Consumers trust that the food choices being offered to them are safe. They might be aware that choosing donuts over kale is not the healthiest decision, but they can rest assured that nothing available for purchase is directly toxic and dangerous. After all, our country’s food system operates according to strict and well-monitored safety standards…right?
Sadly, this isn’t the case.
The United States is notorious in many other parts of the world for having low standards around food toxicity
In truth, the United States is notorious in many other parts of the world for having low standards around food toxicity. The American food system’s overzealousness around sanitation, pasteurization, and similar practices might suggest otherwise, but don’t let that fool you. It’s precisely this perceived “order and cleanliness” about our food system that is most dangerous, as it lulls the public into a false sense of security.
We’d all like to believe that the people pulling the strings are ultimately good-intentioned, so many are quick to believe the propaganda put out by various branches of the industry.
If Monsanto says that RoundUp and genetic modification isn’t dangerous, then they must be right. If dairy mega-farmers say their animals are healthy, happy, and unmedicated, then they must be telling the truth.
Wrong!
Nothing is further from the truth. We simply can’t always rely on regulators and external organizations (and certainly not food producers themselves) to govern the safety of our food.
American food monstrosities (banned in other Countries)
To illustrate the point, let’s take a look at some common American foods that are so toxic as to be banned in other countries. Needless to say, you should do your best to avoid these foods and substances at all costs.
Farm-raised salmon. You’ve probably heard about the benefits of salmon (as long as it’s tested for mercury before distribution). Wild-caught, high-grade salmon is hard to come by, though, so the fish industry has created salmon mega-farms to meet market demands.
These “frankenfish” bear little to no nutritional resemblance to their wild cousins: they’re fed a terrible diet of grains and pharmaceuticals, and pumped full of synthetic astaxanthin and other petrochemical-derived poisons (all in order to compensate for the unappealing grey pallor their flesh takes on due to their deplorable diet and living conditions). Farm-raised salmon are banned in Australia and Russia, but their prevalence continues to grow in the United States.
Genetically modified fruit. The safety of GMOs is still up for debate in America, even though nearly the entire rest of the world does not support the use of toxic pesticides, has banned GMOs outright, or at least is proceeding into the industry with caution. Following research suggesting that ingestion of GMO corn and soy by animals is correlated with multiple-organ damage, gastrointestinal distress and damage, tumors, birth defects and more,[1]
The European Union banned many genetically modified fruits (a class of food that also easily absorbs toxic pesticides, which carry even more potential side effects), including a papaya genetically modified to be resistance against specific viruses and pathogens.
Milk and dairy products with growth hormone. We’ve written before about the perils of including milk as a prominent part of your diet (hint: it doesn’t end well for your body). While even organic milk has its downsides, conventionally produced milk is the worst of all, in part because it often contains recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH).
Big business farmers love it because injecting it into cows can dramatically increase milk production, but the yield comes at a cost: it’s correlated (in humans) with an increased risk of at least three types of cancer.[2] For this reason, over thirty countries around the world have banned its use, but the United States continues its march of profits over health.
Preservatives are so ever-present in conventionally packaged foods that we’ve come to accept them as inevitable. Yet as an increasing number of countries begin to ban these “normal” substances, it’s becoming clear that their convenience just isn’t worth the associated health risks. BHA and BHT are two very common preservatives; reports have found that they act as a “probable carcinogen” for both animals and humans[3]
For this reason they are banned in parts of the European Union and Japan, but American hasn’t budged on its acceptance of them.
Ractopamine is so toxic that it’s banned in more than 160 countries around the world
Meat contaminated with ractopamine. Some of the examples cited above are controversial (i.e. there are proponents on both sides of the fence), but this last example isn’t up for debate—ractopamine is so toxic that it’s banned in more than 160 countries around the world, including all of Europe, Russia, China, and the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Nevertheless, this drug is routinely fed to pigs conventionally raised in the United States, and producers are not even required to test for the chemical in finished meat products. Ractopamine is linked with reproductive dysfunction, cardiovascular issues, hyperactivity, chromosome damage, and behavioral changes.[4]
References
[1] https://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf
[2] http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5wh0g46z#page-1
[3] https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/pubhealth/roc/index-1.html
[4] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2009.1041/pdf
