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Report Finds PFAS Chemicals In One-Third of Fast Food Packaging (cnn.com)
dryriver quotes CNN:
Most of the time, when you order fast food, you know exactly what you're getting: an inexpensive meal that tastes great but is probably loaded with fat, cholesterol and sodium. But it turns out that the packaging your food comes in could also have a negative impact on your health, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The report found fluorinated chemicals in one-third of the fast food packaging researchers tested.
These chemicals are favored for their grease-repellent properties. Along with their use in the fast food industry, fluorinated chemicals -- sometimes called PFASs -- are used "to give water-repellant, stain-resistant, and non-stick properties to consumer products such as furniture, carpets, outdoor gear, clothing, cosmetics (and) cookware," according to a news release that accompanied the report. "The most studied of these substances (PFOSs and PFOAs) has been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, elevated cholesterol, decreased fertility, thyroid problems and changes in hormone functioning, as well as adverse developmental effects and decreased immune response in children."
The chemicals can migrate into your food, says one of the study's authors, who suggests removing it from the packaging as quickly as possible. (You might also request your french fries in a paper cup, which are free from "chemicals of concern".) But they also suggest pressuring fast food chains to remove the chemicals from their packaging, and the president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute acknowledges that after the study concluded in 2015, fluorochemical-free packaging was introduced.
These chemicals are favored for their grease-repellent properties. Along with their use in the fast food industry, fluorinated chemicals -- sometimes called PFASs -- are used "to give water-repellant, stain-resistant, and non-stick properties to consumer products such as furniture, carpets, outdoor gear, clothing, cosmetics (and) cookware," according to a news release that accompanied the report. "The most studied of these substances (PFOSs and PFOAs) has been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, elevated cholesterol, decreased fertility, thyroid problems and changes in hormone functioning, as well as adverse developmental effects and decreased immune response in children."
The chemicals can migrate into your food, says one of the study's authors, who suggests removing it from the packaging as quickly as possible. (You might also request your french fries in a paper cup, which are free from "chemicals of concern".) But they also suggest pressuring fast food chains to remove the chemicals from their packaging, and the president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute acknowledges that after the study concluded in 2015, fluorochemical-free packaging was introduced.
The most studied of these substances has been linked....
As usual, the key information to know the extent of the potential problem is missing. So, we know that there is a study out there that shows a possible link between one of these substances and health problems.
How much exposure required to show a link? What is the elevation in risk for common intake from packaging? How much of the studied substance is actually in use vs other substances?
There hardly appears to be enough information to make any recommendations.
What's inside the plastic wrapping is going to kill you quicker than whatever the wrapping is made of.
Or, otherwise, we'd pretty much all be dead by now.
Sure, start phasing it out, like thousands of things before it, but it's not an end-of-the-world, evil-fast-food-chain, profiteering-bastards kind of story at all.
Hell, I remember when McDonald's burgers came in a polystyrene box. They changed that and it's now a card-thing with shiny outside. I'm sure those things were always marked as "food-safe" or they'd have been in court a million times by now because of it.
But our idea of food-safe changes as knowledge increases. I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up going back to polystyrene boxes at some point, we're bound to find out that something older and abandoned actually wasn't all that bad or we can now make it without it being bad.
But the tone of the summary/story is quite heavily in the "OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE" section. When actually the story is more like "Huh, there's a tiny chance this could very slightly statistically be worse for you that paper. Oh well, let's change that, but it's not worth panicking and trying to do that overnight. Let's just phase it out for something slightly better."
Hell, they banned fish and chip shops in the UK from using newspaper for wrapping the food in, which they always did in my father's day, because of the ink in the paper being not ideal to wrap a greasy load of fried fish and potato into. But try and point to someone who died or was taken ill as a result and you'd be hard pressed to come up with anything at all.
And then, ironically, they all started using polystyrene and plastics, which we're now telling them are bad for the environment and they should go back to paper, and recycled paper at that...
You're confusing fast food with meat.
Meat isn't bad for you, in any way shape or form. There are no conclusive, unchallenged papers saying so.
In fact, very nearly the opposite:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
CONCLUSIONS:
United Kingdom-based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation.
60,310 people studied. That's a LOT.
But don't confuse "meat-eating" with "fast-food junky". And don't think that a vegan or vegetarian diet does ANYTHING for you. It doesn't. It's just the same, but you can't eat meat. If you're used to eating meat, that can make you miserable.
And if you go too strict, you can do more damage to your body and have to take an artificial supplement to restore what's missing from your diet (i.e. the stuff normally found in meat!).
And what you think wild-caught salmon is going to do differently to you than a farmed salmon, we can argue about until the cows come home but basically the stats say the same again: It makes NO difference.
Rather than try to argue on the basis of "this sounds good, and I think I'm helping", find some proper, serious, researched literature and narrow down what you're recommending.
Is it a) meat or lack of it, b) fish instead of meat, c) "free-range" fish over farmed fish, d) vegetarian over meat-eating, e) anything over fast-food?
Because confusing the issue in ONE SENTENCE between five different things, and getting most of those wrong in terms of actual science, is not the way to convince people.
You might as well tell me to only use organic pencils as they "draw better".
Let's eliminate airline regulations. If enough people die, then they'll stop flying or the planes will be made safer. It'll a be a bit late for the dead people, but then Ayn Rand followers can wax poetical on the magic of the markets.
under someone's theory that my water main pressure might drop (it never did)
Congratulations on being the only person ever who's gone 45 years without having to shut off the water to your house for a plumbing repair.
For my part, I'll gradually reduce the packaging material I eat. By the end of March of this year I hope to maintain a 20% reduction. Assuming no serious withdrawal symptoms, I may cut consumption of packaging material in half by the end of the year. Wish me luck!
...omphaloskepsis often...
Meat isn't bad for you, in any way shape or form.
Except there's a strong link between red and smoked meats and increased chance of colorectal cancer.
I've been vegan for 5 years (since high school) and I've never had a vitamin deficiency of any sort and I don't take any any B vitamin supplements whatsoever.
Your liver can store enough B12 to last years. The fact that you don't have a (noticeable) deficiency after 5 years doesn't mean you're not exhausting your supply.
And don't think that a vegan or vegetarian diet does ANYTHING for you. It doesn't.
I guess all those dummies that study nutrition don't know as much as you.
The USDA food pyramid was based on the food used to fatten livestock.
There's also a link between eating red meat and deaths caused by falling from ladders. Correlation doesn't mean much.
The USDA food pyramid has grains at the bottom (and widest) portion of the pyramid
No it doesn't. The pyramid with horizontal slices is obsolete, and was replaced with VERTICAL slices. Of course, vertical slices don't even fit the metaphor of a pyramid, and are thus meaningless, but THAT IS THE INTENT. The USDA was fed up with trying to please so many interest groups (farmers, food manufacturers, nutritionists, etc) that they just threw up their hands and went with something pointless, meaningless, and content free.
The vertical "pyramid" diagram has now been replaced with the MyPlate diagram, which is slightly less stupid.
Also, just in case anyone is wondering, PFAS means perfluorinated alkylated substances.
The problem with epidemiological studies is that it's very hard to account for all the confounders. And if the researcher is biased towards a certain result, it's very easy to get it. People who choose to live a vegetarian lifestyle also make a lot of other choices regarding their health.
A serving of 100 grams of Cremini mushrooms have only 2% of your daily B12 requirement (other sources say 3 or 4%). Tofu has even less. Seems that veganism isn't a natural lifestyle.
There's also a link between eating red meat and deaths caused by falling from ladders.
In this case it means eating meat causes people to climb ladders.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
And what, you gurgled that for us here because there is no such creature as a surviving Vegan, I guess?
While you can certainly survive as a vegan, it's really not ideal. Animal protein carries 100% of essential aminos and a number of essential micronutrients, and in order to replace them you have to go out of your way with different food sources that are otherwise (without modern technology) mutually out of reach of any given geographic area.
Furthermore, the diet has to be micromanaged in order to work, similar to a diabetes diet or a renal diet.
BUT -- The first GMO animal to be sold into the human food chain is salmon, so buyer beware.
Why buyer beware? Every single time somebody tries to challenge GMO, it has always been empirically proven to not only be safe, but beneficial both in terms of environment and nutrition. Anything claiming the contrary has always been proven to be junk science.
It's on the market *now*, and it's a genetic cross between a sockeye salmon and a Brazilian jumbo tapeworm larvae. Disgusting, right??
That's a load of shit. The whole idea of "frankenfood" is a myth. Sure, in some lab experiments moving genes between species is done to understand what given genes do, but nobody actually serves food that way. Instead what's used is proteomics to construct specific mutations.
Seems that veganism isn't a natural lifestyle.
Of course not. The diets of all primitive societies contain meat (mostly from small animals), and eggs. But just because something isn't "natural" doesn't mean it isn't healthy. Smallpox vaccines and indoor plumbing are not "natural" either, but they have vastly extended human lifespans. There is a fair amount of evidence that veggie/vegan diets are healthier than meat rich diets. For people that do eat meat, there is evidence that meat from small animals and fish is healthier than meat from large mammals such as cows and pigs. For people that do eat beef and pork, there is evidence that it is better to eat it in moderation and avoid meat that is charred or smoked.
Disclaimer: I try to mostly stick to a vegetarian diet, but I am not a fanatic about it.