here are all the most shocking chemicals

we've found in fast-food chains in the UK and the US.

This is "Food Wars."

Over the past season and a half of "Food Wars,"

we've found some interesting,

dare I say shocking

chemicals in some of the foods and food processes.

We've created this compilation of these moments,

and Joe and I are going to react to them now.

Sure, we may not be food scientists, food experts,

scientists, or really anything,

but we do have these fancy lab coats,

which I think gives us some credibility.

I got mine at Party City!

Fantastic! Let's dive in.

You know, the only difference is that

our pepperoni contains beef.

Also preservatives beutohydrolatehydrolazinase

and beautohadalidblahbityblah.

BHA and BHT.

I can't pronounce them.

They're bad.

It turns out that BHA and BHT are actually

subject to restrictions in the European Union

and can't be added to foods such as pepperoni.

This might be because studies have shown that

BHA can cause tumors in rats

and it's therefore reasonably anticipated

to be a carcinogen in humans.

You have no idea how much we spent on those dancing rats.

I mean, what doesn't cause tumors in rats, right?

I feel like rats are always getting cancer anyway.

And they don't say the portions.

Are they eating human-size portions of BHA and BHT?

Then, yeah, of course they're getting cancer.

Oh, well.

I'm gonna die doing what I love.

Eating banned chemicals.

Put it in my obituary!

We reached out to Domino's to get some clarity

on the pepperoni situation.

We got our info from their ingredients webpage.

However, when we checked with them,

they told us that their information was incorrect

and they've updated it since to say that BHA and BHT

have now been removed from the pepperoni.

I think this happened at some point during 2018,

they couldn't say exactly when, but, Joe,

it sounds like you're OK after all.

Gotta say, my hair game is pretty strong in this one.

I know it has nothing to do with chemicals,

but my stuff was just [clicks tongue].

My hair's locked in on this one, buddy.

I loved BHA and BHT because this was kind of

the first episode of "Food Wars" where we found a chemical

that actually was kind of banned and very dangerous

and didn't appear in the UK.

I'm gonna be straight up. The European Union sounds

kind of like a buzzkill, right?

Is that what Brexit was all about?

"We want BHA and BHT in our food.

We're outta here."

And in the US, our doughnut is made up of

enriched wheat flour,

[fast-forward noise]

and BHT.

Ah, yes! Our old friend BHT,

aka butylated hydroxytoluene?

It is banned in the European Union.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer

suggests -- might I say strongly suggests --

"there is sufficient evidence"

that BHT causes tumor growth in lab animals.

I'll tell you straight up,

those doughnuts could be made of dead cancer rats,

I'd still eat them. They're that good.

Who cares what's in these doughnuts?

Also, according to WebMD,

BHT is also used to treat genital herpes.

That's right.

I want you to think about that

every time you bite into a Krispy Kreme.

Genital herpes.

And every time you get genital herpes,

I want you to think of Krispy Kreme.

I want those two things together in your mind

for the rest of your life.

You are welcome.

Tricalcium phosphate,

diammonium phosphate.

That last guy, diammonium phosphate,

aka DAP.

Not the sequel to "WAP."

What does that stand for?

It is also used as a fertilizer and as a fire retardant.

So, when we have the next wildfire outbreaks in this state,

'cause it definitely will happen,

we're gonna start dropping Krispy Kremes on those wildfires.

Problem solved!

One thing we need to note about the US Taco Bell menu

is that items like the Baja Blast

and the Doritos Tacos Locos,

I think the shells have an ingredient called Yellow No. 5.

Yellow No. 5 is not in the UK.

Of course it's in the US.

In the UK, you usually find Yellow 5

referred to as tartrazine.

It's on a list of six chemicals which, when added to food,

must contain the following warning:

"May have an adverse effect on activity

and attention in children."

Tartrazine is a fascinating one because

it's in so many places in America

and basically nowhere here.

But, honestly, like, in things like the Baja Blast,

I don't think that's what's causing the hyperactivity.

I think it's the million tons of sugar that they add.

As a medical professional,

you're not going to Taco Bell

because you were concerned about what's going in your body,

you're going to Taco Bell 'cause

you don't care what's going in or out of your body,

apparently.

In some cases, it causes itching and hives

in people who eat it.

Disgusting. [laughs]

Itching and hives? Yep! That's fine.

I feel most people who eat that food

already had itching and hive issues anyway,

so if it's not coming from the Taco Bell,

it's coming from, I don't know,

sleeping on unwashed bedsheets.

Hey, I ate it growing up, and I'm perfectly fine.

I should note that I have a full head of gray hair

and I just turned 23.

What's up?

There are a few things to watch out for

on the menu at Five Guys.

Yeah, like the hot dogs.

For example, the pickles in the US.

In the US, the pickles contain a food coloring

called Yellow 5, or tartrazine.

If this is added to foods in the European Union --

My hair looks stupid in the Five Guys episode.

Why did nobody warn me?

There is one thing to look out for on the menu.

If you're in the US and you get a salad,

the croutons contain azodicarbonamide, or ADA.

This is a substance that's usually used to make

vinyl foam plastics, which form things like yoga mats.

It's actually been banned from use in food

in the UK since the 1990s.

So, this is my comment on the yoga-mat thing.

It's always something.

Even when we're trying to be healthy,

our salad has yoga-mat plastic in it. It's ridiculous.

Like, why do our croutons have plastic in them?

Just get regular croutons without plastic.

It doesn't make any sense.

Oh, my God, I want Pizza Hut so bad right now.

I know it's weird to stick up for a chemical,

but I want to point out that to my understanding --

again, I've done no research on this --

it's not like they're making the yoga mats

and then taking the chemicals out of the yoga mats.

If you imagine the chemical,

like, one truckload goes to the yoga-mat factory,

and the other truckload goes to Pizza Hut.

I'm assuming, right?

Or are they recycling yoga mats?

If they're doing that, then never mind.

That's really gross.

The only ingredient in the US Chipotle

that gave me a bit of pause was something called gypsum.

Gypsum's also known as calcium sulfate hydrate.

Right? OK.

And Chipotle uses that in their tofu process

when they separate the chunks from the liquid.

Gypsum is also found in drywall, chalk, and shampoo.

Of course it is.

Now, does the gypsum stay in the tofu

or is it just used for the separating purposes?

I don't care.

I'm never getting tofu from Chipotle.

Don't worry about gypsum.

It's fine.

You know how they have those billboards for --

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah!

Like, just this.

And then next to it is: "Gypsum. Don't worry about it.

You're fine." [laughs]

One piece of information you can get

from the UK's FAQ page

is that the plant-based Great Imitator wrap

might not actually be as plant-based as it seems.

The baste and the tortilla wrap used both contain shellac.

Now, shellac is also sometimes called confectioner's glaze,

and it's a natural polymer that's used to

give things a waxy finish and to trap in moisture.

Love the shirt I wore in the Nando's episode.

What's your favorite Harry shirt so far?

Leave a comment below.

But where does shellac actually come from?

Well, it's actually secreted by female lac beetles

onto trees in India and Thailand.

This means it's technically an animal product,

and although it can be gathered without harming the beetles,

this is hard to achieve in practice.

Not nice.

Shellac was one which popped out to me

when I was reading the ingredients list

just because the usual context I've heard it in

is, like, gel nails.

So as soon as I kind of knew that that wasn't that,

I wanted to do some more research into it.

And it turns out it's a beetle thing.

Who knew?

However, after combing through their ingredients list

in the UK and the US,

we did find one or two things to look out for.

For example, caramel color.

It's used in a range of Pret products,

from the dressing that they put on their salads

to the caramel syrups, which they put into their drinks.

Well, in the US, you'll find caramel color

in the salted caramel hot chocolate

and the salted caramel latte,

which I drink.

Caramel color is worth pointing out because

it's on the state of California's

Proposition 65 list of chemicals

which are known to the state to cause cancer

or reproductive toxicity.

Ooh, reproductive toxicity.

That's fun. Um. [laughs]

See, I was scared,

but the good news is there's only

two types of caramel color, classes III and IV,

that contained the chemical

that's to blame for this, 4-MEL.

The bad news is that class IV caramel color

does appear on the menu in the UK.

While there is some evidence to suggest that

the amounts currently in our food are pretty safe,

the state of California banning it isn't a great look.

Meanwhile, at a federal level,

the FDA still says that there is "no reason to believe

that there are any immediate or short-term health risks

presented by 4-MEI at the levels expected in food."

So, kind of up to you.

Whenever we reach out to someone

about something like caramel color,

the answer tends to be along the lines of,

"Well, you know, at its current level, it's fine."

Then surely if there's something