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Category: Industrially Produced Edible Substance

Industrial products engineered and processed to look like food for human consumption. Accepted by nutritionists to unhealthy for human consumption, causing addiction, weight gain, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc.

How Industrially Produced Edible Substances took over your shopping basket, and what are they doing to us?

2023-11-04 /

It’s cheap, attractive and convenient, and we eat it every day – it’s difficult not to. But is ultra-processed food making us ill and driving the global obesity crisis?

Bee Wilson, via The Guardian »

Ultra-processed foods (or UPF) now account for more than half of all the calories eaten in the UK and US, and other countries are fast catching up. UPFs are now simply part of the flavour of modern life. These foods are convenient, affordable, highly profitable, strongly flavoured, aggressively marketed – and on sale in supermarkets everywhere.

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You might say that ultra-processed is just a pompous way to describe many of your normal, everyday pleasures. It could be your morning bowl of Cheerios or your evening pot of flavoured yoghurt. It’s savoury snacks and sweet baked goods. It’s chicken nuggets or vegan hotdogs, as the case may be. It’s the doughnut you buy when you are being indulgent, and the premium protein bar you eat at the gym for a quick energy boost. It’s the long-life almond milk in your coffee and the Diet Coke you drink in the afternoon. Consumed in isolation and moderation, each of these products may be perfectly wholesome. With their long shelf life, ultra-processed foods are designed to be microbiologically safe. The question is what happens to our bodies when UPFs become as prevalent as they are at the moment.

Evidence now suggests that diets heavy in UPFs can cause overeating and obesity. Consumers may blame themselves for overindulging in these foods, but what if it is in the nature of these products to be overeaten?

Listen to the podcast version of this article »

98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year

2023-09-20 /

The Guardian »

Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology – including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations – reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO’s guidelines.

The worst hit country in Europe is North Macedonia. Almost two-thirds of people across the country live in areas with more than four times the WHO guidelines for PM2.5, while four areas were found to have air pollution almost six times the figure, including in its capital, Skopje.

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Traffic, industry, domestic heating and agriculture are the main sources of PM2.5 and the impact is often felt disproportionately by the poorest communities. »

Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

2023-08-21 /

Kellogg’s want the right to keep misleading customers and continue to manufacture industrial products engineered and processed to look like food for human consumption. Ultra-processed products that are made to look like food are widely accepted by nutritionists to be unhealthy for human consumption, causing addiction, weight gain, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases.

Stat »

A 2019 policy requires companies that make unhealthy foods to include warning labels on the front of any boxes they sell in Mexico to educate consumers about things like excess sugar and fat. Any food with a warning label — like Kellogg’s Fruit Loops or its Frosted Flakes, which typically contain more than 37 grams of added sugar in a 100-gram serving — is also banned from including a mascot on its packaging.

Kellogg’s, the company behind the mascots known in the United States as Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam, has already sued the Mexican government over the labeling policy.

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U.S. regulators are considering a similar policy, because they say it will help consumers make healthier decisions. The details haven’t been ironed out yet — the Food and Drug Administration just announced it is studying the idea.

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on planet Earth

2023-08-04 /

The Guardian (2018) »

The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world.

The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This month’s heat is likely the hottest Earth has been in about 120,000 years, easily the hottest of human civilization [Updated]

2023-07-25 /
New scientific report identifies "the fingerprints of climate change"

Note: Clicking the above image will load and play the video from YouTube.

Euronews »

The new study by World Weather Attribution – a research group comprised of international climatologists – has found that the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing build up of warming gases in the air.

These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the potential to occur every five years or so.

A stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gases, also made the European heat wave 2.5 degrees Celsius hotter, the one in the United States and Mexico 2 degrees Celsius warmer and the one in China one 1 degree Celsius hotter, the study found.

Study finds human-caused climate change a definitive factor in brutal heat waves

Note: Clicking the above image will load and play the video from YouTube.

Increasing monopoly power poses a threat to Canada’s post-pandemic economic recovery

2023-07-16 /

The Conversation »

The grocery industry is dominated by five major players — Loblaws, Metro, Empire (the owner of Sobeys), Walmart and Costco. These five companies account for over three-quarters of all food sales in Canada.

The Bureau recommended four policies to encourage competition in the sector. These include establishing a grocery innovation strategy, encouraging new independent and international players, introducing legislation for consistent unit pricing and limiting property controls.

WHO releases reports on artificial sweetener aspartame and cancer risk

2023-07-13 /

NBC »

The World Health Organization’s cancer research group on Thursday said that it was categorizing the common artificial sweetener found in Diet Coke and other sugar-free foods and drinks as a possible carcinogen, but the agency’s food safety group said that the evidence wasn’t convincing and that the compound could still be consumed safely in fairly high amounts.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it did not agree that aspartame should be categorized as a possible carcinogen.

“Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. FDA scientists do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions,” the FDA said in a statement.

Related » The Guardian | Le Monde | NY Times | CBC | NY Times | Stat

Who employs your doctor? If you are in the U.S., increasingly it’s a private equity firm

2023-07-13 /

A new study by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth finds that private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in some U.S. markets.

Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, writing in the NY Times »

In more than a quarter of local markets — in places like Tucson, Ariz.; Columbus, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. — a single private equity firm owned more than 30 percent of practices in a given specialty in 2021. In 13 percent of the markets, the firms owned groups employing more than half the local specialists.

The medical groups were associated with higher prices in their respective markets, particularly when they controlled a dominant share, according to a paper by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. When a firm controlled more than 30 percent of the market, the cost of care in three specialties — gastroenterology, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology — increased by double digits.

Eating microwave popcorn increases the level of PFAS in body

2023-06-23 /

UCLA Health »

Studies have linked PFAS to adverse health effects, including high blood pressure, decreased fertility in women, liver damage, cancer, low birthweight and an increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease. The use of some of the more common PFAS was gradually phased out in the United States between 2000 and 2015. However, other variations of the chemicals have taken their place. The newer PFAS tend to have shorter chains of the carbon-fluorine bond, and are thus more rapidly eliminated from the body. But the FDA says they continue to present a concern for human health.

Research suggests that people who regularly consume microwave popcorn have markedly higher levels of PFAS in their bodies. A study published in 2019 analyzed a decade of data about the eating habits of 10,000 people, which was collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2003 and 2014. Blood samples from the study participants were also collected. The researchers found that people who ate microwave popcorn every day over the course of a year had levels of PFAS that were up to 63% higher than average.

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