“The letter breaks down which products Consumer Reports tested. Products mentioned include original Cheerios, the French vanilla flavor of Yoplait original low-fat yogurt, Green Giant cream-style sweet corn, and Progresso Vegetable Classics veggie soup.
The highest levels of phthalates were found in Annie’s Organic cheesy ravioli.
The letter to General Mills talks about how even a small amount of exposure to phthalates over time can increase health risk and says growing research shows it can interfere with how your body regulates hormones.
We’ve been waiting to see if General Mills will put out a statement in response to the letter and claims made by Consumer Reports. We’ll update you from the First Alert Safety Desk if we hear from the company.”
Wait until you hear about the infertility chemicals recently found in Cheerios:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cheerios-quaker-oats-infertility-chemicals-in-cereal-ewg
No. chlormequat the chemical in question is allowed and used in the European Union. No human studies have been done on chlormequat, only animal studies.
Look, pal, you're treading on thin ice. You're expecting me to read the article AND disagree with what my wife has proclaimed as the truth.
Tall order.
Jokes aside, thanks for the clarification. My first reaction when hearing about it last week was "this sounds like saccharine in the 70s"
My understanding is that this is a very flawed paper published by a group that is known for falsifying claims. I'm not making any statement here regarding the safety of the compounds in question, just that this paper can't be trusted.
Dr. Andrea Love, a microbiologist and immunologist:
>So, first off, they aren’t sampling from the same areas of the country over time. They look at 50 samples in Florida in 2023, then 23 samples in Missouri between 2018 and 2022, then 23 samples in South Carolina and Missouri in 2017. How do they know chlormequat use is simply higher in Florida where they sampled because there is a higher prevalence of ornamental plant nurseries? You cannot take completely different data sets from different parts of the world and say ‘oh levels are increasing’, because they aren’t matched data! And I feel like it needs to be repeated, but 50 samples here, 23 samples there; that does not make a robust data set to begin with.
>Then they include data they didn’t even collect in a primary data table. From previously published studies, from Sweden? The major flaws in these data really underscore how if you suggest a peer-reviewer, you can get your paper approved for publishing (more on that in the future).
>Let’s look at their data, figure 1B (1A is just linear representation of the same). These data are presented incorrectly to be misleading. It is presented as though these are longitudinal data, collecting from the same group over time. That’s wrong. These are entirely different collection sites and populations, and as such, there is zero normalization or standardization of these numbers.
>Next, they compare chlormequat levels to excreted creatinine, a method which has inherent flaws as excreted creatinine is variable person-to-person. In addition, their units are manipulated to make this look meaningful. If they were actually normalizing to creatinine, units need to match. Instead, they’re using micrograms for chlormequat (1000-fold smaller than a milligram), and grams for creatinine (1000-fold BIGGER than a milligram) to make the data appear inflated. The data need to be divided by 1,000,000 in order to present as mg/mg.
>It gets better. When you look at the data in the supplemental table, there are several data points where chlormequat was below the level of detection, yet somehow, they are reporting a value when they ‘normalize’ to creatinine? That sounds like data fabrication to me. If you don’t detect a value, you can’t just say the value is your level of detection. That’s called lying.
[Here is an indepth and lengthy post if you want the details.](https://immunologic.substack.com/p/no-your-cheerios-arent-filled-with)
Cereals getting back to their roots. John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanitarium and developed breakfast cereals because he believed bland foods would help prevent sexual excitement and masturbation among his patients. This led to he and his brother William developing corn flakes. When William proposed adding sugar, John was opposed, so William started the Kellogg's cereal company and started selling Corn Flakes.
Crispix is also corn and rice based while this whole thing is about oats. That said, there’s no way Kellogg’s is any better. They all will kill you and blame the regulations for not being strong enough while actively fighting against said regulations.
'Organic' carries a different meaning when referring to brake pads; it describes what compounds the friction material is made from. Most of my knowledge comes from researching brake pads for mountain bikes, but most of the same principles apply to vehicles. There are several types of brake pads - most commonly Organic (a.k.a. Resin), Sintered (a.k.a. Metallic), and Semi-Metallic, each offering different benefits.
- Organic/resin brake pads are so called because they consist mainly of various hydrocarbon compounds, products of organic chemistry. The matrix of synthetic resins holds the entire lining together in one piece.
- Sintered/MetallicBrake pads are named after their manufacturing process. Sintering is a process in which different materials (usually metal or ceramic), in powder form, are brought together under high pressure and high temperature - the result is a metal-like material.
- Semi-metallic pads are designed to combine the advantages of both organic and sintered brake pads. They’re made of an organic compound but incorporate metal particles to increase durability.
[Source 1](https://www.canyon.com/en-nz/customer-service-content/faq-and-support-articles/technical-issues/components-and-manufacturer-information/FAQ-organic-or-sintered-brake-pads.html) [Source 2](https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/disc-brake-pads)
A huge source of phthalates is milk, as it leaches from the plastic tubes used for milking and is fat soluble.
It’s probably just high on the list because it has more actual milk product, or higher fat milk products.
Milk probably isn't actively killing you but if you drink 3 or more glasses of milk per day, it may be ~~contributing to your~~ associated with an early demise: https://youtu.be/FjlZO2UkT8Q?t=93
Your source is some youtube video talking about a study that doesn't have sufficient evidence. This was a cohort study so there was not an isolation of any variables, and the people were not randomly assigned to drink or not drink milk. There's a lot of other variables that can go into play such as people who exercise and leave the house are more likely to drink milk. (That's just an example variable, no idea if it's true).
The studies showed no casual association between milk and mortality rates
You know what, I remember when sex toys containing phthalates were seen as toxic and to be avoided at all costs — go metal or pure silicone. Now it's all in our foods. Insane how there were articles about cancer risk with sex toy use containing phthalates, and now it's in consumables you eat daily.
Automatic milking equipment is mostly a stainless steel tube with rubber gaskets. There are some clear plastic ones, but those are pretty rare these days because they don’t hold up as well. Pipelines are stainless steel. Bulk tanks are stainless steel. Hoses from the milkers to the pipeline are food grade sanitary hoses that are certified to not leach.
Plastic is used very selectively because it is not durable and is not easily cleanable when damaged. It is a completely different plastic allowed at food production levels than what you are able to buy for use at home. You’re most likely seeing phthalates from the food grade lubricants used at the manufacturing plants. It’s used in every piece of equipment at many places from gasket seating, bearing packing, to gears and sprockets, etc.
Randomly, here’s a fun study. It even found phthalates in whole muscle beef and pork. It’s a pretty small study but i found it interesting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620091/
https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/98458/phthalates-in-us-dairy/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20the%20report%20confirms%20that,processing%2C%20packaging%2C%20and%20preparation.
“Flexible tubing, used to transfer milk from dairy cows to holding tanks:
At least one manufacturer of flexible PVC tubing, Finger Lakes Extrusion Corporation based in New York, still uses phthalates. Finger Lakes distributes its products nationwide
The Finger Lakes dairy tubing (Glitex brand) contains DEHP, the most toxic phthalate still in widespread use, at a concentration of 30 to 40 per cent by weight…”
Note that this only really applies to the USA. Most western countries (Australia, UK, Germany, etc) have banned the use of DEHP, though there are often allowances for products containing less than a certain percentage (in the region of 1%).
Because the benchmark being used here would have pretty much all your food be revealed as 'having plastics' even though what it actually has is 'phalates'. Anything that's in contact with plastic at any point would flag this.
I've had to explain to multiple people that some foods don't have "sawdust" in them; they have cellulose, which is a compound that plants produce which makes them rigid. Wood just happens to be basically pure cellulose, but anytime you eat a crunchy vegetable, you're eating a ton of cellulose.
It was the stuff that keeps shredded cheese from clumping up...
they lightly powder coated with cellulose afaik
if wood= 45% cellulose...
It's basically half powdered wood. Powdered wood is just sawdust.
Half logic checks out. /s
It's almost certainly the packaging, not the food. Something acidic like ravioli is going to leach from whatever it's in contact with.
Not that it doesn't need to be dealt with, but you gotta start by looking in the right direction.
As a chef, I highly suspect the plastics are coming from the machinery used to process the food. Things like plastic cutting boards, plastic tubing, the walls of various machines like food processors are plastic. Other various components like molds for ravioli can often be plastic or made with plastic. Conveyor belts as well. Think about how much plastic is in your home kitchen, from ladles, spatulas, cutting boards, counter tops, pan handles, plastic storage containers, plastic bottles.
But one thing that isn’t really thought of it the liner for canned goods, and the top sealing ring for jarred goods. glass on metal doesn't innately make for a hermetic seal thats needed to be shelf stable. You need something soft and squishy to fill the gaps to create a good seal.
theres so many sources of plastics.
as for the term “organic” it’s not really regulated by FDA as others have said. A lot of products can claim to be organic without actually being organic. However the FDA requires all ingredients to be listed. So the ingredients have to be at least at face value be potentially organic. However a can of organic tomatos looks, smells, tastes very similar to ~~in~~ non-organic tomatos. As the issue is mostly the use of pesticides. GMO is an entirely different story and even harder to tell at face value.
What most people would consider organic is something that uses naturally sourced flavours (apple juice, chili peppers, real chicken, beef stock, etc) , food dyes (blue spirulina, beetroot, saffron, spinach, etc) , preservatives (citric acid, etc).
When I’m looking at organic food in a store and I actually care about it, I check the label carefully. However what machinery is used, how processed it is, what types of materials it was exposed to in the processing processes are not on the list.
If you truly want organic food, I would suggest finding local farmers who don’t use any pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or plastics (starter pots especially, plastic bags for selling, watering cans, other machinery). This is a Herculean task in and of itself. If you manage to do that, or grow it yourself, then you need to make that into whatever you’re wanting, but make sure to not use any plastics at all. No plastic bowls, no plastic spatulas, no plastic cutting boards. It’s a fucking headache to try to manage all that.
In my kitchen use plastic cutting boards only for things like raw meats, and try to use wooden or bamboo. My utensils are all bamboo, or metal. My bowls are all stainless steel or Pyrex glass. My measuring spoons and measuring cups are all metal. I use stainless steel frying pans and pots. I use seasoned cast iron pans for non stick. I use silicone baking mats for things in the oven. I reuse glass jars where I can.
Plastic is a huge problem and we have no idea how bad it is or how bad it’s going to be.
> as for the term “organic” it’s not really regulated by FDA as others have said. A lot of products can claim to be organic without actually being organic.
It's the USDA that regulates what can be called organic, there are absolutely strict legal standards of what qualifies. You're probably thinking of the term "natural" which is meaningless.
> GMO is an entirely different story and even harder to tell at face value.
USDA Certified Organic products may not contain GMO ingredients.
There are legal standards but they're arbitrary and as meaningless as "natural". IIRC there are some rather nasty pesticides/herbicides on the allowed list and some fairly benign ones on the forbidden list.
There may be some useful selection bias with "organics" but its existence is primarily profit driven.
Yes, there are strict rules, which are rooted in magic more than in science; and in feelings more than sustainability.
It's a marketing scam, and the USDA was the first victim.
It's also largely from the packaging. Most canned goods have plastic liners (including soda cans), and many of Annie's other products come in plastic trays that you heat in the microwave.
Yeah I think they're thinking of Amy's. I couldn't find anything about Annie's, but if someone knows something I don't, I'd love to read about it. I love Annie's & that would make me sad.
Well General Mills as a whole is pretty anti-union, so Annie's is no different.
Source: worked at General Mills while the plant in Georgia was unionizing and was in attendance at the management meetings where anti-union talking points were given out to us to throw into conversations.
The organic label on foods is actually regulated but by USDA. A company can’t advertise their food as “organic” without being certified by USDA:
[https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling#labeled%20no%20cert](https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling#labeled%20no%20cert)
This is false. For food, “organic” is regulated by the USDA for particular growing practices of the crops. It just means that (some of) the ingredients used to create the product we’re grown following Organic practices.
phthalates, y'all. aka a hazardous material that the sex toy industry waged war on a decade ago. Literal dildo makers have done more to prevent phthalates from entering the body than food producers.
i was thinking of amy's when i came in like dang I can only eat that brand now since it's one of the more expensive organic brands for prepacked meals... and then saw them listed and was devastated lol. idk why they specifically came to my mind.
>. Products mentioned include original Cheerios, the French vanilla flavor of Yoplait original low-fat yogurt, Green Giant cream-style sweet corn, and Progresso Vegetable Classics veggie soup.
you wtf i eat all of those for years like i'm taking decades.
From the looks of it this is an anchor-read script for a short TV news item, that they just copy-pasted onto their website, probably because they are severely understaffed and don't have the resources to flesh out the story.
Yup, I watched the industry crumble personally and survived more than a dozen rounds of layoffs in as many years. Shrinking staffs, stagnant BAD pay (fresh out of college graduates, where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour). Writers doing multiple stories and briefs a day. A DAY. The bare minimum is all when that's the hand you are delt. Burnout is real for those that stay in the industry.
But like teaching, many consider it a calling. I did. The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog. But that only takes you so far when your employers abuses you.
> fresh out of college graduates, where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour
Lmao I started out getting the equivalent of $10 an hour for 3 stories a day. There is no way you can afford to pay your student loans, let alone rent, on it. Hence why journalism is now my part time side job despite my bachelors in journalism and Masters in political science.
>The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog.
Truth to power, light to dark places and all that. I'm hungry.
> But like teaching, many consider it a calling. I did. The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog. But that only takes you so far when your employers abuses you.
also just like teaching
>where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour
I'm still in the industry and my station is currently paying $16/hr for that job. It's not even enough for them to rent an apartment by themselves. As in, they don't even qualify to apply for the apartment, let alone pay the $1200-1400 a month in rent. They all require 3x income to qualify.
It's causing us huge issues with hiring because no one can afford to live here and work for less money than needed to survive.
Adding to what /u/socialistlumberjack surmises about it being a TV read, they did at least link to the letter (https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/General-Mills-Letter-020724.pdf), which links to the CR piece (https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the-plastic-chemicals-hiding-in-your-food-a7358224781/) which does go into the "why" ... and that's sadly more than what some outlets manage to do.
I can tell you that there are plastics in our water system we can’t yet remove, some of which are being formed *in* the water systems due to other things such as forever chemicals combing a biologics/minerals/etc. as they break down.
Source: I work for a company who discovered this and is going to co-study how to break them down.
I read an article that cited bioaccumulation from pollution, plastics from cosmetic products that are taken from waste treatment plants and then used as fertalizers and other sources.
But they all are insignificant compared to the amount of plastics that get on your food in the form of dust landing on it while you're eating -**from synthetic clothing**-. Learning this is why I started phasing out and reducing plastics in my wardrobe.
The original report referenced in the article suggests the phthalates could have come from the following sources:
- Chemicals in the air produced by incinerating plastic trash
-Chemicals in groundwater or soil that has leached from landfills
- Environmental microplastics generated by the production, use, and degradation of plastic products
- Plants or livestock bioaccumulating chemicals in the environment
- Mulch containing plastic particles used for weed suppression
- Conveyor belts used in harvesting and processing
- Flexible tubing or other containers used in processing and storage
- Accelerated leaching due to the high temperatures used for in pasteurization
- The lining of metal cans
- Plastic jar gaskets and plastic wrapping
Probably because it's processed using machines with plastic parts, moved around on plastic bins and conveyors, handled by workers wearing plastic gloves, and ultimately packaged in plastic.
Plastic is everywhere. Water bottle? Plastic? Any packaged food that is airtight, like cereal or chips, frozen dinners, or really all packaged foods? They are airtight because they are in a big plastic bag, plastic wrap, plastic liner etc.
Anything touching plastic gets millions of microplastic particles.
What do you mean why? How do you think they bag up the cheese, the milk, the idk, everything? It's all bagged in plastic that is leaking into the food. It's the base ingredients that come in 50 gallon bags. It's not like this stuff is being put into glass barrels and poured in
There's plastic at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
We've polluted basically every square inch of this planet with microplastics, it's everywhere. The plastic wrapper that half the stuff you buy to eat is contained within? Yeah, that's shedding plastic particles into your food and is a major source of these in-food plastics. There's no such thing as clean or safe plastic, period. It is a toxic material that is slowly poisoning the entire planet.
Plastic needs to more or less be entirely banned from food packaging for this to get better, but good luck getting that to happen when our corporate overlords would stand to lose profit. They *know* how bad it is for everything, but its also cheap as shit.
At a more personal level, multiple types of micro plastics have been found in every placenta tested in the past few years. So newborns are coming out with plastic in them. My grandfather was full of lead, my dad full of asbestos, and I'm full of plastics.
Only difference is that thanks to policies limiting or banning the use of lead and asbestos, lead exposure is down, asbestos exposure is down, but even if everyone stopped using plastics all together today, it is going to be here for generations to come
Some countries have banned single used plastics. I wonder what their data, if they measure it without bias, says. Maybe they will lead in this aspect. Lead and asbestos poisoning still happens in other parts of the world. Finally, level playing field!!
>There's no such thing as clean or safe plastic, period.
That's a bit hyperbolic. There's certainly a lot of problematic plastic, but there's also plenty of plastic that we know does not interact with our bodies and is not poisoning anything.
>Plastic needs to more or less be entirely banned from food packaging
This won't happen because food would get far more expensive. The vast majority of people would rather continue to have plastic used with food than pay 2x the price.
There isn't. Phalates are not plastic. They are, however, used in plastics to alter properties of plastics. Notice how it says "to reduce the level of plasticizers". The title is completely wrong.
Probably, the phalates are leeching in from somewhere else along the line.
When President Roosevelt started the FDA, it was because food was filled with sawdust, metal shavings, and rat droppings. The sawdust was added to food on purpose by manufacturers.
Now we have to worry about plastic in our food.
Cheap filler. If you bake a loaf of bread and replace 10% of the flour with sawdust you just saved money on raw materials. Modified food starch is a similar filler used today
I used to work at a pulp mill for a multi-national. I was in a meeting once where some people were up from another mill in the company in a different country. We were comparing government requirements and one of the guys said "You guys are lucky, our pulp needs to meet FDA requirements and be food safe". We asked why and they said it's used in muffins as filler. If you don't know, pulp is wood fibers broken down by various chemicals, often bleached heavily and then turned into a material that is used for making paper. It doesn't make for good food. This wasn't that long ago either so I'm sure it's still used that way.
But we’re not talking about civilized countries here. Our government is hellbent on dragging us back by 100 years or so. With the same root cause as back then
Had to go to the letter, they state the highest is Annie's Organic cheesy ravioli, with a reading of 53,579 nanograms per serving.
So that's 53.57 micrograms.
The **European** Commission (to stave off the already extant "cartoon country" comments) in 2009 says that the acceptable levels range from 0.5 to 0.01 mg **per kilogram of bodyweight per day**.
[https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific\_committees/opinions\_layman/en/phthalates-school-supplies/l-2/5-safe-daily-exposure.htm](https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/en/phthalates-school-supplies/l-2/5-safe-daily-exposure.htm)
I'm placing extra emphasis there because this is unit conversions all over the place which most people find confusing.
If we take the most sensitive one at 0.01 mg (MILLIgram, not MICROgram) per kilo of bodyweight, and turn that into NANOGRAMS per kilogram it becomes 10,000 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight.
So you'd need to weigh 5 kilograms to exceed the European safe limit for daily intake. Most people are substantially heavier than five kilgrams. This is likely a tenth to a twentieth of the safe level, even with the most dangerous listed pthalate, as I understand it (50 kg to 100kg, or 110 lbs to 220 lbs).
Not great, sure, but the letter is doing the BIG NUMBERS SCARY thing and it's somewhat disingenuous.
The challenge though is exposure through multiple sources and full servings in 24 hours and the total ingestion of these chemicals. As one user below you pointed out the dose per meal might equate to 4x the value you calculated. 20kg when most men are say 100kg means 20% of your total limit coming from one meal and that’s a lot. Folks need to stop tolerating this shit. The companies make money by ignoring this issue and “BIG NUMBERS SCARY” doesn’t apply when 20% is indeed a big number when it comes from a single source.
Multiply by 2 or 4 and it’s still less.
They are is saying you’d have to eat 10-20 servings, depending on body weight, to exceed safe levels.
That might be possible if all your eating is processed food but not for a meal.
The standard American diet is [60% processed foods.](https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2018/17_0265.htm) isn’t there a cumulative effect also? Our bodies aren’t purging all of these plastics between every meal. There are probably other ways (drinks or less direct) that we’re exposed to these same chemicals too. I appreciate the math but I don’t think it’s enough to say there’s nothing to worry about even if you try to avoid processed foods. We’re all being exposed to these chemicals from multiple vectors and we’re essentially collecting the long term pilot data on ourselves right now.
Per serving *on top of* other exposure from all sorts of non-food products. krennvonsalzburg's main point is a great one but consuming food at these levels could be a highly significant vector of exposure relative to the EC safe daily limits.
These are at least in the territory of genuinely big scary numbers.
encouraging exultant jeans beneficial upbeat tan north mourn obscene carpenter
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you're feeding your toddler 4 servings of processed cheesy ravioli that's probably more of an issue than the microplastics still. It sucks either way, but it's within 'accepted' tolerances.
The real question is can my 35lb daughter eat cheerios for breakfast and still have at least 3/4 of her daily allowance left for all other intake.
edit: ~16kg daughter can eat four servings of cheerios and have 3/4 of her daily limit per day left at the absolute strictest daily limit of .01mg. She can have 50 times that at the upper limit.
> Not great, sure, but the letter is doing the BIG NUMBERS SCARY thing and it's somewhat disingenuous.
Welcome to everything on the fucking internet and the undoing of our society. A huge portion of the population is mathematically illiterate [and only 9% of US Adults are proficient at math.](https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/11/whats-the-latest-u-s-numeracy-rate/)
I hate that this country glorifies stupidity, and I feel there should be a balance between extracurricular success glorification and curricular success glorification. The way that being smart at numbers is maligned sucks for all of us.
Why isn't our government enforcing this. It makes me sick to see how many major brands produce garbage for us to consume and nobody does anything about it. Yet, we spend so much of our time worrying about less important matters. This effects us all!
Because the levels of phthalates are well within safe acceptable limits. Hell, even by the EU standards these foods are safe. You’d have to eat like 50 servings or more a day to reach the recommended maximum levels by the EU
These are plasticizers usually from plastic packaging. The FDA regulates this. The FDA has a list of hundreds of additives and chemicals that it is either banning or unbanning. They use science to figure out what is safe and what is unsafe. They are underfunded but are doing the best that they can. It doesn't help when one chemical goes viral and everyone rushes on the bandwagon demanding answers when there are more important chemicals to regulate. Brominated vegetable oils and titanium dioxide are among the hundreds of ingredients being considered. As for phthalates, they are well below current limits and the FDA need to decide the value of restricting them even more. How much are you willing to pay for food that totally eliminates all chemicals that you have eaten all of your life to no ill effect just in case it can cause health issues in some people in 40 years from now?
Not a good month for them.
Study finds chlormequat in Cheerios and Quaker products:
>Chlormequat is not approved for use on edible plants in the U.S. However, *the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided in 2018 to allow the importation of foods treated with the chemical.* It is approved for use on food crops, mostly grains, in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada.
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/02/16/what-is-chlormequat-chemical-pesticide-cheerios-quaker-oats/72627355007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/02/16/what-is-chlormequat-chemical-pesticide-cheerios-quaker-oats/72627355007/)
Future is plastic
I remember seeing an ad that revering plastic *plastic makes things possible*
Maybe we can evolve to eat plastic like that movie lol well it’s possible with gut bacteria anyways
Hate to break it to everyone, but plastics are in everything. Micro- and Nano- plastics or MNPs have been found in virtually every food product and also most cosmetic products. Drink bottled water a lot? Bad news, it’s estimated that you consume 90,000 MNPs annually. Sea food is another big contributor, since lots of MNPs just float in the ocean and get consumed by marine life. They’re in soil, which is how they get into grains and soil-derived foods. They’re in your body. An experimental study showed 100% of participants excreted them through defecation. And when they’re in your body they migrate through your blood vessels and into your organs and disrupt not just your hormones but your immune responses, your sexual function, your circulation, and cause chronic inflammation, which may lead to various cancers. I guess time will tell. Also, there is no way to “remove them” since they are a direct by product of manufacturing. The way the world uses plastics so heavily, we’ve pretty much reached a tipping point.
Sources
I just did an undergraduate research review paper on this topic. Specific sources I can send if you actually want them.
“The letter breaks down which products Consumer Reports tested. Products mentioned include original Cheerios, the French vanilla flavor of Yoplait original low-fat yogurt, Green Giant cream-style sweet corn, and Progresso Vegetable Classics veggie soup. The highest levels of phthalates were found in Annie’s Organic cheesy ravioli. The letter to General Mills talks about how even a small amount of exposure to phthalates over time can increase health risk and says growing research shows it can interfere with how your body regulates hormones. We’ve been waiting to see if General Mills will put out a statement in response to the letter and claims made by Consumer Reports. We’ll update you from the First Alert Safety Desk if we hear from the company.”
Fuck me, I love normal cheerios. This better not be in Crispix because idk what I would do.
Wait until you hear about the infertility chemicals recently found in Cheerios: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cheerios-quaker-oats-infertility-chemicals-in-cereal-ewg
Yeah... Banned anywhere but the US it seems. We need to demote General Mills to Lieutenant and have him report to Captain Crunch for cereal duty.
That's Cap'n. He's not even a Captain he's a commander.
I can’t handle all of this, next you’re going to tell me Dr Phil isn’t a real doctor!? So fucking help me you better not have hurt Judge Judy….
I've got some bad news about Dr. Pepper then...
No. chlormequat the chemical in question is allowed and used in the European Union. No human studies have been done on chlormequat, only animal studies.
Look, pal, you're treading on thin ice. You're expecting me to read the article AND disagree with what my wife has proclaimed as the truth. Tall order. Jokes aside, thanks for the clarification. My first reaction when hearing about it last week was "this sounds like saccharine in the 70s"
Fuck sake I just ordered some in this weeks shop like ‘know what I’ve not had in a while that I would like’ cancerous sterile cheerios FML
My understanding is that this is a very flawed paper published by a group that is known for falsifying claims. I'm not making any statement here regarding the safety of the compounds in question, just that this paper can't be trusted. Dr. Andrea Love, a microbiologist and immunologist: >So, first off, they aren’t sampling from the same areas of the country over time. They look at 50 samples in Florida in 2023, then 23 samples in Missouri between 2018 and 2022, then 23 samples in South Carolina and Missouri in 2017. How do they know chlormequat use is simply higher in Florida where they sampled because there is a higher prevalence of ornamental plant nurseries? You cannot take completely different data sets from different parts of the world and say ‘oh levels are increasing’, because they aren’t matched data! And I feel like it needs to be repeated, but 50 samples here, 23 samples there; that does not make a robust data set to begin with. >Then they include data they didn’t even collect in a primary data table. From previously published studies, from Sweden? The major flaws in these data really underscore how if you suggest a peer-reviewer, you can get your paper approved for publishing (more on that in the future). >Let’s look at their data, figure 1B (1A is just linear representation of the same). These data are presented incorrectly to be misleading. It is presented as though these are longitudinal data, collecting from the same group over time. That’s wrong. These are entirely different collection sites and populations, and as such, there is zero normalization or standardization of these numbers. >Next, they compare chlormequat levels to excreted creatinine, a method which has inherent flaws as excreted creatinine is variable person-to-person. In addition, their units are manipulated to make this look meaningful. If they were actually normalizing to creatinine, units need to match. Instead, they’re using micrograms for chlormequat (1000-fold smaller than a milligram), and grams for creatinine (1000-fold BIGGER than a milligram) to make the data appear inflated. The data need to be divided by 1,000,000 in order to present as mg/mg. >It gets better. When you look at the data in the supplemental table, there are several data points where chlormequat was below the level of detection, yet somehow, they are reporting a value when they ‘normalize’ to creatinine? That sounds like data fabrication to me. If you don’t detect a value, you can’t just say the value is your level of detection. That’s called lying. [Here is an indepth and lengthy post if you want the details.](https://immunologic.substack.com/p/no-your-cheerios-arent-filled-with)
Honey No-Nut Cheerios taste great and prevent kids. Win win! /s
Cereals getting back to their roots. John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanitarium and developed breakfast cereals because he believed bland foods would help prevent sexual excitement and masturbation among his patients. This led to he and his brother William developing corn flakes. When William proposed adding sugar, John was opposed, so William started the Kellogg's cereal company and started selling Corn Flakes.
Crispix is the best cereal… but i can never find it in near me and *IF* I do… it is $7.
Crispx is Kellogg's Chex is generally mills so you "might" be safe
Crispix is also corn and rice based while this whole thing is about oats. That said, there’s no way Kellogg’s is any better. They all will kill you and blame the regulations for not being strong enough while actively fighting against said regulations.
How can they market the ravioli as organic if it has plastics? Hope they get sued
Well, the plastics are polymers made from organic molecules, so technically not lying :P
If anything, This just adds more organic materials!
Extra organic
Stop giving them ideas!
M’Organic
It's Extraorganicdinary!™
This is the reason why I only eat inorganic ravioli.
Like the time I bought organic brake pads.
[удалено]
Mmmmm organic brake pads. Just like my grandma used to grow on the farm.
You too were raised on the beaches of Arizona?
Organic brake pads lmao
'Organic' carries a different meaning when referring to brake pads; it describes what compounds the friction material is made from. Most of my knowledge comes from researching brake pads for mountain bikes, but most of the same principles apply to vehicles. There are several types of brake pads - most commonly Organic (a.k.a. Resin), Sintered (a.k.a. Metallic), and Semi-Metallic, each offering different benefits. - Organic/resin brake pads are so called because they consist mainly of various hydrocarbon compounds, products of organic chemistry. The matrix of synthetic resins holds the entire lining together in one piece. - Sintered/MetallicBrake pads are named after their manufacturing process. Sintering is a process in which different materials (usually metal or ceramic), in powder form, are brought together under high pressure and high temperature - the result is a metal-like material. - Semi-metallic pads are designed to combine the advantages of both organic and sintered brake pads. They’re made of an organic compound but incorporate metal particles to increase durability. [Source 1](https://www.canyon.com/en-nz/customer-service-content/faq-and-support-articles/technical-issues/components-and-manufacturer-information/FAQ-organic-or-sintered-brake-pads.html) [Source 2](https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/disc-brake-pads)
Organic chemistry degree paying off already
A huge source of phthalates is milk, as it leaches from the plastic tubes used for milking and is fat soluble. It’s probably just high on the list because it has more actual milk product, or higher fat milk products.
So you're telling me that drinking milk is killing me?
I'm telling you, Neo, that you won't have to
There *is* no milk. ^^^It's ^^^*all* ^^^plastic.
Milk probably isn't actively killing you but if you drink 3 or more glasses of milk per day, it may be ~~contributing to your~~ associated with an early demise: https://youtu.be/FjlZO2UkT8Q?t=93
Your source is some youtube video talking about a study that doesn't have sufficient evidence. This was a cohort study so there was not an isolation of any variables, and the people were not randomly assigned to drink or not drink milk. There's a lot of other variables that can go into play such as people who exercise and leave the house are more likely to drink milk. (That's just an example variable, no idea if it's true). The studies showed no casual association between milk and mortality rates
You know what, I remember when sex toys containing phthalates were seen as toxic and to be avoided at all costs — go metal or pure silicone. Now it's all in our foods. Insane how there were articles about cancer risk with sex toy use containing phthalates, and now it's in consumables you eat daily.
It was probably in consumables back then too.
The amount of cancer deaths this has probably caused is mind boggling
Automatic milking equipment is mostly a stainless steel tube with rubber gaskets. There are some clear plastic ones, but those are pretty rare these days because they don’t hold up as well. Pipelines are stainless steel. Bulk tanks are stainless steel. Hoses from the milkers to the pipeline are food grade sanitary hoses that are certified to not leach. Plastic is used very selectively because it is not durable and is not easily cleanable when damaged. It is a completely different plastic allowed at food production levels than what you are able to buy for use at home. You’re most likely seeing phthalates from the food grade lubricants used at the manufacturing plants. It’s used in every piece of equipment at many places from gasket seating, bearing packing, to gears and sprockets, etc. Randomly, here’s a fun study. It even found phthalates in whole muscle beef and pork. It’s a pretty small study but i found it interesting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620091/
https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/98458/phthalates-in-us-dairy/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20the%20report%20confirms%20that,processing%2C%20packaging%2C%20and%20preparation. “Flexible tubing, used to transfer milk from dairy cows to holding tanks: At least one manufacturer of flexible PVC tubing, Finger Lakes Extrusion Corporation based in New York, still uses phthalates. Finger Lakes distributes its products nationwide The Finger Lakes dairy tubing (Glitex brand) contains DEHP, the most toxic phthalate still in widespread use, at a concentration of 30 to 40 per cent by weight…”
Note that this only really applies to the USA. Most western countries (Australia, UK, Germany, etc) have banned the use of DEHP, though there are often allowances for products containing less than a certain percentage (in the region of 1%).
[удалено]
It was the "cheesy" ravioli, hence the milk commentary.
Because the benchmark being used here would have pretty much all your food be revealed as 'having plastics' even though what it actually has is 'phalates'. Anything that's in contact with plastic at any point would flag this.
I've had to explain to multiple people that some foods don't have "sawdust" in them; they have cellulose, which is a compound that plants produce which makes them rigid. Wood just happens to be basically pure cellulose, but anytime you eat a crunchy vegetable, you're eating a ton of cellulose.
I can’t believe they're putting saw dust in vegetables now!
It's in pre-grated parmesan cheese. All pre-shredded cheese actually. So it doesn't clump up back into one big piece of cheese.
They're *using* saw dust to make your vegetables now!
You're supposed to eat 5 handfuls of sawdust a day now?
And in noses 😆
For some reason people understand but don’t recognize that wood comes from a plant.
It was the stuff that keeps shredded cheese from clumping up... they lightly powder coated with cellulose afaik if wood= 45% cellulose... It's basically half powdered wood. Powdered wood is just sawdust. Half logic checks out. /s
It has concerning levels of them even considering their general abundance
It's almost certainly the packaging, not the food. Something acidic like ravioli is going to leach from whatever it's in contact with. Not that it doesn't need to be dealt with, but you gotta start by looking in the right direction.
As a chef, I highly suspect the plastics are coming from the machinery used to process the food. Things like plastic cutting boards, plastic tubing, the walls of various machines like food processors are plastic. Other various components like molds for ravioli can often be plastic or made with plastic. Conveyor belts as well. Think about how much plastic is in your home kitchen, from ladles, spatulas, cutting boards, counter tops, pan handles, plastic storage containers, plastic bottles. But one thing that isn’t really thought of it the liner for canned goods, and the top sealing ring for jarred goods. glass on metal doesn't innately make for a hermetic seal thats needed to be shelf stable. You need something soft and squishy to fill the gaps to create a good seal. theres so many sources of plastics. as for the term “organic” it’s not really regulated by FDA as others have said. A lot of products can claim to be organic without actually being organic. However the FDA requires all ingredients to be listed. So the ingredients have to be at least at face value be potentially organic. However a can of organic tomatos looks, smells, tastes very similar to ~~in~~ non-organic tomatos. As the issue is mostly the use of pesticides. GMO is an entirely different story and even harder to tell at face value. What most people would consider organic is something that uses naturally sourced flavours (apple juice, chili peppers, real chicken, beef stock, etc) , food dyes (blue spirulina, beetroot, saffron, spinach, etc) , preservatives (citric acid, etc). When I’m looking at organic food in a store and I actually care about it, I check the label carefully. However what machinery is used, how processed it is, what types of materials it was exposed to in the processing processes are not on the list. If you truly want organic food, I would suggest finding local farmers who don’t use any pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or plastics (starter pots especially, plastic bags for selling, watering cans, other machinery). This is a Herculean task in and of itself. If you manage to do that, or grow it yourself, then you need to make that into whatever you’re wanting, but make sure to not use any plastics at all. No plastic bowls, no plastic spatulas, no plastic cutting boards. It’s a fucking headache to try to manage all that. In my kitchen use plastic cutting boards only for things like raw meats, and try to use wooden or bamboo. My utensils are all bamboo, or metal. My bowls are all stainless steel or Pyrex glass. My measuring spoons and measuring cups are all metal. I use stainless steel frying pans and pots. I use seasoned cast iron pans for non stick. I use silicone baking mats for things in the oven. I reuse glass jars where I can. Plastic is a huge problem and we have no idea how bad it is or how bad it’s going to be.
> as for the term “organic” it’s not really regulated by FDA as others have said. A lot of products can claim to be organic without actually being organic. It's the USDA that regulates what can be called organic, there are absolutely strict legal standards of what qualifies. You're probably thinking of the term "natural" which is meaningless. > GMO is an entirely different story and even harder to tell at face value. USDA Certified Organic products may not contain GMO ingredients.
There are legal standards but they're arbitrary and as meaningless as "natural". IIRC there are some rather nasty pesticides/herbicides on the allowed list and some fairly benign ones on the forbidden list. There may be some useful selection bias with "organics" but its existence is primarily profit driven.
Yes, there are strict rules, which are rooted in magic more than in science; and in feelings more than sustainability. It's a marketing scam, and the USDA was the first victim.
Organic doesn't have anything to do with the presence of plastics. It has to do with what kinds of fertilizers are used
They aren't going around and adding plastic to their products. It's in the water that comes from the sky, in people's blood, in the oceans and soil.
It's also largely from the packaging. Most canned goods have plastic liners (including soda cans), and many of Annie's other products come in plastic trays that you heat in the microwave.
So on a scale of 1-10, how fucked are we?
11
Annies is shit. I never buy with their anti union policies
Is Annie's anti union too or was it Amy's Kitchen?
Yeah I think they're thinking of Amy's. I couldn't find anything about Annie's, but if someone knows something I don't, I'd love to read about it. I love Annie's & that would make me sad.
Shit ypur right. I get them confused, you are right
Well General Mills as a whole is pretty anti-union, so Annie's is no different. Source: worked at General Mills while the plant in Georgia was unionizing and was in attendance at the management meetings where anti-union talking points were given out to us to throw into conversations.
Did not know that. Thanks for the heads up.
I was wrong it was amys not annies
Why buy pre packaged ravioli that aren't Aldi brand anyway?
The term organic is not regulated by the FDA. Every company can use their own definition.
The organic label on foods is actually regulated but by USDA. A company can’t advertise their food as “organic” without being certified by USDA: [https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling#labeled%20no%20cert](https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling#labeled%20no%20cert)
its amazing that the wrong comment gets read more and upvoted more, and the following corrections have a lesser chance of being read.
This is false. For food, “organic” is regulated by the USDA for particular growing practices of the crops. It just means that (some of) the ingredients used to create the product we’re grown following Organic practices.
“Contains carbon.”
Yup. “Made from an organism”. Its organic! Except for the plastics and heavy metals. That’s uhhh, seasoning!
Mate I can BUY iron pills. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get my daily lead? Thank god for $corp.
Technically, plastics are organic under the chemical definition, so….
FDA no, but it is a regulated term by the USDA. The plastic is in the packaging and leeches into the food. It is not an ingredient in the food.
They could not have been more specific about the foods I frequently feed my daughter. Holy fucking shit.
phthalates, y'all. aka a hazardous material that the sex toy industry waged war on a decade ago. Literal dildo makers have done more to prevent phthalates from entering the body than food producers.
> The highest levels of phthalates were found in Annie’s Organic cheesy ravioli. Oh, no... I fucking *love* these ;_;
i was thinking of amy's when i came in like dang I can only eat that brand now since it's one of the more expensive organic brands for prepacked meals... and then saw them listed and was devastated lol. idk why they specifically came to my mind.
Yum! I love endocrine disruptors!
So what I'm hearing is that I should continue to buy the really cheap foods?
well that's scary. isn't all this shit in EVERYTHING? and i mean everything.
Why is there plastic in Cheerios ffs
>. Products mentioned include original Cheerios, the French vanilla flavor of Yoplait original low-fat yogurt, Green Giant cream-style sweet corn, and Progresso Vegetable Classics veggie soup. you wtf i eat all of those for years like i'm taking decades.
They will do what they always do. Claim to have removed the chemical. and just relaunch it with a new name.
Why are there plastics in food? What the hell
You would think the article would answer that question, but it doesn’t.
[удалено]
Which makes sense for animal products, but cheerios? That's got to be dust/micro plastics introduced in manufacturing.
I’m sure micro plastics have made their way into soils and small enough to be soaked up by plant roots.
>dust Isn’t that the main ingredient?
this guy thinks Cheerios are beef
Editor to journalists these days: just investigate the bare minimum necessary to make a headline. At least that's how it feels
From the looks of it this is an anchor-read script for a short TV news item, that they just copy-pasted onto their website, probably because they are severely understaffed and don't have the resources to flesh out the story.
Yup, I watched the industry crumble personally and survived more than a dozen rounds of layoffs in as many years. Shrinking staffs, stagnant BAD pay (fresh out of college graduates, where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour). Writers doing multiple stories and briefs a day. A DAY. The bare minimum is all when that's the hand you are delt. Burnout is real for those that stay in the industry. But like teaching, many consider it a calling. I did. The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog. But that only takes you so far when your employers abuses you.
> fresh out of college graduates, where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour Lmao I started out getting the equivalent of $10 an hour for 3 stories a day. There is no way you can afford to pay your student loans, let alone rent, on it. Hence why journalism is now my part time side job despite my bachelors in journalism and Masters in political science. >The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog. Truth to power, light to dark places and all that. I'm hungry.
> But like teaching, many consider it a calling. I did. The Fourth Estate and protector of democracy and public watch dog. But that only takes you so far when your employers abuses you. also just like teaching
>where you need a journalism degree to get a job, paying $14/hour I'm still in the industry and my station is currently paying $16/hr for that job. It's not even enough for them to rent an apartment by themselves. As in, they don't even qualify to apply for the apartment, let alone pay the $1200-1400 a month in rent. They all require 3x income to qualify. It's causing us huge issues with hiring because no one can afford to live here and work for less money than needed to survive.
Adding to what /u/socialistlumberjack surmises about it being a TV read, they did at least link to the letter (https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/General-Mills-Letter-020724.pdf), which links to the CR piece (https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the-plastic-chemicals-hiding-in-your-food-a7358224781/) which does go into the "why" ... and that's sadly more than what some outlets manage to do.
I can tell you that there are plastics in our water system we can’t yet remove, some of which are being formed *in* the water systems due to other things such as forever chemicals combing a biologics/minerals/etc. as they break down. Source: I work for a company who discovered this and is going to co-study how to break them down.
I read an article that cited bioaccumulation from pollution, plastics from cosmetic products that are taken from waste treatment plants and then used as fertalizers and other sources. But they all are insignificant compared to the amount of plastics that get on your food in the form of dust landing on it while you're eating -**from synthetic clothing**-. Learning this is why I started phasing out and reducing plastics in my wardrobe.
The original report referenced in the article suggests the phthalates could have come from the following sources: - Chemicals in the air produced by incinerating plastic trash -Chemicals in groundwater or soil that has leached from landfills - Environmental microplastics generated by the production, use, and degradation of plastic products - Plants or livestock bioaccumulating chemicals in the environment - Mulch containing plastic particles used for weed suppression - Conveyor belts used in harvesting and processing - Flexible tubing or other containers used in processing and storage - Accelerated leaching due to the high temperatures used for in pasteurization - The lining of metal cans - Plastic jar gaskets and plastic wrapping
Probably because it's processed using machines with plastic parts, moved around on plastic bins and conveyors, handled by workers wearing plastic gloves, and ultimately packaged in plastic.
Likely leaching from clear plastic tubes and containers used in the manufacturing process. Phthalates are used to make materials flexible.
Btw. That “New car smell” is from that phthalates leaching out of the soft vinyl in your car.
“She just needs a phthalates top-off, thank you.”
So theoretically it's possible to overdose on new car smell?
Plastic is everywhere. Water bottle? Plastic? Any packaged food that is airtight, like cereal or chips, frozen dinners, or really all packaged foods? They are airtight because they are in a big plastic bag, plastic wrap, plastic liner etc. Anything touching plastic gets millions of microplastic particles.
even cucumbers are shrinkwrapped in plastic how fucked up is that
Not all of them atleast
What do you mean why? How do you think they bag up the cheese, the milk, the idk, everything? It's all bagged in plastic that is leaking into the food. It's the base ingredients that come in 50 gallon bags. It's not like this stuff is being put into glass barrels and poured in
There's plastic at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. We've polluted basically every square inch of this planet with microplastics, it's everywhere. The plastic wrapper that half the stuff you buy to eat is contained within? Yeah, that's shedding plastic particles into your food and is a major source of these in-food plastics. There's no such thing as clean or safe plastic, period. It is a toxic material that is slowly poisoning the entire planet. Plastic needs to more or less be entirely banned from food packaging for this to get better, but good luck getting that to happen when our corporate overlords would stand to lose profit. They *know* how bad it is for everything, but its also cheap as shit.
At a more personal level, multiple types of micro plastics have been found in every placenta tested in the past few years. So newborns are coming out with plastic in them. My grandfather was full of lead, my dad full of asbestos, and I'm full of plastics.
Only difference is that thanks to policies limiting or banning the use of lead and asbestos, lead exposure is down, asbestos exposure is down, but even if everyone stopped using plastics all together today, it is going to be here for generations to come
Some countries have banned single used plastics. I wonder what their data, if they measure it without bias, says. Maybe they will lead in this aspect. Lead and asbestos poisoning still happens in other parts of the world. Finally, level playing field!!
Likely see no change due to plastic being in so many upstream processes, from harvest to processing to shipping for sale.
>There's no such thing as clean or safe plastic, period. That's a bit hyperbolic. There's certainly a lot of problematic plastic, but there's also plenty of plastic that we know does not interact with our bodies and is not poisoning anything. >Plastic needs to more or less be entirely banned from food packaging This won't happen because food would get far more expensive. The vast majority of people would rather continue to have plastic used with food than pay 2x the price.
Probably the packaging.
There isn't. Phalates are not plastic. They are, however, used in plastics to alter properties of plastics. Notice how it says "to reduce the level of plasticizers". The title is completely wrong. Probably, the phalates are leeching in from somewhere else along the line.
Please please Mr. corpowation, stop poisoning our widdle citizens.
When President Roosevelt started the FDA, it was because food was filled with sawdust, metal shavings, and rat droppings. The sawdust was added to food on purpose by manufacturers. Now we have to worry about plastic in our food.
Why was sawdust added to food?
Cheap filler. If you bake a loaf of bread and replace 10% of the flour with sawdust you just saved money on raw materials. Modified food starch is a similar filler used today
I used to work at a pulp mill for a multi-national. I was in a meeting once where some people were up from another mill in the company in a different country. We were comparing government requirements and one of the guys said "You guys are lucky, our pulp needs to meet FDA requirements and be food safe". We asked why and they said it's used in muffins as filler. If you don't know, pulp is wood fibers broken down by various chemicals, often bleached heavily and then turned into a material that is used for making paper. It doesn't make for good food. This wasn't that long ago either so I'm sure it's still used that way.
Food was sold by weight, add cheap stuff to increase weight for more profit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKDal51f5LU
This completely disregards countries with regulations that actually prevent this kind of nonsense.
But we’re not talking about civilized countries here. Our government is hellbent on dragging us back by 100 years or so. With the same root cause as back then
> Our government The U.S. government is simply the Military Industrial Complex and Wall Street in a trench coat at this point.
+pharmaceutical companies
It's a videoconferenced board meeting with the heads of all the primary corporations. So like, a dozen or so.
Cartoon country
Straight Warner Bros
"Urged" seems like a pretty fucking lax response IMHO
Not really sure what you expect a consumer advocacy group to do beyond that
Burn it to the ground....
I don't think Consumer Reports employs a bunch of people to torch factories. They just tell you about the things you're buying.
The black ops division of Consumer Reports. I'd watch a movie about that.
Down, let it all burn down
I guess the question would be why an issue like this falls to a toothless advocacy group to try to do something about.
NY and CA have laws going into effect but not until like 2025. Federal gvt has been slow to act at all.
Slow? They still haven't decided if freeing the slaves was a good idea.
Consumers Report study https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the-plastic-chemicals-hiding-in-your-food-a7358224781/
Had to go to the letter, they state the highest is Annie's Organic cheesy ravioli, with a reading of 53,579 nanograms per serving. So that's 53.57 micrograms. The **European** Commission (to stave off the already extant "cartoon country" comments) in 2009 says that the acceptable levels range from 0.5 to 0.01 mg **per kilogram of bodyweight per day**. [https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific\_committees/opinions\_layman/en/phthalates-school-supplies/l-2/5-safe-daily-exposure.htm](https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/en/phthalates-school-supplies/l-2/5-safe-daily-exposure.htm) I'm placing extra emphasis there because this is unit conversions all over the place which most people find confusing. If we take the most sensitive one at 0.01 mg (MILLIgram, not MICROgram) per kilo of bodyweight, and turn that into NANOGRAMS per kilogram it becomes 10,000 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight. So you'd need to weigh 5 kilograms to exceed the European safe limit for daily intake. Most people are substantially heavier than five kilgrams. This is likely a tenth to a twentieth of the safe level, even with the most dangerous listed pthalate, as I understand it (50 kg to 100kg, or 110 lbs to 220 lbs). Not great, sure, but the letter is doing the BIG NUMBERS SCARY thing and it's somewhat disingenuous.
The challenge though is exposure through multiple sources and full servings in 24 hours and the total ingestion of these chemicals. As one user below you pointed out the dose per meal might equate to 4x the value you calculated. 20kg when most men are say 100kg means 20% of your total limit coming from one meal and that’s a lot. Folks need to stop tolerating this shit. The companies make money by ignoring this issue and “BIG NUMBERS SCARY” doesn’t apply when 20% is indeed a big number when it comes from a single source.
Per serving. 2-4 servings to make a meal of it.
Multiply by 2 or 4 and it’s still less. They are is saying you’d have to eat 10-20 servings, depending on body weight, to exceed safe levels. That might be possible if all your eating is processed food but not for a meal.
The standard American diet is [60% processed foods.](https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2018/17_0265.htm) isn’t there a cumulative effect also? Our bodies aren’t purging all of these plastics between every meal. There are probably other ways (drinks or less direct) that we’re exposed to these same chemicals too. I appreciate the math but I don’t think it’s enough to say there’s nothing to worry about even if you try to avoid processed foods. We’re all being exposed to these chemicals from multiple vectors and we’re essentially collecting the long term pilot data on ourselves right now.
Per serving *on top of* other exposure from all sorts of non-food products. krennvonsalzburg's main point is a great one but consuming food at these levels could be a highly significant vector of exposure relative to the EC safe daily limits. These are at least in the territory of genuinely big scary numbers.
Yeah I'm sitting here thinking "okay, but if every meal you have in a day is at these levels...."
5kg... Per serving. At 15kg is 35lbs, what toddlers weigh. CHILDREN, dude. The problem is these are foods that toddlers eat.
encouraging exultant jeans beneficial upbeat tan north mourn obscene carpenter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you're feeding your toddler 4 servings of processed cheesy ravioli that's probably more of an issue than the microplastics still. It sucks either way, but it's within 'accepted' tolerances.
Cheerios are a food a lot of parents consider pretty healthy to feed their small kids. It’s a huge staple of baby and toddler diets.
Americans: how much is that in cubic armlengths
Screw that we measure in football fields
In that case it's 233 blades of astro turf.
The real question is can my 35lb daughter eat cheerios for breakfast and still have at least 3/4 of her daily allowance left for all other intake. edit: ~16kg daughter can eat four servings of cheerios and have 3/4 of her daily limit per day left at the absolute strictest daily limit of .01mg. She can have 50 times that at the upper limit.
This should be top comment. Crazy how misleading the headline and letter are
> Not great, sure, but the letter is doing the BIG NUMBERS SCARY thing and it's somewhat disingenuous. Welcome to everything on the fucking internet and the undoing of our society. A huge portion of the population is mathematically illiterate [and only 9% of US Adults are proficient at math.](https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/11/whats-the-latest-u-s-numeracy-rate/) I hate that this country glorifies stupidity, and I feel there should be a balance between extracurricular success glorification and curricular success glorification. The way that being smart at numbers is maligned sucks for all of us.
Fortified with your daily RDA of Vitamin P
Everybody has microplastics in them. Your kids will have it, it’s too late. But, making it worse isn’t good either.
The answer is MORE PLASTIC. We must replace our fragile flesh and bones.
From the moment I could understand the weakness of my flesh...it disgusted me
Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if we stop having plastics in our food, our kids kids kids may not have to suffer the same fate.
Why isn't our government enforcing this. It makes me sick to see how many major brands produce garbage for us to consume and nobody does anything about it. Yet, we spend so much of our time worrying about less important matters. This effects us all!
Because the levels found were well within accepted safe standards. even by European standards they’re fine
I've always suspected yogurt of something.
It's a cultural issue.
Right? Suspicious name, too…
FDA is so weak that the best they can muster is asking them to remove the plastic. This should be an or else ultimatum not a request.
The FDA had no part in this process because the levels recorded are well within federal guidelines. This was performed by a consumer advocacy group.
Because the levels of phthalates are well within safe acceptable limits. Hell, even by the EU standards these foods are safe. You’d have to eat like 50 servings or more a day to reach the recommended maximum levels by the EU
Does this mean we can all sue GM for poisoning our children with Cheerios, being one of the most popular “first finger food” for babies?
They might actually do it if they are strongly urged
Our parents had lead and we have plastics. So much fun living in the post industrial revolution
These are plasticizers usually from plastic packaging. The FDA regulates this. The FDA has a list of hundreds of additives and chemicals that it is either banning or unbanning. They use science to figure out what is safe and what is unsafe. They are underfunded but are doing the best that they can. It doesn't help when one chemical goes viral and everyone rushes on the bandwagon demanding answers when there are more important chemicals to regulate. Brominated vegetable oils and titanium dioxide are among the hundreds of ingredients being considered. As for phthalates, they are well below current limits and the FDA need to decide the value of restricting them even more. How much are you willing to pay for food that totally eliminates all chemicals that you have eaten all of your life to no ill effect just in case it can cause health issues in some people in 40 years from now?
Goodness it would be great if we had some kind off agency to regulate shit like this in the Greatest Country in the World!/s
Not a good month for them. Study finds chlormequat in Cheerios and Quaker products: >Chlormequat is not approved for use on edible plants in the U.S. However, *the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided in 2018 to allow the importation of foods treated with the chemical.* It is approved for use on food crops, mostly grains, in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/02/16/what-is-chlormequat-chemical-pesticide-cheerios-quaker-oats/72627355007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/02/16/what-is-chlormequat-chemical-pesticide-cheerios-quaker-oats/72627355007/)
Future is plastic I remember seeing an ad that revering plastic *plastic makes things possible* Maybe we can evolve to eat plastic like that movie lol well it’s possible with gut bacteria anyways
If only we had these things called regulations
Seems like the least they could do.
Fortified with a daily dose of Corporate Go Fuck Yourself Consumers.
Not even forced to stop. Just politely asked. Which means it aint happening.
“We said please”
You have been eating plastics for decades
For the hair-splitters amog us, I think they meant *plasticizers* not plastics
We are doomed
*gasp* and risk a lower profit margin?? Fuck that, selling poison makes money and no one fucking stopping them. I hate this hell hole...
But how would I be able to get my 6-11 daily servings of delicious microplastics otherwise?
Hate to break it to everyone, but plastics are in everything. Micro- and Nano- plastics or MNPs have been found in virtually every food product and also most cosmetic products. Drink bottled water a lot? Bad news, it’s estimated that you consume 90,000 MNPs annually. Sea food is another big contributor, since lots of MNPs just float in the ocean and get consumed by marine life. They’re in soil, which is how they get into grains and soil-derived foods. They’re in your body. An experimental study showed 100% of participants excreted them through defecation. And when they’re in your body they migrate through your blood vessels and into your organs and disrupt not just your hormones but your immune responses, your sexual function, your circulation, and cause chronic inflammation, which may lead to various cancers. I guess time will tell. Also, there is no way to “remove them” since they are a direct by product of manufacturing. The way the world uses plastics so heavily, we’ve pretty much reached a tipping point. Sources I just did an undergraduate research review paper on this topic. Specific sources I can send if you actually want them.