As if it weren’t already enough of a headache to find
non-toxic, safe and healthy food to eat, a recent study published in the
journal Environmental Health Perspective reveals
that the packaging used for certain food products can impact hormones.
Researchers for the study found that people who eat more fast food have
significantly increased rates of phthalates—industrial chemicals used to
make plastics—in their systems. The study authors attribute the trend
to chemicals seeping from plastic packaging into foods.
The
study asked 8,877 participants in the National Health and Nutrition
Examinations Surveys between 2003 and 2010 to report all the food they
had eaten within last 24 hours. Participants also donated a urine sample
to the study. Researchers tested each urine sample for the industrial
chemicals di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), diisononyl phthalate (DiNP)
and bisphenol A (BPA)—all of which are suspected to impact health and
hormones.
The results showed people for whom fast food
made up 35% or more of their daily food consumption had higher rates of
DEHP (24%) and DiNP (40%), compared to those who did not eat fast food.
There was no significant correlation between BPA and fast food.
Fast foods often comes in packaging that contains phthalates, as do a number of processed grocery store items, according to the American Chemistry Council.
While the study did not show a correlation between BPA in the blood and fast-food consumption, researchers concluded in
2008 that plastics containing BPA can and do seep into foods, and then
into the bloodstream. Since then, BPA has been banned by many food
packaging manufacturers, which could potentially explain its absence in
the recent study.
A Time article on
April 13 discussed the recent study results in detail, and spoke with
study author Ami Zota, an assistant professor of environmental and
occupational health at the George Washington University Milken Institute
School of Public Health. Zota told Time,"The same range of
concentrations measured in this [group] overlaps with the range of
concentrations that have been measured in some of epidemiological
studies that find adverse health effects.”
Thanks to
efforts to educate the public that date back to the '50s, most people
now know chemicals are entering our food supply in a number of ways.
Studies continue to link chemicals with common cancers, like breast cancers, as
well as other health issues like reproductive abnormalities in men and
women. Despite mass efforts to rein in the big companies like Monsanto
that are responsible for the creation of many chemical poisons,
toxins continue to make their way into our food supply all the time via
packaging, pesticides sprayed on crops, and antibiotics and hormones
given to poultry, pigs and cattle in industrial factory farm operations.
Many
people are generally aware that fast food is unhealthy (toxic chemicals
aside, fast food contributes to high rates of diabetes, heart disease
and obesity), and it’s likely the average person has heard that
processed foods contain cancer-causing carcinogens. Still, Americans
continue to consume these foods at perversely high rates. According to
the United States Healthful Food Council, the
average American adult buys a meal or snack from a restaurant 5.8 times
a week and more than 30 percent of children eat fast food on any given
day. Americans spend an average of $100 billion on fast food each year.
Ami Zota spoke to this piece of the puzzle in the Time interview, which points out that “about a third of all the people in the study had eaten fast food in the prior day.”
“That’s a lot,” Zota said. “That alone tells you the public health impact of this type of food preparation.”
Zota
also told Time that in addition to chemicals leaching into food through
packaging, “plastic gloves and conveyer belts could also be sources.”
The
study concludes that, “Fast food may be a source of exposure to DEHP
and DiNP. These results, if confirmed, could inform individual and
regulatory exposure reduction strategies.” Alternet
No comments:
Post a Comment