PLASTIC PACKAGING CAUSE FOR OBESITY AND DIABETES?

It is unimaginable as to why hundreds of chemicals are allowed for use by the food industry for one reason or the other. While pharmaceutical industry is shackled, forcing it to be more careful and cautious in using different ingredients in medicine formulations, food industry is allowed to get away, mostly under the so called GRAS provision under which proof of safety is not insisted on!  The result is that many of the food ingredients had to be withdrawn after consumers were exposed to their dangers unnecessarily. Latest to join the list of monster chemicals are phthalates and Bisphenol A. Though indications about their suspect safety credentials were known earlier, they were allowed to be used for technical reasons ignoring the harm they could bring upon the consumers. The dangers posed by the above chemicals have been highlighted succinctly in a recent report which has some credibility. 

"Children exposed to two chemicals commonly used in food packaging are more likely to be obese or show signs of diabetes precursors than those with lower exposure, new research suggests. Researchers found urine levels of one type of phthalate, used to soften plastic, were tied to a higher risk of insulin resistance among teenagers. Based on data from the same large nutrition survey, another study group linked bisphenol A, or BPA - used to line aluminum cans - to obesity and larger waists in youth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six U.S. children and teenagers is now obese. "Clearly unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity are the drivers of this epidemic … but increasingly environmental chemicals are being identified as possible contributors," Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician from New York University, said. He and his colleagues analyzed data from a nationally-representative health and nutrition survey conducted in 2003 to 2008, which included urine and blood tests for 766 adolescents aged 12 to 19. They found urinary levels of one particular type of phthalate, known as Di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP), were closely tied to a teenager's chance of having insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. Just under 15 percent of study participants with the lowest one-third of DEHP levels were insulin resistant, compared to almost 22 percent of those with the highest levels. DEHP, Trasande said, is often used to soften plastic bottles. It's used in plastic that is printed with the number 3 for recycling. The researchers said their findings don't prove that eating food packaged with phthalates causes insulin resistance. For example, it's possible children who are already insulin-resistant have unhealthier eating habits and eat and drink more packaged products - thus the higher phthalate levels in their urine. But Trasande told Reuters Health the chemical may influence how the body secretes insulin in response to sugar. Because of that, he tells parents to avoid buying plastics made with DEHP. "I advise them not to wash plastic containers in the dishwasher," he said. And, "When the plastic is clearly etched or damaged, it's time to throw it away." For a separate study published concurrently in Pediatrics, Dr. Joyce Lee from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her colleagues used nutrition survey data through 2010 to compare BPA levels in the urine of six- to 18-year-olds with other health measures. In their analysis of 3,370 kids, BPA - an industrial chemical that may mimic estrogen in the body - was not linked to insulin resistance or blood sugar. But children with higher BPA levels were more likely to be obese, and tended to have a higher waist circumference-to-height ratio, than those with the lowest levels."

The particular variety of Phthalate-DEHP is implicated in developing insulin resistance leading to diabetic conditions, especially among children. Similarly BPA is now being confirmed as an obesogenic chemical causing early obesity among children. On the face of the fact that almost 20% of American kids are obese and the consumption of processed foods is very high in that country, there is a definite cause for alarm. It is high time that safety authorities wake up to this shocking reality and revisit the issue of safety of all food ingredient currently allowed for use by the industry before further damage is caused to the innocent public.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

NON-CALORIC OBESOGENS-NEW REVELATIONS OF SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS

Is the world becoming a scary place to live considering the plethora of risks and dangers humans face to day in their eternal search for more pleasure and convenience? If all the contradicting, often confusing reports that come in their way, are taken at their face value, there appears to be a sense of inevitability that future is going to be more and more insecure for the denizens though not many realize the lurking dangers ahead. If the food industry, the retail industry, government and the consumer community do not pull up their socks, world is hurtling towards a catastrophe of gigantic dimension. For example obesity is making a nation like America present a grotesque picture of its population as more than 30% of them are obese by definition and consumers have to bear a lot of responsibility for this undesirable transformation. But the contribution by the industry is also not too small to be ignored. From marketing junk foods, loaded heavily with "empty" calories to using thousands of chemicals in the food during processing the industry plays a "dirty" role in seducing the citizens to the portfolio of products it offers. Bis-Phenol A, an additive in many plastic packaging materials and lining materials was ubiquitous by its presence in the blood and urine of more than 90% of the population in the US, is now discovered to be an obesogen causing weight increase in many people, even under normal food consumption protocol. Here is a take on this issue.    

"One of the most common of these obesogens, as they have become known, is bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, the ubiquitous chemical found in everything from the lining of cans to the paper that most receipts are printed on. Research suggest that it's in the urine of upwards of 90 percent of Americans—evidently at levels high enough to cause harm. According to University of Missouri biologist and notorious BPA researcher Frederick vom Saal, it also affects how the body deals with fat. "BPA reduces the number of fat cells but programs them to incorporate more fat, so there are fewer but very large fat cells, vom Saal recently told Environmental Health Perspectives. "BPA exposure is producing in animals the kind of outcomes that we see in humans born light at birth: an increase in abdominal fat and glucose intolerance." A study released last week by University of California-Irvine researchers further implicates BPA in the obesity problem—and raises even greater suspicion about a related compound called bisphenol A Diglycidyl ether, a combination of of BPA and something called epichlorohydrin, this World Health Organization report explains. It's through BADGE that BPA makes it into in food-can linings. UC-Irvine biologist Bruce Blumberg, who co-authored the study, explained to me in an email that the BPA that ends up in our food through can linings gets there when BADGE breaks down into its components. Blumberg and his team found, though, that BADGE in its whole state is an even more potent obesogen than BPA—and its effects are independent of BPA. Both BADGE and BPA can trigger preadipocytes—which are known as "pre-fat cells" because they can either lie dormant, copy themselves, or turn into fat—to become fat cells. The Cal-Irvine researchers tested the effects BADGE and BPA have on stem cells, our bodies' cellular building blocks that can differentiate into the whole variety of human cells. They found that while BADGE can turn stem cells into fat cells at tiny doses, BPA doesn't have that effect at all. The result surprised Blumberg and his team, because they went into the study assuming that BADGE wasn't an obesogen. How small are the doses at which BADGE does its dirty work? Blumberg told me that the stuff can induce stem cells to become fat cells at levels as low as 3 parts per billion. That's way, way below the level the FDA has declared the "no observed adverse effect level" for BADGE, which is 15 parts per million, Blumberg wrote in an email".

The fact that BPA and BADGE even at  a level, as low as 3 parts billion can induce fat synthesis in fat cells will have far reaching implications. The FDA insistence that BPA does not pose any danger to consumers, probably may need a revisit immediately in the light of the above findings. Polycarbonate feeding bottles, extensively being used till recently and continued use of bottles made from polycarbonate base for packing drinking water have been implicated as important sources of BPA and the quick action response by the industry in voluntarily stopping the use of these containers is indeed welcome. Industry was successful in finding suitable replacements for them. Same is true with can linings, another important source of BPA with the industry developing suitable replacements. As of now it is very difficult to come to any conclusion whether BPA really poses any grave danger to consumer health in the light of concerted action by the packaging industry and the food processing sector in withdrawing these risky material for food contact application. The stand of FDA that BPA does not pose any health risk needs will have to be reconsidered in the light of above findings. If more than 65% of Americans are overweight as per the current yardsticks and if more than 90% of them show significant levels of BPA in the blood and urine, food alone might not be wholly responsible for the situation and chemicals like BPA and other obesogens may have to shoulder some blame too.  

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com