What Not To Eat In A Day

A RoundUp of The Not-So-Secret Toxins Found In Our Food Supply

Photo by Karen Sewell on Unsplash

Doesn’t it feel like the news has been flooded with bad news about our food lately?

It’s terrible because we rely on a safe food system to nourish ourselves and instead, we keep learning about all the ways our regulatory systems are once again failing us.

Let’s take a look at some of the toxins found in our food.

Breakfast Time

What’s a little chlormequat in your Cheerios?

Chlormequat is a toxic agricultural chemical that the EPA refers to as a pesticide.

Chlormequat chloride is currently registered for use as a plant growth regulator (PGR) in ornamentals grown in greenhouses and nurseries. It works to control plant size by blocking the hormones that stimulate growth prior to bloom.

When applied to oat and grain crops while they’re growing, it stops the plants from bending over, which can make for a difficult harvest. 

But guess what? If this chemical compound alters plant hormones, what do you think it does to us? Animal studies show chlormequat can lead to reduced fertility, harm to the reproductive system, and altered fetal growth.

Yikes! That raises a lot of question about how it could impact people.

A new EWG peer-reviewed study has found chlormequat in four out of five, or 80 percent, of people tested. The groundbreaking analysis of chlormequat in the bodies of people in the U.S. should ring loud alarm bells.

In addition, the testing found higher levels and more frequent detections of chlormequat in the 2023, compared to those from 2017 through 2022, which suggests consumer exposure to chlormequat could be on the rise. 

Current EPA regulations allow the chemical to be used on ornamental plants only, not food crops. But its use is permitted on imported oats and other foods sold here. Many oats and oat products consumed in the U.S. come from Canada. 

Chlormequat was not allowed on oats sold in the U.S. before 2018, when the Trump EPA gave first-time approval for some amount of the chemical on imported oats. In 2020, the same administration increased the allowable level from 15 to 40 parts per million. These regulatory changes might help explain why we’re seeing more frequent, higher detections of the chemical in Americans tested. 

In April 2023, in response to an application submitted by chlormequat manufacturer Taminco, the Biden EPA proposed allowing the first-ever use of chlormequat on barley, oat, triticale, and wheat grown in the U.S.

“The EPA proposal to allow chlormequat to be sprayed on crops that ultimately become the main ingredients in foods we eat, like cereals, is a serious mistake that puts the health and safety of the American public, especially children, at risk,” said EWG Vice President for Science Investigations Olga Naidenko, Ph.D.

Chlormequat has been found in samples of conventional oat products including General Mills Cheerios and Quaker Old Fashioned Oats in levels exceeding 100 parts per billion.

While acute ingestion of chlormequat can be fatal, the impact of low, chronic doses is not thoroughly understood.

Many oat products sadly also have been found to contain high levels of the herbicide glyphosate, commonly known by its original brand name “RoundUp.” Last year, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that high levels in human urine was linked to oxidative stress, a condition that causes damage to DNA; the chemical is also associated with metabolic disorders and liver inflammation.

We can’t catch a break before we even start the day. Weedkiller for breakfast? No thanks.

Ok, So Skip The Oats & Have Some Applesauce

A spoonful of lead in your applesauce?

The New York Times reported that cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches sold in grocery and dollar stores last year poisoned hundreds of American children with extremely high doses of lead. Children in 44 states ate the tainted applesauce, some of which contained lead at extraordinarily high levels.

Lead is known as a cumulative poison and one of the best-researched neurotoxins that can cause irreversible damage and is most toxic to the developing brain. According to our own regulatory agency (the EPA), lead has no safe level of exposure. Lead in drinking water can cause everything from stomach pains to permanent brain damage.

So what happens when it ends up in your applesauce?

According to the Times, “the tainted cinnamon went untested and undiscovered, the result of an overstretched FDA and a food-safety law that gives companies, at home and abroad, wide latitude on what toxins to look for and whether to test.”

Let’s remember that The Food and Drug Administration has moved from a taxpayer-funded entity to one increasingly funded by the manufacturers that are being regulated. About 45 percent of its budget comes from user fees that companies pay when they apply for approval of a medical device or drug.

Starting in 1958 Congress gave the FDA the authority to ensure the safety of chemicals in our food. Since then, thousands of chemicals have entered the food system.

“Yet, their long-term, chronic effects have been woefully understudied, their health risks inadequately assessed, according to a 2017 article published in PLOS Biology. “The FDA has been sluggish in considering scientific knowledge about the impact of exposures—particularly at low levels and during susceptible developmental stages.”

While the FDA boasted a quick recall of three million applesauce pouches, hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The New York Times and the nonprofit health newsroom The Examination, along with interviews with government and company officials in multiple countries, show that in the weeks and months before the recall, the tainted applesauce sailed through a series of checkpoints in a food-safety system meant to protect American consumers.

“Companies have the responsibility to take steps to assure that the products they manufacture are not contaminated with unsafe levels of heavy metals,” Jim Jones, the top FDA food official, said in a statement. “The agency’s job is to help the industry comply and hold those who evade these requirements accountable, as appropriate.”

Sounds to me like another case of letting manufacturers regulate themselves. Guess it’s time to start growing my own cinnamon.

I’ll Just Drink Juice Then

Just a sprinkle of sodium benzoate in your fruit juice?

On to the world of food preservatives. An increasing number of chemicals have been added to our food throughout the years in order to improve taste and appearance or extend shelf life. We call them additives or preservatives.

Sodium benzoate is a salt of benzoic acid used to preserve food products with an acidic pH, such as fruit pulp and purees, jams, pickles, fruit yogurts, canned vegetables, and salads.

This food chemical has been linked to a variety of health harms, including damage to DNA, hormone disruption, and reduced fertility. 

Sodium benzoate also poses a cancer risk when combined with ascorbic acid, citric acid, or vitamin C. When it’s combined with any of these compounds, it forms benzene, a chemical associated with blood cancers.

Questionable additives, including sodium benzoate, continue to be allowed in the food we eat because of the FDA’s outdated generally recognized as safe, or GRAS, rule loophole. 

The purpose of the rule was to allow ingredients to skip regulatory approval only if they’re known to be safe. But it’s allowed manufacturers, not the FDA, to certify their own ingredients as safe.

Since 2000, nearly 99 percent of new food chemicals added to the food supply chain have exploited the GRAS loophole. 

Time to start growing our own food. Check out this inspo

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Bottom line: don’t assume the food on grocery store shelves is fit for human consumption. If we’re not setting standards for what’s safe, then anything goes.

Just as we discus the need for clean, safe drinking water, we also need to talk about food that nourishes us and doesn’t give us high or low level exposure to unwanted chemicals.

What Can Consumers Do To Avoid These Toxins?

Consumers concerned about exposure to harmful chemicals and pesticides may want to buy products made with organic ingredients, as certified organic products are grown without synthetic pesticides. Low levels of contamination may still occur in organic products, but they are usually lower than their non-organic counterparts.

Always read labels and try to avoid products with long lists of ingredients or food additives that you don’t recognize. Avoid foods that list both sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid, citric acid, and vitamin C as ingredients. Food companies must list these chemicals on packaged food ingredient labels. 

Watch out for “health washing,” Big food companies often tout health benefits on the front of a package like “heart healthy” or “great source of fiber,” to entice you to buy their products when the back of the box tells a different story. Continue to educate yourself about food ingredients and toxins and spread the word to the people you know.

Let the regulatory agencies that we fund with our tax dollars know:

FDA: We’d like more testing of food for dangerous chemicals.

EPA: Please don’t allow the use of dangerous chemicals on the foods grown in the U.S.

Additional Listening

Think you might be playing it safe with prepared healthy foods like to-go salads? Listen to this podcast for a bigger look at why these foods have become so dangerous.

Maintenance Phase

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Have you thought about the toxins hiding in your food? Let us know what we should add to this list in the comments below!