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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.
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...