More food scare mongering

I recently read an article in New Zealand Farmer entitled "The stomach-churning truth about what's in synthetic food".  The writer, Jon Morgan was writing an opinion piece and quoted an article by a British food writer, Joanna Blythman.

She had apparently investigated the ingredients in the "Impossible Burger", which has been launched in the US.  The ingredients can be found in many foods already consumed widely in New Zealand and other countries.

She was upset that the major ingredient by weight was water, suggesting that "no quality product uses it as a bulk ingredient".  I had a look in our food cupboard and refrigerator, and found many processed foods with water listed as the main ingredient.  Practically any food manufactured in which powders, such as milk powder, are incorporated will require water to rehydrate the dry ingredients.  (What does she think is the major component of a beef steak cut from a cattle beast?)

She then got stuck into some of the other dry ingredients - textured wheat protein, potato protein and soya protein isolate, claiming that these were produced using high-tech. chemical and physical processes veiled in secrecy.  The konjac and xanthan gums used in food manufacture were described as industrial hydrocolloids, the latter used in oil drilling muds.  In my opinion, this reference is totally irrelevant - there are many materials found in foods that are also used in unrelated industrial processes, such as starch used in paper coating.

The ingredient that caused Joanna the most heartache appeared to be soy leghemoglobin, which is a protein produced in genetically modified Pichia pastoris and which imparts a meat-like flavour profile onto plant-based foods.  I found a number of scientific studies that tested its safety for consumption at up to 0.8% in ground beef analogues.

Overall, I came to the conclusion that this was just another scare mongering beat up of modern food technology.  It is worth noting that Sir Peter Gluckman, the New Zealand Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, has stated that synthetic foods will have a major impact in 10 to 15 years, and that great strides are being made in the commercialisation of synthetic milk and meat.

I also tried to find information on Joanna Blythman's qualifications to comment on the safety of foods.  All I can find is that she graduated from City, University of London.  City is focused on business and the professions, so I can only assume that she has no food or science qualifications (if she does have some, then perhaps I am doing her an injustice) but at the moment, it appears that she is yet another journalist who has set up to criticise the food industry.

Food Trash Writing

Once again, an article about fast food has been posted on several “healthy living” websites and reposted on FaceBook.  On this occasion, HealthZone.Tips writes about McDonald’s french fries under the title:

When You Find Out What is in McDonald’s French Fries, You Will Be Disgusted!

Whatever you think about fast foods, you would expect the article to be accurate and not merely sensational.  The article claims that McDonald’s puts more than ten ingredients into its fries, and quotes Grant Imahara (Myth Busters), suggesting that the fries are not really potatoes!  This article is just plain scaremongering, and I wonder what is the author’s motivation.

The post lists the main ingredients, noting that there are other components:

    Potatoes

    Canola oil

    Soybean oil

    Hydrogenated soybean oil

    Natural beef flavour

    Hydrolysed wheat

    Hydrolysed milk

    Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ)

    Dimethylpolysiloxane

    Dextrose

and states that “The three offenders on the list are TBHQ, dimethylpolysiloxane and hydrogenated soybean oil”.

Notice that there is no mention of the amounts of these “offenders” in the fries, as you would find on a food label - usually as grams per 100 grams and grams per serving. 

So let’s look at these three components.

Tertiary butylhydroquinone E319, an anti-oxidant, is used as a preservative for unsaturated vegetable oils and also for many edible animal fats.  Both the FDA and the Scientific Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, ProcessingAids and Materials in Contact with Food of EFSA  regard TBHQ as safe when used at the permitted levels. The Panel stated that, “Based on the data reviewed, the Panel concluded that TBHQ is not carcinogenic and that further genotoxicity studies were unnecessary.  TBHQ is used in many foods and also in perfumery. In a medium serving of french fries (133 g) there is about 22 g fat and thus about 4.4 mg TBHQ.  Using the EFSA acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0.7 mg/kg body weight for a 70 kg human, this equates to about 9% of the ADI, which itself has a 100x safety factor built in.

Dimethylpolysiloxane E900  is a polymeric organosilicon compound, used as an antifoamer in cooking oils to prevent foaming and splatter.  FSANZ permits a maximum of 10 mg/kg of the final food.  The WHO summarised a number of studies of the effect of DMPS on humans and animals with “None of these studies has revealed any significant toxicity. The metabolic studies, including those in man, indicate that the orally administered dimethylsiloxanes are mainly excreted unchanged in the faeces.”  It is difficult to obtain data on levels of DMPS in final foods, but using data from Five Guys, I estimate that the level in the frying oil could be around 0.004% and in the fries, the final level could be around 0.9 mg in a medium serving of fries, or 6.8 mg/kg fries.

Hydrogenated soybean oil  is used in the production of margarine, shortening, and salad and cooking oils.  The US FDA Committee on GRAS substances concluded that “There is no evidence in the available information on hydrogenated soybean oil that demonstrates, or suggests reasonable grounds to suspect, a hazard to the public when it is used as a direct or indirect food ingredient at levels that are now current or that might reasonably be expected in the future”.

For those readers who live in New Zealand:  I consulted a fats and oils chemist.  He told me that 

They don’t use hydrogenated soy in Nz and never have done; the oil is now monounsaturated canola/sunflower oil.  TBHQ is no longer used.  As far as he is aware, the oil blend no longer contains DMPS, and even when it was used, the level was around 1ppm.

Lies, damned lies, and misinterpretation of the data.

I am constantly amazed by the apparent ignorance and credulity of the general public on matters of food safety and nutrition.  But should I be surprised?   Few people are lucky enough to have studied food technology, food science or nutrition.  Their main sources of information are then the popular press, magazines, television cooking shows and the all-pervasive Internet. 

Scientists and engineers know that the best sources of information are peer-reviewed papers published in international journals.  Experts in the field have read the paper and picked it apart, looking for poor experimental design, inconsistencies and faulty interpretation of data.  Believe me, I can say this with certainty from both sides of the fence: it is pretty difficult to get a paper published these days!

The other sources of information mentioned above are generally not peer-reviewed.  Articles can be published by people with no formal qualifications in the subject and are often either highly biased or downright wrong.  See:  http://foodsafetywithjaybee.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/dangers-of-google-degree.html

Sensationalism and sycophantic following of media celebrities are what sell newspapers and magazines.  We see more food scares and wonder diet advice every month without any reference to the original research.

A few examples spring to mind:

Towards the end of October 2015, the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer stated that processed meats, including hot dogs and sausages would be added to its list of high risk carcinogens.  Red meats were also declared a probable carcinogen.  Needless to say, this caused a furore in all the media.  A Google search, using the terms “sausages cause cancer” returned 469,000 results!  IARC classifications rank the quality of the evidence that something can cause cancer, but don’t assess the level of risk. The announcement was often quoted out of context.  For example, Discovery News baldly stated “Eating sausages, ham and other processed meats causes colon cancer”.  Other reports mentioned the increase in risk as a percentage, but did not state the base level of risk. This scare is enduring; at a barbecue recently, someone noted that I was cooking “cancer sticks”.

Coconut water appears to have been a major drink commodity this year. I have no sales figures, but the sales in 2013 were around half a billion dollars, see http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/75567921/how-healthy-is-coconut-water.html.  Claims for coconut water include helping with weight loss, improving skin tone and aiding digestion.   Other claims, now withdrawn, stated that it could fight kidney disease, osteoporosis and viruses.  Coconut water contains potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus, which are required minerals.  As a sports rehydration drink, coconut water is definitely unsuitable - when we sweat, we lose lots of sodium.  The ratio of sodium to potassium in sweat is about 10:1, but the ratio of sodium to potassium in coconut water is around 1:3.  Where are the peer reviewed scientific studies of the value of coconut water? They are never quoted.

Critics of the hypothesis that saturated fat consumption is linked with coronary heart disease use the argument that the correlation between total saturated fatty acids and risk factors is not very good.  Unfortunately, the scientific findings have been misinterpretated by the popular press media, with the result that we are told we can eat as much saturated fat as we wish. This advice is incorrect, unethical and irresponsible, see http://nzifst.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/the-recent-non-scientific-comments.html.

Despite all the information on food safety available, in my opinion, a large proportion of the population is still badly educated in this regard.  At an outdoor party this week (it's summer in New Zealand) I sat with a very-soon-to-be mother.  She got stuck into the soft cheese in a big way, but said that she would eat it only during the first half hour of its being unwrapped; thereafter it was to be avoided.  In fact, the cheese had been made with pasteurised milk and she was therefore probably safe in eating it, but where had she got this idea from?  I guess she had read about Listeria in soft cheeses, and believed that the bacteria could multiply as the cheese warmed up.  For reliable information on safe foods to eat during pregnancy, see:  http://www.foodsmart.govt.nz/information-for/pregnant-women/list-of-safe-food.htm

I believe that food scientists and food technologists have a duty to provide unbiased and easily digested (sorry!) information to the public in order to help educate them in food safety.  But how can we compete with big advertising budgets and the pronouncements of media celebrities?

I wish all my readers a happy, successful and safe 2016.