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Ultra-Processed Foods Linked to Early Death, Mental Disorders
Ultra-processed foods have been linked to a higher risk of more than 30 health conditions, a new study has found. These range from all-cause mortality, cancer, anxiety, mood disorders, heart disease and obesity. The study, published in The BMJ, is an umbrella review of 45 meta-analyses, drawing on data from nearly 10 million people.
“While nutrients like salt, sugar, and fat will always be important to consider, there’s increasing evidence that other aspects of ultra-processed foods, such as additives (like emulsifiers and flavorings) and the way they’re made (using high temperatures and breaking down food particles), may also affect our health in various ways, including through inflammatory processes and the (related) gut microbiome,” Melissa Lane, an associate research fellow at Deakin University in Australia and first author on the paper, told Newsweek.
Overall, the analysis showed that eating ultra-processed foods was associated with an increased risk of 32 adverse health outcomes, including a 40 to 53% increased risk of anxiety and common mental disorders, a 50% increased risk of cardiovascular disease-related deaths and a 12% greater risk of Type 2 diabetes.
There was also strong evidence for a 21% increased risk of all-cause mortality, a 22% increased risk of depression and a 40 to 66% increased risk of heart disease-related death, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and sleep problems.
After Protests, U.S. Agency Drops Plan to Limit Pesticide Use Report
After protests from hundreds of scientists, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is dropping plans to scale back reporting to a widely used database that tracks the use of approximately 400 agricultural chemicals in the United States.
Researchers are welcoming the agency’s decision, announced this week, to reverse moves to reduce the number of chemicals tracked by the database and to release updates less frequently. “It probably wasn’t easy to reverse a decision like this, but they did it to their credit,” says Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. He hopes the move “brings attention to more researchers that we have this amazing scientific resource at our fingertips.”
The controversy was rooted in a USGS decision to reduce the scope of the 2019 edition of its Agricultural Pesticide-use Estimates and Maps data, which since 1992 had provided county-level data on the use of chemicals to control fungi, weeds, insects, and other pests. The agency first reduced the number of tracked chemicals to 72, then said it would cease the annual release of preliminary pesticide use data and instead release final data every 5 years.
On February 27, USGS quietly reversed course. A note on the agency’s website states it will resume the annual publication of preliminary data for 400 compounds — and that the 2018–22 data will be published in 2025. The news was first reported by Undark.
Big Companies, Like Nestlé, Are Funding Health Research in South Africa — Why This Is Wrong
In 2021, the director of the African Research University Alliance Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of Pretoria was appointed to the board of the transnational food corporation Nestlé.
At the time a group of more than 200 senior academics wrote an open letter, about conflicts of interest. Nestlé’s portfolio of foods, by its own admission, includes more than 60% that don’t meet the definition of healthy products.
In December last year, the same center announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Nestlé. It signaled their intent to “forge a transformative partnership” to shape “the future of food and nutrition research and education” and transform “Africa’s food systems.”
This is not an isolated case. Across African universities, companies with products that are harmful to health fund health-related research and education.
A 2023 Lancet Commission reports that “just four industry sectors already account for at least a third of global deaths”, one of which is unhealthy food. These four industry sectors are expanding their markets in Africa and elsewhere in the global south where the inadequate regulation of the sales and marketing of unhealthy foods, drinks, alcohol, tobacco and agrichemical products provides opportunities for corporations to exploit.
Yogurts Can Now Make Limited Claim That They Lower Type 2 Diabetes Risk, FDA Says
In a decision nearly five years in the making, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has decided that yogurts can now make a limited claim that the food may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, the federal agency concluded Friday.
The decision marks the first-ever qualified health claim the federal agency has issued for yogurt.
In the case of yogurt, the claim states that according to limited scientific evidence, “eating yogurt regularly, at least 2 cups (3 servings) per week,” may reduce the risk of the disease that affects about 38 million people in the U.S. and roughly 462 million individuals worldwide.
Made from milk fermented with the bacteria, or probiotics, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, yogurt is rich in calcium, protein, B vitamins and minerals, including magnesium, phosphorus and potassium.
Why Now Is the Time to Reinvent Processed Foods
Processed foods are once again a hot topic. Between catastrophic externalized costs, new diet drugs, rampant price gouging and a growing wave of regulations, processed foods are attracting all the wrong attention. But processing may also be key to reinvigorating the best and brightest trends in the food industry.
People have processed food since the dawn of time. Nixtamalizing corn, stomping grapes into wine, smoking fish. Processing food makes us human. But in recent decades, as food processing has become more industrialized and consolidated among ever fewer manufacturers and retailers, things have gotten out of control.
Much of our food processing infrastructure was originally underwritten by federal contracts for provisions needed to feed the troops during WW2. The grocery industry is to this day a permanent wartime economy. The agribusiness sector solidified during the post-war period to ensure cheap, calorie-dense, convenient and abundant food for all. Decades later, this stunning success has led to the widespread consumption of ultra-processed food (UPFs). It has also wrought enormous damage to human health and the environment.
Take Action: Federal Food Program Asked to Stop Feeding Children Pesticides That Contribute to Obesity
With 14.7 million children and adolescents in the U.S. recognized as obese by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the established connection with endocrine-disrupting contaminants, including many pesticides, Beyond Pesticides is calling on federal food assistance programs to go organic.
While childhood obesity is recognized as a serious problem, the National School Lunch Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — although improved by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 — still provides lunches laced with obesogenic pesticides. To take meaningful steps against childhood obesity, school lunches must be organic. The program served 4.9 billion meals in fiscal year 2022 in over 100,000 public and nonprofit schools, grades Pre-Kindergarten-12.
Contrary to popular opinion, the blame for the obesity epidemic cannot be attributed solely to diet and exercise broadly but relates directly to pesticide and toxic chemical exposures, including residues in food, that may lead to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney failure, a breakdown of cartilage and bone within joints, and other metabolic disorders.
An increasing body of research shows that exposure to certain pesticides and environmental contaminants initiates various changes in metabolism leading to obesity — not only in the exposed person but also in offspring. According to medical researchers, obesity “is a complex disease which has reached pandemic dimensions” and has multigenerational effects. The prevalence of obesity increased three-fold from 1980 to 2019.
Out With the Animal Cruelty. In With … Mushrooms? These Farmers Are Leaving Factory Farming Behind
Farmer Tom Lim had been raising poultry for 20 years when the company he worked for as a contractor terminated him without warning, leaving him saddled with debt and unsure of where to turn. “My heart just dropped,” he said. “I didn’t know where to make money to pay off our loans.”
Lim was born in rural Cambodia, where his parents tended rice fields with water buffalos, raised a smattering of chickens and grew vegetables around their home. That lifestyle shaped his love of farming but was a far cry from what he found himself doing as an adult, raising 540,000 chickens a year in North Carolina for Pilgrim’s Pride, one of the largest meat producers in the U.S. that supplies chicken to Walmart, Costco and KFC.
The longer he stayed in industrial-scale poultry farming, the more aware Lim became that it “hurt the environment” and that “many poultry farmers get sick due to breathing inside the [chicken] house”, he said, referencing the ways that the ammonia in factory-farmed chicken waste harms ecosystems and human health alike.
Lim’s predicament is an increasingly common one for farmers in the U.S., where about a quarter of all farm operations are in debt and family farms are increasingly bought up by large agribusinesses. Many of the small farms that do remain are like Lim’s, running operations where growers take their orders from multinational agriculture companies, which often prioritize the bottom line over the health and wellbeing of growers, their animals, and the water and land they depend on.
Bee-Harming Neonicotinoid Use ‘Makes a Mockery’ of Ban
Sugar beet farmers have the green light to use a banned pesticide deadly to bees following a forecast that a virus could sweep through their crops. Emergency authorization to use neonicotinoids was given in January but rested on a threat level being met. Supplier British Sugar said the predicted infection rate was now 83% of crop and was “historically high.”
Neonicotinoids are toxic to pollinating bees, disrupting their ability to navigate and reproduce. But some sugar beet farmers say the pesticides are needed to protect against the disease known as virus yellows.
But environmentalists and wildlife campaigners have warned that the decision will be devastating to bees and pointed out that the government had now approved neonicotinoid use for four consecutive years.
Richard Benwell, the CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “To have four emergency authorizations in a row makes a mockery of the ban, and now the trigger has been reached, nature will once again have to endure exposure to this harmful chemical.”
Food Execs Signal a Strong Appetite for M&A in 2024
Major food makers are poised to accelerate M&A in 2024, with companies such as Mondelēz International claiming to be in “active” discussions.
Once known for consummating big transformational deals, the food and beverage sector has been focused during the last six years on so-called “bolt-on” transactions. These purchases give companies a deeper presence in certain categories without saddling their businesses with huge amounts of debt or the complexities of integrating a new business.
Dirk Van de Put, CEO of Mondelez, said the Oreo and Ritz manufacturer, which has completed nine acquisitions since 2018 including Tate’s Bake Shop, Perfect Snacks and Clif Bar, looks at 35 or 40 potential M&A targets at the beginning of each year and, if necessary, starts establishing a relationship to build trust and familiarity with the smaller businesses. The majority of them never lead to a deal.
