Genetic Maize

Brownfield Ag News America had an interesting blurb on Thurs Feb 12: Maryland may ban certain food colorings.

The Maryland bills deal with the dyes: Blue 1; Blue 2; Green 3; Orange B; Red 3; Red 40; Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. One of the bills would prohibit public schools and child care facilities from providing food with the coloring in it. The second bill would require a label warning: The color additives in this food may cause hyperactivity and behavior problems in some children. Use of the dyes would be banned in the state in 2012.

The food industry opposes the bill saying the link to ADHD is based on flawed research while the Food and Drug Administration states there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the colorings cause hyperactivity.

I’m rather conflicted about this. On the one hand, there really isn’t any science backing the idea that dye causes ADHD, although perhaps there is a genetic predisposition that is exacerbated by the dye. There are studies showing a link between dye and hyperactivity – is that enough of a reason to ban it? Sugars cause tooth decay and diabetes, high-fat and high-sodium foods cause heart disease… if we ban one, shouldn’t we ban, restrict use of, or at least paste a warning label on the others?
On the other hand, do we need food dye? Shouldn’t food just be the color it is? What about other additives, like sodium benzoate? Do we need those more or less than, say, trans-fats?
Risk benefit analysis may tell us the answer, but we need regulators to actually think through it. (more…)

In Something tastes bad…, I questioned IATP’s use of the Env. Health paper Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar. The paper described an experiment that took place in 2005. Renee Dufault, the lead author, described how she obtained samples of high fructose corn syrup and tested them for mercury. When she went back for more samples, her employer (the FDA) asked her to switch to a different project, so no more tests have been conducted. We can only hope that increased funding for the FDA will result from the recent elections and in response to the many recent threats, particularly peanut butter!

Renee has offered to discuss her experiment, her interactions with the FDA, and her reaction to the IATP report. I heartily agree with her call for more testing, but extend the call beyond mercury to include other contaminants, chemical and biological. I also agree that removing mercury from our environment should be top priority, but still feel that mercury exposure from coal-burning power plants is far more dangerous due to quantity than mercury from chlor-alkali plants. However, it certainly couldn’t hurt to switch chlor-alkali plants over to newer (non-mercury) technology! (more…)

When I first read reports of mercury in corn syrup, I was first shocked, then concerned, then skeptical. Janet (qualifications unknown) at Ethicurean described the source of the mercury (in fact, she was picked up by Huffington Post):

How did the heavy metal get in there? In making HFCS — that “natural” sweetener, as the Corn Refiners Associaton [sic] likes to call it — caustic soda is one ingredient used to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. Apparently most caustic soda for years has been produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants, where it can be contaminated with mercury that it passes on to the HFCS, and then to consumers.

First of all, I’m no particular fan of corn syrup; it tastes nasty and I avoid it. However, I also avoid added sugar or rice syrup or any other sweetener because I eat enough calories without them. Various types of foodie have been railing against HFCS for a long time, but I haven’t actually be able to figure out why. Instead of saying “HFCS is bad” we should be saying “processed food is bad”. Any special link between obesity and HFCS was broken in December with a comprehensive review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (see press release in Newswise). The other argument against HFCS is that we are growing too much corn, but this is a sidestep at best. If people really cared about the amount of acres taken up by corn, they’d be saying “eat less meat” instead of “eat less corn syrup” (see the ISU Extension fact sheet about corn syrup for the uses of corn – ironically, you can’t get both ethanol and HFSC from a given bushel). Seriously, if you don’t like the stuff, then don’t eat it – but it’s helping no one to spread falsehoods and exaggerations.

Ok, back to mercury. While I’ll be the last person to say that the FDA is doing the best job in keeping us all safe, or that food processing conglomerates aren’t out to get a profit no matter what, American capitalism does have some protective effects. I’d wager that the Corn Refiners Association knew about the possible contamination source long ago and has done their best to remove or reduce it (which is exactly right, according to the CRA press release) simply to avoid future boycotts and lawsuits. Some commenters on Janet’s post were also skeptical, along with Marion Nestle on her Food Politics blog.

Marion points out that the study used no controls, and I heartily agree. The researchers should have obtained multiple brands of approximately equivalent foods (vanilla flavored yogurt for example), tested for mercury, and looked for any statistically significant differences between those that contain and those that do not contain HFCS. Without this comparison, the result that “nearly one in three” of the products contained detectable amounts of mercury is meaningless. Some amount of mercury is in everything we eat, processed or not, perhaps the result of decades of coal burning. Of course, there’s many more details to consider… (more…)