Category Archives: Environmental Pollutants

Proposed Warning Label For Meat: “Eating Meat Contributes To Insulin Resistance And Diabetes”

The California Senate just passed a bill requiring warning labels on sugar-sweetened beverages:

“Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.”

It’s a shame that sweetened beverages are being singled out. I would like to see a similar label on meat:

“Eating meat contributes to insulin resistance and diabetes.”

Why? Because meat-eating is a risk factor for developing diabetes:
Meat Consumption As A Risk Factor For Type 2 Diabetes, Nutrients, February 2014

Researchers evaluated studies that examined different amounts and types of meat consumption and the risk for developing diabetes. They found that meat-eaters had a significantly higher risk of developing diabetes compared with non-meat-eaters. Here’s a chart summarizing the results of one of the included studies, Type of Vegetarian Diet, Body Weight, and Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes, Diabetes Care, 2009:

Mechanisms for meat’s effect on diabetes risk:

Effect on body weight – “Nearly all observational studies comparing meat-eaters with those who avoid meat show higher body weights among the former group, a finding mirrored in the results of intervention studies using meatless diets.”
Effect on visceral fat (fat around organs in abdominal area) – “Visceral adipose tissue is associated with insulin resistance as a result of increased proinflamatory cytokines.”
Effect on intracellular lipid (fat inside cells) – Impairs insulin action. This would involve, in part, the glucose transporter (GLUT4), which I discussed here.
Effect on iron balance – “Meat provides a substantial quantity of heme iron … a prooxidant that encourages the production of reactive oxygen species, which may damage body tissues, including insulin-producing pancreatic cells.” Even moderately elevated iron stores are associated with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Nitrates in processed meats – Nitrites and sodium are both linked to elevated diabetes risk.
Systemic inflammation – “A 2014 Harvard study reported that as total red meat consumption increased, so did biomarkers of inflammation.”
One they didn’t mention was presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs): Animal Fat Is A Natural Reservoir For Environmental Pollutants. “There is now solid evidence demonstrating the contribution of POPs at environmental levels, to metabolic disorders … such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.”

Do you think a meat label could come to pass? There certainly is enough justification for it.

Animal Fat Is A Natural Reservoir For Environmental Pollutants

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With all the debate about weather fat in the diet is good or bad, one morsel getting lost in the discussion is that animal fat is a natural reservoir for environmental pollutants. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are largely hydrophobic, meaning they don’t dissolve well in water but they dissolve easily in fat. They also bioaccumulate, meaning they are found in higher, more concentrated amounts in animals higher in the food chain (such as tuna, salmon, fish-eating fowl, and farmed animals fed fish meal and other animal products), and, of course, ourselves:

“POPs are lipophilic chemicals that can pass through biological phospholipid membranes and bio-accumulate in fatty rich tissues of humans.”

Consumption of fat and cholesterol has been repeatedly linked to weight gain, arterial plaque buildup, blood glucose abnormalities, even cancer progression. Could it be the chemicals dissolved in that animal fat that are contributing to these ailments? Yes, says researcher Jerome Ruzzin from the University of Bergen in Norway:

Public Health Concern Behind The Exposure To Persistent Organic Pollutants And The Risk Of Metabolic Diseases, BMC Public Health, April 2012

“There is now solid evidence demonstrating the contribution of POPs, at environmental levels, to metabolic disorders. Thus, human exposure to POPs might have, for decades, been sufficient and enough to participate to the epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes.”

“The general population is exposed to sufficient POPs, both in term of concentration and diversity, to induce metabolic disorders. This situation should attract the greatest attention from the public health and governmental authorities.”

No mincing of words there!

What are POPs?

“Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and organochlorine pesticides, are chemicals mainly created by industrial activities, either intentionally or as by-products [13]. Because of their ability to resist environmental degradation, these substances are omnipresent in food products, and found all around the world, even in areas where they have never been used like Antarctica [14]. Thus, virtually all humans are daily exposed to POPs.”

What foods contain the most POPs?

“In the general population, exposure to POPs comes primarily from the consumption of animal fat like fatty fish, meat and milk products; the highest POP concentrations being commonly found in fatty fish [15–26].”

Some diseases linked to POPs (from a variety of studies: humans, animals, cell models):

Bio-accumulation of PCBs has been linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and elevated blood pressure.

Animals exposed to environmental levels of POP mixtures through the intake of non-decontaminated fish oil (obtained from farmed Atlantic salmon) exhibited insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, abdominal obesity and NAFLD [44]. In rats fed decontaminated crude salmon oil, which contained very low levels of POPs, these metabolic disturbances were almost absent.

The presence of POPs in farmed Atlantic salmon fillet was found to accelerate the development of visceral obesity and insulin resistance in mice.

Another important issue is the regulation of organochlorine pesticides, which are chemicals strongly linked to type 2 diabetes [29, 32, 33, 37, 44, 45] as well as breast and prostate cancer [94] and Parkinson disease [95]

It looks like we can’t get away from DDT, even though it was banned here in 1972:

“Not surprisingly, a recent US monitoring study revealed that DDT and its metabolites as well as endosulfan and aldrin, are still largely present in food, and daily consumed by humans.”

Children are at greater risk of exposure:

“Because of their high food intake per kilogram body weight required to maintain whole-body homeostasis and growth, children are likely to be at higher risk for environmental pollutant exposure. Not surprisingly, many scientific studies have highlighted that children are over-exposed to dioxins and dl-PCBs, and exceed the TDI of 2 pg/kg body weight.”

Finally, here’s a list of limits set by the European Union:

Ruminants: 4.5 pg/g fat
Poultry and farmed game: 4.0 pg/g fat
Pigs: 1.5 pg/g fat
Marine oils: 10 pg/g fat

You can see that the limit for marine oils is double that for fat from land animals. Why? They need to get together on this and create standards that apply across the board, and are based on public health, not commerce. Speaking of salmon, he says that “eating 1 g of fat from a fatty fish fillet could induce an exposure to 70 pg.”

What are Paleos eating? I mean, you can’t be Paleo and vegan at the same time. How do you avoid all these dissolved POPs?

Regulating vehicle emissions, pesticides, and industrial wastes is at odds with economic growth. Which is why I think pollution and its attendant chronic disease load is here to stay.

Food Packaging Chemicals Harmful To Human Health Say Scientists

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I was at Walmart yesterday looking for an inexpensive cutting board. Boy, do I go through cutting boards, now that I use wood. I used to use plastic or acrylic cutting boards because they never warped, were dishwasher-safe, and didn’t dull knives. But I became antsy after reading about polymers, how they accumulate in the body, and how they’re not as inert as I once believed. They often mimic hormones, acting as endocrine disruptors, and are thought to contribute to a number of metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes. They also interfere with sex hormones and have been linked to infertility and birth defects. The immune system, the brain and nervous system … there isn’t a bodily function they don’t in some way impact.

Back to Walmart. I found something in bamboo. We shall see. While I was there I noticed how extensive their food section had become. It isn’t just Walmart, it’s other discount stores too like Target, BJ’s, and Kmart. They’ve given up space that used to hold housewares (but, really, who cooks anymore) and automotive and garden supplies, to shelves of colorful plastic food containers and wall-long refrigerated units with prepared meals. There must be enormous profit in packaged and prepared foods.

That’s not good, because:

Food Packaging Chemicals May Be Harmful To Human Health Over Long Term, ScienceDaily, 19 February 2014

“The synthetic chemicals used in the packaging, storage, and processing of foodstuffs might be harmful to human health over the long term, warn environmental scientists. This is because most of these substances are not inert and can leach into the foods we eat, they say. Despite the fact that some of these chemicals are regulated, people who eat packaged or processed foods are likely to be chronically exposed to low levels of these substances throughout their lives. And far too little is known about their long term impact.”

The study:

Food Packaging And Migration Of Food Contact Materials: Will Epidemiologists Rise To The Neotoxic Challenge?, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 19 February 2014

“Food contact materials (FCMs) have long posed a silent challenge to researchers concerned with human health, nutrition and the environment. FCMs are articles used in packaging, food storage, processing or preparation equipment that come directly into contact with human foods. Most often FCMs are made of plastic or have a synthetic material in direct contact with the foodstuff — for example, as can coating, laminate in beverage cartons or the closures of glass jars. Importantly, most FCMs are not inert.”

Some of the cutting boards I was looking at were manufactured with Microban, a proprietary chemical blend known to include triclosan, an antibacterial and known endocrine disruptor. Microban is “added to a product during manufacturing and becomes part of its molecular structure.” You can’t wipe this stuff off.

Bisphenol A, Microban, triclosan, phthalates, formaldehyde, pesticides, detergents, adhesives, dioxins, PCBs… “The total number of known chemical substances used intentionally in [food contact materials] exceeds 4000.” And that’s just food.

I see two problems with these chemicals, besides the growing list of diseases they’re linked to. One – a single dose here and there probably isn’t harmful, or at least we could measure its impact. But the effect of chronic, low-level exposure of thousands of substances – that accumulate – isn’t known. Two – these chemicals are everywhere.