Pfizer, Genentech, Sandoz, Novo and Merck. Were widely used (today all are legally accepted in the US) for growth of livestock, athletic improvement, and even was related on the advertising of supplementary nutrients by the producer companies, providing an ambiguous idea about the combined effects of the hormone and dietary supplements. The UCSF has partnerships with industry as Pfizer, Genentech, GE Healthcare, Nikon, Abbott Diagnostics, and other research institutions as the HHMI. You can discover a very interesting map about the extension of interests from the UCSF over the world in this map. Genentech is considered the first biotechnological industry in genetic engineering: only the solution of only one dispute among the UCSF and Genentech over the patent of Protropin, patented in 1982, reached the amount of $200 millions, and it was anyway a success. As in many cases, Genentech is a company founded by a biologist (Herbert Boyer, who performed the recombinant DNA technique in 1978, and the synthesis of insulin) and a businessman (Robert Swanson, a financial investor who found the money to make possible the onset of the company, currently the first in funds).
The fact that a significant number of hazardous molecules "seek shelter" within us abundantly, does not mean that anything has changed suddenly after millions of years, unless our food habits: this habit increases fat mass in the body, providing a perfect refuge (a kind of communal living) for molecules that love fat, lipid constitution. It is unbridled consumption of fats that attracts unfriendly agents to place less appropriate. Furthermore, concentrations with toxicity to certain compounds are related to its density / kg of body mass. Again the food deceives you. No matter the mass of the molecule acting, what matters is how many molecules there are.
Many pathogens are naturally presents when conditions allow it: a fungi called Aspergillus can contaminate with aflatoxins the maize, soya, rice, wheat, olives, sunflower, cotton, millet, along drought periods, with high temperatures, and even once harvested the crops, in warehouses with moisture. Humans have resistance to aflatoxins, unlike animals, but children are particularly sensible to it. By one side, is visible the need of control, and by other side the advances offered temporarily but worldwide by processes as this one. However, we should add other solutions in substitution of the pioneer techniques already elders: this ones could be a very real green attitude, investing more in less aggressive treatments (by microwaves, mix of light and heat), and maintaining what has been a primary, worldwide, continued along the life, strong basis of our feed.
As show the studies geared in developing or undeveloped countries, and the data verified from historical diseases in the European and Mediterranean region, in many of these natural diseases the rate of appearance could be diminished by the control of the practices that we make with waters and lands, but those that have not pathogenic origin may be supposed directly related to other issues: the use of chemicals in many ways (the more usual of chemicals in our society turns on in an average of 1,000 compounds ubiquitous, till the number of 10,000 of wide use) and the interaction between our genes, our body, and the environment (chemicals included), what has been called today epigenetic.
The why of food additives in our lifestyle.
Is not this control and prevention of pathogens what concerns people, logically, is the use of compounds as substitutes of the features: these can substitute the smell, the taste, reach a consistency and feel desired, a selected color that supplies the missing color in the food, or even hide some undesired flavor. The ability to shape food thus is directly related to the sale and harvest conditions, collection or treatment. If you have ever made a jam natural at home, of course in hygienic conditions, you will understand what I am saying, since its appearance, odor and consistency have little to do with the industrial jam. You have in the mall (not in all the countries) food without additives: eggs, natural yoghourts, nuts… and sure, whatever the type of food, the organics. The rest … you cannot avoid what they carry into.
What that more concerns us usually is what is going into our stomach or gut. Is it not so? Of course, how is being treated currently the food is an issue that interest us. Let’s go see a bit about it. By one side, the current industry says: “all this must be guaranteed, clean, tested, safe… and beautiful,” and finally is a remembrance of how knows the food and fed you. By other side, we might get bored listing all the changes that have taken food. Its related feature for consumers is the price. I will add another more for a clever consumer with common sense, like the way of growth, feeding in animals, fertilizers in vegetables; the health status, pollutants absorbed, and nutrient levels; the package carrier; and the environmental behavior of the processing. And it is quite difficult for the consumer on the street really know what they have purchased or eaten, at least by this way. People have neither time nor knowledge for it. It is not a problem with organics.
Our lifestyle has assumed into our habits and culture some invisible and little dangers that we do not worry because we do not seem it can be important, even we like some of them. We cannot avoid our pleasure to fried and roasted with crispy skin and almost burned: these have inside nitrites, which react in the acid environment of the stomach with beer, fish, or meat, especially when roasted, resulting nitrosamines, the same of the smoke.
Nitrosamines are carcinogenic, one inducing factor of colon cancer. And as it was revealed in a farm from Norway, the reaction of the methylamine of fish treated with sodium nitrite, had as result the liver cancer in livestock, so may be continued with the bigger consumer, the man. Also the acrylamide, another carcinogenic (as ever we only can assume that is possible), appears when meals with high content in starch are cooked at high temperatures: although is difficult assess the dose for its effects, is known the relation with some cancer processes in women and the pancreatic cancer. One example more of toxic pollutant in the food is the benzopyrene, a carcinogenic pollutant (Group 1 in the IARC list) generated at high temperatures, generally originated by wood burning, automobile exhaust fumes (where diesel engines are more dangerous), but related to our lifestyle, in the combustion of organic material or grilled and charbroiled food, and cooked meat products. I am sorry, that is not new; all the cases posed already are known and old. Nowadays we are struggling with new cases as these ones.
The energetic drinks are other case of stupidity. The sales of energetic drinks around the world, that do not have any relation with any real bodily need: in any case are a business of trillion. The possible profits that we could hope, as we usually do, are the profits of drink water ... and sugar! Actually are accustoming our body to nothing but the drink, to the belief of his power. We are paying for nothing, and therefore fatter.
The packaging of food also has passed out through a close watching by some consumer associations, and it reasonably. The package is important for the big selling and delivery, but not in the small markets: by this reason have been performed many designs, with chemical plastics derived from oil. The package must control the entering light, water, temperature, entering gasses as O2, N2 o CO2, or pollutants included the metals, and microorganisms. Two matters can worry us: the huge amount of debris that we are generating uselessly (wood, paper, paperboards, inks, metal, glass and pane of glass, and plastics) while there are possible uses of basic materials (glass, ceramics and pottery) even more economic and cheaper than the used currently, also addressing issues such as weight for its transport; and the transference of toxics to food and its real environmental prices for plastics. The classic plastics of that war are polyethylene terephthalate (PET, with a mild toxicity by release of antimony), polyvinyl chloride (PVC, with some effects over liver, nervous system and immune system), nylon, polypropylene polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), polyethylene (high or low density, HDPE, LDPE), oriented polypropylene (OPP), or the high nitrile resins (HNR). Compositions of these ones are the Tetra Brik, metal packaging.
First we do and afterwards we study, when we study. A new frontier of concern comes from the nano-particles (based on metals as copper, iron, cerium oxide, magnetite, zinc oxide, gold, silver, tit
anium dioxide, cerium oxide, or fullerols C60 or fullerenes C70), are clearly transferred from foo to the body, and when observed in plants affect to germination, flowering, or growth.
When we talk about food and organics, we usually forget what this can mean: a new problem in other kind of feed, the animal feed. Plastics such as container or building material goods have now become a problem to redesign, as our way of proceeding is to send them passively away after use. This results in a large-scale burst of garbage in any part of the world: from landfills, urban slums, rivers, and also over the large-scale meeting areas in the sea’s currents. The plastics degrade by acids, sun light, salt, but slowly, fragmenting into smaller pieces, which massively entering the digestive system of birds and fish eventually killing them. The plastic soup discovered by a captain (Charles Moore) is not an illusion or film: it causes yearly (at least estimated by down) the dead of 1,000,000 birds and 100,000 sea mammals, is unknown how much of floor in deep zones is covered with this fragmented garbage, and extends for a variable length
An Invisible Chain of our Time Page 35
