Mystery Ingredients in Food

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/07/21/346103/index.htm

Say what you will about American food, at least we Yanks haven’t afflicted the world with calamities like haggis, the Scottish staple made of boiled sheep’s stomach, or hakarl, an Icelandic offering of putrid shark. In fact, it’s hard to think of a down-home American recipe that would warrant inclusion in The Joy of Cooking a Dog’s Ex-Breakfast–the obvious title for a collection of demented dishes like haggis. Unless, that is, you happen to know about the human-hair extract in U.S. baked goods, the crushed-insect residue in many of our foods, and the flavorings made with … something unimaginable.

Those aren’t contaminants. They are official ingredients that the food industry rarely tells us about. Some yuck factors are fairly obvious, such as the blue mold spores in Stilton cheese. But most are hidden, since it’s perfectly legal for manufacturers to lump additives such as insect extracts under the comforting term “natural” on food labels–or simply omit them (unlike artificial ingredients). How many times have you seen “essence of squashed bug” listed on a food package?

Yet if you scan the label on, say, a container of strawberry yogurt, you may spot “carmine”–a popular coloring concocted from insects. Used to give red, pink, and purple color to everything from ice cream to lipstick, carmine is made from a pigment called cochineal. Cochineal, in turn, is extracted from dried female insects that feed on a cactus found in Peru, the Canary Islands, and other places. The pigment builds up in the insects’ bodies; after the six-legged moms deposit their eggs on the cactus and die, their rotting carcasses, along with the eggs and hatched larvae, are brushed off the plants, crushed, and then baked, boiled, or steamed to produce cochineal.

Carmine may not be yummy, but it is GRAS. That’s food-industry speak for Generally Recognized as Safe, a classification almost as all-embracing as “natural.” But skeptics say carmine can cause severe allergic reactions, and hence should be classified as CRUD–Considered Really Unsafe to Devour. (I just made up that category.) Several years ago the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer watchdog in Washington, D.C., petitioned the FDA either to ban carmine or to require that manufacturers disclose its creepy-crawly source on labels. So far the agency hasn’t responded.

If you want to rid your diet of bug extracts, you’ll need to avoid not only reddish foods but also many shiny ones. Shellac, made from the excretions of insects, is used to glaze everything from apples to coffee beans. If you get really obsessed, you may starve; blended-in insect remnants are everywhere. The FDA permits a typical jar of peanut butter to contain over 100 bug parts. A can of tomatoes can include one maggot or up to nine fly eggs.

But you’ll find stranger things than insect parts if you hack into the American cuisine’s heart of darkness. Perhaps the creepiest ingredient is l-cysteine. Sometimes derived from a human body part–to wit, hair–it seems to have come right out of The Mistah Kurtz Cookbook. (It also can be extracted from feathers or produced synthetically.) An amino acid, l-cysteine is used to enhance the stretchiness of dough, which facilitates its rapid processing by machines into cookies, pizza crusts, bread, doughnuts, bagels, and other baked goods.

Discovering whether a product contains stuff extruded from human bodies isn’t easy. When I put the question to a spokesman at Interstate Brands, which makes Wonderbread, Hostess, and other baked lines, he said, “I’ve no idea of the source. We don’t use enough l-cysteine to be interested.” A Sara Lee spokesman snapped that there was no hair extract in his company’s products but declined to say how he knew. A spokesman at Puratos Group, a Belgium-based supplier of bakery ingredients, was friendlier: “Very commonly l-cysteine is from human hair,” he conceded, “but I’m 99% sure that ours comes from duck feathers.”

Oh, well. Next question: Whose hair do we eat, anyway? Industry experts say most human-derived l-cysteine comes from Chinese women, who, in a case of life imitating O. Henry, help support their families by peddling their tresses to small chemical-processing plants scattered across the People’s Republic.

The baking industry’s hairy little secret takes the cake for weird, but among all consumables, cigarettes stand out as richest for bizarre ingredients. According to tobacco industry documents divulged in court cases, various brands of cigarettes include cocoa, pine oil, bee’s wax, prune juice, cognac, vinegar, beet juice, apple skins, butter, flour, yeast, maple syrup, urea, skatole, and several hundred other additives.

To those with a smattering of chemistry, skatole is the most startling–it is one of dung’s key components. (Don’t freak: The skatole added to consumables is synthetic.) To flavorists, the fact that cigarettes are spiked with simulated essence of excrement doesn’t seem odd at all. At low levels, skatole actually smells nice. Indeed, it is often added to jasmine fragrances and flavorings, says Frank Fischetti, a senior flavor chemist at Wynn Starr Specialty Foods & Flavors in Allendale, N.J.

Similar olfactory paradoxes are at work in perfumes, says Fischetti. Rose-scented fragrances often contain small amounts of civet absolute, an extract from the anal scent glands of civet cats, weasel-like creatures of Asia. Yet “when you taste concentrated civet, it reminds you of fecal matter,” he adds. Taste it? “In the old days we got civet from Asia,” says Fischetti. “It came packed in water buffalo horns. One of my jobs was to tell if it really was civet. You had to taste it to make sure.” (Instruments now do the job.)

Civet was once widely used in meat flavorings, cheese, and other foods. Like skatole, its role is to help blend a mix of flavors or fragrances together. But today a cheaper synthetic version, civetone, has replaced the real thing in most products except high-end perfumes.

One member of the scatological fragrance family hasn’t yet been synthetically replicated: castoreum. Extracted from beavers’ anal musk glands, it is sparingly used to impart a “smoothing and rounding note” to raspberry flavorings. Which raises an issue that’s been crying out for attention for several paragraphs: How did things like beaver excretions find their way into food in the first place? We’ll let that one cry itself to sleep; we wouldn’t want to spoil your appetite.

Sand (silicon dioxide)

 

Silicon dioxide, also known as silica (also known as sand!), is used to make glass, optical fibers, ceramics and cement. Oh, and chili. Used as an anti-caking agent, it is often added to processed beef and chicken to prevent clumping, and is listed in the ingredient panels for chili from both Wendy’s and Taco Bell. Most experts suggest that it isn’t harmful for consumption, but just know that the ingredient keeping that chili meat nice and non-caking is the also the primary component of diatomaceous earth, commonly used as a natural insecticide.
 

Wood (cellulose)

Processed wood pulp, known as cellulose, is used in everything from cheese to salad dressing, from muffins to strawberry syrup. Food processors use it to thicken and stabilize foods, replace fat and boost fiber content — as well as to minimize reliance on more costly ingredients like oil or flour. Powdered cellulose is produced by cooking virgin wood pulp in chemicals to separate the cellulose, and then purified. Modified versions require extra processing, such as exposure to acid in order to further break down the fiber.
 

Ironically, with the increase in nutritional awareness has come an increase in the use of cellulose — with the addition of wood pulp, products can boast of less fat and more fiber. Just don’t mind the wood.

 

McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC, Sonic, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Jack in the Box, and many others include cellulose in their repertoire.

 

Silly Putty plastic (dimethylpolysiloxane)
Eight-syllable ingredients make sense for Silly Putty, but French fries? Sure enough, dimethylpolysiloxane, a form of silicone used in cosmetics and Silly Putty, is also found in many a fast-food fried thing. It is the secret ingredient that keeps fryer oil from foaming. McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish and French fries have it, as do Wendy’s Natural-Cut Fries With Sea Salt. In fact, most fast-food items that bathe in a deep-fat fryer are imbued with a hint of dimethylpolysiloxane. Should you be concerned? The World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane, but come on — what’s wrong with using potatoes, oil, and salt for fries?

 

Petroleum-derived preservatives (TBHQ)

Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is made from compounds derived from petroleum and finds a home in cosmetic and skincare products, varnish, lacquers and resins — and processed food. McDonald’s, for example, uses it in 18 products ranging from its Fruit and Walnut Salad to Griddle Cakes to McNuggets.

 

TBHQ was finally approved after many years of pressure from food manufacturers, though with approval, the FDA mandated that the chemical must not exceed 0.02 percent of a food’s oil and fat content. Why would there be a limit? Because five grams would be lethal, while one gram can cause nausea, vomiting, delirium, a sense of suffocation and collapse. (Although you would have to eat more than 11 pounds of McNuggets to reach that level. And if you’re willing to eat 11 pounds of McNuggets in one sitting, well…)

 

Soil fertilizer (ammonium sulfate)

Ammonium sulfate is sold by chemical companies to food manufacturers as “yeast food for bread,” and many fast-food companies list the ingredient in their bakery products.

 

But that’s just its night job; when ammonium sulfate is not moonlighting as a food additive, it performs its main task: as a fertilizer for alkaline soils. Ammonium sulfate also does duty as an agricultural spray adjuvant for water soluble insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.

 

Meat paste-goop (mechanically separated meat)

Mechanically separated meat (MSM) has been produced since the 1960s, but has been enjoying new fame lately courtesy of a photo making the rounds which shows an industrial machine extruding a plump ribbon of pink paste into a box. It is commonly referred to as “pink slime.” Looking more like frosting than pureed meat and bone bits, the FDA defines mechanically separated poultry (MSP) as “a paste-like and batter-like poultry product produced by forcing bones, with attached edible tissue, through a sieve or similar device under high pressure to separate bone from the edible tissue.” Mechanically separated pork is used too, although in 2004 to protect consumers against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, mechanically separated beef was considered inedible and prohibited for use as human food.

 

After the meat slurry has been produced, it is sometimes treated with ammonium hydroxide to remove excess bacteria. Ammonium hydroxide is also used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers. Since the resultant meat-bone-muscle-tendon-ammonium-hydroxide goop doesn’t taste much like meat, artificial flavors are added to finish the whole thing off.

 

Mechanically separated meat is to blame for a number of processed meat products; think hot dogs, salami, bologna, burgers and many a chicken nugget. Fast-food restaurants are known for employing pink slime, although recently McDonald’s made clear that it no longer relies upon it in its burgers.

Patient-to-nurse spread of deadly infection – New SARS-like virus: WHO reports

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/16/new-sars-like-virus-who-reports-first-patient-to-nurse-infection/

Two health workers in Saudi Arabia have become infected with a potentially fatal new SARS-like virus after catching it from patients in their care – the first evidence of such transmission within a hospital, the World Health Organization said.

The new virus, known as novel coronavirus, or nCoV, is from the same family of viruses as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003.

“This is the first time health care workers have been diagnosed with (novel coronavirus) infection after exposure to patients,” the Geneva-based U.N. health agency said in a disease outbreak update late on Wednesday.

The health workers are a 45-year-old man, who became ill on May 2 and is currently in a critical condition, and a 43-year-old woman with a coexisting health condition, who fell ill on May 8 and is in a stable condition, the WHO said.

France has also reported a likely case of transmission within a hospital, but this was from one patient to another patient who shared the same room for two days.

NCoV, like SARS and other similar viruses, can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia.

Scientists are on the alert for any sign that nCoV is mutating to become easily transmissible to multiple recipients, like SARS – a scenario that could trigger a pandemic.

WHO experts visiting Saudi Arabia to consult with the authorities on the outbreak said on Sunday it seemed likely the new virus could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact.

Initial analysis by scientists at Britain’s Health Protection Agency last year found that nCoV’s closest relatives were most probably bat viruses. Yet further work by a research team in Germany suggests nCoV may have come through an intermediary – possibly goats.

The WHO’s Wednesday update said that, while some health care workers in Jordan had previously contracted nCoV, these Saudi cases were the first clear evidence of the virus passing from infected patients.

“Health care facilities that provide care for patients with suspected nCoV infection should take appropriate measures to decrease the risk of transmission of the virus to other patients and health care workers,” it said.

It also advised health care providers to be “vigilant among recent travelers returning from areas affected by the virus” who develop severe acute respiratory infections.

Since nCoV first emerged and was identified in September 2012, the WHO says it has been informed of a total of 40 laboratory-confirmed cases worldwide, including 20 deaths.

Saudi Arabia has had most of the cases – with 30 patients infected, 15 of them fatally – but nCoV cases have also been reported in Jordan, Qatar, Britain, Germany and France.

India developing cheap vaccine against major cause of diarrhea deaths in kids

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/15/india-developing-cheap-vaccine-against-major-cause-diarrhea-deaths-in-kids/

The Indian government announced Tuesday the development of a new low-cost vaccine proven effective against a diarrhea-causing virus that is one of the leading causes of childhood deaths across the developing world.

The Indian manufacturer of the new rotavirus vaccine pledged to sell it for $1 a dose, a significant discount from the cost of the current vaccines on the market. That reduced price would make it far easier for poor countries to vaccinate their children against the deadly virus, health experts said.

Rotavirus, spread through contaminated hands and surfaces, kills about half a million children across the world each year, 100,000 of them in India.

At a conference Tuesday, the government announced that Phase III trials of Rotavac proved that it was safe as well as effective. The clinical trial of 6,799 infants at three sites in India showed the vaccine reduced severe cases of diarrhea caused by rotavirus by 56 percent during the first year of life.

“The clinical results indicate that the vaccine, if licensed, could save the lives of thousands of children each year in India,” said Dr. K. Vijay Raghavan, the secretary of the Department of Biotechnology.

The vaccine still needs to be licensed before it can be distributed in India and would require further approval by the World Health Organization before it could be distributed globally.

Two other vaccines have proven effective against rotavirus, but they are significantly more expensive.

The GAVI Alliance, which works to deliver vaccines to the world’s poor, negotiated a significant discount last year with GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, obtaining the rotavirus vaccines from those pharmaceutical companies for $2.50 a dose. The alliance has programs for delivering those vaccines in 14 countries and plans to expand them to 30 countries.

Dr. Seth Berkley, the GAVI Alliance’s CEO, said the announcement Tuesday was “a big deal.”

“The cheaper the price the more children you can immunize,” he said, adding that it will still take some time before the vaccine is approved for use.

In addition, having a third manufacturer for the vaccines would ease supply shortages and could drive down the costs charged by the other manufacturers, he said.

“That would make a big difference in terms of changing the marketplace,” he said.

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death among young children in the world after pneumonia. A study of 22,568 children at sites in seven African and south Asian countries that was published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet showed that rotavirus was the leading cause of moderate to severe diarrhea in children under the age of two.

The new vaccine was developed from a weakened strain of the virus taken from a child hospitalized in New Delhi more than a quarter century ago. It was the result of a broad global partnership that included the government, the Indian company Bharat Biotech, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among many others.

Those involved said the broad cooperation reduced research costs for the manufacturer and helped keep the vaccine inexpensive.

“This public-private partnership is an exemplary model of how to develop affordable technologies to save lives,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, said in a statement.

MMR jab: Somali migrants have lingering fears on autism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22382756

Health officials say vaccination rates against measles are worryingly low among Somali children in the US and UK because some parents still believe the MMR jab is linked to autism.

The officials say they are struggling to show that the vaccination is safe.

BBC Radio 4’s The Report has found that the discredited former doctor Andrew Wakefield visited some Somali groups in the US.

Health authorities there blame him for the drop-off in MMR vaccinations.

Andrew Wakefield, who now lives in Texas, says Somalis in Minnesota already had fears about autism and MMR before his visit.

Somali Bakita Mohamed Haji lives in north-west London with her 10-year-old daughter, who suffers from autism.

Fears reinforced

She says her daughter’s condition started after she was given the jab.

“My daughter was born normally but when I started the MMR, my daughter changed. Screaming all the time, crying. I went to the hospital and they said it’s autism. I don’t understand it. I’d never heard of it.”

“A number of individuals reached out to the community who planted the seed that there might be concerns about vaccination”

Kristen Ehresmann Minnesota department of health

She wishes her daughter had never had the injection, which she believes caused the condition.

Health experts say her fears, and those of other parents, have been reinforced by a common belief in their community that only the children of Somali families that emigrate to the West develop autism, whereas those who stay at home do not.

While there is no solid evidence to confirm this, a small study of immigrants in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, did suggest that families using services for autistic children were more likely than expected to be from West and East Africa.

Discredited study

And separate research in the UK also found there was a higher than average incidence of autism in children born to African mothers – but it did not establish a reason why.

The fears of Somali parents echo those sparked by a study in The Lancet medical journal that linked MMR with autism.

The study was discredited and withdrawn. Andrew Wakefield, the lead author, was struck off by the General Medical Council because of ethical concerns about his methods.

A subsequent raft of research has found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and average vaccination rates are back up to 94% in England for five-year-olds receiving the first dose of MMR.

Parents frustrated

But take-up of the vaccine is much lower among Somali children in the UK and in the US.

In Minnesota in the Midwest, the Somali American Autism Foundation has pledged to find out what causes the condition in their children.

Idil Abdul runs the foundation and has a son, 10, who is autistic.

“If your child is sick, the goal is you take them to the doctor and the doctor tells you what’s wrong with the kid and how to make him better. With autism, we go to the doctor and they say, ‘We don’t have a cause, we don’t have a cure, too bad, so sad, you might not get access to early intervention, have a nice day.'”

“It is very difficult to dislodge beliefs from whatever community if they’re dealing with a disease that isn’t adequately explained”

Prof David Salisbury Director of immunisation at the Department of Health

She does not believe there is a link between MMR and autism but says parents are frustrated because they do not feel their concerns are being listened to by the authorities.

‘Planted the seed’

Andrew Wakefield visited Minnesota at least three times between 2010 and 2011, promising research to find answers to their questions.

The Minnesota department of health says his visit contributed to a drop-off in MMR uptake among Somalis and says only around 50% of Somali children now receive the vaccine.

Kristen Ehresmann, the state’s director of infectious disease, believes he had an influence on Somali perspectives.

“There were a number of individuals who reached out to the community who planted the seed that there might be concerns about vaccination and what role it could play.

“Since that time we’ve seen vaccination rates drop off accordingly.”

Andrew Wakefield denies his visit caused the drop in Somali children having the MMR jab, claiming the trend was already happening.

‘Vaccination champions’

He said: “The reason that I was invited was to help address the Somalis’ pre-existing fears about developmental regression in their children following MMR immunisation.”

Although there are no official statistics, vaccination rates are also believed to be low among Somali children in London.

Shukri Osman, a parent of an autistic child, estimates that only half the Somali parents she knows have taken up the vaccine.

She lives in Brent in north-west London. The local council said: “There are a number of groups and communities in Brent where uptake rates for immunisation have been low. Low uptake rates in the Somali community has been recognised for a number of years.”

It is currently training up “community vaccination champions” and now has an immunisation team with Somali-speakers.

Engrained perceptions

Prof David Salisbury, the director of immunisation at the Department of Health, said: “We know that there is not an association between MMR and autism, and that I’m sure has been said many times to Somali community leaders.”

But even he admits it will be hard to change what may have become engrained perceptions.

“I think we know it is very difficult to dislodge beliefs from whatever community if they’re dealing with a disease that isn’t adequately explained on the basis of the cause. “

You can listen again to The Report on BBC Radio 4 via the Radio 4 website or The Report download.

How Pumping Antibiotics into Animals Could Cause Global Health Crisis

http://www.care2.com/causes/how-pumping-antibiotics-into-animals-could-cause-global-health-crisis.html

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of antibiotics, and like many other nations around the world, it does almost nothing to monitor the powerful medicine’s usage or impact on the environment. A study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that China’s unchecked use of antibiotics in animal production is giving rise to antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) that pose a potential worldwide human health risk.

The study, carried out by a team of researchers from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of the Sciences, took place on Chinese commercial pig farms. What they found is astounding: 149 unique antibiotic resistant genes, or ARGs, some at levels 192 to 28,000 times higher than the control samples. Although China’s rampant antibiotic consumption (they use four times as much as the USA) makes it an easy target, it’s not the only place where this cultivation of ARGs is taking place.

“Our research took place in China, but it reflects what’s happening in many places around the world,” said James Tiedje, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and of plant, soil and microbial sciences at Michigan State University. “The World Organization for Animal Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been advocating for improved regulation of veterinary antibiotic use because those genes don’t stay local.”

Since animals aren’t equipped to absorb the enormous number of antibiotics pumped into their systems, much of it ends up in manure—an estimated 700 million tons annually from China alone. The manure is then spread as fertilizer, sold as compost, or ends up downstream in rivers or groundwater, taking ARGs with them. These dangerous genes can also be spread via international trade, immigration and recreational travel.

In some cases, ARGs become highly mobile, meaning they can be transferred to other bacteria that can cause illness in humans. This is a big concern because the infections they cause can’t be treated with antibiotics. Because of this cycle, ARGs pose a potential global risk to human health and should be classified as pollutants, says Tiedje.

“It is urgent that we protect the effectiveness of our current antibiotics because discovering new ones is extremely difficult,” says researcher Yong-Guan Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.