I think instead of criticizing the Food Babe on a regular basis, which could easily become a second career, it is time to take a different approach. Maybe we can be pro-active here and attempt to teach her some of the chemistry she so sorely lacks.
Vani, in your attack on polydimethylsiloxane, a chemical used to prevent foaming in frying oils, you make the following claim: “The FDA allows dimethylpolysiloxane to be preserved by several different chemicals that don’t have to be listed on the label either, including formaldehyde!”
First of all polydimethylsiloxane is a polymer (that’s a giant molecule made of repeating units) that does not require a preservative. There is no formaldehyde added to this polymer! Your confusion probably comes from having seen polydimethylsiloxane and formaldehyde appear in the same sentence somewhere. That’s because at temperatures above 200 degrees C, the methyl groups (those are groupings made of three hydrogen atoms attached to a carbon atom) on the silicone polymer react with oxygen from the air, and through a complex series of reactions can produce trace amounts of formaldehyde.
Now for some numbers..the crux of science. Polydimethylsiloxane is used at a concentration of 0.2-0.3 parts per million in commercial cooking oil. If this released the maximum amount of formaldehyde, it would be way less than the formaldehyde that occurs naturally in a glass of apple juice. But frying is done at 185-190 degrees C, and at that temperature essentially no formaldehyde is produced. Furthermore, the addition of polydimethylsiloxane to oil reduces the formation of oxidation products. I realize that there are words here you don’t understand, but maybe you get the gist of the argument. Maybe.
