Yves here. Even though I am not a medical or Big Food production person, I still felt like slapping myself on the forehead when I read this article, which describes a not-yet-much-considered reason why consumption of ultra-processed foods are strongly correlated with poor health outcomes. It may be the processing and packaging, as in the chemicals and substances that wind up becoming part of the “food” during its production. A simple example that cuts across ultraprocessed food and many routine items, starting with water, is microplastics introduced via packaging. But even though that is the most obvious and apparently most pervasive type, there are others.
By Shannon Kelleher. Originally published at The New Lede
By Peter Secan on Unsplash
Toxic synthetic chemicals that migrate into ultra-processed foods from packaging, processing equipment and other sources may explain why these foods are so bad for our health, according to a new review article.
In addition to the foods’ poor nutritional value, these chemicals represent an “underappreciated and understudied” explanation for the link between ultra-processed foods and health problems such as obesity and other chronic diseases, the authors conclude in the article, published Friday in the journal Nature Medicine.
“The more (ultra-)processed a foodstuff, the greater its burden of synthetic chemicals generally is,” the authors wrote.
Ultra-processed foods such as candies, hot dogs and packaged soups are industrially made and contain many added ingredients not found in home kitchens, such as stabilizers and added colors and flavors.
Thousands of harmful substances including bisphenols (such as BPA), phthalates, microplastics (tiny plastic particles) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can leach into industrially produced foods during production, as well as from containers in which the foods are stored and while heating them up before they are eaten, according to the article. Emerging research suggests that even the “normal and intended use” of plastic materials that come into contact with foods along their journey to our plates can contaminate these products, the authors wrote.
Research increasingly shows that some of the same synthetic chemicals found in ultra-processed foods, as well as drinking water and other sources, are prevalent in our bodies. About 98% of the US population has PFAS in their blood, while microplastics and even smaller plastic particles (nanoplastics) accumulate in “just about every portion of your body…no organ is spared, really,” Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University, said during a May 15 webinar hosted by the group Beyond Plastics. Plastic particles have been found in everything from the placenta to the brain, lungs and heart, he said.
In a 2024 study, Rajagopalan and colleagues found a link between microplastics in the arteries and risks for heart attacks and strokes.
“The particles looked quite nasty,” he said. “They were jagged particles with sharp edges, very similar to cholesterol.”
Studies estimate that the economic cost of disease attributed to exposure to plastic-related chemicals in the US was about $249 billion in 2018. The estimated health costs that year related just to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a type of PFAS classified as carcinogenic by an international cancer research group, was at least $5.5 billion.
“Shortcomings in chemical risk assessment, management and enforcement” are one reason for the prevalence of chronic diseases linked to exposure to synthetic chemicals, wrote the authors of the new review.
While there may be as many as 100,000 synthetic chemicals that can migrate into foods from packaging, storage containers and processing equipment, most of these substances remain unknown, according to the review.
Studies to assess the safety of the chemicals scientists do know about typically involve animal experiments that test exposure to high doses. However, exposure to even very low doses of some substances that contaminate foods, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals including BPA and phthalates, can lead to obesity and diabetes. And while chemicals are usually studied individually to assess their safety, in the real world people are exposed to mixtures of chemicals, which may have different health effects.
“Current approaches to testing food contact materials are outdated and need to be urgently updated,” said Jane Muncke, the managing director and chief scientific officer of the Food Packaging Forum in Zurich, Switzerland, an author of the review article.
“Reductions in the numbers and types of direct food additives are necessary, as well as the way that food contact chemicals and food contact materials are regulated,” she added. “A post-market review of food contact chemicals that focuses on removing the most hazardous substances known to damage human health… is a good first step.”
“sippy pouches” are one extreme; they are ubiquitous in some homes. always bothered me when a saw kid with blatant ADHD symptoms handed a sippy pouch of yogurt…wondered it if was fractionally causal, whether as a baby or in womb. (same with gender dysmorphia….but i ain’t touching that third rail, lol)
zero plastics exposure is impossible without Herculean efforts.
Why are sippy pouches worse then any other type of plastics?
Because the kids hooked on sippy pouches tend to only eat from sippy pouches.
acidic yogurt. presumably hot (pasteurized) yogurt goes right into the pouch. hot + acidic is theoretically the worst combo
. then throw in that it’s fed to 1 to 5 year olds.
then throw in all the ancillary stuff…high sugar, opportunity cost versus eating real fruit. I am not a dietary saint, but sippy pouches was definitely one thing that i never exposed to the kids
But “less than now” plastic exposure is possible with less-than-Herculean efforts. And some people can give themselves “less than now” plastic exposure starting right now.
add water tubing too– ice machines, soda fountains, frig. dispensers.
attached to our new refrigerator’s manual had a circular with a line buried in the boilerplate text that it meets ISO xyz re. plastics off-gassing.
makes you wonder about the pvc (known suboptimal vector) used in the last 50 years prior.
(as long as there is no lead solder) nice thing about old homes…copper tubes!
How many people change their ice maker filters but neglect the step of discarding the first several pitchers of water due to turbidity, taste and less apparent issues? At least that discarded water might find use watering some non-edible plants.
Packaging should receive more notoriety, too. A recent article highlighted the dangers in black plastic containers. The author, whose name escapes me, says that the plastic includes many nasty substances, including recycled e-wastes! How many people nuke their food in those packages?
The first, highly negative paper was quietly withdrawn due to methodological faults which led to the risks being overestimated by a factor of at least 10.
It doesn’t give the containers a clean bill of health by any means, but the retraction received almost no publicity, in contrast to the original alarmist reporting.
I have never liked the taste of automatic ice-makers from household refrigerators, so I still make ice the old-fashioned way, in a metal tray in the freezer. I find it is worth the hassle as It tastes much better, probably because it has little or no chemicals.
If I were cynical, I would say that McFood industries and MedExtortion industries are in cahoots: the US is flooded with toxic, processed “food” which, as noted, contribute to the terrible health outcomes of the majority of US population. The “food” is rendered even more unhealthy by the chemicals introduced during processing and packaging. (Subsidies to BigAg add more incentive for low-quality food production).
Then, when folks are obese, diabetic, hypertensive, and stricken with cancers etc. MedExtortion can make a killing on the most expensive “health care” and medications in the world.
But then again, all of this might just be a “fortunate” coincidence. But with such strong incentives to continue the status-quo, is it possible to curtail the chemicals we are exposed to?
” …is it possible to curtail the chemicals we are exposed to?”
Organically grown food fresh from the grower might be a solution..
Of course, but you didn’t address the structural incentives NOT to do that.
Every person who is willing to pay for organic food is creating a little incentive structure to YES do that. Enough such people willing to pay the price-in-money for less dangerous food would end up subsidizing and supporting the creation of parallel counter-foodsystems to provide them as an ongoing customer base with those better safer counter-mainstream foods.
Maybe if enough millions of better-food seekers create enough counter-mainstream better-food systems, they will become aware of how many millions of them there are, and they can then begin thinking about how to conquer, re-orient and decontaminate the mainstream food system. And upgrade its quality.
Because blaming the victim is more convenient than prosecuting the villains. Because markets.
Some people find handwaving more convenient than paying a high price for high value.
Other people find high value worth the high price.
Some people are too poor to pay a high price for high value. Or they live in a food desert or food junkyard where there is no high value to be found. Or both.
They can fairly be called victims of the mainstream fake fuud system. Their victimizer villains deserve prosecution.
Other people are rich enough to pay a high price for high value, and they live in food jungles and food rainforests where high value is easy to find and pay for.
But they are too cheap to pay high price for high value. They are victims of their own willful cheapness. They are good for nothing and they support nobody. Let Darwin take them.
I only buy organic food, but unless it is growing season here in SE MI and thus at a farmer’s market it is at my food co-op and some, but not all is wrapped in plastic.
What to do…
“Wrapped in plastic” will not inject as much plastichemicals into the food as “ultraprocessed by machines with many plastic parts” will.
In today’s world, access to “fresh food” is a privilege.
And there will be some Loud Leftists who will jump up and scream ” if everybody can’t have fresh food, then NObody should be allowed to have it, starting right now”. And they will work their hardest to outlaw fresh food.
As ciroc points out, this is not an affordable option for everyone. And I would question even organic growing when it comes to use of plastics. Growing pots? Packaging for seeds, row covers, etc. I don’t know the details of how a farm is certified as Organic but I would be curious to know if the certification looks at use of plastics.
Irrigation lines are all plastic thats sits in the hot sun all day
Yes there is lots of problems with the USDA’s organic labeling laws.
Its better than it used to be though, apparently 20 years ago it was a lot worse.
https://archive.is/avQwf
What’s even worse is how companies are allowed to sell toxic PFAS contaminated sewage sludge as “organic fertilizer” even though using that fertilizer on commercial crops makes the crop NOT organic at all!
Many big cities now package up their toxic sewage sludge and sell it cheap to people who dont know any better.
My childhood county has declared a disaster emergency from sewage sludge put on fields. There have been fish die offs from runoff, at least one cow die and well contamination. The county environmental investigator found the cow’s liver had levels of forever chemicals at 100’s times the levels allowed. They asked our great Gov Abbott of Texas for help and he has ignored them.
Back in the day, home water piping was copper with lead soldered joints. The recommendation was to run your water for awhile before drinking it. Now my pipes are PEX and I still run it before using.
When I was a kiddo we used to drink out of the garden hose, no problem. Now that is not recommended. I will still take a drink from my “toxic” hose but only after I have ran it for a long time. Water at well temperature tastes good.
While processed food packaging might be a problem the crap in the package is worse than the packaging, hands down.
If the plastics were made from hemp oil instead of petroleum, the problem would all but disappear. Not to mention degrading factor in the single digit years as opposed to thousands.
PFAS, again. Woocoodanoode? Well, they did, at least 55+ years ago.
Plastics, PFAS, pesticides, other farm chemicals, food additives, home/furniture finishes, proprietary cleaning and cosmetic synthetics – some have limited study separately, with many concerning results.
It seems the mixture is an experiment on humanity. Backyard gardens and farmers markets sound better.
When I read about the extreme amount of microplastics released through tea bags I realized those little Keurig k-cups have got to be offloading some serious microplastics. The ground coffee is packed and stored in plastic cups and the machines pump hot acidic liquid through the plastic. There is no way this isn’t loading up all the Keurig users with as much plastic as a sea turtle.
But I still want to be a turtle.
About a decade ago, I was at a medical conference where this very topic had its own presentation. I have seen nothing like it available at any conference since that time. Hilariously, all of the other lectures at that particular conference could be used for CME. The one on this topic, no CME available. Priorities. Therefore, very little attendance. CME stands for Continuing Medical Education. We as physicians have to have so many CME points every year to maintain our license.
It was however a very interesting hour for those few of us who attended. Two biochemists sharing raw data from their experiments. A lot of our processed food is very acidic. Ketchup, jams, jellies, mayonnaise, mustard, tomato sauce, all the soft drinks, on and on. In our youth, every last one of these items was packaged in glass jars and bottles. Not so anymore. Everything is now in plastic.
This plastic is a very specific kind of vinyl polymer that is very soluble in multiple organic and inorganic acids. Fascinatingly, the presenter showed just how much of the inner plastic lining is leeched into water stored in the same plastic, and even more importantly, water made to be the same pH of these products. It is absolutely horrifying how much of the inner plastic lining is leeched into these products.
At that very minute in my life was the last time we ever used anything in a plastic bottle. We make our own ketchup and marinara sauce ( I have multiple tomato varieties just for exact purposes like this), our own jam and jelly, our own mayo and mustard. Absolutely anything needing to be stored is in canned glass mason Jars.
For fear of upsetting people, I will not share the data on how much plastic is leeked into food when you microwave your dinner in plastic Tupperware-like containers and even worse in the TV dinner type trays. The amount is staggering.
As they pointed out, all of this changeover from glass bottling to plastic bottling happened in the 1990s. It is pretty amazing to look at so many of the health charts and see all kinds of different medical issues take nosedives right around 1995-2005.
Thank you. You know what is saddest? That thanks to COVID I no longer have the strength to go out, buy raw ingredients from renewable sources, make stews that I can freeze for my family to eat. Instead I (and often they) buy these ready meals in plastic containers you microwave that are almost undoubtedly the ones you refer to.
It doesn’t matter to any of the 3 of us. Parents have done their offspring bit and I don’t intend my genes to be passed on.
IM Doc, I so appreciate your existence!
I started donating blood a couple of years ago. In NZ, there is no payment involved. (They gave me a pair of socks with their logo, and a cup of tea/coffee)
After a couple of years, at 500 ml a time, every 3 months, one will have replaced just about all of their blood (about 5 litres).
After that..,…….an ongoing, easy, free, win-win pick-me-up. (Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger)
It’s like having a car but never changing the oil— just putting aditives (STP) in the oil when the engine make funny noises. (Just Change the oil!)
Donating blood, for me, is similar to getting a blood test (discomfort wise). Except you sit there for 15 minutes, not 2 minutes. Your body then makes new blood.
Health Benefits of Donating Blood: Men & Women Over 40
“Blood donation can have health benefits for men and post-menopausal women. Here’s the science……”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVcYfEAZCxw&t=14s
I asked a Chinese technician at the center about Asian views of donation. She said that if I could happily donate (lose) blood, it was an indicater of good health……..
This is a good idea, but please, no inaccurate health claims. If you have low blood pressure, you can’t donate blood.
Low blood pressure is considered healthy in the young (unless it is super low) since it generally becomes merely normal blood pressure as you age.
there is 1 AUS study re. PFAS in firefighters post-plasma donation.
Plasma donation lowered their PFAS. 1 study, may/may not be scalable to Normies as firefighters are disproportionately exposed to PFAS via fire retardants
There are plenty of compelling reasons to think that the foodstuffs in the package are less than ideal. Fair enough the toxic chemical and toxic nanoparticles make it worse. As long as we are here, that hotdog bun (and any white bread) has a very high glycemic index, the hotdog has oxidized fats, and the franken-animals that it was made from were fed with corn and soybean meal, and other bad things. And then nitrates and nitrites were added. I forgot to mention high omega-6 content in seed oils like soybean and corn. The uric acid downstream from high fructose corn syrup causes systemic inflammation.
“Toxic synthetic chemicals that migrate into ultra-processed foods from packaging, processing equipment and other sources may explain why these foods are so bad for our health, according to a new review article.”
Almost 50 years back, I joined an Allergy Support Group located in one of the hospitals here. We became a chapter of the Human Ecology Action League (HEAL). HEAL was all over the chemicals and processed foods scandal. They also had the nerve to question some of the drugs and medical treatments local MD’s were using. Somebody did not like what we were doing, and we got kicked out of the hospital.
Meetings moved from place to place. Then a chapter in Arizona was accused of being a Terrorist Group. The FBI was supposedly investigating, and the group disbanded.
Maybe relevant: https://apnews.com/article/ultraprocessed-foods-markers-biomarkers-3d19f93573cf36698c7b946fee6e8d18
Markers in blood and urine may reveal how much ultraprocessed food we are eating.
Probably the ultraprocessing, the nutrient-deprivation, and the pollution-addition, all cross-combine to make eachothers’ effects on health to be even worse. Maybe additive, maybe multiplicative.
I used to work as a tool / mold maker, or precision machinist anyway, until I retired some years back. I went for an interview at a company that made food processing / packaging equipment. I admit I was horrified when shown one machine that packages ground meat. There was a unit that made the styrofoam tray (Styrofoam is not quite a typical injection molded product. It is a chemical reaction inside a mold.) It slides into the next station, still piping warm from being made, and a blob of ground meat is plopped onto it, then it is wrapped and labeled. I don’t remember seeing that little plastic sheet that is usually stuck to the tray (after removing the meat at home) being laid into the tray before the meat was dropped. I wonder if that was a later addition to the process to help reduce the migration of plastic from the foam tray to the ground meat. This was around 2012 I think.
My childhood county has declared a disaster emergency from sewage sludge put on fields. There have been fish die offs from runoff, at least one cow die and well contamination. The county environmental investigator found the cow’s liver had levels of forever chemicals at 100’s times the levels allowed. They asked our great Gov Abbott of Texas for help and he has ignored them.
While obviously we should be avoiding mixing food and plastics, there is quite a bit of evidence that consuming a lot of fibre (especially with betaglucanes) significantly reduces the amount of microplastics and forever chemicals absorbed by the body. Sauna and sulporaphane seems to help too, according to Rhonda Patrick.
This has been an RFK Jr. talking point for a while, hope he does something about it now that he’s in the administration.
Growing up as a teenager in the US during the 2010s (pre-COVID, pre-SMO), I used to envy Europe (incl. Russia) for its legislation restricting, if not outright banning, the use of artificial colors and preservatives in its food products. While the lack of such legislation in a money-hungry regime like the USA is understandable, I wondered why other regions in the world didn’t have similar legislation.
But on the subject of microplastics and other forever chemicals, what legislation, if any, does the EU have regarding it? Or is it just as bad as in the US?
This is all much ado about nothing until quality studies can be done. Food studies are hard, but I would think that one might be able to find places where packaging is different, so perhaps large sample observational studies could be done. Just saying “microplastics look jagged” is the root of an unproven hypothesis and nothing more.
there have been so many studies by now about microplastics and other toxins, there is no ambiguity at all. If that one line summary about “jaggedness” wasn’t enough for you, you could easily look up dozens of rigorous studies going into detail on microplastics in blood vessels and organs.
This research has existed for decades and only made the troubles more clear over time – there literally was a book published in 1996 called “Our Stolen Future” about mass chemical poisoning, much due to plastics. Still it’s easy to find mass-market science-y articles with scientists saying the research is unclear.