the outgassing of chemicals accumulated from processed foods through sweat.

For the specific case of heavy metals and industrial chemicals accumulated through chemical injections or intense exposures, Aajonus developed a chelation smoothie formula based on the amino acids in raw apple cider vinegar combined with dark and light berries, raw cream, coconut cream, fresh raw lime and lemon juice, pineapple, and raw eggs. His specific daily formula for metal and industrial chemical chelation was three-quarters cup each of raw raspberries and blueberries, one-half cup raw cream, two ounces coconut cream, one to three tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar, four tablespoons fresh raw lime juice, one tablespoon fresh raw lemon juice, two ounces pineapple (whole, not juice), and three to four raw eggs, blended to fill a jar to one quart, sipped throughout the day.