Read many processed food nutrition labels, and chances are you'll see the ingredient "sodium benzoate" listed. Just like "sodium nitrite" and "monosodium glutamate," this preservative sounds pretty harmless. After all, it has the word "sodium" in it, right? That's quite a misdirection if you've done the research on these substances.

Sodium benzoate was looked at in recent research in Britain and was found to actually "switch off" certain vital parts of DNA (not in humans -- yet). Umm, this is not good.

Although jumping the gun on a news story like this is not a good thing, it almost seems natural that a preservative chemical used extensively could harm a person's DNA. Solution: dump soft drinks (diet and regular), and drink only water, tea, coffee and fresh fruit juice.