Reposting from TUK. It seems food handling is of importance as well as food provenance. No mention whether those tested all ate at junk food establishments, or whether the levels of phthalate were high in restaurants serving real food?
Eating out increases levels of phthalates in the body, study finds
US research discovers 35% increase in levels of chemical linked to disease in those who dined at restaurants the previous day
Eating at restaurants and fast food chains may increase exposure to potentially harmful hormone-disrupting chemicals used to increase the flexibility and durability of plastic, a study has found.
Researchers investigating levels of phthalates in the human body, which have been linked to asthma, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and fertility issues in the past few years, were found to be nearly 35% higher in participants who had eaten out the previous day compared with those who stayed at home.
Phthalates are binding agents frequently used in food packaging as well as a number of other products including flooring, adhesives soaps and shampoos, and some forms of the chemical have been banned from children’s products in the US.
Phthalates are everywhere, and the health risks are worrying. How bad are they really?
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Certain foods, including burgers and sandwiches, were linked to higher phthalate levels in the study, but only if purchased at a fast-food outlet, restaurant or cafe.
The association was especially strong for teenagers, researchers found. Adolescents who frequently ate at fast-food outlets while out with their friends had 55% higher levels of the chemicals than young people eating at home.
Researcher Dr Ami Zota, from George Washington University in Washington DC, said: “This study suggests food prepared at home is less likely to contain high levels of phthalates, chemicals linked to fertility problems, pregnancy complications and other health issues.
“Our findings suggest that dining out may be an important, and previously under-recognised, source of exposure to phthalates for the US population.”
The scientists analysed data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected between 2005 and 2014.
A total of 10,253 people were asked to recall what they ate and where their food came from over the previous 24 hours. Levels of phthalate biomarkers were measured in each participant’s urine.
Of the whole group, 61% reported dining out the previous day. The association between phthalate exposure and dining out was significant across all age groups, but especially strong for young people, said the researchers.
The findings are reported in the journal Environment International.
Lead author Dr Julia Varshavsky, from the University of California at Berkeley, said: “Pregnant women, children and teens are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals, so it’s important to find ways to limit their exposures.
“Future studies should investigate the most effective interventions to remove phthalates from the food supply.”
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It's absolutely mad isn't it. Everyone knows it's a problem and nobody wants to do anything about it. Surely the solution is incredibly simple: stop putting plastics everywhere. I realise that plastics have their place, but we don't need absolutely everything we eat to be wrapped in 15 layers of polyethylene, styrofoam, and who-knows-what. Whatever was wrong with re-usable glass bottles or compostable paper bags? Lifecycle cost for plastic food containers is higher than either of these, so there isn't even an economic argument. Why is anyone doing it? It's weird.
Another poster mentioned "Health and Safety" rules about wrapping fish+chips in newspaper, which ironically is probably a lot safer than putting stuff in clingwrap, especially since modern inks are designed to be non-toxic and the food never actually touches the print anyway.
Oh I so agree with you TAT ( too long a name. I hope you don't mind )
I've recently bought reusable sandwich wraps and they keep the food extremely well.
We are drowning in plastic. I've started only buying loose fruit and veg if I can. I've had people at the till telling me to put it in bags !!!!!!!
I go to the local fruit and veg shop when I can but it's hard for me with back problems to carry the stuff back to my car . It's not always the freshest either as their turnover is small.
I am glad I am finding others on here who think like I do. Not always the case on some of the HU forums.
I do worry sometimes about the levels of chemicals / plastics and other artificial ingredients in the food we consume. Many food additives have not been around long enough for their long-term effects to be clearly understood. Some things may take up to 30 years to manifest themselves. The more we look into this, the more we are beginning to see how potentially harmful some of this stuff can be. But we demand cheap and readily available processed foods, and the food giants demand ever-increasing profits, as of course do the pharmaceutical companies that produce the additives in the first place. Is there an answer?? Money talks very loudly - but maybe we can keep a closer eye on what goes into what we put in our mouths.
I think the issue of food contamination is all along the food chain, with regard to exposure to agri-chemicals, & phytate exposure increases between processing & serving junk "food".
Recent reports suggested US teenagers had high levels of phytate*, So many teenagers here & elsewhere are brought up to see junk food as a normal part of their diet, & socialise around places selling trash. I was once accused of child cruelty for not taking my son to McDeath.
>> I was once accused of child cruelty for not taking my son to McDeath.
Are you serious?
Stop the planet, I want to get off.
As for agri-chemicals: anionic polyacrylamide has become very popular in the last decade or two as a soil conditioner. It increases water-holding capacity and improves soil texture. It's normally used only in tiny amounts (about 0.1g per square meter) but inevitably the product contains a certain amount of acrylamide monomer, and I imagine over a period of decades it will depolymerize.
Yup! He was denied the happy meal, as well as the prospect of obesity, diabetes & cancer.
Anionic polyacrylamides is a new chemical to me, having studied EVS a long time ago. I wonder if it's added as unevenly as many chemicals, & how frequently?
When folks tell me how cheap their shopping is, I just think how lacking in nutrients it will be & how much additional c**p their fruit & veg is likely contain.
I'm not philosophically opposed to agrichemicals: very occasionally, the judicious application of technology is the right approach, although I've never used chemicals designed to kill - as a farmer, I want MORE life, not less! For example if your soil lacks phosphorus or manganese, there's no realistic way to fix that except to import and apply the missing minerals; however, in that situation, the first order of business is to establish plants that will proceed to "mine" those elements from subsoil.
A-PAM is almost certainly misused, as most agrichemicals are. Ordinarily, it's a one-off treatment applied to soils that are disastrously damaged. I've used it myself: it's a very effective way of jumpstarting ground cover on land that is otherwise hopelessly degraded and would be difficult to repair in any other way. It gives pioneer plants a foothold, and as they grow they provide habitat for animals and a succession of other plants. Typically you apply it at a minimum dose (200-300g per hectare) along with lime and calcium sulphate, and then you never need to use it again, ever: the natural cycles resume and the soil starts to repair itself. It's a calculated tradeoff: I'm conscious of the potentially toxic effects of the monomer, I assume the worst possible case of complete depolymerization and/or unknown effects of the polymer itself, and I take a gamble on nature's ability to deal with modest amounts of such things (a few milligrams per tonne of soil).
So far, the fact that I see nature re-establishing itself on dead land gives me hope that I'm doing the right thing. A good marker is the presence of earthworms and toads - those animals are extraordinarily sensitive to pollutants, so if they're thriving, things are probably OK. I have a lot of both!
I've seen videos of it being applied in China and they clearly have no idea how to use it - they just sort of scatter handfuls of it like it's fertilizer, I would guess 10-20x the recommended application rate. Applied excessively, it can actually cause serious damage to the soil. Since they continue to use bare-soil cultivation (instead of using APAM to facilitate re-vegetation) the chemical actually causes INCREASED erosion, and they have to apply it again as subsoil is exposed ... along with the usual complement of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
>> When folks tell me how cheap their shopping is...
I've never understood this attitude. How important is your own body? Do these people really place such a low value on it?
Thanks for the information, it's really interesting having been out of the soil loop for some time. Oddly, I had a chat last week about plant succession, but in relation to volcanoes. Soil erosion is certainly a serious thing that farmers forget about, & one that's been an issue here with loss of hedgerows & industrial scale farming.
Great that you have worms & toads. Invertebrates are essential for natural soil health, & toads for pest control. It's a pity that's not better recognised & beneficial critters' encouraged.
People are fooled by advertising & the rather loose & misleading health advice that's bandied about. With the current recession & issues here, so many people can't afford to think about nutrition as much as filling up, & then cheap eats seems more attractive. I read an article that turned out to be an advert, last week, comparing the cheapest supermarket prices to where I shop. I don't think one standard UK item was on the regular foods I buy, & there was no mention of nutrition, environmental, chemical, or welfare standards for the critters sold or the employees working for the cheap company.
You should get back into it, it's just loads of fun
I'm starting to realise why older cultures associated nature with mystical forces, and the mastery of it as equivalent to 'magic'. The amount of raw power flowing through a functioning ecosystem is phenomenal - even if you assume it's capturing only a fraction of incoming solar energy, it's still several hundred kilowatts per hectare. On my modest plot I'm driving a vast half-megawatt organic engine along the path I choose. It's pretty exhilarating (and it gives you a big incentive not to make mistakes).
The modern zeitgeist is that nature is something to be wrestled with and opposed. I think people who promote this view just don't grasp the physics of the situation. Don't bring a pointy stick to a nuclear war would be the appropriate analogy, I think.
I love having animals turn up on my place. They literally converge upon it as a refuge from the chemical-blasted wasteland around me. I even found a turtle the other day, having a nap under a pile of mulch.
As for advertising: I think the most pernicious aspect is that people are told that they can't AFFORD the good stuff, that it is somehow a waste of money to spend more than the bare minimum. In other words, it's morally WRONG to buy high-quality food because, you know, you're a busy working mum, you have a limited budget, and you need to put plenty of food on the kids' plates ... oh, and you need to buy the kids the latest iPhone so they don't get teased at school, so don't waste your money on pointless things, mum! The logic is all messed up, but that's the picture that gets painted.
I was reading somewhere that "staples", eg., white bread, is sold at below cost in order to get lots of bodies into the stores so that they'll buy other low-end crap (burgers, nuggets, etc) which carries an actual markup.
The 'you're not rich so you must eat garbage' argument is only marginally true at best. If you calculate the from-scratch prices for bargain-basement foods, it turns out you can make your own chicken nuggets, chips, sausages, burgers and suchlike for approximately the same price as the packaged ones. Anyone can grow things like microgreens and beanshoots with very little effort, space, or investment (or skill!). I'm not suggesting it would be ideal to live on burgers, homemade or otherwise, but a proper meat patty in a home-baked bun with homegrown salad on it has got to be better for you than the chemical-laced 8-for-a-pound variety.
I'm still disturbed by looking at soil micro-organisms through a microscope & examining soil horizons on foggy or wet days in winter! Last time I looked at soil analysis was for a friend's vineyard in California, which was far nicer!
Most people are wholly unaware of how important our soil ecosystems are, & how fragile. It offends me that Americans call the essential substrate our food comes from dirt. It seems as though you live somewhere tropical, so would have a far faster nutrient cycle, but back here, it can take over 100 years to form less than 1cm of soil, & the magic stuff is generally abused. I have a friend who grows 90% of his food on two vegan organic allotments, so it's amazing what can be done with a little know how,
Humans revel in destruction, which is a pretty poor attitude, & one that'll soon bite us in the bum.I keep reading about impending tipping points, which is potentially scary. Take a look at George Monbiots website, & Resurgence if you're interested in environmental philosophy. Some's a bit hippy, but good food for thought.
Please post some pics of your critters, I'd love to see them.
You're right about the logic behind eating. I'm oon a limited income, but know what I put in my body is the most important thing I can do, so make savings elsewhere. Most people don;t understand this is sensible, even when I explain this. Having been a single parent, I've worn shoes with holes in rather than feed my Small Person crap, yet I know professional couples who shop at the cheapest outlets so they can continue smoking & drinking every day.
I think what you're referring to is known as a loss leader, that tempts people in somewhere for cheap goods.
People want fast food c**p, so they can cook & eat quickly, so there's more time to watch television & see adverts for more cheap c**p whilst eating more of it, Crazy world!
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Food additives in poll revealed. 
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