Did you know that your drink might contain an ingredient that is not used in beverages in 100 countries around the world?

Brominated vegetable oil (also known as “BVO”) is found in sports drinks and citrus-flavored sodas.  It is a chemical that keeps two liquids mixed together.  It acts as a binding agent, also known as an emulsifier, and it prevents the flavoring and other ingredients found in our drinks from separating and floating to the surface.

It makes sense , on one level, as we don’t want our drinks to look like a separated salad dressing with ingredients floating to the top!  But this appearance might come with a hidden side effect.  According to SHAPE magazine and nutritionist Mira Calton and her husband Jayson Calton, Ph.D., “Because it competes with iodine for receptor sites in the body, elevated levels of the stuff may lead to thyroid issues, such as hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, and cancer,” Calton says. As if that wasn’t scary enough, BVO's main ingredient, bromine, is a chemical that is considered toxic. It's been linked to all kind of health concerns, including organ system damage, birth defects, schizophrenia, and hearing loss, which explains why it's been removed or banned from food and drinks in more than 100 countries.

These health concerns and the fact that so many countries have removed BVO from their beverages was so concerning to one 15 year old that she launched an online petition that landed her in the New York Times in which she called for the removal of this ingredient from American beverages, as it’s been removed from products around the world.

Want to opt out of brominated vegetable oil here in the United States? Skip the sports drinks and choose water.  And if you’re filling up your cup at the soda fountain, instead of the lemon-lime and citrus flavored drinks, consider drinking something else.

Remember, while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something.  Focus on progress not perfection, and do what you can, where you are with what you have, remembering not to make “the perfect” the enemy of “the good.”

 Follow Robyn on Twitter @unhealthytruth or on Facebook.

Most people that follow food issues had their eyes on California last night.  Voters in the state were going to the polls to determine if the United States would finally join countries around the world and label ingredients recently introduced into our food that have been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticidal toxins, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as pesticides.

The legislation had the opportunity to impact all of us.  California recently voted on labeling an ingredient found in sodas, due to its potential link to cancer.  But rather than label it, soda companies decided to reformulate their products and they removed the ingredient in products around the country.  The same fate could happen with these genetically engineered ingredients if they were labeled - companies might simply want to opt out rather than carry any liability that a label might cause.

So the question put to California voters was essentially: should ingredients, now regulated as pesticides, be labeled in our food?

But it wasn't exactly framed that way.  And in the months leading up to the election, a tsunami of money poured into the state from chemical and pesticide companies from around the world.  These corporations selling the products, both the genetically engineered ingredients and the chemicals used on them, didn't feel it was neccessary to label these ingredients, they didn't want to cause alarm.

And with polling results in, they won in the California voting booth.

But did they win on the national stage?

Because rather than consider this "the end" of the issue, perhaps it should be seen as the beginning of a long-overdue dialogue in the United States, a dialogue that the industry spent $45 million dollars to try to keep from having.

Any grocery store shopper knows that a lot gets labeled: orange juice has to be labeled if it comes from concentrate, allergens are labeled, fat content, too.  But we have not yet joined over 50 countries around the world and called for the labeling of ingredients that have been engineered by the chemical companies to withstand increasing doses of their chemicals.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll asked: Do you think genetically engineered foods should be labeled?  87% said yes.

This is not a party issue, it is an American one.

And as more of us are waking up to the fact that the United States remains one of the only developed countries in the world to have failed to label these ingredients in our food supply, the question now seems to be: Is now the time to label genetically engineered foods, foods whose genetic makeup has been hardwired to withstand increasing doses of toxic chemicals or to produce insecticides within the plant itself.

The chemical companies that are both making the foods and selling the chemicals required to grow them often claim that their products are needed to feed the world.

It's an emotional argument.  Powerful, too, and does a lot to drive shareholder return.  But in light of the fact that 2 billion people are overweight or obese and 1 billion are hungry, according to the USDA, 40 percent of the food we produce is never eaten.

Is a food shortage really the problem?  Or is it a shortage in earnings visibility that has these companies quietly pushing their products on us, spending $45 million to make sure that they don't have to label them for fear that labels might lead Americans to join eaters in other countries and  opt out?

"The world is hungry because of politics and economics, not because we can't grow food" a farmer from Australia recently said.  And if you go wide, beyond the consumers and farmers, and dig into the politics of food, you realize how complicated and politically, economically and finanicially loaded the issue has become.

The companies engineering these crops to withstand their chemicals  say they are safe.  They've conducted their own research because the FDA has not.

It's not the first time that ingredients with the potential to cause harm have been marketed this way.  Doctors marketed cigarettes to our grandmothers.  Like the tobacco industry, the pesticide and chemical industries fund research, protected under intellectual property law that is not subject to peer review, and then present it as evidence that their products are safe.  That's their job, to market their products so that they can drive shareholder return.  But what about the rest of us, the world's 7 billion stakeholders in the food supply - those of us, not known by the names given to our portfolios, but those of us simply called "eaters"?

A researcher with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory said,"The noteworthy thing is that there are no studies of embryos on the world level and none where (the chemical routinely doused on these genetically engineered crops) glyphosate is injected into embryos.”

We don't know what these foods are doing to our children.  And while correlation is not causation, from 1992-2007, there was a9.4% increase in childhood cancers in the United States.  Children in the United States where cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in kids under the age of fifteen also have skyrocketing rates of food allergies and have earned the title "Generation Rx".

Is it the new, genetically engineered ingredients in the food?  We'd have no idea, since there are no labels.

That's hard to hear, especially for those of us that dismissed concerns around genetically engineered foods as some hippy, fringy, purist thing.  It can be so hard to hear that when industry claims there is "no evidence of harm", you almost want to believe them.  But if you think about it, without labels, there simply is no evidence.  And "no evidence of harm" is not the same as "evidence of no harm."

Labels are needed to prove a direct cause and effect. And while we don't yet have them, mounting hospitalization records, record drug sales and an increasingly allergic, diabetic, cancer-stricken and obese population in which 46 children are diagnosed with cancer every day might suggest that we should take a closer look and introduce labeling here in the United States as a conservative measure to protect the heath of our citizens, the way the health of citizens in every country in the European Union, Australia, Japan, Russia and China are protected (to name a few).

And while in the face of record amounts of campaign spending money by the chemical, pesticide and junk food companies, the labeling initiative was defeated in California, what that campaign started was a long-overdue national dialogue.  This is not "the end" of anything but the beginning of a national discussion.

It brought an awareness to the fact that the FDA does not require pre-market safety testing of these foods, that no long-term human, prenatal or pediatric studies have been conducted and that Americans remain one of the only developed countries in the world whose citizens have not been give the liberty of labels in order to make an informed choice about the foods that we are eating.

States matter.  To get a feel for just how much take a look at the first seat belt law which was introduced by a state in 1984, in no time, others followed.  And today, in the absence of any federal seat belt law, it speaks to the important role that states play in protecting the health of their populations by using preventative measures to protect citizens from potential harm.

So what can Americans do next?  Keep up the pressure at the state level.  Begin a dialogue.  Find a friend who cares about this as much as you do.  Join the national movement that is calling on the FDA to address the issue on behalf of all Americans.  A 53 to 47% loss is not something to bury heads over given that the opposition flooded the campaign with $45 million in marketing, but rather something for which to keep heads up, looking forward, as we focus on the FDA and work to address this at the national level.

The health of our country and our economy are dependent on the heath of Americans.  41% of Americans are now expected to get cancer and there is a growing burden that disease is placing on our economy.  Labeling these new ingredients in our food supply, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as "pesticides,"  just might prove to be one of the smartest economic measures of our time.

To learn more about genetically engineered foods and the pesticides being routinely applied to them, please visit one of the following sites, known for their independent research:

• Just Label It
  
• Our Right to Know

 

I wrote this about a year ago for a friend, but as Hurricane Sandy hurls towards loved ones on the East Coast, heaving her winds, these words still ring true today.

As unprecedented storms, epic heat waves and floods continue to hit, as well as the wild temperature fluctuations, drought and scorched and infertile grounds, it is beginning to feel like our planet is sick, with a growing list of conditions.

Much like our children.

And just as our increasingly allergic and asthmatic kids have trouble breathing or are covered in dry patches, running fevers or launching inflammatory responses to things they have ingested, the Earth appears to be having an allergic reaction of her own.

We have poured fossil fuel over her skin, filled her airways with pollution and poisoned her water with everything from oil to agrichemicals to pharmaceutical drugs. 

Is it any wonder that her health appears to be failing, her waters swirling and her airways struggling?

If the Earth were a child that was this sick, what would this condition be called?

Perhaps it could be called "climate fever." She is running hot and cold with all kinds of conditions, upheavals and reactions that have the potential to cause tremendous harm.

And her "fever" affects all of us. Families, friends, farmers.  

Is it short-term? How long will it last?  

The fact of the matter is that dirty air, water, soil, climate.....they affect all of us.  They don't care what we think or what side of the aisle we are on...and neither do storms like this one.

How would we treat this Earth if she were our own sick child?   

So with the image of that child in mind, perhaps we should consider a new approach. And rather than "fight global warming" and get into "he said/she said" debates, arguing over how sick this child really is or who is to blame, perhaps it's time that we simply care for our planet as a mother might care for a child.

And rather than the routine dousing of her skin with toxic pesticides and agrichemicals, we might consider reducing her exposure to these chemicals and cultivate an approach to agriculture that isn't chemically or fossil fuel dependent, like the one recently recommended by the United Nations.

And rather than continuing to inject her with IV-like instruments used to extract the very oil and fossil fuel that is harming her, we could consider building clean energy sources and alternative energy infrastructures to give her the means with which to grow and thrive without the risk of toxicity.

We could call on our collective talents and insights to lend to the healing of her condition.

And rather than focus on what short-term economic advantages can be obtained through the extraction of her resources, recognize that we need to care for her as if our wellbeing depended on it.   

Because it does.  

And while new data shows that countries like China are contributing more than the United States and Canada combined to climate pollution, we have the extraordinary opportunity to embrace a moral authority, to design and create new energy systems that will not only serve us economically and financially but also resourcefully and sustainably for generations to come.  

A child won't remain healthy living on dirty air, dirty water or dirty food.  Our planet is no different. 

And while these changes won't happen overnight, if we leverage our collective talents, we can begin making them, because we're a pretty resilient source of renewable energy ourselves, and in the words of George Eliot, "it is never too late to be what you might have been."

In the absence of any federal labeling law, California is trying to become the first state to label genetically engineered ingredients in foods.  This could impact the county, as they represent the largest state economy in the US and the 8th largest in the world.

How could this affect all of us?  When legislation was proposed in California for Coke and Pepsi to label a caramel color in their sodas as potentially carcinogenic, rather than do so, the soda giants reformulated their products....across the country.

If this legislation (Proposition 37) passes in California, as Jillian Michaels, Danny DeVito, Dave Matthews and others are urging in this public service announcement, the food industry might very well decide to reformulate their products here in the US for all of us, in order to avoid the liability that these labels might carry, removing GMOs from their products and replacing them with alternatives, much like what they have done in over 40 countries around the world, like all European countries, the UK, China, Australia, Japan and India, where GMOs are already labeled.

If you have friends or family in California, please share this important message, as we all have the right to know what we are eating, and what happens in California has the potential to impact all of us.

 To learn more about this proposition and its ability to impact all of us, please visit California's Right to Know

 

So when it comes to Subway sandwiches, you'd think you were pretty safe, right?  I mean, if you had to trade up from a fast food burger and fries, that's where you might go.

But a recent article by a woman who calls herself "Food Babe" will stop you in your tracks.

In her efforts to eat "real food", she decided to ditch the processed stuff.  It was an interesting journey, to say the least, but nothing could have prepared her for what she found in her local Subway shop.

"Eat Fresh" At least, that's what she thought she was getting.

But when she decided to look under that plastic shield, she was absolutely stunned at what she found.

And while she goes into remarkable details about the chemicals that have been added to the ingredients used in those sandwiches to preserve their shelf life in the store, the details she gives about one of the ingredients in the bread are jaw-dropping.

Like many of us, we've eaten there, multiple times, and probably like "Food Babe" had absolutely no idea that this is what we were getting:

"The 9 grain wheat bread might look and smell freshly baked but it contains close to 50 ingredients including refined flours, dough conditioners, hidden MSG, refined sugars, etc.

Could bread this processed ever be real food?

Certainly not, when it includes a chemical ingredient called azodicarbonamide, which is banned as a food additive in the U.K., Europe, and Australia, and if you get caught using it in Singapore you can get up to 15 years in prison and can be fined $450,000.  Azodicarbonamide is more commonly used in the production of foamed plastics, however, it is allowed in the United States as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent, and a dough conditioner that improves elasticity of bread.

The U.K. has recognized this ingredient as a potential cause of asthma if inhaled, and advises against its use in people who have sensitivity to food dye allergies and other common allergies in food, because azodicarbonamide can exacerbate the symptoms."

It certainly makes you stop and think about what we have done to the U.S. food supply for the sake of profit margins.  And what we need to do to dig ourselves out of this chemical-heavy kitchen.  Researchers increasingly refer to certain chemicals that can promote weight gain as "obesogens."  Our grandmothers certainly didn't have that term, but now that we have it, books have been written about it, and increasing amounts of science are highlighting their effects.

Want to learn more? Then check out Food Babe's article on 100 Days of Real Food or her blog, FoodBabe.

To learn more about the chemicals going into our food supply and what you can do to protect the health of your loved ones, please visit the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

 

As originally seen onPrevention.com
Last week, the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) released a list of the top ten toxic chemicals suspected to cause autism and learning disabilities.

This list can't come soon enough, as last month, the CDC reported that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) now affects 1 of every 88 American children -- a 23% increase from 2006 and a 78% increase from 2002.

And while there is controversy over how those numbers are reached, it still is worth repeating.  There has been a 78% increase in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the last ten years.  At the same time, the CDC also reported that ADHD now affects 14% of American children.

As these disorders continue to affect more children across the U.S., researchers are asking what is causing these dramatic increases.  Some of the explanation is greater awareness and more accurate diagnosis. But clearly, there is more to the story than simply genetics, as the increases are far too rapid to be of purely genetic origin.

According to the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) release this morning and data from the research article, "Environmental Pollutants and Disease in American Children (July 2002), "the National Academy of Sciences reports that 3% of all neurobehavioral disorders in children are caused directly by toxic exposure in the environment and another 25% disorders are caused by interactions between environmental factors and genetics. But the precise environmental causes are not yet known". (Note: the first version of this article included a link to the National Academy of Sciences study from 2000 and has been updated to include a link to the July 2002 study).

So while industry can claim that there is little evidence that these chemicals in isolation or in combination (which doctors now refer to as "synergistic toxicity") cause autism, the truth is that there is still very little evidence or the toxicological safety studies.  In other words, there is a gap in the science.

There is a huge gap.  According to CNN, the EPA has tested only about 200 of the 80,000 chemicals in use.

But thankfully, that is changing with the work of the team at Mt. Sinai and the extraordinary leadership, courage and intellect of Dr. Phil Landrigan and the urgent call by experts to reform chemical laws.

To guide a research strategy to discover potentially preventable environmental causes and to arm parents and those hoping to be parents with knowledge, the Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) has developed a list of ten chemicals found in consumer products that are suspected to contribute to autism and learning disabilities.

This list was published today in Environmental Health Perspectives in an editorial written by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the CEHC, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and Dr. Luca Lambertini, also of the CEHC.

The top ten chemicals are:

1. Lead
2. Methylmercury
3. PCBs
4. Organophosphate pesticides
5. Organochlorine pesticides
6. Endocrine disruptors
7. Automotive exhaust
8. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
9. Brominated flame retardants
10. Perfluorinated compounds

As the Children's Environmental Health Center shares, the editorial was published alongside four other papers -- each suggesting a link between toxic chemicals and autism.  Both the editorial and the papers originated at a conference hosted by CEHC in December 2010.

The first paper, written by a team at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, found preliminary evidence linking smoking during pregnancy to Asperger's disorder and other forms of high-functioning autism.  The next two papers, written by researchers at the University of California - Davis, show that PCBs disrupt early brain development. The final paper, also by a team at UC - Davis, suggests further exploring the link between pesticide exposure and autism.

Ultimately, all five papers call for increased research to identify the possible environmental causes of autism in America's children.

This importance of this call to action can not be emphasized enough, because while our children may only represent 30% of our population, they are 100% of our future and we need to protect them like our country depends on it.  Because it does.

So what can you do to protect the health of your children?  Thankfully, a lot.  And while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something, so choose one, some or all from the list below:

• Eat organic food whenever possible to reduce exposure to synthetic pesticides which by law are not allowed for use in its production
• Open your windows to clear the air in your home from the toxins that can accumulate there
• Take your shoes off as you come inside to keep pesticides on the soles of your shoes from entering your home
• Look for cans and plastic bottles that are "BPA-free"

The landscape of food has changed.  Not only is it available 24/7 and  marketed to us using mobile apps and Internet games, but it is also full of lots of ingredients that just didn't exist when we were kids.   So while our food may look the same, it now contains  artificial, engineered and genetically altered ingredients that are so new that patents have been filed on them in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Not something any busy eater wants to hear.  Especially a busy parent who is doing his or her best to simply get the kids to eat.

But we are quickly learning that the ingredients in our foods - the good ones that include vitamins and minerals and the ones that have the potential to cause harm - have a lot to do with the health of our families.

And if you are just getting started on trying to eat a little cleaner or reduce your families exposure to artificial ingredients, you may be hearing about something called "genetically engineered foods."  If you haven't heard about them, you're not alone.  While countries around the world labeled these ingredients when they were introduced in the 1990s, we didn't here.

So a lot has changed in our food in the last decade, and given the juggling act that most of us perform on a daily basis, coupled with the fact that these new ingredients were never labeled, it's no surprise that we are only just beginning to have this dialogue around the labeling of these ingredients here in the United States.  States like California, North Carolina and other have taken a lead on it.  But the dialogue is now being held at the national level, with millions of citizens calling on the FDA to do the same.  So we put together a short Q&A, working  with researchers who have not accepted funding from or developed patents for the corporations developing these new products, to pull together this information for you.

FACT SHEET: GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS