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High Levels of Weedkiller Found in More Than Half of Sperm Samples, Study Finds
More than 55% of sperm samples from a French infertility clinic contained high levels of glyphosate, the world’s most common weedkiller, raising further questions about the chemical’s impact on reproductive health and overall safety, a new study found.
The new research also found evidence of impacts on DNA and a correlation between glyphosate levels and oxidative stress on seminal plasma, suggesting significant impacts on fertility and reproductive health.
“Taken together, our results suggest a negative impact of glyphosate on human reproductive health and possibly on progeny,” the authors wrote.
Glyphosate is used on a wide range of food crops and in residential settings in the U.S. The most popular glyphosate-based product is Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, which has been at the center of legal and regulatory battles in recent years. U.S. government research from 2023 found genotoxicity in farmers with high levels of the herbicide in their blood, suggesting an association between it and cancer.
Experts Find Cardiometabolic Risk Signs in Kids Young as 3. Here Is the Food They Say Is Linked
The ultra-processed foods your kids eat now may be putting them a greater risk for cardiometabolic problems — like heart attack, stroke and diabetes — in adulthood, a new study suggests.
From this study, families and institutions should take away how early life lays the foundation to problems dealt with in adulthood, said Dr. Stuart Berger, a pediatric cardiologist and chair of the section of cardiology and cardiac surgery for the American Academy of Pediatrics. He was not involved in the research.
The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, analyzed data from more than 1,400 children ages 3 to 6 recruited from schools across seven cities in Spain.
Ultra-processed foods are those that contain ingredients “never or rarely used in kitchens, or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The U.S. Food Industry Has Long Buried the Truth About Their Products. Is That Coming to an End?
Today, more than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages — a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide.
So far, the United States does not require any front-of-package nutrition labels. But that could soon change. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently developing front-of-package labels that it could require corporations to begin printing as early as 2027. Despite significant opposition from food companies, many of which are drawing on big tobacco’s playbook, the FDA is evaluating different mandatory label designs to determine which is most effective at informing consumers, but also which is legal under U.S. corporate free speech laws.
As emerging research identifies a wide range of health impacts linked to the consumption of ultra-processed food, conversations about nutritional labels are growing more urgent. To date, the labels under consideration by the FDA (and implemented in other countries) mark only “nutrients of concern,” like sugar and sodium — not-ultra processed foods. But many advocates say that should change.
UPFs are industrially formulated products made out of substances extracted from foods, like sugars, salts, hydrogenated fats, bulking agents and starches (think sugary breakfast cereals, microwave dinners, soft drinks and packaged snacks). Today, UPFs make up 73% of the U.S. food supply, according to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, and provide the average U.S. adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. But research is increasingly linking UPFs to a whole host of health issues: from cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes to colorectal cancer and depression.
U.S. FDA Tested Retail Milk Samples for Bird Flu in 17 States
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that it tested retail samples of milk and other dairy products in 17 states for viable bird flu virus, providing further details about the locations of the previously disclosed tests. The regulator said it collected 297 samples at retail locations in 17 states between April 18-22, but the retail samples represented products made at 132 processing locations in 38 states.
The FDA had said on May 10 that no live virus was found in retail milk samples. It has also said that pasteurized milk is safe to drink but has cautioned against consuming raw milk.
Scientists, however, have said they believe the outbreak is more widespread based on the FDA’s findings that showed about 20% of retail milk samples contained remnants of the H5N1 virus.
The samples included cottage cheese, cream, and half and half, which is equal parts milk and cream, sour cream and yogurt, in addition to milk.
Nestle to Launch Frozen Pizzas, Other Foods Targeting Users of Weight-Loss Drugs
Nestle is launching a new frozen-food brand, Vital Pursuit, aimed at the growing market of consumers who are using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Over the last year, the buzzy weight loss and diabetes drugs have taken off as more options hit the market and celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk endorse them.
Roughly one in eight adults in the U.S. has used a GLP-1 drug at some point, according to a recent survey from health policy research organization KFF. Roughly half of those Americans, or around 6% of U.S. adults, are currently using one of the treatments. The total number of U.S. consumers taking the medication could soar to 31.5 million, or 9% of the total population, by 2035, according to Morgan Stanley research.
As the drugs’ popularity has soared, investors have grown concerned about what their rise means for food and beverage companies and fast-food chains. People who take the medication typically eat less frequently because they have fewer cravings and desire more protein and less sugary and fatty foods. In October, Walmart’s U.S. CEO John Furner told Bloomberg that people who pick up GLP-1 drugs from its pharmacies are buying less food, typically with fewer calories.
But Nestle sees an opportunity to cater to those consumers through Vital Pursuit.
Farm Groups Brace for EPA Formaldehyde Review
EPA and agricultural groups are clashing over the agency’s position that formaldehyde — a chemical with many industrial uses — poses an “unreasonable” risk to human health.
In a preliminary risk evaluation, the EPA said formaldehyde puts workers and others exposed to it at risk of noncancerous and possibly cancerous respiratory ailments.
Formaldehyde in agriculture is added to animal feed to kill bacteria that might infect livestock. Pork producers use it to prevent viral diseases, and it helps reduce the risk of salmonella contamination in food. It’s also added to fertilizer to boost crop growth over time. Research suggests it may help in the fight against African swine fever, a major threat to the pork industry, according to the American Chemistry Council.
The preliminary findings are an early step toward a more comprehensive review by an EPA scientific advisory board. A separate review will soon begin for uses of formaldehyde in pesticides, EPA said.
Academic and Doctor Chris Van Tulleken: ‘Ultra-Processed Products Are Food That Lies to Us’
Chris van Tulleken has suggested we meet at his local pizza place, Sweet Thursday, in Hackney, east London. If the choice seems counterintuitive for a man with a mission to improve our national diet, he puts me right when we sit down. “Pizza has become emblematic of junk food,” he says, “but proper homemade pizza is very healthy.”
The distinctions Van Tulleken makes go to the heart of his research into the damage that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are causing to our physical and mental health. The contention of his bestselling book Ultra-Processed People is that food engineered by corporations with additives and emulsifiers and modified starches essentially “hacks our brains,” disrupting the normal regulation of appetite. It tricks us into eating more by being softer, slicker, saltier, sweeter than whole foods and it is that trillion-dollar fact, his evidence suggests, which is driving the obesity epidemic.
In the course of his deep research, he acts as a guinea pig for these theories (with the occasional help of his twin brother, Xand, also a doctor and, because they share a genetic makeup, his built-in control group). His months of eating badly served to show that what he was consuming was not food, it was, as one academic colleague kept insisting to him, “an industrially processed edible substance.” Or “food that lies to us.”
Latin America Labels Ultra-Processed Foods. Will the U.S. Follow?
Latin America is leading the world in a movement to print nutritional warning labels on the fronts of food packages. Currently, the labels warn when a food product exceeds a consumer’s daily recommended value of any “nutrient of concern” — namely, sugar, salt or saturated fat (some countries have added trans fats, artificial sweeteners and caffeine). But research led by scientists across the continent is increasingly pointing towards another factor consumers may want to consider: how processed a food is.
Ultra-processed foods make up an increasingly large share of the average Latin American consumer’s diet. These industrially formulated products, which are often high in fats, starches, sugars and additives (like flavorings, colorings and preservatives), were first named and studied by Brazilian researchers in the early 2000s.
Today, many Latin Americans get 20% to 30% of their daily calories from ultra-processed products (in the United States, the average is even higher — upwards of 60%). As the continent leads global research into the health impacts of ultra-processed foods, countries there are also taking steps to ensure labels end up on all ultra-processed products, warning consumers of these harms.
The Plastic in Your Food That’s Playing Havoc With Your Gut Health
Over the past 10 years, the medical community has become progressively alarmed by the sheer ubiquity of micro and nanoplastics, tiny plastic particles which have been found in their thousands in food, bottled water, and increasingly in our own bodies.
Recent medical studies have detected the presence of plastic in blood samples, breast milk, placenta tissue, and even people’s lungs.
So when Raffaele Marfella, a surgeon and professor of internal medicine at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples, and his colleagues conducted a study to examine plaque taken from the arteries of people with cardiovascular disease, they were not surprised to find that half of the samples contained miniature fragments of plastic.
But a closer look at the data indicated a concerning trend — the patients who had accumulated plastic within their arteries all had much more advanced disease. By monitoring them over the next three years, they found that these people were four and a half times more likely to have died or experienced a nonfatal stroke, compared with patients whose samples did not contain any plastic.
It is one of the first studies to have identified a link between plastic deposition and declining human health. But we still need to learn far more about how and why plastic can damage the human body, and most crucially of all, what to do about it.
