FOOD CHEMICALS: FDA Recipe for Permitting Dangerous Food Chemicals
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Remember that “How things work” series you loved as a kid? Well here’s one version for explaining why the FDA keeps giving a thumbs-up to dangerous chemicals in your food.
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How the FDA allows dangerous chemicals to be used in food packaging
It sounds like a fine idea: “Good Laboratory Practice.” But critics say that reliance on this standard of scientific test by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has allowed dangerous chemicals to be used in foods and food packaging.
The nonprofit group 100 Reporters has this interesting story, Good Practice v. Good Science, researched and written by Clare Howard.
An excerpt:
In a recent decision to permit continued use of a chemical in food packaging that research has tied to cancer, diabetes, miscarriages and developmental delays in children, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has favored two industry-funded studies over more than 1,000 independent analyses finding the chemical poses serious risks to human health.
The FDA’s decision on bisphenol A was not an isolated, or even unusual, call. For more than 30 years, U.S. regulatory agencies have relied on an arcane rule for approving chemicals used in everything from food packaging and drugs to pesticides and electronics, one that favors industry-funded reports over independent academic research.
That process exalts studies that follow design standards known as “Good Laboratory Practice,” and discounts research that may be confirmed through peer review, but do not follow the GLP protocols. Favoring GLP has given a green light to hundreds of chemicals and products from nicotine to atrazine linked to human disease and chronic health conditions.
Critics contend that the protocols, defended by the chemical industry, have become an arbitrary barrier, shutting out important independent research. In the case of BPA, a common chemical used in food packaging, adherence to the protocol largely overrode studies linking BPA to breast cancer, prostate abnormalities, low sperm count, developmental disorders, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Read the full story at 100 Reporters.
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(Source: msnbc; image-foodmatters.tv)
RECIPE: Summer Veggie Time!
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Roasted Cauliflower With Tahini Sauce
1 head cauliflower, broken into bite-sized pieces
2 tsp. olive oil
sea salt
5 ½ oz. tahini
2 (or more) garlic cloves, finely minced
3 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 oz. water
salt and pepper to taste
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DIRECTIONS
Toss cauliflower with the olive oil and season with salt. Spread on large cookie sheet, and bake 12 to 15 minutes at 400 degrees or until cauliflower is softened and golden brown.
Sauté garlic in a little olive oil for 1 or 2 minutes. Mix with the tahini, water and lemon juice in a bowl and whisk until the sauce is creamy (use more or less water and lemon juice to get the consistency you like). Season with salt and pepper.
Put cauliflower in a serving bowl and drizzle with the tahini sauce.
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RESOURCE: Homemade Organic Weed Killers
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10 Homemade Weed Killers
Try organic gardening and lawn care the Cheapskate way: with cheap homemade weed killers, and no expensive pesticides. See how vinegar, boiling water, salt and other simple ingredients and techniques can tackle any weed problem.
FOOD CHEMICALS: FDA Fighting Ban on Antibiotics in Your Meat and Dairy
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FDA Appeals Mandate to Ban Three Animal Antibiotics
Food Safety News, News Desk
After a magistrate judge ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must act on its long-standing proposal to ban the use of three antibiotics in animal feed because they may contribute to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, FDA is appealing the decision.
The ruling came after a coalition of 5 nonprofit organizations filed a suit demanding that FDA take action on an announcement it made 35 years earlier in 1977 that it would ban the use of penicillin and two types of tetracycline in animal feed in light of evidence that this practice was contributing to antibiotic-resistant strains of human pathogens.If upheld, the decision will mandate FDA to follow through with drug company hearings that it must conduct in order to determine whether these drugs are indeed a threat to human health. If the antibiotics are found to be dangerous to humans, FDA must see that they are withdrawn from the market for use in animal feed.Read more »
FOOD—ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS: Toxic Flame-retardant Chemicals in Food?
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Flame Retardant Found in Some Common Foods
WebMD
A common flame retardant is found in many popular foods, including fish and turkey, according to new research. Researchers tested foods such as meats, fish, and peanut butter. Fifteen of the 36 food samples tested had …
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Flame retardant found in common foods
CBS News(CBS News) A new study from researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health has revealed that flame retardant chemicals were found in many samples taken from popular food items.
While less than half of the tested food products had detectible levels of the chemical called hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), 15 out of the 36 items tested positive. HBCD is used in polystyrene foam in the building and construction industry and can be found worldwide in the environment and wildlife, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It has been highly toxic for aquatic organisms, and shown to have troubling effects on animal populations.
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FOOD—ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS: Yes, Virginia, BPA Can Make You Fat
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Can BPA Make You Fat?
Mother Jones, By Tom PhilpottThe food industry likes to portray obesity as a matter of personal responsibility: People who eat too much gain weight, and it’s their own fault.
That view willfully neglects the role that industry marketing, particularly to children, plays on shaping people’s food habits. Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that exposure to certain industrial chemicals in food, often at very low levels, changes the way people metabolize calories and can lead to weight gain. While no one would say that these chemicals, known as obesogens, are the sole cause of rising rates of obesity in the United States, they may well be contributing significantly to it.
One of the most common of these obesogens is bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, the ubiquitous chemical found in everything from the lining of cans to the paper that most receipts are printed on. Research suggest that it’s in the urine of upwards of 90 percent of Americans—evidently at levels high enough to cause harm.
According to University of Missouri biologist and well-known BPA researcher Frederick vom Saal, it also affects how the body deals with fat. “BPA reduces the number of fat cells but programs them to incorporate more fat, so there are fewer but very large fat cells,” vom Saal recently told Environmental Health Perspectives. “BPA exposure is producing in animals the kind of outcomes that we see in humans born light at birth: an increase in abdominal fat and glucose intolerance.”
A study released last week by University of California-Irvine researchers further implicates BPA in the obesity problem—and raises even greater suspicion about a related compound called bisphenol A diglycidyl ether, a combination of BPA and something called epichlorohydrin, this World Health Organization report explains. It’s through BADGE that BPA makes it into in food can linings. UC-Irvine biologist Bruce Blumberg, who coauthored the study, explained to me in an email that the BPA that ends up in our food through can linings gets there when BADGE breaks down into its components.
Blumberg and his team found, though, that BADGE in its whole state is an even more potent obesogen than BPA—and its effects are independent of BPA. Both BADGE and BPA can trigger preadipocytes—which are known as “pre-fat cells” because they can either lie dormant, copy themselves, or turn into fat—to become fat cells. The UC-Irvine researchers tested the effects BADGE and BPA have on stem cells, our bodies’ cellular building blocks that can differentiate into the whole variety of human cells. They found that while BADGE can turn stem cells into fat cells at tiny doses, BPA doesn’t have that effect at all. The result surprised Blumberg and his team, because they went into the study assuming that BADGE wasn’t an obesogen.
How small are the doses at which BADGE does its dirty work? Blumberg told me that the stuff can induce stem cells to become fat cells at levels as low as 3 parts per billion. That’s way, way below the level the FDA has declared the “no observed adverse effect level” for BADGE, which is 15 parts per million, Blumberg wrote in an email.
While numerous studies have measured how much BPA leaches from cans and into our bodies, very little research has been done on our exposure to BADGE in its whole state. But BADGE does appear to leach into food. Blumberg says that one study found it in humans at a level of around 15 parts per billion—significantly more than the 3 parts per billion at which his team saw fat-inducing effects.
Clearly, more research needs to be done to sort out just how BADGE turns stem cells to fat cells at tiny doses. Perhaps it’s the other ingredient in BADGE, epichlorohydrin, that has the fat-transforming effect on stems cells, or perhaps it’s the way BPA and epichlorohydrin interact. But the UC-Irvine study represents yet another bit of evidence that the FDA, which recently reaffirmed its approval of BPA in can linings, isn’t taking the threat of industrial chemicals in food nearly seriously enough. And it also strongly suggests that at least some of our obesity problem stems not from personal choice but rather from decisions made behind closed doors by the food and chemical industries, which have found it profitable to put this stuff in our food containers.
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Also see:
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(photos-reuseit.com;fastcoexist.com;bcaction.org)
