Unfortunately, it’s now been over 50 years, and cancer is still very much with us.

But cancer science has indeed made progress. Some cancers, like childhood leukemia, which had a 99% fatality rate in 1955, are largely curable these days. New drugs can add years of life to many people diagnosed with multiple myeloma. And many cancers have morphed from death sentences into manageable chronic conditions. Gene-editing technology also promises many more potential medical treatment advances in the years to come.

That’s the good news.

The less good news is that cancer is still a leading killer worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths every year (that’s nearly one-sixth of all deaths from all causes). And there’s a concerning uptick in cancer cases among people younger than 50, with the largest increases among those aged 30–39.

No matter what age it occurs, cancer can be a devastating disease physically, emotionally, and financially. And those burdens are often shared by friends and families. The financial toll can be especially disastrous if the person and their family lack the financial resources to take time off work or don’t have insurance.

Globally, the cost of cancers diagnosed between 2020–2050 is estimated to reach an almost incomprehensible $25.2 trillion. (To help wrap my head around that amount, I calculated that it would be enough money to provide $3,000 to every human being on Earth — with a trillion dollars to spare.)

Some researchers wonder, then, if the original framing of waging a “war” against cancer was a mistake. Viewing cancer as an external enemy took focus away from the value of prevention, which, in all likelihood, could have kept many cases of cancer from developing in the first place.

A lot of research over the last 50 years has pointed to the pivotal role of dietary and lifestyle choices in influencing cancer risk. In fact, one conservative estimate found that 30–40% of all cancers may be preventable with diet and lifestyle measures alone. (In case you’re keeping track, that could lead to savings of up to $10 trillion, and 120 million lives, over the next 30 years, which doesn’t sound too shabby to me.)

So what are these measures? How can you potentially prevent cancer in yourself or a loved one? In this article, we’ll look at 12 ways to reduce cancer risk.

What Can You Do to Help Prevent Cancer?

While many diet and lifestyle strategies have research behind them showing they can help prevent cancer, there are no guarantees in life. There are many different factors that may contribute to a cancer diagnosis. Everyone is biologically different. And what works for one person may not work for another.

But if you want to give yourself the best chance of preventing a cancer diagnosis, there are a few strategies that may help eliminate exposure to harmful cancer-causing chemicals and dietary compounds, along with preventing oxidative stress — a known contributor to carcinogenesis — in the body.

1. Don’t Smoke or Vape Tobacco

Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of cancer in the US and accounts for 25% of all cancer deaths globally (including the majority of lung cancers). Cigarette smoke contains numerous carcinogens, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), N-nitrosamines, aromatic amines, 1,3-butadiene, benzene, aldehydes, and ethylene oxide.

And while smokers’ risk of lung cancer can be a whopping 22 times higher than that of nonsmokers, smoking increases the risk of many other types of cancer as well. Associations also exist between smoking and skin cancer, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, endometrial carcinoma, and breast cancer

While the long-term effects of vaping and e-cigarettes are as of yet unknown, preliminary research suggests that they may also increase cancer risk. Similarly, vaping can expose you to nasty-sounding carcinogens such as nicotine derivatives (nitrosonornicotine and nitrosamine ketone), PAHs, heavy metals, and complex organic compounds such as formaldehyde.

While quitting smoking at any age can improve your health, doing so at a young age can significantly lower cancer incidence and increase life expectancy.

2. Avoid Plastics

Plastics are another environmental toxin linked to an elevated risk of cancer. This is most clearly seen where plastic exposure is the greatest such as in occupational exposure during manufacturing.

But as industrially-produced plastics continue to grow and infiltrate our lives, it’s harder and harder to find water, food, or soil that doesn’t contain microplastics. Even more concerning is their ability to find their way into living tissue due to their tiny size. While researchers first noticed microplastics in the flesh of marine creatures, now studies show they’re increasingly prevalent in human bodies as well.

Even if you avoid seafood and don’t work in a factory that produces or uses plastic, you still risk exposure to potentially carcinogenic chemicals from plastics found in everyday items.

Plastic packaging for food products can leach harmful chemicals into that food, especially if the contents are heated or acidic (like tomato sauce). Two of the most frequently implicated plastic chemicals are BPA and phthalates.

BPA may cause metabolic disease, obesity, infertility, and ADHD; while phthalates, as endocrine disruptors, can compromise pregnancy, child growth, and reproductive system development. Both chemicals have links to cancer.

BPA has a role in promoting several hormone-dependent cancers (breast, ovarian, and prostate). Exposure to phthalates during childhood is associated with an increased incidence of childhood osteosarcoma (bone cancer) and lymphoma (blood and lymph cancers).

BPA and phthalates aren’t limited to food packaging, however. They’re also in toys, medications, and beauty and personal care products.

The plastics industry has responded to growing concern by using plastics touted as “BPA-free” and “phthalate-free.” But the problem is, other chemicals found in plastics — nearly every type of plastic — turn out to be toxic as well.

It’s not clear whether swapping one type of plastic for another will pay health dividends, at least not nearly as much as finding ways to reduce overall exposure to plastic. Reducing your plastic footprint benefits not just you, but the wider environment.

You can replace plastic food containers with safer ones that have the added benefit of being long-lasting. And for both health and environmental reasons, you can eliminate, as much as possible, highly wasteful and polluting single-use plastics from your life.

Here are nine tips to help you live without plastic (yes, it really is possible!).

3. Avoid Processed Foods and Meats

Now it’s time to talk about food. Many processed foods contain harmful cancer-causing ingredients. While many countries have banned these ingredients, they’re still very much a part of the ultra-processed US food system.

A 2023 study found that eating large amounts of ultra-processed food is associated with a higher risk of developing cancers of the upper digestive tract, such as mouth, throat, and esophageal cancer.

Processed meat, in particular, has been associated with increased cancer risk. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified it as a class 1 carcinogen back in 2015. Specifically, a comprehensive 2021 meta-analysis found that processed meat consumption was associated with “a 6% greater breast cancer risk, an 18% greater colorectal cancer risk, a 21% greater colon cancer risk, a 22% greater rectal cancer risk, and a 12% greater lung cancer risk.”

Fortunately, it’s possible to replicate a lot of the taste and texture of processed meats with plant-based alternatives. Some are definitely kinder to your health than others. And the healthiest will generally be the ones you make yourself. You can even make bacon out of plants!

4. Filter Your Water

Multiple carcinogens exist in drinking water, too. Some, like arsenic, occur naturally, while others are the result of contamination from industry or agriculture. Still others are created when chlorine, used to disinfect tap water, comes into contact with organic material.

The 2000 movie Erin Brockovich told the true story of a town’s contaminated water supply. Unfortunately, a 2022 survey of US federal and state water testing found that the tap water of more than 250 million Americans still has dangerously high levels of this contaminant (chromium-6).

A 2023 study found that the tap water consumed by half of all households in the US is contaminated with cancer-causing PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” so named because they’re extremely resistant to breaking down, either in the environment or the body.

Microplastics are also increasingly concentrated in drinking water.

For tips on how you can treat your drinking water to reduce health risks, check out this comprehensive article on drinking water treatment.

Editor’s Note: Having a good home water filter is a great way to protect your family (and to save money over buying bottled water, which typically comes in plastic). One option that FRN likes is the AquaTru — a countertop RO unit that includes excellent carbon filter technology, delivers high-quality water and flavor, slashes the purchase cost, requires no installation fees, is remarkably water-efficient, and has extremely minimal maintenance costs. The manufacturer, AquaTru, states that their system removes chromium-6, arsenic, PFAS, and a great many other contaminants. It’s available for a $100 discount for FRN members. If you’re interested, you can find out more here.

5. Filter Your Air

While many people think that lung cancer only happens to smokers, up to 29% of all lung cancer deaths are attributable to poor air quality. Some of this comes from outdoor pollution, including car exhaust, factory and power plant emissions, and wildfire smoke, which can travel indoors, where the carcinogenic particles can become even more concentrated.

Your home is also a potential source of airborne cancer-causing chemicals. Cooking with a gas stove, it turns out, can be more of a contributor to carcinogenic air than even second-hand cigarette smoke. Gas stoves can raise indoor levels of benzene, a carcinogen linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers.

VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, are chemicals that can off-gas from cleaning supplies, paints, insecticides, lacquers and stains, and many other products. Some of these are suspected human carcinogens, as well as having multiple other health effects.

Another chemical that can build up in the home and raise the risk of cancer is radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer. You can get your home tested, and if levels are high, you can either increase the rate of airflow, get a suitable home air filter, or install an underground ventilation system to divert the gas before it enters your living spaces.

To find out more on the top sources and stunning health effects of indoor air pollution, and what you can do about it, see our article, here.

6. Reduce Your Stress

There are also internal contributors to cancer development: how we process stressors. While the stress response is a crucial system that has evolved to keep us safe in the presence of a threat, many people experience a chronic stress response that remains active even in the absence of an external threat.

Animal studies (our view on the use of animals in medical research is here) and lab-grown human cancer cells have provided evidence that chronic stress may cause cancer to get worse and spread. That’s because prolonged stress triggers inflammation, suppresses immunity, and promotes tumor growth, angiogenesis, and metastasis.

There’s also evidence that persistent and chronic stress exposure might also contribute to tumor initiation in specific cancers.

While you can’t avoid all of life’s stressors, there are some proven strategies that can help you manage stress more effectively. Certain foods can help (here are seven of them.) And adaptogens are plants and herbs that could be especially useful in helping your body deal with stressors and come back into balance.

Exercising and spending time in nature are also documented ways of lowering stress levels. For an added boost of calm, you can do both at the same time, an approach known as green fitness.

7. Use (Natural) Sunscreen

Skin cancer accounts for almost one-third of all diagnosed cancers, and the incidence of both melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers has been increasing over the past decades.

The main factors that predict the development of melanoma appear to be a combination of a history of sunburn from ultraviolet radiation and continued recreational exposure to the sun.

One way to keep the sun from damaging your skin is by using sunscreen. Studies have shown that it does reduce the risk of skin cancers. Unfortunately, not all sunscreens are benign. Some contain benzophenone, a suspected carcinogen that also can interfere with key hormones and reproductive organs.

It’s ironic that many people who seek to avoid one type of cancer end up doing so with products that promote other cancers, as well as additional health problems. To avoid this “from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire” scenario, look for natural sunscreens or other forms of natural sun protection. There are even foods that can protect your skin from harmful UV radiation.

For advice on what to look for in a natural sunscreen, see our article, here.

8. Wash Produce to Remove Pesticides

The greatest cancer risk associated with pesticides is occupational, affecting farm workers who apply pesticides. However, there may also be a risk from dietary sources. Estimates put more than 90% of the US population with detectable concentrations of pesticide biomarkers in their urine or blood.

While many fruits and vegetables are potent cancer-fighters, some of the pesticides used to grow them promote tumor growth, as well as cause harmful gene expression and DNA modification. For example, a 2021 study found a correlation between dietary exposure to pesticides and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women.

But there are several things you can do to minimize your exposure to these potentially carcinogenic compounds. If you can access and afford organic produce, that’s a great way to keep some of the worst pesticide offenders off your plate.

If a 100% organic shopping cart is out of your reach, you can get the most pesticide-free bang for your buck by going organic with the most pesticide-contaminated produce aka “the Dirty Dozen.”

And while you can’t remove all pesticide residue by washing your produce, a water and baking soda mixture can get rid of some pesticides.

For more on how to wash produce to remove the vast majority of pesticide residues, see our article here.

9. Use Nontoxic Cookware

Even after buying organic and washing off as much pesticide residue as you can, you may still be cooking your produce in ways that increase cancer risk. That’s because some nonstick cookware has a coating of carcinogenic chemicals.

The two biggest culprits are poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). PFOA is widely used in the manufacture of a bunch of industrial and commercial products, including Teflon coating on cookware. It’s associated with several cancers, including those of the testicles and kidneys, as well as pancreatic cancer.

To avoid these chemicals, check out some of our suggestions on healthy cookware options.

10. Drink Less (or No) Alcohol

While the media and wellness influencers debate the pros and cons of red wine for heart health, the evidence is clear and increasingly compelling that alcoholic beverages qualify as group 1 carcinogens. This doesn’t mean they get to board airplanes first. Rather, “group 1” is used by the WHO to indicate that there’s “convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer” in humans.

Drinking alcohol increases the risk of several cancer types, including cancers of the upper digestive tract, liver, colorectum, and breast. Worldwide, about 4% of cancers have a correlation with alcohol consumption.

But how much alcohol do you need to drink before your risk of cancer increases? According to the WHO, there’s no safe level of alcohol consumption. While the risk of developing cancer increases substantially the more alcohol you consume, even light or moderate consumption raises your odds of developing cancer.

Find out more on how alcohol affects your health here, and get some suggestions on nonalcoholic or mocktail recipes here.

11. Get Regular Cancer Screenings

Although no substitute for prevention, it’s often true that early detection can be a lifesaver. Getting regular cancer screenings can enable your health care provider to find precancerous cells as well as cancerous tumors.

Specifically, medical societies recommend screening for cancers that are easier to treat and cure when found early. For example, screenings can prevent colorectal and cervical cancers by identifying and removing precancerous lesions before they become cancerous.

Recent studies are also showing that mammography screenings decrease women’s risk of dying from breast cancer. A large-scale 2020 study out of Sweden found that women who participated in mammograms reduced their risk of dying of breast cancer within 10 years by a whopping 41%.

Another screening success has been the Pap smear, which I just learned was named after Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou, the Greek pathologist who discovered the test and publicized it in 1943. Over the past three decades, its widespread use has been credited with decreasing cervical cancer incidence and mortality by over 50%.

Colonoscopies that look for colorectal cancer may also be beneficial once people have reached a certain age. (According to the American Cancer Society, that age is 45 for folks with “average risk”).

Keep in mind, however, that there are also risks involved in all cancer screenings, including false positives that can lead to invasive treatments, as well as aggressively treating tumors that may be so slow-growing as to represent little threat to health.

Additionally, certain cancer screening tests may only be suggested for people who are high-risk. Others are routine tests done regularly after a certain age. To find out what cancer screenings are recommended by the American Cancer Society, here’s a resource they put together.

And remember the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. For most of us, the best prevention is a healthy diet and lifestyle. Starting with choosing to…

12. Eat Cancer-Fighting Foods

While most of the items on this list are things to avoid — tobacco smoke, plastics, processed foods, etc. — there are also things you can add more of to help prevent cancer.

Vegetable and fruit consumption is associated with a lower risk of many cancers, including those of the stomach, esophagus, lung, oral cavity and pharynx, endometrium, pancreas, colon, and others. The effects are likely due to the many positive qualities of whole plant-based foods. But two of the best studied are phytonutrients and fiber.

Phytonutrients and phytochemicals found in colorful plant foods, in particular, have been shown to possess anticancer effects. These and other antioxidants help neutralize free radicals in your cells and fight oxidative stress in your body.

Oxidative stress plays a major role in cancer cell metabolism. Cancer patients frequently have low antioxidant stores, and experience increased oxidative stress, leading researchers to seek ways to increase antioxidant activity as a cancer prevention strategy.

Fiber is another key nutrient for cancer prevention. There’s a clear link between fiber and colorectal health. You can think of fiber as the “broom” that sweeps your colon clean. Studies show that people who consumed just 10 more grams of fiber per day had a 10% reduction in their risk of developing colorectal cancer.

But fiber’s benefit doesn’t stop there. Multiple studies have found that the more fiber you eat, the lower your risk of breast and other hormonal cancers.

For more on why fiber is good for you, including a beautifully designed graphic showing 33 of the best high-fiber foods and a bunch of delicious fiber-rich recipes, check out this article.

And for more on anticancer foods, check out 7 Ways to Eat to Defeat Cancer Today and Every Day by Dr. William Li.

Cancer-Fighting Recipes

While some of the strategies shared in this article may take time and even a bit of expense to implement (changing cookware and sunscreen, replacing plastic containers with glass ones, getting a home air purifier, and so on), you can quickly make a dent in your cancer risk through the food you prepare and eat today.

Here are a few of our favorite anticancer recipes that taste so good, you’ll be forgiven for forgetting how good they are for you.

1. Smashed Edamame Avocado Toast

This easy toast recipe delivers a hefty dose of fiber, which is essential for digestive health and reducing the risk of certain types of cancer. Avocado is a nutrient powerhouse, rich in monounsaturated fats and antioxidants, and is known for its anti-inflammatory properties. The star ingredient, however, is edamame, which adds a substantial dose of plant-based protein and isoflavones. These phytonutrients may protect cells from damage and reduce the risk of cancer development. Enjoy the flavors, textures, and nutritional attributes of this craveable breakfast.

2. Strawberry Spinach Salad

Delight in a vibrant salad bursting with flavor and packed with cancer-fighting nutrients. This colorful ensemble features nutrient-rich spinach, known for its abundance of antioxidant cancer fighters like vitamin C and beta-carotene. It’s also complemented by sweet and succulent strawberries, offering a dose of ellagic acid — a phytonutrient that helps scavenge free radicals. The Strawberry Spinach Salad also provides quercetin — a plant compound with anticancer properties. Topped with a tangy beet balsamic dressing, this salad is a mouthwatering treat and a potential ally in your journey toward cancer prevention.

3. Pink Cauliflower Soup

Indulge in a flavorful blend of cauliflower, beets, garlic, tofu, and aromatic spices designed with potential cancer-fighting properties in mind. Cauliflower, a cruciferous vegetable rich in sulforaphane, may assist in reducing the risk of certain cancers by aiding in the body’s natural detoxification processes. Vibrant beets contribute betalains known for their anti-inflammatory properties. And garlic adds allicin, believed to possess powerful anticancer effects. With the addition of delicate microgreens, you’ll also get an extra boost of essential vitamins and minerals.

4. Plant-Powered Lunch Bowl

This Plant-Powered Lunch Bowl is a vibrant mix of nutrient-dense kale, antioxidant-packed turmeric, and carotenoid-rich sweet potatoes. Complemented by a vibrant matcha turmeric dressing, this bowl is more than just a delicious meal — it’s a cancer-fighting recipe. The abundance of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals from all of the ingredients creates a bowl bursting with health benefits.

5. Rainbow Smoothie

Indulge in a vibrant Rainbow Smoothie, a flavorful concoction blending the goodness of banana, apple, mixed berries, nutrient-rich spinach, and chia seeds, all with potentially cancer-preventive properties. This colorful smoothie offers a wealth of antioxidants, vitamins, and fiber. Both berries, particularly rich in anthocyanins and vitamin C, and spinach, abundant in folate and antioxidants, are believed to combat oxidative stress and inflammation, potentially reducing cancer risk. Combined with the fiber and omega-3 fatty acids from chia seeds, this refreshing smoothie is a nourishing and delightful treat!

Take Control of Your Health with These Cancer Prevention Strategies

Cancer can be devastating. And while medical advances have been largely modest and limited to certain families of cancer, there’s a lot of hope in the form of evidence-based strategies for lifestyle-based cancer prevention.

From steering clear of harmful substances like tobacco and plastics to embracing stress reduction techniques and consuming cancer-fighting foods, there are many steps you can take toward a healthier lifestyle.

While no approach guarantees immunity from cancer, the combination of these measures can significantly reduce your risk. And the collective impact of these lifestyle changes holds promise not just for individual well-being but also for a future in which the devastating impact of cancer is diminished.

Tell us in the comments:

• Which of the 12 cancer-fighting strategies above do you already engage in?
• What’s one thing you can do right now to reduce the risk of cancer for yourself and your loved ones?
• Which cancer-fighting recipe will you make next?

Featured Image: iStock.com/FatCamera

Read Next:

• The Top 10 Vegetables You Can Eat to Prevent and Reverse Cancer
• IGF-1: The Growth Hormone That Can Fuel Cancer

The post 12 Ways to Reduce Your Cancer Risk Using Diet & Lifestyle appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

It can’t be totally random, though, because the prevalence of eczema is rising around the world, afflicting about 10% of children and young adults, and 2–5% of all people.

And while there are many treatments for eczema, including hygiene practices, identifying and avoiding personal triggers, and even corticosteroids, they don’t always work. And even if medicated creams work at first, sometimes people can develop tolerances to them with prolonged use, and more and more supplementary treatments may be required.

People in remission from eczema may dread their next relapse, and feel powerless to prevent their flare-ups. And as with most conditions that resist conventional medical intervention, people who suffer from long-term eczema may turn to alternative treatments, lifestyles, and diets.

But some evidence suggests that eczema may go hand in hand with food allergies. Food allergies are also on the rise, and researchers are paying special attention to the barrier function of the skin as it relates to allergic conditions. Might consuming certain foods increase the likelihood of both food allergies and atopic dermatitis? And might some foods protect against or reduce symptoms?

A man in Hong Kong allegedly cleared up his eczema on a largely plant-based diet. A woman’s severe eczema almost completely disappeared after she adopted a whole foods, plant-based approach. And another woman who had swollen eyes and flaking skin for 20 years saw her symptoms go away after four days of plant-based eating.

Are these isolated, idiosyncratic cases, or examples of the placebo effect? Or is it possible that a plant-based diet may really be helpful in the treatment of eczema, at least in some cases? After all, a quick search on Amazon reveals dozens of books on eczema diets, cleanses, detoxes, and other approaches — all of which claim success where mainstream medicine cannot.

In this article, we’ll explore the evidence for the claims that a plant-based diet, along with other lifestyle choices, can help relieve eczema suffering. First, though, let’s find out more about the disease — and what triggers it.

Understanding Eczema

As we’ve seen, eczema is also called atopic dermatitis. A quick peek at the etymology of the two words gives us insight into the disease. Dermatitis is inflammation of the skin, which can result in itching, flaking, swelling, oozing, and crusting. And atopic comes from the Greek words a and topos, which together mean “out of place” — i.e., unusual or strange.

In essence, eczema is a chronic condition that causes the skin to become itchy, dry, cracked, and inflamed. So basically, if your skin were a party, eczema would be that awkward guest who not only refuses to leave but also insists on playing the Macarena on repeat. It’s out of place and it definitely makes its presence felt!

In infants and young children, who are most likely to suffer from eczema, the areas typically affected include the face, the outside of the elbows, and the knees. In older children and adults, eczema generally appears on the hands and feet, the arms, and the back of the knees. We don’t know why the condition often migrates from one part of the body to another.

Another eczema mystery is what causes the disease. (The one thing we know for certain, and it’s good news, is that the condition isn’t contagious.) It can run in families, suggesting either genetic or environmental factors, and it often develops alongside other conditions, including asthma and hay fever.

Eczema so frequently occurs in tandem with allergies that there’s reason to suspect an immune system link. Just as allergic reactions appear to be the result of overactive and confused immune responses, eczema, too, may be the skin’s overreaction to harmless stimuli.

While there are some autoimmune conditions that affect the skin — including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and dermatitis herpetiformis — eczema is not caused by the body attacking itself. Still, research shows that people with eczema are at higher risk of a number of autoimmune conditions, including alopecia, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and ulcerative colitis.

What Triggers Eczema?

One of the most troubling aspects of eczema is the seeming unpredictability of the course of the condition. There are periods when the skin is clear and free of symptoms, called remissions, and times when it flares up.

It’s not entirely random, though. Certain things can trigger flares in susceptible people, including stress, environmental exposures, and food.

Stress and Eczema

We know now that stress is a lot more than a state of mind. Acute and chronic stress can cause big physiological changes throughout the body, including some that can trigger or exacerbate eczema. New understandings of the “brain-skin connection” point to the release of stress hormones, especially in large quantities or over an extended period of time, as sometimes fueling eczema symptoms.

As you can imagine (or may even know from personal experience), living with eczema is stressful in its own right, leading to a potentially vicious cycle in which stress triggers eczema, making it harder to sleep or relax, which in turn exacerbates the stress, and so on.

Research has shown that the skin immediately picks up on stress. What might be less obvious is that it’s also a target of stress responses.

As the largest organ of the body, the skin is one of the key sentries keeping track of the outside world for signs of threat. Specifically, the skin is an important barrier for immune functions, maintaining homeostasis between the external environment and internal tissues. When it’s working properly, the skin lets in the good stuff and keeps out the bad. With eczema, stress can weaken this homeostasis, increasing inflammation and immune function dysregulation.

Personal Care Products and Eczema

Exposure to certain chemicals and toxins in the environment may also trigger eczema in some people — which could partly explain why prevalence is on the rise.

It can be challenging for an individual to figure out what they’re sensitive to. And it may take time, focus, and an action plan to eliminate various exposures to see if doing so leads to any relief.

Some of the most commonly implicated exposures include personal care products, such as shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers, and other products that come into contact with the skin. Products that contain fragrances may increase itching, and those with sodium lauryl sulfate may irritate the skin of people prone to eczema.

Another category of eczema triggers includes fabrics. In particular, wool and some synthetic fibers appear to cause irritation and trigger symptoms in some people.

Environment and Eczema

There are also environmental factors that tend to be much harder to avoid. The weather itself can be an eczema trigger; specifically, cold and dry air, or very humid air, can lead to flares in susceptible folks.

Indoor air quality also plays a role, as house dust mites, mold, and pollen are all potential triggers. And if you have a furry friend living with you, that furry friend’s fur may not be much of a friend if you’re prone to dermatitis.

Indoor air can also be compromised by gas stoves, furniture off-gassing, construction materials, paints, and anything else that releases volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The category of exposure that you may have the least control over is outdoor air pollutants. Chemicals from car exhaust, power plants, cigarette smoke, and even wildfires can all impair your skin’s ability to make healthy oils, leaving skin more easily irritated.

Food and Eczema

As we’ve seen, there’s a correlation between eczema and food allergies. Researchers estimate that up to 30% of children with eczema also have a food allergy — the most common ones being milk, egg, soy, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, fish and shellfish, and/or sesame.

Roughly the same percentage of adult eczema sufferers will also develop a food allergy in their lives, and experience symptoms such as hives, itching, difficulty breathing, or intestinal distress immediately after eating a specific type of food.

Interestingly, a distinct type of atopic dermatitis seems to have a direct link to food allergies right from the start. Children with this condition tend to show skin irregularities all over, not just in areas with active lesions.

However, in a broader sense, allergy specialists often view atopic dermatitis as an initial stage in the sequence known as the “atopic march.” This term describes a common pattern in some children, where atopic dermatitis evolves into food allergies and may even further develop into respiratory allergies or allergic asthma.

[Find out more about food allergies and what you can do about them.]

Can a Plant-Based Diet Help with Eczema?

Unlike medical specialties like cardiology and endocrinology, dermatology hasn’t yet acknowledged the potential health benefits of a plant-based diet. A 2022 review article noted that dermatologists typically advise against plant-based diets.

To be fair, there aren’t many studies that look specifically at the relationship between plant-based diets and eczema. We’ve seen a few anecdotal reports, which should not be dismissed just because they aren’t randomized controlled clinical trials. However, we do have some evidence suggesting that plant-based diets may help with eczema.

• A 2018 study asked 169 atopic dermatitis patients what changes they were making in their diets to treat their eczema, and whether their symptoms were improving. The greatest benefits were reported in those who added vegetables, especially organic ones, to their diets.
• A case study published in 2020 shared the story of a four-year-old patient with severe, persistent eczema. Ten days after the little girl was placed on a dairy-free elimination diet, her symptoms had improved by 76%. By the end of four months, she was in remission from eczema symptoms.
• Another study from back in 2001 took 20 eczema patients and put them on a strict plant-based diet. After just two months, they showed reduced markers of inflammation and immune response and a dramatic reduction in symptoms.
• And a 2021 Greek study on adolescents found that the more fruit, vegetables, and legumes they ate per week, the less they suffered from all atopic diseases, including eczema, allergic rhinitis (inflammation of the nasal cavities, and not a fear of rhinoceroses), and asthma.
• Interestingly, eating a plant-based diet during pregnancy may also lower the odds of an infant having eczema in their first year of life, according to a 2020 study.

There’s clearly much more research on eczema and plant-based diets that’s necessary. But we do know that plant-based diets contain many foods and compounds that are helpful for skin health, the immune system, and combating inflammation. They also generally eliminate some common food triggers and allergens, such as dairy, eggs, and shellfish. And whole food, plant-based diets also cut out processed foods, which are pro-inflammatory.

Food and Nutrients That May Help with Eczema

In general, diets rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich foods may decrease inflammation and improve antioxidant status, thus positively affecting skin health. And probiotic and prebiotic foods, including fermented foods and those high in fiber, can also support a healthy gut microbiome and a balanced immune system — which may help improve eczema symptoms. These are just some of the nutrients and foods that help eczema go away.

Fermented Foods and Eczema

Fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, and plant-based yogurt are not only high in antioxidants, they also deliver lactic acid-producing bacteria (LABs). The LABs support the “good” populations of gut bacteria and also improve local and systemic immunity.

Researchers surveyed 9,763 Korean adults in 2012–13 and found that those consuming large amounts of fermented foods (defined as eating fermented foods an impressive 92+ times per month!) had less atopic dermatitis than those who weren’t as committed to those foods.

For more on fermented foods, read our article: Fermented Foods: What are they, and how can they boost your health?

Fiber and Eczema

If you think of your gut as a party for probiotics, then dietary fiber is their all-you-can-eat buffet. Fermented foods, high in probiotics, are essentially the life of the party — but they can’t sustain themselves without a steady supply of dietary fiber — their version of party food.

In 2021, a group of Korean party planners — I mean, researchers — found that the more fiber-filled buffet options people had (i.e., the more dietary fiber they consumed), the less they had to worry about uninvited guests like eczema, asthma, and allergic rhinitis.

Fast-forward to 2022: A team of international researchers discovered the magic trick that happens when gut bacteria hit the fiber buffet hard. The short-chain fatty acids they produce can boost the bouncer at the door (the strength of the outer skin barrier), reducing the chances of allergens and related diseases crashing the party early.

Fiber-rich foods include all the usual suspects: legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, and veggies. Essentially, everything you’d find at a whole food, plant-based diet party — which sounds like a bash your gut would definitely want to RSVP to!

For more on why fiber is good for you, the best kinds, and the best sources, see our article, here.

Omega-3 and Eczema

In the modern industrialized diet, there’s a huge imbalance between the intake of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, with the former being consumed in much larger quantities than the latter.

Research shows that excess omega-6 is a risk factor for eczema, while omega-3 appears to inhibit an over-the-top immune response, such as cytokine production that can trigger inflammation of the skin.

A 2021 overview article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences suggests that balancing the omega-6 GLA with omega-3 fatty acids may inhibit inflammatory responses, with positive effects on skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, and acne.

High omega-3 foods include flaxseeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, and certain forms of algae. And many vegan omega-3 supplements, like this one by Complement, are produced from algal oil.

For more on why omega-3s are important — and what the best sources are for your health — see our article here.

Vitamin D and Eczema

Vitamin D may also play an important role in easing or suppressing eczema symptoms. A 2016 meta-analysis found four randomized controlled trials that, taken together, suggest that vitamin D supplementation could safely reduce eczema symptom severity.

A 2019 meta-analysis found lower vitamin D levels in eczema patients than in healthy controls. And it highlighted three interventions in which vitamin D supplementation reduced eczema severity.

However, a 2023 meta-analysis argued that vitamin D didn’t improve eczema across the board, and that it appeared to make a positive difference in adults but not in children.

The confusion may arise from the question of whether the relationship between vitamin D levels and atopic dermatitis is causal, and if so, in which direction. That is, does low vitamin D increase the risk of eczema, or does having eczema decrease vitamin D levels, perhaps by compromising the ability of the skin to synthesize the vitamin from sunlight — or perhaps because eczema sufferers are less likely to expose their skin to the sun?

If you aren’t getting sufficient vitamin D via sun exposure, there are some foods that can deliver the nutrient, including fortified plant-based milk and orange juice, and UV-exposed mushrooms. There are also supplemental forms of vitamin D, like this highly bioavailable liposomal version from our friends at Purality Health.

For more on vitamin D, including how much you need and how to get enough, see our article, here.

Vitamin E and Eczema

Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant and has been shown to reduce inflammatory compounds in patients with atopic conditions, including eczema.

A 2015 randomized trial gave participants either 400 IU of oral vitamin E or a placebo for four months. And the researchers found that the vitamin significantly reduced itching and the extent of skin lesions.

A 2020 review of the full medical literature on the relationship between vitamin E and eczema concluded that supplementation “has great potential as an adjunctive treatment for AD (Atopic Dermatitis) owing to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory bioactivities.”

While 400 IU is considered a safe dose, there are risks of getting too much vitamin E from supplements. You may not need to supplement if you focus on foods naturally high in vitamin E. These include nuts, seeds, avocado, mango, bell pepper, and leafy greens.

For more on vitamin E, including why it’s important and the best sources, see our article, here.

Eczema-Friendly Recipes

If you (or anyone you love) suffer from eczema and are inspired to see if a healthy diet can help, these eczema-friendly recipes are sure to make it a tasty transition.

Incorporating at least one of these recipes a week just might do wonders for the overall health of your immune system, microbiome, and skin.

Each recipe features foods packed with fiber and powerful, anti-inflammatory nutrients that could improve eczema symptoms. They’re also free of many of the most irritating food allergens, such as dairy, eggs, and shellfish.

1. Apple Walnut Oatmeal Bake

This comforting dish is full of healthful, anti-inflammatory ingredients to help soothe your skin during an eczema flare. Rich in calming and fiber-rich oats, omega-3-packed chia and walnuts, and vitamin D-fortified plant-based milk (if you use fortified plant milk), you could call this a breakfast made for healthy skin!

2. Kelp Salad with Baked Tempeh and Kimchi Miso Dressing

Kelp Salad with Baked Tempeh and Kimchi Miso Dressing brings together highly nutritious fermented foods, including tempeh and kimchi, which support a healthy microbiome. Helping supply your gut with the good bacteria it needs may reduce incidences of eczema flares.

This flavorful salad also has omega-3 fatty acids from the hemp seeds, calcium from the tahini, iodine from the kelp, iron from the beets, and zinc from the pumpkin seeds. You’ll cover lots of your nutritional bases with this one plant-powered salad!

3. Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale is a super cozy bowl of nourishing plants that provides comfort in more ways than one. In addition to the soup’s mouthwatering umami flavors from mushrooms, chickpeas, kale, and cashews, it packs a nutrient-dense punch! It’s a potent source of vitamin E, vitamin D (depending on the amount of sun exposure your mushrooms get), fiber, and protein, just to name a few. This soup is a delicious way to nourish your skin barrier and gut microbiome.

Reach for Plants to Support Your Skin from the Inside Out!

While scientific evidence supporting dietary interventions for eczema is still limited, the link between diet and overall skin health is strong enough that you may want to prioritize a healthy, plant-based diet as a first-line treatment strategy. A diet rich in nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds holds promise in providing essential nutrients, reducing inflammation, and supporting skin barrier function.

Prioritizing skin-supporting nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, probiotics, and vitamins E and D, could play a vital role in managing eczema.

The benefits of plant-based eating also come from what the diet eliminates. Avoiding potential allergens or trigger foods and pro-inflammatories, such as dairy and processed foods, could help in many cases.

Reducing stress and exposure to environmental toxins can also play a meaningful role in reducing eczema symptoms. In severe cases, consulting a health care professional may be necessary, to develop an individualized approach tailored to specific needs and preferences.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you have eczema? If so, do you know what triggers it for you?

• Have any diet and lifestyle strategies reduced flares and lessened symptoms?

• Have you tried eliminating certain foods and increasing others?

Featured Image: iStock.com/nensuria

Read Next:

• 10 Foods for Healthy, Radiant, Younger-Looking Skin
• What Can You Eat for Clearer Skin? The Best (and Worst) Foods for Acne

The post Eczema and Diet: Can Going Plant-Based Help Your Skin? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

When it comes to the health impacts of air pollution, most people think of lung and heart issues. However, a growing body of research suggests our brains could be at risk as well.

The brain starts developing weeks after conception, and like the rest of the body, continues to change throughout the rest of life, facing the threat of many environmental hazards — whether old, new, unknown, or unregulated. For instance, the effects of lead and mercury on the brain have been known for decades and still present a large global health problem. Many pesticides are neurotoxic, and yet remain available for use. Recent evidence suggests that fluoride, a compound used in public water supplies to reduce tooth decay, may also be neurotoxic.

But even the air humans breathe is associated with an increase in the risk of many brain-related conditions — whether people are exposed as children or as adults. Although US air pollution levels have come down in the past few decades, it’s been well-established how environmental contaminants and air pollution are linked to chronic medical conditions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart disease. And air pollution kills millions of people every year. Like other organs, the brain is not immune to environmental contaminants, and there is increasingly compelling evidence that air pollution is linked with conditions including autism spectrum disorders, dementia, and lower cognition.

“You only have one chance to develop a brain — you can’t go back and do it over or get a transplant,” says Philippe Grandjean, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark and an adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

While neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders have their own unique features, many share a lot of the same underlying brain tissue changes — and air pollution may exacerbate them.

“The risk of air pollution on the brain is a much broader risk factor than we’ve given it credit for,” says Deborah Cory-Slechta, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

A Lifelong Impact

Air pollution can include a cocktail of things, from industrial emissions to heavy metals to pesticides to particulate matter and other airborne contaminants that can harm the human body, including, it seems more and more likely, the brain. Besides studying the brain-related health risks of individual contaminants in air pollution, scientists have studied how levels of particles that are 10 micrometers or smaller (PM10) and particles that are 2.5 micrometers or smaller (PM2.5) are associated with brain-related conditions.

Growing evidence suggests that air pollution may more deeply affect long-term human health, behavior, and functioning than originally thought. Experts say this motivates the need for science-driven regulations and policies to minimize exposure.

“We’re not just trying to prevent brain disease, we’re trying to protect optimal brain development to support the highest possible functioning level and quality of life in the interest of the next generation and society.”

Philippe Grandjean

Experts say that exposure to air pollution can potentially lead to brain inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s natural, protective response to fight harmful contaminants; however, too much inflammation may lead to brain-related impairments and disease. Besides inflammation, accumulation of magnetite particles and amyloid plaques (an Alzheimer’s-associated protein) have been observed in the brains of humans and animals exposed to air pollution.

Brain damage, whether in children or adults, can have a lifelong impact.

“The main concern is really that even minor dysfunction of the brain can have dramatic consequences,” Grandjean says. “You can live a normal life with decreased liver function, and you can donate a kidney for transplantation, and it won’t affect your health. But for the brain, every IQ point is important.”

While IQ is not a comprehensive measure of brain or social functioning, it has provided a good sense of whether contaminants may be damaging the brain, and losing IQ points can potentially impact one’s quality of life, education, and income.

“In regard to the brain, we need to prevent even the smallest adverse effects,” Grandjean says. “We’re not just trying to prevent brain disease, we’re trying to protect optimal brain development to support the highest possible functioning level and quality of life in the interest of the next generation and society.”

Some skeptics are quick to point out that the large number of human studies that have been published are observational, which they dismiss because a causal link between air pollution and adverse brain health hasn’t been demonstrated.

“If we let everything run on the free market and intervene when people develop signs and symptoms, we’ve missed the window of opportunity. If we took this science seriously, we could dramatically reduce exposure to hazardous chemicals.”

Bruce Lanphear

But, says Bruce Lanphear, professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University, that line of thinking is incomplete. He points out that observational studies contributed to the conclusion that smoking causes lung cancer. “We do make inferences both from observational studies and parallel studies done in the lab,” he says. “When people dismiss these observational studies, they do so at the peril of public health.”

Furthermore, many animal studies have shown that air pollution negatively impacts animal brains. Although animal studies don’t necessarily mean the same findings translate to human beings, they are still controlled studies that provide strong, detailed evidence that air pollution negatively affects the brain. (Editor’s Note: Food Revolution Network’s view on the use of animals in medical research is here.)

What to Do?

In the battle to protect human health from air pollution, there has been some recent encouraging news. California recently passed legislation to require all cars sold in the state to be electric by 2035; currently, transportation is the biggest source of emissions in the state, and in announcing the legislation, the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said, “For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe.” The move may gradually impact the automobile industry and motivate other states to pass similar legislation. Furthermore, researchers have estimated that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative effort involving a growing number of northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has prevented hundreds of cases of childhood illnesses (including autism) and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in costs.

Given these recent events, “you can see that we can accelerate the progress quite a bit,” Lanphear says. “But even if we do the science, testify in front of Congress, and serve on advisory boards — that is not sufficient [for change]. It’s not until the public gets involved.”

“We wait until the impairments are so obvious — but this is all structural, and it can be changed.”

Irva Hertz-Picciotto

For members of the public, actionable steps can take many forms, experts say, including limiting their own contributions to pollution, publicly voicing their concerns (as was the case in the Flint water crisis), supporting tighter regulation of known environmental hazards, challenging people who are skeptical of science, and supporting candidates for elected office who will protect the environment and human health.

But, says Irva Hertz-Picciotto, director of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center, “the burden shouldn’t be on everyone for every product we buy and eat. Too much happens after the fact. We wait until the impairments are so obvious — but this is all structural, and it can be changed.”

For scientists and public health experts, prevention makes the most sense.

“If we let everything run on the free market and intervene when people develop signs and symptoms, we’ve missed the window of opportunity,” Lanphear says. “If we took this science seriously, we could dramatically reduce exposure to hazardous chemicals.”

Hertz-Picciotto notes there are moneyed interests in maintaining the uses of certain chemicals, and that some pollutants that need to be regulated are already known, but protections that have been in place are in some ways being systematically dismantled. According to academic experts and non-governmental organizations, there are many chemicals that need regulatory oversight, as well as a growing trend in recent years of increased rollbacks of environmental legislation that will allow more pollution and a decrease in prosecutions of pollution-related violations of existing laws.

Meanwhile, some contaminants remain unregulated. For instance, unlike PM10 and PM2.5, ultrafine particles (that are 100 nanometers or less in diameter), including those generated from diesel exhaust, are unregulated everywhere despite having a relatively large surface area and ability to carry contaminants. Furthermore, most experts believe the ultrafine components of pollution carry the most adverse effects.

“They get to the bottom of your lungs and can go directly to the bloodstream,” Cory-Slechta says. “You can breathe them through your nose, and they can go directly to your brain.”

With US Environmental Protection Agency regulations, there have been reductions in PM10 and PM2.5 levels, but no organizations monitor ultrafine particles, let alone regulate them.

“In the nano-range, there’s a whole realm of effects of what’s happening biologically, including for nano-plastics — the normal defense systems in the brain and body don’t really pick them up,” Cory-Slechta says.

The effects of ultrafine particles on the brain are not all known yet, and there are likely more neurotoxic pollutants in the world that scientists are yet to discover. These risks are causes for concern — because each human only has one chance to develop a brain.

Kasra Zarei wrote this story as a participant in the Ensia Mentor Program. The mentor for the piece was Brian Bienkowski.

Tell us in the comments:

• What is the air quality like where you live?
• What pollution regulations, if any, exist in your area?
• How can you help limit the contamination of our atmosphere?

Feature Image: iStock.com/quickshooting

Read Next:

• Indoor Air Pollution: Here’s What You Need To Know

The post How Air Pollution Could be Harming Your Brain appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

The hairy mystery foods in the back of your fridge may be humorous in and of themselves, but when you multiply food waste by billions of people, it becomes tragic.

One-third of the planet’s food goes to waste — enough to feed two billion people. A lot of food waste happens before it reaches the consumer — fruits and vegetables rot in fields or warehouses, packaged items not sold by their expiration dates end up in supermarket dumpsters, and restaurants dispose of unused food at the end of the day.

Reducing Food Waste

The United States is the largest producer of food waste. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 30–40% of the entire US food supply goes to waste. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council put this collective behavior into an individual context — imagine going shopping, filling five grocery bags, and leaving two of them in the supermarket parking lot before driving off.

While we don’t routinely leave bags behind at the grocery store, each US resident does waste, on average, about 400 pounds of food every single year. Four hundred pounds! That’s about the weight of a full-grown female muskox, in case you were wondering.

While most of us don’t have direct control over wasteful supply chains, we can do our part with the food that makes it into our homes. In addition to eating what we buy before it starts to go bad, we can also give otherwise unused food scraps a second life, and benefit people and the planet, by not adding them to our landfills.

So what are the benefits of saving or recycling food scraps, what kinds of food scraps can you reuse, and what are some ways to use them that can help create a zero-waste kitchen?

Why Save Food Scraps?

Some food scraps can be used to make new foods. With others, you can grow new plants or feed companion animals. Some can even be turned into homemade DIY beauty and household cleaning products. And almost all of them can be used to make compost that can enrich your soil and your garden.

If you’ve never saved or repurposed food scraps before, you might be wondering what difference you can make by starting. It turns out that there are plenty of benefits to doing so (and not contributing to food waste), a few of which I’ll discuss below.

Supports Environmental Health

Repurposing your food waste keeps it out of landfills, and that’s a good thing. Food accounts for nearly a quarter of solid waste in US landfills, which are themselves the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the country. Food in landfills is deprived of oxygen (and insects), both of which are needed to accelerate the decomposition of that food into carbon, nitrogen, nutrients, and water that can return to the earth. As a result, food trapped in landfills putrifies, but doesn’t properly decompose.

Aside from air pollution caused by methane and the stench of a giant pile of rotting food, food waste can also contribute to soil and water pollution in the form of landfill leachate. This is what happens when rainwater enters a landfill, mixes with rotting food waste, and seeps down into the ground (and groundwater) below.

Food waste can also lead to resource overuse, which is a fancy way of saying that along with the food itself, we’re also wasting all the water that went into producing that food. And since water shortages are plaguing more and more communities (just ask anyone from California or Brazil or Madagascar or Arizona or Mexico or Oregon or the Middle East), this wasted water is contributing to water scarcity.

Compostable Food Improves Your Soil

Food scraps can also help improve the health and quality of your garden soil if you use them to make compost. If you grow your own food, you can create fertile soil for growing fruits and veggies by composting leftover scraps. Organic matter attracts more life to your soil by providing yummy meals for decomposers like earthworms. Earthworms — red wigglers, in particular, if you practice vermicomposting — can repair damaged soil, improve its structure, recycle nutrients, and help create an overall better growing environment.

Using food compost can also improve water retention and buffer the pH of your soil, promoting healthier plants. Compost is nature’s ultimate closed-loop system, utilizing food waste from one cycle to make a whole new generation of food to feed others.

Recycled Food Scraps Save You Money

Saving food scraps can even help you save money? Yes! On average, households could save about $370 per person annually by reducing food waste. For a five-person household, this comes out to $1,850 saved in a year. That’s a lot of cabbage!

Not only does reducing your food waste save you money on food in the long run, but depending on what you do with them, repurposing your food scraps can also help you save money on soil and fertilizer (if you turn them into compost), new plants (if you use them to grow more vegetables), animal feed (if you feed them to companion animals), or beauty and cleaning products (if you use them to make these).

Examples of Food Scraps That Can Have a Second Life

With all the food scraps we tend to toss away, where do you start to turn things around in your own kitchen? Here are some parts of foods you might commonly chop and discard that are great to save as recycled food.

• Fruit and vegetable seeds
• Ends of vegetables (e.g., green beans, onions, celery, zucchini, and lettuce)
• Fruit cores
• Green tops of root vegetables (e.g., carrots, radishes, beets)
• Herb stems (e.g., basil, parsley, mint, cilantro)
• Fruit and vegetable peels, rinds, and skins
• Almond or other nut or legume pulp (from making nut milk, soy milk, etc.)
• Fruit or vegetable pulp from juicing
• Coffee grounds, tea leaves, and unbleached tea bags
• Stems from mushrooms and stalky veggies like broccoli and cauliflower (the parts you don’t eat, that is!)
• Pretty much anything on a picky eater’s plate

What to Do with Food Scraps

Curious what your most frequently discarded food waste can still be used for? Here are some ways you can turn would-be trash into (repurposed) treasure for a zero-waste kitchen.

Make Your Own Compost

As you’re prepping food or cooking, have a designated bag or food scrap container to save scraps as you go. Rather than throwing scraps into the trash or garbage disposal, toss them in your kitchen scrap container instead. Once your bin is filled, bring it to your compost area. (Pro tip: In warmer climates or during summer months, you may want to make the trip daily, unless you want to DIY a solution for fruit flies.)

Your compost setup might also include vermiculture, or using worms to decompose organic food waste into the nutrient-rich matter you can then use in your soil and garden. Kitchen scraps like vegetable trimmings, green leaves, tea bags, coffee grounds, and seaweed can make up the “greens” of your pile.

Or you can pile everything up in an enclosed space in your yard and let nature take its course without the intentional acceleration provided by red wigglers (chances are that earthworms of one variety or another will turn up to help). Commercially available food waste composters come in a few different styles. One popular design consists of a drum that can turn via a hand crank, which aerates the pile and speeds up the transformation from kitchen trash to soil.

And if you’re in a hurry and have the time and energy to tend to it, consider the Berkeley Hot Compost method, which promises to turn food scraps into rich humus in under 21 days. (That’s humus, not hummus. But if you suddenly find yourself craving hummus, here’s our favorite red pepper version.)

And if you like the latest technological gadgets, you might want to consider a food recycler, which turns compost into soil that’s ready to go into the garden in just a few hours. Seriously. Here’s a popular food recycler from Vitamix.

Check out this post for more information on how to compost at home.

Contribute to a Commercial Composting Program

If you don’t have use for compost at home (no garden or garden space), save food scraps and include them with your regular municipal green waste pickup, if offered. This includes things like garden waste, leaves, or grass clippings. Some forward-looking states and cities have enacted composting programs. For example, Vermont is one of a growing number of states that have “no landfill” laws for organic waste. With a full ban on such waste in landfills, residents can use curbside pickup, bring scraps to local collection points, or compost at home.

And the Los Angeles County composting law went into effect on January 1, 2022, and requires consumers to recycle their food scraps and other leftovers instead of throwing them away. And just to be clear, this doesn’t include throwing your food scraps onto the Staples Center floor to protest the Lakers’ terrible outside shooting this season. That is not OK.

To find a composting program in the US, check out CompostNow. There you’ll find programs where people will pick up food scraps from your home, as well as locations where you can drop them off. Europeans will find abundant composting resources here.

There are also apps that can help match you with people who need food scraps for their compost. One example is ShareWaste, which connects composters with people who have food scraps to share, as well as cafes that may have coffee grounds and other organic materials to give away. (Coffee grounds are a great addition to any compost pile — especially if you prefer the smell of espresso to the smell of a typical compost pile.)

Make Vegetable Stock with Food Scraps

If vegetable stock is a pantry staple in your home, consider making your own using food scraps — it can be far more flavorful than commercial stocks or those made from salt and palm oil-filled bouillon cubes and saves you from having to buy these packaged foods. 

To make vegetable stock from food scraps, save your vegetable scraps in a resealable, freezer-safe bag or container, where they can live for up to six months if you keep them in the freezer. Stock scraps can include peels, stems, and ends from things like carrots, onions, mushrooms, herbs, zucchini and yellow squash, potatoes, and more. The only categories you’ll want to avoid are Brassica vegetables, like broccoli and Brussels sprouts, as well as artichoke stalks, and most varieties of lettuce (these will make the stock bitter).

When your freezer bag or container is full, transfer the contents to a large pot on the stove. Fill the pot with water until the vegetables are floating, around ¾ of the way full. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for at least 30 minutes to allow the most flavor and nutrients to be released into the liquid. Then, strain out your solids, leaving the stock liquid. This homemade stock can be kept in the fridge for three to five days, or, once cooled, it can be stored in the freezer for up to three months. Use it for soups, sauces, slow cooker dishes, as a base for cooking grains, and in stir-fries.

If you just need a couple of tablespoons of vegetable stock at a time, say for oil-free sautéing, you can freeze some of it in ice cube trays. Once frozen, pop the cubes out of the tray and into a labeled freezer bag or container. Nobody wants to play “Guess what this is” with some unidentified frozen lumps at the bottom of your freezer.

Regrow Plants From Scraps or Seeds

Leafy greens and herbs are some of the easiest plants to regrow from scraps. When preparing fruits and veggies to eat, save the seeds from different varieties so that you can plant them in your garden or in containers. It can be fun to try a number of different kinds and see what grows best.

Especially if you have kids who are growing up thinking that food comes from the supermarket, it can be fun and exciting to see a carrot growing out of a carrot top, or a puny garlic clove transform into a plant that can go into the ground and regenerate.

Many people have had success using market-bought produce and kitchen scraps to grow new plants, like apricots, bok choy, garlic, red onion, pineapple, basil, melon, carrot tops, squash, mint, green onion, ginger, celery, potatoes, and more. For more specific guidance on regrowing plants from food scraps, see this post.

Feed Scraps to Companion Animals

Food scraps make great, healthy supplemental food for certain kinds of animals you may have at home. Just make sure to check which foods might be toxic to certain species before offering them free range to all of your scraps.

Rabbits love to munch on leafy greens and herb scraps, beet and carrot tops, and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli. Cats can safely enjoy a variety of herbs and herb scraps like mint and basil. As long as you don’t have bears and other large visiting wildlife where you live, backyard birds can flock to feeders filled with pantry grains, nuts, seeds, and fruit scraps. Backyard chickens, some of the most famously non-picky eaters in the animal kingdom, enjoy vegetable peels, bananas, apples, berries, carrots, bok choy, silverbeet, spinach, cabbage, and broccoli. And some scraps will also be enjoyed by dogs (though there are also some dangers to be aware of — as described here).

Get Creative With Food Scrap Arts & Crafts

The beauty of colorful fruits, vegetables, and grains isn’t limited to the kitchen. You can also put these kinds of scraps to creative use in a number of food scrap art and craft projects. Some ideas include decorative and aromatic citrus peel garlands and candles, potato stamps, veggie-based watercolors, and hot-glued pistachio shell artificial succulents.

Good advice — if you carve Michelangelo’s David out of an old turnip, make sure you list it on eBay before it gets wrinkled and starts smelling like old socks.

DIY Beauty & Cleaning Products

You can even use food scraps to make eco-friendly and non-toxic products for your home and personal care routine. After you eat the inner flesh, the insides of avocado shells can be rubbed on elbows as a natural moisturizer. The pit can be dipped in olive oil and used as a softening foot massager. You can mix coffee grounds with coconut oil and sugar for an exfoliating scrub. You can even throw unused oats into your bath water for an extra creamy and softening soak.

As for cleaning products, you can use fruit peels, pulp, and juice to make “garbage enzymes” that can kill problematic bacteria and fungi around your home. You can use them to mop your floors, wash your dishes, and clean your sink. One way to do this is by collecting fruit peel scraps in a bag with some sugar and water, allowing them to sit for around three months, and then using the residual enzymes — which are found in the vinegar-smelling brown liquid. It might not smell or look appetizing, but it sure does the trick when it comes to cleaning the house.

Citrus peels and vinegar can make a quick DIY cleaning spray, leaving parts of your home clean and smelling good. One simple recipe is this gentle lemon cleanser, which combines lemon rinds, white vinegar, water, and liquid castile soap. It takes two to seven days to make, but once it has ample time to sit, you’ve got yourself a non-toxic, gentle, all-purpose cleanser. If you don’t feel like making your own cleaning products, a company called Veles sells a cleaning product made up of 97% food waste.

Reuse Food Scraps in Recipes

Of course, you can keep your food scraps in the kitchen by repurposing them for a variety of recipes. Herb scraps, carrot or radish tops, and other leafy greens can make pesto. Use apple scraps to make homemade apple cider vinegar, which can then be included in dressings and other recipes.

If you have nut pulp leftover from making nut milk, use it in baked goods like crackers, muffins, or even dog treats, to add nutrients and texture. Save stems of veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, and kale and create a sheet pan meal by seasoning and roasting them as a side dish or to top a grain salad. You can also make jams, dressings, or purees out of fruit that’s nearing the end of its useful life in your fridge. And you can pickle or lacto-ferment vegetable scraps or slices that would otherwise go unused — for example, celery stalks, cucumber slices, or the stems of rainbow chard.

Recipes Using Food Scraps

Minimizing waste while preparing delicious, plant-based dishes can be its own fun adventure. Now for some recipes! 

Homemade Vegetable Bouillon skips the scraps stage entirely by blending the whole plant, which means you get exponentially more nutrition (think fiber) and flavor! 

You can rename Creamy Squash Soup each time you make it by adding just about any leftover vegetables you have on hand to the sauté process and blending them into the creamy base. 

Instead of ditching those pesky fibrous kale stems, use them in the Kale Walnut Basil Pesto. With this pesto’s perfect texture and flavor, you won’t even know they’re there, but your body will recognize the abundance of nutrition. 

If you’re ever unsure if you’ll be able to finish fruit in the fridge before its expiration date, freeze it. Then, when you happen upon that fruit one day and wonder what you’ll do with it, make delicious and nutritious jam — either our Strawberry Pear blend or whatever fruit you have on hand. 

Finally, a tasty and crunchy way to elevate just about any meal is by adding pickled veggies. Pickling, especially our Vietnamese-Inspired version, is simple, yummy, and a great way to expand veggies’ shelf life!

1. Homemade Vegetable Bouillon

If you enjoy maximizing nutrition while minimizing food waste then you’ve come to the right recipe. Vegetable broth might be something you keep on hand to use in soups, whole grain dishes, and casseroles. Why not use vegetable parts (stems, roots, or leaves) that you’re not using in traditional recipes, or vegetables nearing expiration, and make a bouillon? Rather than boiling and then simmering vegetable scraps (which is another way to make homemade broth), you’ll use the entire plant by adding it to your food processor to make a bouillon. This means that, in addition to the phytonutrients, you’ll also get plenty of fiber — a huge bonus! Not only are you minimizing food waste, but you’ll also save on packaging costs and trips to the grocery store.

2. Creamy Squash Soup

Have you ever made a recipe and had just one small extra piece of an ingredient or a few items leftover? Oftentimes, it’s a few potatoes left over from a five-pound bag, a leftover piece of squash from a recipe calling for one cup cubed, or the relentless half an onion which always seems perched up in the fridge. While this recipe is called Creamy Squash Soup, you can add a variety of vegetables that you need to use to the sauté portion of this recipe, just before blending.

3. Kale Walnut Basil Pesto

Often, the fibrous stems, or ribs, of leafy greens are ditched because of their ultra-chewy texture and extra bitter compounds. However, there are fun and delicious ways to disguise them in recipes so that you can enjoy all of the nutrition they offer while minimizing waste. For example, Kale Walnut Basil Pesto is so appetizing and tasty that you won’t even know that stems are included! Use this flavorful pesto on top of avocado toast, as a pasta sauce, or as a pizza spread.

4. Strawberry Pear Jam

When in doubt, freeze it! This is a good motto to keep in mind whenever you have fruit that is nearing expiration and you’re unsure if you’ll enjoy it before it’s time to say goodbye. At some point, you may open your freezer door and find that fruit, wondering what the heck you’re going to do with it now. We have a solution — make nutritiously delicious homemade jam! Pears, strawberries, and chia pack a ton of fiber. Strawberries contain phytonutrients that have been shown to help with skin, brain, and heart health. And chia seeds bring lots of bone-supporting minerals like magnesium, calcium, iron, and phosphorus. Share this jam with friends and family and let them know that your homemade jam is not only delicious but also good for their health!

5. Vietnamese Inspired Pickled Veggies

Have you ever experienced the excitement of finding a new farmers market veggie to try or growing unique vegetables in your garden that seemed interesting to you at the time, but then you’re left with, “what the heck do I do with it?” We have a healthy fix for you — make pickled veggies! Not only will you have an opportunity to use new-to-you veggies in a fun and tasty way, but you’ll also exponentially expand their shelf life with the help of the brine solution. Pickled veggies are also simple to make! Use them on top of plant-based burgers, grain bowls, and avocado toast. P.S. Kudos to you for exploring and experimenting with new plant-based foods!

Be Scrappy with Food Waste

Food waste is a worldwide problem that’s contributing to global warming — and can be affecting your pocketbook, too. There are many ways to make use of your food scraps — like composting them, making household or personal care products with them, or including them in recipes, so they don’t end up in landfills. By thinking about your food scraps in a new light, and using them in new ways, you can contribute to a better world for people and the planet, both inside and outside of your home.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you compost? If so, share your composting tips (and favorite scraps to use) below!
• How do you already reuse food scraps in your home, or what are some ways you can start?
• Have you ever used food scraps to make a household cleaning product?

Feature Image: iStock.com/chameleonseye

Read Next:

• Infographic: 19 Foods You Can Regrow from Scraps
• You Have More Power to Reduce Food Waste Than You Think! 17 Things You Can Do to Take a Bite Out of This Massive Global Problem

The post How to Use Food Scraps to Reduce Kitchen Waste appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Prominent Northeastern grocery store chain Hannaford Supermarkets made headlines recently by declaring that for an entire year it had not sent any spoiled or outdated food to landfills, where the organic decomposition process produces methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

Instead, Hannaford, which operates in New England and New York, is contracting with an anaerobic food reprocesser to strip the food from its packaging, mix it with microbes and manure, and turn it into fuel, fertilizer, and bedding for dairy cows.

While bovines belching methane also is a climate problem, the Hannaford effort targets one of the leading sources of methane. Food waste in landfills produces the third largest amount of methane emissions in the United States (15%), after petroleum production (30%) and animal gas and manure (27%), according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

At least eight states, all in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic except California, have laws requiring some reprocessing of food waste, to keep it out of landfills and cut down on greenhouse gases, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

States have come up with a number of approaches to reduce food waste, especially the refuse bound for landfills. They include laws that require separation of food from other waste and incentives in the form of grants.

This year, state lawmakers have introduced at least 52 bills in 18 states involving food waste management, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Last year, 46 bills were introduced across 17 states and the District of Columbia. The waste management firm RTS noted that some states and cities including Tennessee and Washington, and Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin, have created food waste task forces.

Maryland and New Jersey are the latest to adopt similar laws. Maryland requires food facilities producing more than two tons of food waste a week to separate it from other waste and divert it from landfills by January 1, 2023. Facilities that produce one ton a week have until January 1, 2024. In both cases, the law applies only if the food originates within a 30 mile radius of a recycling facility.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

Critics of the Maryland law argued that a mandate would be costly and called for letting market forces work things out. The Maryland Association of Counties opposed the bill because of worries over increased costs, especially to schools and prisons.

“Amidst a health pandemic and an accompanying fiscal uncertainty, counties are struggling to maintain service levels to meet essential needs — including in educational and correctional facilities. Placing an added cost burden onto those facilities will only divert resources. MACo believes that the bill should not apply to local government-owned facilities,” the organization said in written testimony during a hearing on the bill in January.

The state’s restaurant association fought the measure, too; the legislature ultimately exempted restaurants before passing the law, according to Wastedive, a trade publication.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, last year signed into law a requirement that producers of food waste such as hospitals, prisons, restaurants, and supermarkets recycle food garbage rather than send it to incinerators or landfills. The law will go into effect this fall.

The New Jersey Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, while generally praising the bill, criticized in a news release a loophole that allows the state Department of Environmental Protection to issue waivers, which the organization argued could be used to undermine the law’s intent.

The National Grocers Association has not taken a public position on disposal of food waste by independent grocery stores. In an email, Jim Dudlicek, director of communications for the trade group, noted it has 1,500 members whose stores are privately controlled. He did say, however, that some of its members have “innovative” programs for food waste, including Big Y stores, which divert food waste from landfills by donating usable food either to food banks or for animal feed, according to the company’s news release.

States Step Up

Vermont is among the leaders in states that have “no landfill” laws for organic waste. The state has close to a full ban on organic waste in landfills, said Josh Kelly, materials management section manager for the state’s department of environmental conservation.

Any Vermont entity that produces more than one ton a week of organic waste must separate it from landfill trash and compost it, or reprocess it if there is a facility within a certain distance, he said. The initial statute was passed in 2012 and was just fully implemented in 2020, despite the pandemic.

“There was talk of delaying it because of the pandemic, but it was not delayed,” Kelly wrote in an email.

The law, combined with some grants from the state, has served to reset minds and procedures at large facilities, as well as in individuals, Kelly said in a phone interview. The idea, he said, is to get people to think, “it’s against the law to throw a banana peel in the trash,” before they toss it.

The state grants are funded by a fee of $6 a ton for regular trash.

By January 2022, California will require statewide collection and recycling of organic waste from all businesses and residents, including processing collected waste to become compost, clean electricity, or biofuel, according to Maria West, communications director for CalRecycle, the state’s recycling agency.

In an email, West said the goal of the law is to reduce organic waste sent to landfills by 75% by 2025.

She said the pandemic briefly interrupted recycling and reprocessing efforts as the state assessed the safety of workers who were separating waste items. But by June 2020, recycling was “deemed essential and safety protocols allowed separating to continue,” she said.

In addition, she said, the California law requires the state by 2025 to recover 20% of edible food otherwise sent to landfills to feed people in need.

Slow Moves

Long ramp-up times in the effort to curb food in landfills are common even in the private sector, Hannaford health and sustainability expert George Parmenter said in a phone interview. His company had been taking smaller steps for many years to try to process food waste in the most environmentally friendly way possible, he said.

“We had a plan, eight or nine years ago, to work on food waste and get our arms around it and deal with it in a methodical way,” he said. At first, Hannaford stores sent their food waste to farms that composted it, but that also produces methane, and the facilities are generally smaller and scattered.

They eventually hit on Agri-Cycle Energy, an anaerobic food waste processor with a plant in Exeter, Maine. The key was the plant’s “de-packager” — automated equipment that freed store workers from having to scrape the spoiled food from the packaging, saving time and work hours. Hannaford is able to truck the spoiled food, packaging and all, to the plant.

Dan Bell, president and co-founder of Agri-Cycle, said the company began in 2011 and has grown annually. The Exeter site also includes a working dairy farm, owned by the family of Bell’s partner, Adam Wintle, providing a companion site for the use of the fertilizer and cow bedding produced.

The anaerobic process generates biofuel that runs the waste-processing engines. The company sells the extra power to electric companies, Bell said.

Because the process is contained in a building, he said, no odor escapes. The same cannot be said for the dairy farm, where manure smells are a fact of life, he acknowledged.

The company was helped by both federal and state grants for waste firms, which raised “a couple million” for the operation, Bell said. In addition, a power purchase agreement regulated by Maine assures that power produced will be bought by utilities, he said.

But Maine, unlike other New England states, does not have a law that requires food waste be kept out of landfills, according to Paula Clark, director of the division of materials management in the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“We’ve talked about it from time to time,” she said in a phone interview. “We were not comfortable that Maine has sufficient capacity in composting or anaerobic digesting.” She added that the state is focused on providing grants and advice to help municipalities construct those facilities.

Donate First, Landfill Later

Many grocery stores already donate outdated, but still edible, food to food banks. And some anti-hunger advocates argue that the focus on how to dispose of food waste diverts attention from the need for food that is past its expiration date to be donated.

Preventing food waste at the beginning of the supply chain is better for the world altogether than concentrating on what to do with what’s spoiled later, said Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit environmental group based in California.

“Preventing food waste is much more environmentally useful than dealing with it later,” she said in a phone interview.

She said some grocery stores and other large food entities “greenwash” the issue by donating to environmental causes or just measuring how much food is wasted rather than putting their efforts into donations of edible food.

She called for stores to follow EPA’s food recovery hierarchy, which focuses on solutions at the top of the chart, especially food donations, to drastically cut the amount that is wasted. The hierarchy calls for cutting down on the amount of surplus food that’s produced, feeding hungry people with leftover usable food, then feeding animals, then using what’s in anaerobic processing, then composting, and finally, sending the rest to landfills.

“The No. 1 thing is prevention,” Molidor said. “If you don’t waste food, you don’t have to worry about landfills.”

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you compost your food scraps?
• Has your state or local jurisdiction put a food waste law in place?
• What other ways can you keep food waste out of landfills?

Feature Image: iStock.com/maerzkind

Read Next:

• The Pandemic’s Waste Problem: How Stalled Composting Programs are Contributing to Food Waste
• How To Reduce Food Waste
• Compost: 5 Secrets to Composting at Home

The post Waste Not? Some States are Starting to Send Less Food to Landfills appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If the beaches are a sea shell museum, then the sea plants that wash up on shores must constitute the vegan option in the museum’s cafe. Popularly known as seaweed, and recently rebranded as sea vegetables (which are technically the portion of all the seaweeds that are edible to humans, though we’ll use the terms a bit interchangeably in this article), these marine plants are poised to become, in the eyes of culinary trendspotters, the “new kale.”

And why not? They’ve got all the buzzwords going for them: organic, regenerative, non-GMO. And they’re versatile: from sushi to roasted seaweed snacks to smoothie ingredients, more and more people throughout the world are eating a wide variety of sea veggies.

While sea vegetables have long been a staple in Asian cultures, until recently, they’ve been largely absent from western cuisine. Only with the rise in popularity of sushi have they made their way into prominence on the world stage. And still, there’s a big gap between daintily nibbling on rice and veggies wrapped in nori, and viewing mounds of seaweed washed up on a beach and thinking, “Oh, yum!”

But that’s changing, and rapidly. Seaweeds — or as they’re often called, sea vegetables — now have some marketing muscle behind them. And there’s a lot to market; many varieties offer intriguing health benefits and may even be associated with increased longevity. Case in point, the centenarians living in the Blue Zone region of Okinawa, Japan, regularly incorporate sea vegetables into their diet.

But despite their benefits to both our health and the environment, there are some potential downsides to consider on both fronts.

So what’s the deal with sea vegetables? Are they good for you or the environment? Where do you find them? And, what are the best ways to use them in your diet?

What Are Sea Vegetables?

In most cases, sea vegetables are actually edible marine algae, or macroalgae. This is different from freshwater algae, like chlorella or spirulina (which also have great health benefits!). The macroalgae are plant-like organisms that generally live attached to rock or other hard surfaces in coastal areas. They have no true roots or leaves, and are more similar to mushrooms or lichen than terrestrial plants. But just like terrestrial plants, sea vegetables use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy.

Since the mid-19th century, cooks have categorized sea vegetables by color: green, brown, or red.

There are several popular types of sea vegetables:

Nori

Most commonly known for its use in rolling sushi, nori is a dried, pressed red seaweed. It has a naturally salty, umami flavor and is low in calories and high in minerals like vitamins B12, A, and C, along with iodine, magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium.

Dulse

You can find dulse — a red sea veggie — in dried flake form, which you can shake onto other prepared dishes like pasta, stir-fries, and casseroles.

Arame

More of a garnish than an actual dish, arame is a brown seaweed served in long, thin strands, often as part of a Japanese-inspired salad. With a slightly sweet flavor, it is high in fiber, calcium, iodine, iron, magnesium, and vitamin A. When sold, arame can be found shredded, cooked, and air-dried and can be reconstituted with water. You can steam it, sauté it, or add it to hot soup.

Kombu

Unlike other types of seaweed, kombu can be used to make an umami soup stock called dashi, which is the foundational flavor of Japanese cuisine. You can also use kombu in dishes to impart a crunchy, firm texture or as a soft and pliable addition. Kombu is rich in calcium and contains more iodine than other seaweeds. This brown sea vegetable is also beloved for its ability to increase the digestibility of beans (making the “musical fruit” less musical). Thanks to its versatility and ubiquity in Japanese cooking, kombu has earned the nickname “king of seaweeds.”

Wakame

Frequently used in Asian dishes like salads, soups, and snacks, wakame also gets used as a seasoning. It’s sometimes known as “sea mustard,” referring to its visual resemblance to mustard greens when cooked. Not surprisingly, it’s a very good source of calcium, iron, riboflavin, folate, and magnesium.

Wakame has a mild flavor and generally comes either dried or salted and fresh in the refrigerated section. If purchased dried, wakame has to be reconstituted by soaking in water for five to six minutes before using. Rehydrated, wakame has a slippery, rubbery, almost squeaky texture. (Maybe one day it will replace plastic in the rubber duck industry!)

Other Less Common Sea Vegetables

Less commonly consumed outside of Asia are sea moss, sea grapes, and sea beans. While not exactly seaweeds, these are also classified as sea vegetables.

• Sea moss (Chondrus crispus) is also called Irish moss, and often gets sold as a dietary supplement in powdered form. The red algae are also the main source of carrageenan — a polysaccharide used to thicken some foods and beverages (You can read about carrageenan concerns here).
• Sea grapes, or umibudo, come from southeast Asia (not to be confused with the seagrape tree native to the Caribbean). If you don’t live within driving distance of one of the villages where they’re grown, you’ll have to order the dried version online. These sea veggies look like tiny bunches of grapes on strands, and deliver a satisfying, crunchy texture and pop when you bite into them. However, unlike regular grapes, sea grapes taste like the ocean and are more salty than sweet.
• Sea beans, or salicornia, may look more like a fish tank decoration, but can be found at many farmers markets in the summer if you live near the shore. Sometimes called “sea asparagus,” sea beans are often used in crunchy salads, as a garnish, or in chickpea frittatas.

Nutrition of Sea Vegetables

So are sea vegetables healthy? Well, they’re packed with nutrients, but are more appropriate as a garnish rather than something to pile on your plate every day. In fact, even in Japan — where sea vegetables are more common — people typically don’t eat them daily.

Sea vegetables are such a rich source of many micronutrients that it doesn’t take much to meet or even exceed our daily requirements for those nutrients. That’s why moderation is key, to keep you from getting way more of certain nutrients than is actually healthy.

Most types of sea vegetables are good sources of protein, fiber, healthy polyunsaturated fats, antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. Some of the most concentrated minerals in sea vegetables are iodine, sodium, magnesium, and calcium. They’re also rich in B vitamins like folate and vitamin B12, as well as vitamins A, D, and K1.

Certain types of marine algae can even be made into algal oil, a vegan source of the very important omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA.

In one sheet of nori, for instance, you’ll get around 10 calories, 0 grams of fat, one gram of protein, one gram of carbs, one gram of fiber, six percent of the Daily Value (DV) for vitamin A, and four percent of the DV for vitamin C. It also has B vitamins, manganese, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. One sheet also provides around 11% of the DV for iodine, which could be health bringing, or not, as you’ll soon see.

While different varieties of seaweed contain similar nutrient types, the amounts can vary greatly by species and preparation method. For instance, while 100 grams of dulse contains 307 mg of sodium, 100 grams of rockweed contains over 4,000 mg (more than the average American eats in an entire day)!

7 Health Benefits of Sea Vegetables

Sea vegetables, rich as they are in so many important nutrients, offer a number of health benefits.

1. May support thyroid health

Sea vegetables are the second richest source of iodine, after iodized salt. Iodine is an essential mineral, needed to make thyroid hormones that control your metabolism as well as other important functions for health. Many healthy, plant-based foods contain compounds that can interfere with iodine uptake, making it all the more important to get iodine from reliable sources, like iodized salt and/or small amounts of sea vegetables like dulse, kelp, and wakame.

2. May support pregnancy and postpartum recovery

The recommended daily intake of iodine during pregnancy is 220 micrograms to both meet the mother’s needs and pass on the nutrient to the baby. But many pregnant women don’t get this much. Families in Korea often make seaweed soup, or “miyeok guk,” for new moms to aid in postpartum recovery. It’s intended to provide nutrients like iodine for a baby’s brain development, iron to prevent anemia, calcium to prevent bone loss, and fiber to prevent constipation, among an array of other benefits.

3. May offer anticancer benefits

Sea vegetables may inhibit cancer cell growth and offer therapeutic benefits in the treatment of liver cancer. Red seaweeds contain compounds called porphyran and carrageenan that may help protect against cancer by boosting immunity and promoting cancer cell death.

Other types of seaweeds also contain anticancer compounds like terpenes, polyphenols, phlorotannins, fucoidans, and polysaccharides, which can help defend cells against environmental stressors that may lead to cancer. A 2014 review published in the journal Marine Drugs discusses how bioactive compounds in seaweed may offer therapeutic effects in cases of breast and colorectal cancers, primarily by inducing cancer cell death in both lab and human studies.

4. May support heart health

Sea vegetables are rich in dietary fibers, polyphenols, peptides, phlorotannins, lipids, and minerals, which may have a role in both preventing and treating cardiovascular diseases. Seaweeds are rich in antioxidants, which can help protect cells from oxidative damage that leads to heart disease. Other compounds in them may promote blood vessel dilation, which can bring down high blood pressure.

Additionally, sea vegetables contain flavonoids that may have beneficial metabolic effects on obesity and atherosclerosis, which are two risk factors for heart disease. Still other research has observed the ability of seaweed compounds to help lower blood fats, like total cholesterol, LDL “bad” cholesterol, and triglycerides.

5. May have antiviral benefits

Brown seaweed contains compounds called sulfoquinovosildiacylglycerols (which, sadly, is two syllables short of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, so that particular mnemonic melody won’t help you remember it) — mercifully abbreviated to SQDGs —  that have been found to have antiviral properties, particularly when it comes to herpes simplex viruses or cold sores. Many types of marine algae contain structural sulfated polysaccharides, which inhibit viral replication early in the process, preventing these viruses from attaching to a host (in other words, us).

6. May protect against obesity-associated metabolic complications

Sea vegetables are a rich source of compounds that appear to support a number of metabolic functions. A 2020 study published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition examined the effects of Pacific dulse (a red algae) and wakame (a brown algae) on metabolic complications in obese mice. (Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.) The authors found that even when fed a high-fat diet, the mice who were fed sea vegetables excreted more fat, experienced less systemic inflammation, and had healthier gut microbiomes compared to mice who did not eat them.

7. May protect gut health

Research shows that disturbances in the gut microbiome can underlie many chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and cancers. To help prevent these changes, prebiotics are often recommended to promote an optimal balance of good gut bacteria. Compounds in seaweed, such as polyphenols, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and carotenoids, may help break down polysaccharides and oligosaccharides, and promote prebiotic activity in the gut that helps to reduce occurrence of chronic diseases.

5 Health Concerns Associated with Sea Vegetables

Despite their many benefits for your health, sea vegetables also come with potential downsides to consider before adding them to your diet.

1. May contribute too much iodine

As mentioned, sea vegetables are a rich source of iodine. And while iodine is an essential nutrient, there is such a thing as getting too much of it, which can be easy to do if you’re eating a lot of sea vegetables daily. Too much iodine can lead to hyperthyroidism and can also interfere with thyroid medications, like Synthroid.

In fact, some species of kelp (such as kombu) are generally not recommended because their iodine content is so high. The recommended average daily intake of iodine is 150 mcg/day for non-pregnant, non-breastfeeding adults. And most people may want to stay below an average of 300 mcg/day on a day-to-day basis, and definitely below 1,100 mcg/day, which is the daily tolerable upper limit for people without thyroid disease. Since a single tablespoon of dried kelp may contain up to 2,000 mcg of iodine, even modest amounts of this sea vegetable on a regular basis could cause problems.

On the bright side, cooking significantly reduces the amount of iodine you get from sea vegetables. For example, boiling kombu for 15 minutes can make it lose up to 99% of its iodine content, while iodine in sargassum, a similar brown sea vegetable, loses around 40%. Much of that iodine may be released into the water, however. So if you’re cooking sea vegetables and then drinking the broth it’s cooked in, you could still be getting a hefty dose of iodine.

2. May contain arsenic

Arsenic is a naturally occurring heavy metal found in the environment.  It tends to accumulate in air, water, and soil, and shows up in certain foods that are grown using these resources, including seaweed. As you probably know, arsenic can be poisonous to humans and is also a carcinogen.

One type of seaweed, hijiki (sometimes called hiziki), is actually no longer recommended for consumption because it tends to contain high levels of arsenic. Hijiki is an uncommon type of seaweed that’s black in color and primarily sold in dry shreds for use in Japanese and Korean cuisine. While other types of seaweed likely contain some arsenic, it generally shows up in such trace amounts that they’re not considered a threat to health when eaten in moderation. One study of 31 samples of five varieties of seaweed found that only hijiki contained concerning levels of inorganic arsenic.

If you are concerned about the arsenic content of seaweed, or find yourself forced to eat some hiziki (I’m drawing a blank as to how that might happen, but hey, you never know), boiling it in saltwater will reduce the arsenic levels.

3. May interact with medications

As we’ve seen, because of their high iodine levels, some kinds of sea vegetables may interfere with medications used to manage thyroid conditions. If you are taking such medications, you should probably check with your healthcare provider to find out if seaweed is safe for you to eat.

Sea vegetables are also considered leafy greens, which means they’re high in vitamin K. This nutrient is a natural coagulant, which means it helps your body form blood clots. This could be problematic if you’re taking anticoagulant medications, like Warfarin, which are designed to do the opposite.

While it’s not generally recommended to totally avoid vitamin K-rich foods while using these medications, it is important to keep your intake of this nutrient stable. If you take an anticoagulant medication, it may be best to talk with your healthcare provider to make sure your intake of vitamin K-rich foods like sea vegetables isn’t going to interfere.

4. May contain heavy metals

In addition to arsenic, seaweed can contain other heavy metals. For instance, varieties of red seaweed may contain cadmium, copper, manganese, and nickel in higher concentrations than other types of seaweeds. This appears to be especially true if they’ve been grown in southeastern China.

Mercury, a heavy metal linked to cognitive impairment and neurodevelopmental problems in babies when consumed by pregnant women, is a contaminant of concern in all types of seafood. Unfortunately, some research has found that blood levels of mercury are higher among people who eat the most seaweed, compared to people who eat the least. Warmer water temperatures can increase the amount of mercury absorbed by fish in these areas, and the same effect may occur in seaweeds — which is especially concerning with global warming trends.

The presence of heavy metals in seaweed — especially red varieties — is another reason to consume these foods in moderation.

5. May be high in sodium

Many sea vegetables contain high levels of sodium, which can be detrimental if someone already has a diet that’s high in this mineral.

Too much sodium can lead to increased blood pressure and fluid retention in the body, which can raise your risk for cardiovascular disease. This is because high blood pressure stiffens the arteries, reduces the flow of oxygen and blood through them, and makes the heart work harder to pump blood throughout the body.

Sodium intake may also need to be monitored in the event of an existing health condition like kidney disease or hypertension, to prevent the condition from worsening. High sodium intake can increase protein in urine, which can further the decline of kidney function among people with already deteriorating kidneys.

To avoid excess sodium intake from seaweed, it may be prudent to only eat it in small portion sizes, especially if your diet contains other sources of sodium or added salt. You can also soak dried sea vegetables in water, and then pour off the water, which may get rid of a lot of the sodium.

Environmental Benefits of Sea Vegetables

Just as sea vegetables come with both health benefits and concerns, they offer a similar mix of pluses and minuses when it comes to the impact of seaweed farming on the environment, too. Let’s start with the benefits.

Carbon Sequestration

First, sea vegetables help reduce carbon emissions by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, coastal marine systems can absorb carbon at rates up to 50 times greater than forests on land. Kelp can grow at a rate of over one foot per day. On a global scale, seaweeds sequester nearly 200 million tons of CO2 each year. And in regenerative ocean farming systems, by removing kelp from the ocean rather than letting it decompose, it prevents the carbon sequestered in the kelp itself from returning to the water. Australian scientist Tim Flannery estimates that if nine percent of the ocean was covered with seaweed farms, it could effectively absorb all CO2 emissions from humans.

Reduce Ocean Acidification

Kelp, specifically, also has the added benefit of helping reduce ocean acidification. Ocean acidification mainly occurs from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean. This leads to a lowering of the water’s pH, making the ocean more acidic, which threatens the survival of many marine species. Kelp traps carbon from the water and produces oxygen, which may help alleviate some of the acidification. Of course, the most effective way to sequester carbon is to not release it in the first place.

Oceanic Reforestation

Seaweed is essentially the forest of the ocean. Over 95% of sea vegetables come from farms, which are contributing to a kind of oceanic “reforestation.” There are even organizations working on managing seaweed reforestation projects around the world, such as SeaForester, which has the simple (yet actually highly complex) mission “to restore the forgotten forests in our ocean.” How does this work? Regenerative seaweed farms take kelp spores and grow them in tanks before reintroducing them into the ocean to grow, which then produces more spores, promoting reforestation.

Reduce Methane Emissions from Cattle

Sea vegetables can also help reduce methane emissions by adding certain forms of red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis, to be exact) to cattle feed. According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, doing so may be able to reduce methane emissions by 82%. Of course, while this might make industrialized beef production a bit less environmentally damaging, a much more effective approach to reducing methane emissions (and a host of other environmental problems) would be for humans to reduce our consumption of red meat and reliance on factory farms altogether. But as long as people are eating industrialized meat, adding seaweed to cow feed is an intriguing step that could help reduce environmental impact. (I’m wondering if anyone has researched red seaweed’s gas-reducing ability in humans as well.)

Create Biofuels

Lastly, seaweed can create biofuels — renewable energy sources produced from organic matter or waste. This includes biofuel for the transportation sector, reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Compared to soybeans, which can also make biofuels, growing seaweed is faster, more space-efficient, and doesn’t need fresh water or fertilizer to flourish. Seaweed also doesn’t need land to grow.

Environmental Concerns Associated with Sea Vegetables

Despite all its environmental benefits, seaweed also comes with some potential eco-negatives.

Wherever seaweed is grown, it might compete with native species for things like light and nutrients. Without proper management, seaweed farms may also contribute to the problem of plastic, gear, and other types of pollution in the ocean, which can damage ecosystems and threaten marine life.

There are also monocultures of certain seaweed species, which reduces genetic diversity associated with domesticated seaweed species. This makes crops more vulnerable to disease. Plus, growing seaweed in areas where it doesn’t usually grow can increase the risk for invasive species to expand and throw off the natural balance of the ecosystem.

Over-foraging of wild seaweed can also pose problems. Currently, only five percent of all the seaweed that humans eat, globally, is the result of wild harvesting. Small-scale wild harvesting of seaweed happens by hand and is often referred to as seaweed cutting. If this is kept small-scale, and done sensitively, it may not cause much damage, and can even be beneficial if accompanied by reforestation techniques that stimulate the growth of more seaweed in the future. However, too many single wild harvesters collectively can do a lot of damage. For example, Chilean wild harvesting is especially damaging. As a result, the Chilean authorities made wild harvesting illegal in 2016 and are incenting wild harvesters to switch to sustainable cultivation of seaweed.

Where to Find Sea Vegetables

Fresh sea vegetables are generally hard to find, unless you live near the ocean and have local sources available. It’s more common to find fresh sea vegetables in Asian countries or Nordic countries in Europe. In the US, you may have a local source if you live in an area with ocean access, like near San Francisco or the coast of Maine.

If you’re feeling adventurous and want to forage your own sea vegetables, you might even find classes that can teach you how. Some classes offered on the west coast of the US range from a few hours to several days in length, and include harvesting sea vegetables from a kayak and even cooking it.

Fortunately, unlike foraging mushrooms — which can be deadly if you eat the wrong kind — there are no known poisonous varieties of seaweed, though some should be avoided because they can cause gastrointestinal distress if you eat too much. Your instructor should be able to steer you clear of any varieties that might cause problems.

Purchasing Sea Vegetables

Sea vegetables are typically sold in dried and packaged form, to help preserve their nutrients. But if you have a hankering for fresh seaweed, simply rehydrate the dried version before eating. To do so, place it in water until it softens right up — which could happen in as little as five minutes for some varieties.

Nori is typically sold in dried sheets, and is used to roll sushi. It also comes in smaller sheets as a snack food, or a kid-sized addition to bagged lunch. Some varieties, like dulse, are sold in shakers as small flakes. You can use these to sprinkle on dishes like stir-fries, casseroles, soups, and pastas. They also add a hint of ocean flavor to plant-based, fish-free tuna salads. Wakame and kombu seaweed varieties may be sold in dried strips or shredded.

You can usually purchase sea vegetables through online retailers, in many grocery stores, and in Asian markets.

When choosing your sea vegetables, look for organic brands that also use third-party testing to help make sure there aren’t high levels of heavy metals. If you can, it’s often ideal to buy sea vegetables from brands you trust, or from small, locally owned businesses run by people who live in coastal communities.

How Sea Vegetables Are Used

If you haven’t been used to eating sea vegetables as a regular part of your diet and lifestyle up to this point, you’re probably wondering how to use them.

Seaweed is actually commonly used as a thickening agent in food and cosmetics, so you might find it both in your kitchen and your bathroom. For example, carrageenan, a mixture of polysaccharides from red and purple seaweeds, may be found in both conventional and organic foods, including plant-based milks.

Sea vegetables may also be found in supplements. Algal oil is becoming more frequently used in vegan omega-3 supplements. Kelp and other seaweed may also be used in iodine supplements.

And, of course, many varieties of seaweed can be eaten on their own, usually in dried or dehydrated form. Just make sure to follow the recommended serving size to avoid overexposure of nutrients like iodine and sodium, as previously discussed.

Cooking with Sea Vegetables

If you’re suffering from flatulence after eating fiber-rich foods like beans and legumes, kombu can help. Adding kombu to your cooking pot, along with the beans, can help reduce the carbohydrate raffinose that’s found in beans and causes unwanted gas. (See, we are a bit like those cows!) This works because kombu contains the enzyme alpha-galactosidase that breaks raffinose down. Alternatively, you can use cumin or fennel seeds to get a similar result if you want to reduce gas but need to avoid high amounts of iodine in sea vegetables due to a thyroid disorder.

When eaten as a food, you can also use sea vegetables in the following ways:

• Eaten on their own as a snack (dried or toasted nori sheets)
• Crumbled up or sprinkled over various foods as a condiment
• In soups, especially miso soup or ramen bowls
• Used in grain bowls
• Blended into sauces and dips
• Rehydrated and made into salads (either on their own or with other veggies)
• Used to roll up and make sushi rolls
• Used as a sandwich wrap

Seaweed Recipes

If sea vegetables are new to you, it’s time to have fun experimenting! If you’re a sea veggie connoisseur, then we have some new tasty recipes for you to try. And, if you love nori rolls, then you’re going to love preparing the Veggie Nori Rolls even more. The key is letting go of all expectations in creating the perfect roll — enjoy the process of getting creative with your hands!

The Sea Veggie Gomasio is one seasoning that is tiny in size, but big in flavor — and even bigger in the nutrients it offers. Enjoy the colorful Warm Arama and Kale Rice solo as a meal or as a side dish to grilled tofu or tempeh. Arame has a mild flavor, so its use in meals is very versatile. So go ahead — have fun experimenting with sea veggies!

1. Veggie Nori Rolls

Making nori rolls at home doesn’t require fancy tools or equipment. If it’s your first time, don’t expect it to be a perfectly put-together little package. You can, however, expect it to be a fun experience that results in lots of delicious flavors, varied textures, and loads of nutrition from the mineral-rich nori sheets and nutrient-packed veggies.

2. Sea Veggie Gomasio

While this flavorsome condiment may not seem like much at first glance, with its short list of ingredients and five-minute preparation time, it’s actually packed with nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and zinc from the toasted nori, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds. It’s also filled with healthy plant-based fats and protein. Sprinkling just a bit on your grain bowls, stir-fries, and avocado toast not only adds lots of flavor but also oodles of nutrition.

3. Warm Arame and Kale Rice

Mineral-rich, sea veggie arame is sold in its dry form and needs to be rehydrated before using. With its mild flavor, it is a well-suited addition to a variety of taste profiles in stir-fries, salads, and bowls. Here, kale, edamame, peppers, and onions add pops of color, flavor, and nutrition. To highlight its natural and beautiful black color, make this dish with red or brown rice (black works too, but you won’t see the pretty arame!).

A Little Seaweed Goes a Long Way

Sea vegetables are uniquely nutrient-dense foods that are used all around the world — albeit to varying degrees — including in some of the areas associated with longevity. As such, eating them is associated with numerous health benefits and uses. However, many of them are high in iodine, which can be good in moderation, but may cause problems when overconsumed — especially for people prone to hyperthyroidism.

Many seaweed varieties are also high in sodium. And seaweed can contain contaminants as well as high levels of heavy metals. So it’s best to buy organic, locally sourced, or heavy metal tested sea vegetables when possible, and to consume sea vegetables with care and in moderation.

Seaweed also brings multiple environmental benefits, especially as an alternative to land-based agriculture and factory farming. But unsustainable practices occur in seaweed farming and foraging, so how it’s produced matters. Overall, sea vegetables can be a valuable source of nutrients when used in moderation, and can be a sustainable source of nutrition when farmed or foraged responsibly.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you eat sea vegetables?
• What are some new ways you’re interested in trying sea vegetables?
• Have you ever tried seaweeds like dulse, kelp, nori, or wakame?

Featured Image: iStock.com/joakimbkk

Read Next:

• Vegan Sushi: How to Make It & the Benefits of Fish-Free Sushi
• Is Eating Fish Good For You? The Truth About the Health and Environmental Impacts of Eating Fish

The post Are Sea Vegetables Good for You and the Planet? — And Are Some Better Than Others? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Those two words sound innocent enough: “climate change.” And maybe that’s part of the problem; with everything that’s going on right now, thinking about the climate changing in 10 or 50 or 80 years just isn’t that much of a priority for most of us.

But that’s got to change. Because really, what’s happening isn’t just climate “change”, it’s climate chaos. And as crazy as things have gotten, unless we change course, we are barely seeing the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming.

But already, climate chaos is beginning to unfold, and it’s not looking good.

With unprecedented heat waves in unlikely places, like Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and even British Columbia; unprecedented flooding in Germany, Belgium, and China; unprecedented droughts and wildfires in the Western US and around the globe; the first rainfall on the peak of Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time in literally ever — and a truly alarming new scientific report on the now-unavoidable impact of global warming on our world, we can’t keep acting as if this isn’t an urgent matter of life or death.

So here’s the latest update on the crisis — and on one of the most important things we can do to turn it around (that almost nobody is talking about!).

The Current State of Climate Chaos

Earth’s temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, with about two-thirds of that warming occurring since 1975. What’s causing this rise in temperature? Well, we are.

If we don’t collectively start making major changes now, scientists predict the path we’re on will have dire consequences for all life on Earth.

The primary greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. They become trapped in the atmosphere and prevent heat from leaving the planet — causing the planet to overheat.

Storms are becoming more powerful, frequent, and unpredictable. Agricultural patterns are being overturned, with massive droughts in some places, and floods in others, leading to widespread crop failures.

Insect populations are falling, threatening entire ecosystems with collapse. Without pollinators, crops will fail. Other crops — including key global staples — are threatened by pests who move in along with warmer temperatures. And as polar ice caps melt, coastal communities, including entire nations, are being threatened by rising ocean levels and saltwater encroachment.

In short: Sea levels are rising. Ecosystems are being destroyed. Species are going extinct. And if we don’t change course, we may soon look back on the 2020s as the “good ol’ days.”

According to a new United Nations commissioned scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we’ve lost the chance to reverse this overheating. Under no foreseeable circumstances will we be able to prevent the planet’s average temperature from rising another 2.7 degrees F over the next 30 years. The pollution blanket that our industrial and agricultural sectors and our western lifestyles have woven is here to stay for decades, even if we were to miraculously stop polluting tomorrow.

As a result, leading-edge scientists project that there could be more than 1.4 billion environmental refugees by 2060.

And unless we act collectively, that temperature increase could easily exceed 3.6 degrees F, which could be so catastrophic for humans and other species that the scenario could easily exceed the limits of our predictive models.

The most likely outcomes, according to the IPCC summary for policymakers, include “increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones,” as well as more severe floods and droughts. And these changes will be “irreversible for centuries to millennia.”

The report shares “unequivocal” evidence that, as most scientists have been arguing for years, human activities are the biggest driver of our warming atmosphere.

But what can we do? 

You Can Have an Impact on Climate Change

The problem can seem so daunting, and our individual power can feel so limited. Most of us don’t want to stop driving our cars, heating our homes, or buying the manufactured goods that keep us alive and comfortable.

Do we have to throw up our hands and hope that technology will save us? Or that the world’s energy companies will decide to stop drilling for oil?

The good news is, we all share one thing that can have a significant impact on climate change: the food we eat.

By making small adjustments to your daily food choices, you can help counteract the biggest environmental threats we’re facing today.

You have the power to help save the planet — starting with what’s on your plate. It’s not the whole story, but you can take a real bite out of the problem.

Food and Climate Change Facts You Need to Know

You’ve heard that carpooling and buying more efficient vehicles is good for the planet. Perhaps you’ve even participated in Bike to Work Day or dreamed of getting an electric car to do your part.

But did you know that agriculture — specifically the breeding and raising of animals for food — contributes more to global warming than transportation?

And, of course, industrial-scale agriculture and especially animal-based agriculture is one of the planet’s heaviest users of transportation as well. Furthermore, animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction and ocean dead zones.

It makes sense then that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests reducing consumption of meat, milk, cheese, and butter as a critical way to reduce your carbon footprint.

Some of the Major Ways Modern Food Production and Climate Change are Linked

• Livestock production is responsible for a surprisingly high amount of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This comes from both animals and their manure. Cows alone are responsible for the majority of livestock’s contribution, releasing methane through their eruptions (what 1st graders might call their farts and burps) and their manure. Methane is at least 28 times as destructive as carbon dioxide when it comes to heating the atmosphere.

  Methane’s contribution to climate chaos has sometimes been overlooked because methane doesn’t remain in the atmosphere nearly as long as carbon dioxide (CO2). But while methane is in the air, it traps a tremendous amount of heat — far more than CO2. So a dramatic reduction in methane emissions, which would occur automatically if we ate far less beef, would actually be a quick fix that would seriously help slow the rise of global temperatures. This, in turn, would give us, as Bill McKibben explains, “more time to work on the carbon quandary.”

  Eating less (or no) beef will not in and of itself solve the climate problem. But there is no possible way we can solve it without eating far less (or no) beef.

• Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation. We’re destroying countless acres of land just to grow food (like corn or soy) for livestock, or to create grazing land for cattle. And we’re doing it in very delicate ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest. Not only does this destroy habitats for already endangered species, but it also releases the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that those plants and trees absorbed for us.
• Growing food for livestock gives off nitrous oxide. The biggest livestock crops are soybeans, alfalfa, and corn. Corn is especially dependent on large amounts of carbon-emitting chemical fertilizer.

For a compelling narrative on the links between industrialized animal agriculture and the climate crisis, watch this short video produced by Mercy for Animals, featuring Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish student who inspired a global movement to fight climate change, and who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019:

Greta begins by noting that our relationship with nature is broken, but “relationships can change. The climate crisis, the ecological crisis, the health crisis — they are all interlinked.”

And the thing that links them all is how we raise animals for food.

How Can We Combat Climate Change While Continuing to Feed a Growing Population?

A report from the World Resources Institute says that shifting from a standard, animal-centric diet is one of the best places to start. Even changing just 30% of your food from animal products to plant-based foods would lead to meaningful improvements (though greater reductions would be even better!).

In 2018, the journal Science published the largest study to date on the environmental impact of food. It was an enormous and thorough study. Researchers looked at data collected from 40,000 farms in 119 countries, and studied the 40 food products that represent 90% of everything we eat.

The authors concluded that livestock provides only 18% of the food calories eaten by humans, and 37% of the protein, yet it uses over 83% of farmland. Meanwhile, livestock is also responsible for 57% of water pollution, 56% of air pollution, and uses a third of the world’s fresh water.

A 2018 article in Nature states that continued consumption of the Western diet (high in processed foods and red meats) could lead to “exceeding key planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity beyond which Earth’s vital ecosystems could become unstable.”

Or, put more starkly, in the words of Star Trek Lt. Commander Montgomery (“Scotty”) Scott, “I dunnae if she can take any more, Captain!”

And even though by “Western diet” they mean the standard American diet, most other developed and developing countries have increasingly adopted or aspired to this dietary pattern.

This has not only led to an increase in many preventable chronic diseases, but it has also widened the impact of environmental damage. 

The 9 Top Climate Damaging Foods

By now, you’re probably wondering — exactly which foods contribute most to climate change? Where can you start if you want to shift your diet to help prevent global collapse?

A 2011 analysis by the Environmental Working Group looked at the carbon footprint of various foods. In other words, how much do different foods contribute to the greenhouse gas effect? Their report shows how many kilograms of carbon dioxide is emitted per kilogram of each food consumed.

The worst offenders included beef, of course, and also lamb, cheese, pork, farmed salmon, turkey, chicken, canned tuna, and eggs.

Beef production emits about 10 times more greenhouse gases per pound of meat than chickens or pigs, which themselves emit about 10 times more than legumes. The lowest greenhouse gas-producing animal product, chicken, is still seven times more damaging to atmospheric stability than lentils.

Plants also need natural resources to grow, but they’re far less resource-intensive than animal products.

Foods like peas, lentils, and beans need little water and can grow in tougher climates. Legumes also have the ability, in partnership with certain soil fungi, to extract inert nitrogen from the soil and use it, which reduces the need for fertilizers that release nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. I’ve also never seen a plant burp or pass gas (not even skunk cabbage!).

11 Foods That Are Better for the Environment

By making more environmentally-friendly food choices, you can make a big impact.

Many plant foods contribute to far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than animal products. The EWG report included several plant foods for comparison, as outlined below:

#1 — Lentils = 0.9kg carbon per kg of lentils consumed

Lentils come in several varieties. Green and brown lentils are great for making cold lentil salads, while red lentils do well in soup and dal. You can find lentils both canned and dried.

#2 — Tomatoes = 1.1kg carbon per kg of tomatoes consumed

Tomatoes may be one of the easiest plants to grow at home, but whether you grow or buy them, they have countless uses. I enjoy them sliced on sandwiches or on top of avocado toast, chopped into salads, or blended into homemade tomato bisque.

#3 — Dry Beans = 2kg carbon per kg of dry beans consumed

Dry beans are a great, affordable bulk food to keep in your pantry. After an overnight soak and a rinse, they’re ready to cook and use in soups, bean dips, on nachos, in chili, or in a bean salad.

#4 — Tofu = 2kg carbon per kg of tofu consumed

Tofu is one of the most versatile plant proteins and comes in a range of soft and firm consistencies. Tofu takes on most any flavor or seasoning it’s given. You can eat it baked, sautéed, blended, crumbled, scrambled, or even eaten raw. (Tofu comes from soy, so keep in mind that if it isn’t organic or certified non-GMO, then it was made using GMO soy.)

#5 — Broccoli = 2kg carbon per kg of broccoli consumed

Broccoli is delicious both raw and cooked. It makes a nutritious snack any time of day and an excellent side to just about any dish. I enjoy creamy broccoli soup, roasted broccoli florets, and have even been known to put broccoli on pizza. And maybe I’m weird, but I also love it lightly steamed, with nothing on it!

#6 — Nuts = 2.3kg carbon per kg of nuts consumed

Nuts are another nutrient-dense food to keep on hand. They make great snack food, but you can also use them to make nut milk, mix them into oatmeal, sprinkle them onto salads or casseroles, or use them to make dairy-free cheese.

#7 — Rice = 2.7kg carbon per kg of rice consumed

Rice is a low-cost grain that complements many simple meals, such as stir-fries, curries, burritos, and cooked beans. It’s also a key ingredient in rice pudding, homemade veggie burgers, and sushi. Rice is often contaminated with arsenic, so you may want to limit consumption with this in mind.

#8 — Potatoes = 2.9kg carbon per kg of potatoes consumed

Potatoes are great mashed, roasted, or air-fried. Twice-baked potatoes loaded with veggies can even be the star of the meal. Leave the skin on for added nutrients.

Other Environmentally-Friendly Plant Foods Include:

#9 — Green peas

They naturally fix nitrogen in soil. This reduces the need for fertilizers and helps maintain the soil’s nutrients. For more on peas click here.

#10 — Amaranth

This grain is resilient and can grow in difficult climates. It doesn’t need much water and has been used to help with world hunger.

#11 — Oranges

These fruits are water-efficient in their whole form. They require around half as much water to grow as bananas. For more on oranges click here.

So Just How Big of an Impact is There Between Eating Plant-Based Food and Climate Change?

According to a 2018 study published in the journal Nature, adopting a plant-based diet could contribute to cutting food-related greenhouse gas emissions by more than half. 

Where Your Food Comes From Matters, Too

When it comes to choosing how the food you eat is produced, you also have some options that take the environment into consideration.

Support Local Farms

Local food is commonly considered as food grown within 100 miles from you, though there’s no official definition.

Eating locally — even if that means foods grown within your own state or region rather than foods imported from other continents — cuts down on food miles, the distance your food travels to reach you.

The more food miles traveled, the bigger the carbon footprint. The average fruit or vegetable travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles, and it wasn’t on foot, horseback, or pulled by a bicycle. We’re talking ships, trains, and trucks — most of which are gas-guzzlers. Local foods travel less, and that means they cause fewer carbon emissions.

Look for farmers markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, and urban farms in your area to support when available.

For more reasons to become a locavore (or person whose diet consists mainly of locally grown food), check out this article. (Spoilers: fresher, better-tasting food; varieties of produce selected for flavor rather than their ability to not spoil in a truck; stronger and more resilient communities.)

Support Organically Grown Produce

Food that’s grown organically can also be better for the environment.

The Soil Association says that 23% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU) could be cut if half of all the farming in the EU converted to organic agriculture by the year 2030.

Organic farming attempts to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers by cultivating healthy soil, which typically stores a lot more carbon than the moribund soil kept on life support through massive and frequent applications of industrial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.

Keep an Eye on Regenerative Agriculture

Organic food is a great option, even though it’s still often grown on massive farms that aren’t all that sustainable. Using ideas from organic and holistic farming methods, regenerative agriculture is a new concept (actually, an ancient one, rediscovered!) that uses crops to mitigate climate change.

And it’s a pretty cool idea. Plants breathe out oxygen, but they also breathe in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

One of the principles of regenerative agriculture is to store that carbon dioxide in the soil by constantly increasing the ratio of organic matter through composting and heavy mulching. This can help rebuild deteriorated topsoil, lead to better and higher-yielding crops, address world hunger, reduce soil erosion, and mitigate climate change. Sounds like a win to me.

For more information about regenerative agriculture, you can check out Regeneration International’s site, here. 

Your Food Choices Matter and Affect Climate Change

When I face the enormity of climate change, sometimes the problem can feel so large that I’m tempted to think that I don’t matter all that much. Sometimes, I can feel like not so much a drop in the bucket, as a drop in the sea.

And then I remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi, who famously said, “Whatever you do (may be) insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” 

And when I look at how food and climate change are related, I start to think that maybe our choices aren’t really all that insignificant after all.

Because when it comes to what you and I eat, we have real power. And it just so happens that the same food choices that contribute to a healthier climate can also help contribute to longer and healthier lives.

So whether you go 100% plant-based or adopt a meat-free Monday (as many New York,  Los Angeles, and other public school districts are doing), and whether you support organic or regenerative agriculture some of the time or all of the time… There are steps you can take.

And every step, and every bite counts — for you, and for the planet, too.

Tell us in the comments:

• What questions or concerns do you have about food and climate change?
• How does climate change impact the way that you think about food?
• Are there any foods you prefer, or avoid, because of their climate impact?

Featured Image: iStock.com/MHJ

Read Next:

• A healthy future for our planet is possible! See how your food choices impact the future of life on Earth

The post What You Eat Can Impact Climate Change! See 9 Foods That Harm the Planet and 11 Foods That Can Help Save It appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Below is the edited transcript of the video above:

Ocean Robbins: I am so excited for this conversation with Dr. Terry Mason. We’re going to be looking at food and health and you. We’re going to be looking at the inequities of health opportunity and access in our world today, and, more importantly, what we can do about it, so we can have healthy, ethical, and sustainable food for all.

Dr. Terry Mason is a retired urologist and public health official who champions holistic approaches to health management. He serves as the CEO of Trevention Incorporated. That’s Trevention — as in treatment and prevention. Trevention seeks to combine treatment and prevention and to reduce the burden of chronic disease through education and empowerment.

Dr. Mason has been responsible for leading public health programs and services for one of the nation’s largest metropolitan health departments. He shares his holistic approach to health as an internationally recognized health educator and an inspirational speaker, and also on his popular radio show, which is on WVON 1690AM. It’s called “The Doctor in the House.” He’s been doing it for more than 21 years. And Terry is a champion of helping bring health education, and nutritional awareness, and opportunity, and access into all of the communities that need it the most.

Terry, thanks so much for being here with us today.

Dr. Terry Mason: You are so welcome, and I’m grateful to be here.

From a Steak a Day & a Blocked Artery …

Ocean Robbins: So, you practiced urology for more than a quarter-century in Chicago. And for most of that time, I gather, you were someone who literally ate a steak a day. Is this true?

Dr. Terry Mason: That is correct.

Ocean Robbins: But something happened, through your own practice of urology, that shifted your eating habits. Can you tell us about how that unfolded?

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, as you properly noted… I ate a steak a day. I loved Porterhouse and T-bone. And I had my butcher cut them and individually wrap them, so I had one for every day. And, obviously, the stresses of residency, and I was hypertensive already… What happened was I was on a treadmill trying to work out and ended up with chest pain. I called my cardiologist from the treadmill and met him at the hospital. Next thing I knew, I was on the cardiac cath tape, and he had discovered a significant blockage in a major artery.

And while he had the catheter in my artery, in my heart, and he was going to do a balloon angioplasty, I was trying to negotiate with him to let me come off of the table. I wanted to go out to Sausalito, California, where Dean Ornish had his program. I had been out to see Dean before. And I said, “Look, I’d really like to do this instead of that.” He says, “No, I got you on the table. I can’t let you get off this table and get on a plane, not knowing what might happen.” So that ended that conversation. I ended up with a stent.

… to Zero Animal Products & Low Cholesterol Levels

Dr. Terry Mason: So then he said, “But you’re going to have to take this drug for the rest of your life, this statin.” And I said, “No, I’m not going to take it.” And he said, “Why?” I said, “Because I know what that does to your muscle tissue. I’m not going to take that medication.” And I said, “But here’s what I will do. I will promise you that I won’t put anything in my mouth that contains any cholesterol or bad saturated fat. And I will come to your office every month for you to verify my results with a lab test.” And that’s what happened.

Ocean Robbins: What happened then? What happened to the lab test? What happened to your heart?

If we eat the right food, we could never need medicine. So the food is really a self-correcting agent. That is the only thing that we have that actually works on the cause of our problem and not just manages a complication.

Dr. Terry Mason

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, I get checkups from time to time. Everything is fine. I’m still checking my cholesterols because I promised him I would. And they’re always very, very low. And I haven’t had any animal or dairy products since that time. And that’s been over, maybe, 15 years ago or more.

Ocean Robbins: So you’ve had a very direct, personal experience with the power of food.

Dr. Terry Mason: If we eat the right food, we could never need medicine. So the food is really a self-correcting agent. That is the only thing that we have that actually works on the cause of our problem and not just manages a complication.

Health Disparities in America

Ocean Robbins: The CDC recently came out with a report telling us that in the first half of 2020, life expectancy in the US dropped by a year, overall. But among the Black population, it actually dropped quite a bit more than that. By 2.7 years, in fact. In one year, it fell down to 72 years, as compared to 77.8 years for the population overall. So there’s a life expectancy gap of almost six years, along race lines, right there. And everyone, of course, is struggling. But Black people, a lot more.

We know that Black Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 at about 2.9 times the rate of white Americans and die at about 1.9 times the rate. The CDC is saying that the primary reason for the drop in life expectancy is COVID-19 related. But it’s not impacting everybody equally. So, from your perspective, what are the core causes of this inequality?

Dr. Terry Mason: Sure, the health outcomes have always been disparate. The economic outcomes have been disparate. The opportunities for professional placement are disparate. I did a lot of work in the areas of disparities. And I had a slide at the beginning of my presentation that asked the question, “Why do racial disparities exist?” And then, in nice big, bold letters, “Because they’re supposed to.”

And people would ask, “Well, why do you say that?” I said, well, you don’t do need to do more than a cursory review of the history of America to understand that we were different, and we were disparate, from the beginning of our association with the people who are the arbiters of slavery and everything else. So why would you expect that it’d be a difference?

I did some conversations around what we were fed as we were people that had to work these fields. And many of us developed things like beriberi and scurvy and things of that nature because we were just given cornmeal and bacon.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah.

Dr. Terry Mason: And when you saw the lynchings and all the other things, not just of African-Americans, but what happened to the indigenous people here who were actually taken off their land by force and massacred. So these disparities exist because of the history of this country. And the way people have been treated, not just in the last 10 or 15 years, but over 400 years.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah. So it’s not by accident. It’s functionally by design that we have these, the enormous disparity and opportunity and resource and access and in health outcome, that so often plays out along lines of race.

Uplifting Health, Opportunity, & Knowledge

Ocean Robbins: At the same time, there are some of us who would like to change that with whatever resources we have, whatever opportunities we have. And you’ve obviously dedicated a lot of your life to trying to uplift health and opportunity and knowledge in communities that have been the most struggling the most.

Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” For those of us who want to help it bend a little faster… For those of our members, whatever their skin color and whatever their class background, who want to be a part of the solution… When you look at the health disparity in America today, what do you think we could advocate for at a policy level, or invest in as individuals, that might make a bit of a difference?

Changing Food Subsidies

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, that’s a great question. And it’s a multi-layered question, as you can obviously imagine. One of the things that I would say is that as Americans, we ought to be lobbying our government not to be complicit in the leading causes of death, by allowing the food manufacturers and other people to continue to promulgate using all manner of technology and the opportunities that advertising gives them, and the subsidies that we provide for certain foodstuffs that we know are not helpful. We need to be advocating for those to be changed.

We need to be advocating for it not to be more expensive to buy organic food, for example. We need to be subsidizing the food that’s better for us, instead of making the food that is worse for us cheaper. Because in poorer communities, these are the foodstuffs that people are going to be eating.

Dr. Terry Mason: We need to be certain that we allow the science that we know to speak, not to be censored, when it comes to simple things, like the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We know that these particular things like hot dogs, as they mentioned, or four pieces of bacon, as they mentioned, are group one carcinogens that increase the risk of colorectal cancer for everybody, not just for Black people, but for everybody by 18%.

Getting Antibiotics & Hormones Out of Our Food

Dr. Terry Mason: So there are a number of things that we need to know, and we need to do, and we could do those things. We need to stop the subsidy that drives the prices of the foods so low, but the products are so bad. And we’ve got so many antibiotics and so many hormones and different things in our meat supply. And we are feeding, probably, better grains to our livestock than we’re getting in the artificially created cereals that we eat so much.

Addressing Food Deserts

Dr. Terry Mason: There’s a great paper that came out in about 2010, done by Mari Gallagher. She coined the term food deserts in that paper. She looked at the relative distances for good food, stores that sold good food, relative to where people lived. And she did a very nice computation that showed that the further those things were, the more likely people were to suffer from bad health outcomes. And what she coined was the term that a lot of people began to use called food deserts.

Food is Generational

Dr. Terry Mason: So what we did at the American Public Health Association, we took it one step further. And it wasn’t just that these foods were not available, but it looked as though after a certain period of time, perhaps one generation, people were not familiar with eating the foods I grew up eating. I’m one of 10 kids. And my mom, we didn’t have much. But she always had a great big pot of beans on the stove. We had lots of beans. We ate lots of rice, and we only had meat very rarely, maybe on the weekend.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah.

Dr. Terry Mason: When people have been bereft of the real good foods they should eat for long enough, and it looks like it’s about a generation, they lose their taste for the better foods. And even if the stores are sometimes there, no one will know how to cook it. No one will know how to prepare it. And so this is what’s happening, not just in Black America, but in America in general.

A Biodiversity of Solutions

Ocean Robbins: Yes. So there are so many levels at which we can tackle this problem. And I sometimes think that we need a biodiversity of solutions because you never know quite what’s going to work. And the truth is it takes all of it. So I’m hearing you saying that we need to address the subsidies. Which, you know, tens of billions of dollars a year, for those who don’t know, in federal taxpayer money are going to subsidize commodities crops, which is bringing down the price of factory-farmed meat, high fructose corn syrup, white bread, and all sorts of junk foods. And very little of that money is reaching fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds — the very foods we should all be eating more of, according to tens of thousands of studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals.

I’m also hearing you say, we need to address the food desert issue. And part of how we can do that is through education and through sharing culinary wisdom that’s culturally appropriate, I would add, in all of the communities that exist.

So for everybody who thinks that when you’re just cooking something good in the kitchen that’s healthy, that’s just a selfish thing, I say: No, you’re actually preserving a cultural tradition. And hopefully, you’ll share it with other people. Because the best doorway, they say, to a man’s mind is his stomach, right? [LAUGHS]

Dr. Terry Mason: Yes.

Wholesome Wave’s Double Up Bucks Program

Ocean Robbins: So if you want to influence people, sometimes feeding them good food can be powerful work. Another thing I think we can do if we want to address the food desert issue, as well as education, is economic empowerment through, of course, resources in communities that need it. We’ve got to stop the redlining and a lot of the other historical practices that have unfairly discriminated against certain communities and people. But we can also double the value of the SNAP program for fruits and vegetables.

There’s an experiment being done around this led by an organization called Wholesome Wave. And what they’re doing is called the Double Up Bucks Program. There are 500,000 Americans right now that get double value for fruits and vegetables in almost every state. They’re testing it out. And what they’re finding is that when that happens, people buy more fruits and vegetables, demand for fruits and vegetables increases in their community; they eat more fruits and vegetables, and they’re healthier because of it. So to me, if we’re going to subsidize anything, we should be subsidizing healthy food in the communities that need it the most, rather than subsidizing the junk food industry.

Dr. Terry Mason: Yes, that was my entire point. And we were part of the Double Bucks Program when I was at the county. We actually had RX bags, prescription bags. And one of our primary care doctors, Dr. Jifunza Carter, helped to devise bags that had certain sorts of vegetables that were better for people who may have some kidney failure, people that had high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, different things. And then, she went over those so that people walked out with a prescription that was food. And also, with a methodology to cook it, that would not reverse the good things that the food would do, but would be able to accommodate the cultural tastes that people had in a way that would not make them ill.

So, you’re right. And then, the hospital itself poured more money into the Double Bucks Program to extend it so that more people could get the double bucks.

Stopping the Programming

Dr. Terry Mason: But you’re absolutely right. These are the things that could be done. We can make good food cheap and widely available in America, and that’s what we ought to do. But at the same time, we’re going to have to stop the programming, and the programming that makes people go buy these foods that are not good for us. And the fact that nowadays, if you’ve got a 50-inch television set in your bedroom, and you happen to wake up in the morning, you could see a 50-inch burger. And so, we’ve got to start thinking about that.

And lastly, we have got to make sure that we do what we can to make sure that the good foods also taste good so that we could begin to reprogram the taste buds of our youth in a positive way.

Ocean Robbins: Yes. Good call.

COVID-19 & Comorbidities

Ocean Robbins: I want to talk COVID-19 for a second.

Dr. Terry Mason: Sure.

Ocean Robbins: A CDC report analyzed more than 1.7 million US cases and 103,000 deaths. They concluded that people with underlying medical conditions like heart disease and diabetes were hospitalized six times as often and died 12 times as often as those without those underlying conditions.

Terry, do you think that comorbidities and overall health status have a major impact on COVID-19 outcome and that we should be putting more attention there as a society if we want to stop COVID-19?

Dr. Terry Mason: Yes. Basically, what we need to do is to do the things that help our bodies fight this, and to make our bodies less of a victim to the ravages of the coronavirus. And this is the thing that is difficult, and what I’m trying to get people to understand is that it’s the food. It’s the food that is inflammatory.

Inflammatory Foods

Dr. Terry Mason: And we want to call it heart disease and this and that. But what we have is system-wide vascular inflammation caused by these foods that we eat, these processed foods, these foods that are fried, these foods that have the milks and the creams and the butters. And these are the things that are causing this inflammation. Not a lot at one time, but a little bit all the time. And eventually, just as if you scrape your knee once, if you give it time, it will heal. But if three hours later, or four hours later, you scrape it again. And then, four hours after that, you scrape it again — it never heals. And that’s what we do.

We’ve been programmed to think we need to eat far more than we need to eat. We’ve made bad things that are very inflammatory, easy for us to have access to. And we have misguided information as to what causes these diseases.

So everybody thinks, or many people think, that diabetes is caused by too much sugar, when in fact it isn’t the sugar at all. It’s the saturated fat that kills these beta cells in the pancreas.

Obesity

Terry Mason: So we really do need an education program that speaks the language that people understand. And I know our commercial industries know how to do this.

The other thing is that we’ve got to have people stop believing they need to eat more. We’re eating almost 75 pounds more meat per person now than we did in 1950. And yet, the human being has not changed in terms of who we are and what we are in that same period of time, except that we’ve grown wider, not necessarily taller.

Ocean Robbins: Yes, we have grown wider. Obesity rates are now approaching 40% in America. More than two-thirds of our population are overweight. We have, I think, the dubious distinction of having the fattest population on the planet, right?

Dr. Terry Mason: Yes.

Ocean Robbins: And I think we’ve passed Mexico again on obesity rate. And, of course, this is all fueling disease.

Dr. Terry Mason: Absolutely.

Ocean Robbins: It’s not just an aesthetic thing; that’s not even the core issue. The core issue is that that’s a marker for higher risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, and so many other issues.

Cardiovascular Disease & Erectile Dysfunction

Dr. Terry Mason: I want to add one thing about that. Language is so important. So when I talk to people, I say, “Look, guys, if you have vascular disease anywhere, you have it everywhere.” So this whole notion that you just got some blockages in the blood vessels of your heart is wrong. If they’re in your heart; they’re in your legs; they’re in your stomach; they’re everywhere. And if you’ve got damage to these inside lining cells, these endothelial cells, anywhere in the body, you have them everywhere. I learned that while I was in practice treating erectile dysfunction.

And there’s a journal article published in JAMA, I think in 2009, that actually correlates the clinical onset of certain diseases with erectile dysfunction. And they found that men who complained of erectile dysfunction went on to have heart attacks and strokes. Why? Because it’s all the same disease.

So what we have to do is we have to change this language because it confuses people. And we need to talk about how ubiquitous these diseases are everywhere. So when you get a blood clot, or you get a blockage of blood flow in your leg, that’s not different from the blood flow to the heart, or that’s not different from the blood flow to the brain. It’s the same process caused by the same thing.

We don’t need different solutions. We need the only real solution that we have, and that is to reverse these things by eating just the opposite of the foods that cause them.

The Impact of a Plant-Based Diet on African American Health

Ocean Robbins: Yes. Well, hear, hear to that. You were one of the authors of a study conducted by researchers at Rush University. And the study was looking at vascular health. And it tracked, I believe, 44 African-Americans. Some of them were given a plant-based diet for five weeks. Can you tell us what happened in the study? And what did we learn from it?

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, Dr. Kim Williams was the professor and chair of cardiology at Rush University Hospital and the past president of the American College of Cardiology, who’s always been very, very community-focused. And I said, “You know, I’d really like to think about how we can begin to prove that Black people can improve.” We always hear about how bad we are, but we never talk about how we improve.

So we designed a small study. Actually, because of funding, it was small. We’re actually now in the process of trying to get more money to do a much bigger study. So we could only take about 50 people. And our church had well over 5,000 people that attended. And just before I got the announcement out for the first service, we had 200 people in the room wanting to sign up.

And what we did was we contracted with a company so we could make sure everybody had an isocaloric diet.

Participants were getting food deliveries, and they were supposed to only eat what they got delivered to them. But we told them, if you don’t, if you cheat, just write it down.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah.

Improvement in Health Markers

Dr. Terry Mason: And people were very compliant. And we also did a bunch of biometric measurements. We measured particularly inflammatory markers, like trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which does a lot of damage and has now been implicated in cancer and everything else. We had a lab that we send the blood for the pre- and post-TMAOs, as well as the lipoproteins. And we assessed cardiac risk, and insulin levels, and everything else.

What was the most startling thing is that the TMAO dropped 41% in five weeks. In five weeks, just on a dietary change.

Ocean Robbins: Wow.

Dr. Terry Mason: Forty-one percent. There’s no medicine out there that can do that. And the other markers dropped too. The low-density lipoproteins, the C-reactive proteins, all of these things.

And what we’d like to do is we’d like to get 200 people to do this because we need more power in the larger numbers. But it just goes to show you. And people were astonished. And my motivation was to show that… Because we never saw information like this on the African-American population. We always see the bad stuff.

And here is something that shows that, “Hey, good things can happen when we do this. And when we change what we eat, we can change our internal biochemistry, which then changes our life and gives us a new lease that we didn’t know existed before.”

And this is not just our opinion. I always say, in God we trust; all others must have data. So this was the data. And right now, we are in the process of trying to recruit some other folks to help raise the money we need for a larger study. It looks like it’s going to take us about 1.5 million dollars to do the study in the way that it really needs to be done.

Saving Trillions on Healthcare Costs

Dr. Terry Mason: And I just spoke to one of our senators. I’m like, “Guys, you’ve got to shake some money loose from someplace because what we’re telling you is you don’t know how much we could save in pharmaceuticals, hospitalization, surgeries, and what have you, if we began to get this message out. Now, some of your donors may not like it because we’re going to be talking about the causes of this.” For the rest of my life, I cannot be engaged in just prescribing pills. That’s why I quit conventional medical practice.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah.

Dr. Terry Mason: I have to give people what they need to reverse the disease.

Ocean Robbins: How much do you think we might be able to save if we truly made food the foundation of health in the United States?

Dr. Terry Mason: I would say, if we got really serious about it, not all at once, but I think that we could comfortably say we’re spending about three trillion dollars now. We should be able to cut that in half.

And the fact that we’re spending three trillion dollars is a great cartoon. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s a picture of a sink. And the sink is stopped up. And the water is running. And the water is running over the sink. And you got a bunch of guys in a room with mops trying to mop up the water. But nobody goes over to turn the water off on the sink or to pull the stopper out.

And I’m saying that we’re spending three trillion dollars on basically mopping efforts. If we really wanted to get serious about this, we could spend less than half of that if we just pull the sink stopper out and turn the disease off. And how do we do that? We do that with changing, using the power of our advertising machine to start getting people to eat the right things.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah. It’s pretty stunning, if you think about it, that we could save, according to that estimate, 1.5 trillion dollars per year. That means in about 18 years, we could repay the entire national debt. We could create a kind of utopia with just those savings. Seventeen percent of gross domestic product in the United States, maybe more, goes to medical care or disease symptom management. And yet, people say we can’t afford healthy food. Well, individuals can’t when the subsidies are stacked against them and when the whole economic system is stacked against them.

Saving the Environment in the Process

Ocean Robbins: But if we were serious about valuing health and human welfare, we could make so many good things happen.

Dr. Terry Mason: Not only that, but do you know what we do to the environment? Because now we wouldn’t be killing all these animals; we wouldn’t need to grow all these animals; we would be able to stop the methane that’s coming from these animals that are contributing the greenhouse gases. You know, more greenhouse gases come from that than from all of the transportation, cars, planes, boats, trucks, combined.

Ocean Robbins: Yeah.

Dr. Terry Mason: So we could literally clean our air in a generation.

Ocean Robbins: Yes. More than 80% of the Earth’s land, of agricultural land service, is being used for animal agriculture. For 17% of our calories. So yeah, tremendous savings possible there.

Lactose Intolerance

Ocean Robbins: I want to turn to another kind of more specific topic, which is lactose intolerance. It affects 65% of humanity, the vast majority of whom are people of color. And yet, milk is advertised as nature’s most perfect food. Of course, it is for a baby calf, but not necessarily for humans. Do you think that our milk and dairy obsession is, in any way, functionally, an expression of racism?

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, you know, that’s a great question. And the fact is that there are some people that are not Black that are also lactose intolerant, but far fewer.

I happen to be a lactose intolerant person. And I didn’t even know what it was, and my parents didn’t know what it was. I just know that whenever I tried to eat certain things, I would end up in the bathroom. So I think that the fact that we’re not being aggressive to do something about it is racist.

And I have to commend guys like Neal Barnard. We went to the AMA a year or two ago, where they were trying to say that lactose intolerance was a disease. And we said no, it’s not a disease. There’s nothing wrong with people who are lactose intolerant other than they rightfully do not have the enzyme to break down milk that does not come from their human mother.

Breastfeeding & Milk Consumption Past Infancy

Dr. Terry Mason: We talk a lot about how cow milk is the absolute perfect milk for baby cows. Because we had a huge breastfeeding campaign in the Department of Public Health that we championed. And we had marches, and we had parades to celebrate women who choose to breastfeed and to give them the support that they need to do that and to create spaces in all of the businesses. We call the rooms the Milky Way rooms so a woman could go and breastfeed her child, or pump her breasts, to get the milk that her child needs. And we need to make that a national practice and to make it far more comfortable for women to breastfeed.

Ocean Robbins: Yes. Humans are the only species on Earth that drinks milk past infancy, though. And we’re also the only species on earth that drinks the milk of another species. So although consumption of milk from other bovine lactating mammals has been normalized in our society, it is, from an evolutionary perspective, perhaps a little bit odd.

Black Veganism & Vegetarianism

Ocean Robbins: There was a recent poll that found that 3% of Americans identified as vegans. Eight percent of Black Americans, however, identified as vegans. Another poll found that 31% of people of color in the US say they’re eating less meat intentionally, compared to 19% of white respondents who said they were eating less meat intentionally. 

Can you shed any light on why you think it is that so many Black people and people of color in the US are moving away from animal products at a dramatically higher rate than white folks are? Any sense of the cultural elements of that, or what’s making that happen?

Dr. Terry Mason: I think it’s a number of things. We’re seeing more of some of the celebrities who are vegan. I mean, I was with one of the basketball players who is a vegan and talks about it. We see more of these iconic people who are openly vegetarian or vegan. We’re hearing more about this than we used to hear.

Look at the movies that have come out. Everything from Forks Over Knives to Diet Fiction to The Game Changers — all of these things that have helped to change the psyche. And Game Changers, especially, because men were probably the most confused around what being a plant-based person will do or not do. But when you look at a guy like Rich Roll, who is an ultra-athlete, who does these amazing athletic feats, or the strongest man in the world who is lifting untold pounds of weight, almost a ton — you can’t argue with it anymore.

And I’m just grateful to all those people that produced these films for us because some people get things in different sorts of ways. And certain kinds of genres are better than others. But I’m just so happy to see this because I’ve been able to see this transformation in a very short period of time.

Advocating for Accessible Health

Dr. Terry Mason: So, this is good, Ocean. This is good. I just thank God for what you guys do and to make this information so easily available in language that people can understand is absolutely amazing. And I thank you for it.

Ocean Robbins: Well, thank you so much, Terry. And I thank God for the work that you do.

You know, in a sense, you retired from medical practice because you didn’t want to push drugs and surgery, and you wanted to advocate for health. But your work as a healer was just beginning.

Mother Carr’s Farm

Ocean Robbins: I understand that you and others acquired farmland that you’re using to grow food for distribution in underserved neighborhoods in Chicago. I also understand you’re employing folks recently released from prison who served time for non-violent offenses.

Can you tell us about this project, what you’re aiming to achieve, and how it’s going?

Dr. Terry Mason: First of all, thank you for asking. It was an outgrowth of a project led by a pastor by the name of Dr. Gerald January from a church called The Church of God. And it’s a thing that started out as a small garden of one of its parishioners — Mother Carr is what they called her.

They’ve subsequently moved from their old church to a new site that’s 76 acres of land that the church acquired. They were going to build a much bigger sort of commercial park with things like Starbucks and all that sort of stuff, but for a number of reasons, that didn’t happen.

So, they decided to use a little bit more of the land for what was called Mother Carr’s Farm. And we went from just maybe an acre or so. And over the last year, we doubled the space that we had because it got up to like nine, and now we’re almost at 18 acres. Last year, for the first time, we actually grew watermelons. We had about 300 watermelons that we grew, both red and yellow meat watermelons, in addition to our kale, our Swiss chard, our radishes, our onions. We have our own bees. We had almost 20 gallons of organic clover honey.

Enriching the Lives of Underserved Communities

Dr. Terry Mason: We have a wonderful farm manager. His name is Mr. Anthony Williamson, who has done all of this without using any pesticides, no chemicals of any sort because of the richness of this soil that this church bought, which was an old farm. And the nutrients were still there. And we’re in the process now of putting manure and other things to sort of replenish some of those nutrients.

Our plan is to build this up. We want to double it again. And we’d like to eventually, within a year, hopefully, get up to half of the capacity that we have.

The young men that we brought out are what we call returning citizens. This has made such a difference in their lives. And we’re actually now trying to figure out how we might be able to get some temporary trailers with some solar power to provide them a place to live while they’re there. And we also bring in some of the troubled teens from the schools in the southern suburbs that have had some brushes with authority.

None of these folks had ever even seen a farm or even been involved with picking food.

CSA Boxes

Dr. Terry Mason: We sell shares in this. So a full share is $450 for the growing season. That allows you to get a box that is usually somewhere, without the watermelon, somewhere around 12 to 18 pounds of fresh vegetables. And those vegetables are picked on Friday. And they’re picked up on Saturday. So, they never see a refrigerator. Just take it out, and we put a little water on it, and just a little ice, and people come up the next day and pick it up.

Ocean Robbins: And that’s a box every other week throughout the growing season.

Dr. Terry Mason: And whatever we have. And that includes honey and whatever else is there. It’s picked, and it’s picked up. Our plan is to try to raise money to buy more farm equipment to make it a bit more efficient as well as to create a place where we can do some degree of post-processing. Because we now have demand from the restaurants.

We took some of the food to a few of the restaurants, and it’s amazing. They would pick some of this stuff on Friday. And on Friday evening, these vegetables would be on the plates of people in these restaurants. And they didn’t understand why this tasted so different. And it tasted so different because it had never been stored in a refrigerated place. One buyer went from just testing it out to buying over 350 pounds of kale from us every week.

Ocean Robbins: Wow.

Restoring Human Dignity & Health

Dr. Terry Mason: So, we’re really, really trying to expand both our commercial business, but we also want to reach out to our seniors. We’re trying to create a delivery service so that they don’t have to drive. It’s a bit of a drive to come out to the farm. We’re working with some people to create some drop-off points.

And we’re also working on getting more farm implements and on being able to bring and hire… Because we want to pay these young people a livable wage. We want them not to have to sleep out in a trailer. We want them to have enough money to be able to rent a small apartment and to feed themselves. And so that’s the other part of what we’re trying to do. And we started a GoFundMe page.

Ocean Robbins: Well, it’s a labor of love. And I’m thinking about the ripples this sends out. When I think about those 350 pounds of kale, when I think about those CSAs, every single box that you’re delivering equals fewer heart attacks, fewer people living in misery, fewer kids losing their parents too young.

Every box you’re delivering also represents more people employed who otherwise might have been on the streets doing who knows what. It means more human dignity restored. And it also means more regeneration of our soils. Land that might’ve been fallow is now growing food which, when well managed, can sequester carbon, can become a part of the solution on Planet Earth. So it’s like everywhere you look, you see these ripples of goodness and health and wellness flowing from this one simple act.

Vernon Park Church of God

Ocean Robbins: So, if people want to get involved, do they Google to find it?

Dr. Terry Mason: Just go to Vernon Park Church of God, and everything is right there. They can see pictures of the farm. We didn’t have money this year, but we wanted to try and get a little movie so that we could put it up on the website. We’re trying to raise money for our tractor so that Tony and the guys can do their work far more efficiently than they’re doing it now.

Our goal over the next year or two is to raise enough money to put in our own little greenhouse, so we can do all our starter plants here rather than have to drive and cart them all the way back from Champaign.

Ocean Robbins: Beautiful. So, for everybody watching — please pitch in if you can.

Healthy Food for All

Ocean Robbins: Terry, it’s been such a privilege talking with you and sharing this time. I’m so grateful that your waiting room essentially expanded to include all of humanity and the whole planet.

Dr. Terry Mason: [LAUGHS]

Ocean Robbins: We’re all grateful for what you’re doing. Thank you so much for your wisdom. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your courage. And thank you for walking the talk. Who knew that when you were healing your own heart and your own cardiovascular system years ago, you would be having epiphanies that would change, fundamentally, everything you do in your life.

Dr. Terry Mason: [LAUGHS] Yes.

Ocean Robbins: And now, you’ll be helping so many other people.

Dr. Terry Mason: Well, I so want to thank you, Ocean, for what you and your publications and your conferences, you know… It’s just wonderful, and I’m so grateful. You’re the reason why we have more people that are eating vegan. And the people that you bring on, and the programs that you produce, those are the reasons why we have more people who are choosing to love life more abundantly by eating the things that we were designed to eat. And I thank you for it.

Ocean Robbins: Why thank you.

We’ve been talking with Dr. Terry Mason. And thank you so much, everyone watching, for your time, for your attention, and for your participation with us in this food revolution.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you feel inspired by this interview?
• How has culture or race influenced your eating habits?
• What are some of the health-promoting projects and organizations that inspire you?

Read Next:

• America’s Two Deadly Viruses: How COVID-19 and Racism Converge – And What We Need to do About Health Inequality
• Selma, Alabama: Peace, Reconciliation, & Hope — An Interview with State Senator Malika Sanders-Fortier & Ainka Sanders Jackson

The post Increasing Health & Opportunity for All: An Interview with Terry Mason, MD appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

This story is supported with a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Get poisoned or get on board.

That’s the choice soybean farmers such as Will Glazik face. The past few summers, farmers near Glazik’s central Illinois farm have sprayed so much of the weed killer dicamba at the same time that it has polluted the air for hours and sometimes days.

As Glazik puts it, there are two types of soybeans: Monsanto’s, which are genetically engineered to withstand dicamba, and everyone else’s.

Glazik’s soybeans have been the damaged ones. His soybean leaves will curl up; then the plants will become smaller and weaker. He’s lost as much as 40 bushels an acre in some fields, a huge loss when organic soybeans are $20 a bushel. He has to hold his breath every year to see if the damage will cause him to lose his organic certification.

His neighbors who spray dicamba are frustrated with him, he said. There’s an easy solution to avoid damage, they tell him: Buy Monsanto’s seeds.

Monsanto’s Dicamba-Tolerant Crop Rollout

This reality is what Monsanto was counting on when it launched dicamba-tolerant crops, an investigation by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found.

Monsanto’s new system was supposed to be the future of farming, providing farmers with a suite of seeds and chemicals that could combat more and more weeds that were becoming harder to kill.

Instead, the system’s rollout has led to millions of acres of crop damage across the Midwest and South; widespread tree death in many rural communities, state parks, and nature preserves; and an unprecedented level of strife in the farming world.

Executives from Monsanto and BASF, a German chemical company that worked with Monsanto to launch the system, knew their dicamba weed killers would cause large-scale damage to fields across the United States but decided to push them on unsuspecting farmers anyway, in a bid to corner the soybean and cotton markets.

Monsanto and BASF have denied for years that dicamba is responsible for damage, blaming farmers making illegal applications, weather events, and disease. The companies insist that when applied according to the label, dicamba stays on target and is an effective tool for farmers.

The Monsanto-Dicamba Investigation

Over the past year, the Midwest Center reviewed thousands of pages of government and internal company documents released through lawsuits, sat in the courtroom for weeks of deliberation, interviewed farmers affected by dicamba, and weed scientists dealing with the issue up close. This story provides the most comprehensive picture of what Monsanto and BASF knew about dicamba’s propensity to harm farmers’ livelihoods and the environment before releasing the weed killer.

The investigation found:

Ignoring Warnings

Monsanto and BASF released their products knowing that dicamba would cause widespread damage to soybean and cotton crops that weren’t resistant to dicamba. They used “protection from your neighbors” as a way to sell more of their products. In doing so, the companies ignored years of warnings from independent academics, specialty crop growers, and their own employees.

Limited Testing

Monsanto limited testing that could potentially delay or deny regulatory approval of dicamba. For years, Monsanto struggled to keep dicamba from drifting in its own tests. In regulatory tests submitted to the EPA, the company sprayed the product in locations and under weather conditions that did not mirror how farmers would actually spray it. Midway through the approval process, with the EPA paying close attention, the company decided to stop its researchers from conducting tests.

Questionable Impact

Even after submitting data that the EPA used to approve dicamba in 2016, Monsanto scientists knew that many questions remained. The company’s own research showed dicamba mixed with other herbicides was more likely to cause damage. The company also prevented independent scientists from conducting their own tests and declined to pay for studies that would potentially give them more information about dicamba’s real-world impact.

Avoiding Liability

Although advertised as helping out customers, the companies’ investigations of drift incidents were designed to limit their liability, find other reasons for the damage, and never end with payouts to farmers. For example, BASF told pesticide applicators that sometimes it is not safe to spray even if following the label to the letter, placing liability squarely on the applicators.

Working Together

The two companies were in lockstep for years. Executives from Monsanto and BASF met at least 19 times from 2010 on to focus on the dicamba-tolerant cropping system, including working together on the development of the technology, achieving regulatory approval for the crops and herbicides, and the commercialization of crops.

Illegal Applications

Monsanto released seeds resistant to dicamba in 2015 and 2016 without an accompanying weed killer, knowing that off-label spraying of dicamba, which is illegal, would be “rampant.” At the same time, BASF ramped up production of older versions of dicamba that were illegal to apply to the crops and made tens of millions of dollars selling the older versions, which were more likely to cause move off of where they were applied.

Monsanto & BASF Company Statements

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, refused to grant an interview with the Midwest Center. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment, instead issuing a statement.

Spokesman Kyel Richard said the company “has seen an outpouring of support from grower organizations and our customers.”

“We continue to stand with the thousands of farmers who rely on this technology as part of their integrated weed management program,” Richard said.

BASF also did not respond to requests for comment, instead issuing a statement.

BASF spokeswoman Odessa Patricia Hines said that the company’s version of dicamba has “different physical properties and compositions” than Monsanto’s. Hines said the company is continuing to improve its dicamba technology.

A federal court banned the herbicide in spring of 2020, but the EPA reinstated dicamba for five more years in October of that same year.

Bader Farms & Other Legal Complaints

In 2020, a federal jury sided with a Missouri peach farmer who sued the companies for driving his orchard out of business. The jury awarded Bill Bader $15 million for his losses and $250 million in punitive damages designed to punish Bayer. Bayer and BASF are appealing the verdict. The punitive damages were later reduced to $60 million.

Hines of BASF pointed out that in the Missouri trial: “The jury’s verdict found that only Monsanto’s conduct warranted punitive damages.”

Following the trial, Bayer announced a $400 million settlement with farmers harmed by dicamba, including $300 million to soybean farmers. Bayer said they expect BASF to pay for part of the settlement.

An attorney for Bader called the companies’ conduct “a conspiracy to create an ecological disaster in order to increase their profits” in court filings. The case largely revolved around showing the companies knew dicamba would harm thousands of farmers.

According to court exhibits, in October 2015, Monsanto projected it would receive nearly 2,800 complaints from farmers during the 2017 growing season, a figure based on one-in-ten farmers having a complaint.

However, even one Monsanto executive knew these projections might be low, according to court records. In late August 2016, Boyd Carey, a PhD crop scientist overseeing the claims process for Monsanto, realized it might be more like one-in-five and asked for a budget increase from $2.4 million to $6.5 million to investigate claims. Carey testified that he was awarded the increase.

The projected number of complaints rose to more than 3,200 for 2018, before going down. After 2018, Monsanto figured that fewer farmers would be harmed because more farmers would switch to Monsanto’s crops to avoid being damaged, Carey testified in the Bader trial.

Delaying the Inevitable

Dicamba affects all parts of Glazik’s operation. He grows organic soybeans to avoid exposure to toxic pesticides. He also likes the higher premiums and the improved soil quality. But with dicamba in the air, he’s less likely to be successful.

He now has to plant his soybeans later each year. Soybeans are less likely to be severely damaged when they’re small, and planting them later than usual means they’ll be smaller when the inevitable cloud of weed killer envelops his crops. Later planting typically means a bit of yield loss. It also means a later harvest, which limits planting of cover crops Glazik uses to improve his soil.

“All crop damage aside,” he said, the weed killer is everywhere. Oaks, hickories, and other trees are damaged near his farm, both in the country and in town, he said. “The fact is that the chemical can volatilize and move with the wind and in the air. We’re breathing it.”

A ‘Potential Disaster’

For two decades, Monsanto made billions of dollars with Roundup Ready crops, which had been genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by the weed killer and adopted by nearly every American soybean farmer. But by the mid-to-late 2000s, Roundup was starting to fail. Farmers’ fields were overwhelmed with “superweeds” that had developed resistance to Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate.

In response, Monsanto developed new soybean and cotton seeds that were genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by both glyphosate and dicamba, a very effective weed killer used since the 1960s. It was also touted as the company’s largest biotechnology rollout in company history. In just three years, Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant system was able to capture up to three-fourths of total soybean acreage, an area the size of Michigan.

Dicamba was not widely used during the growing season because of its propensity to move off-target and harm other plants. Because of its limited use, fewer weeds were resistant to it, making it an effective replacement for Roundup. Monsanto even dubbed the crops as its money-maker’s next-generation, calling them Roundup Ready 2 Xtend.

But the company faced a problem with dicamba: The weed killer drifted onto non-resistant plants, some as far as miles away. In its own testing over the years, Monsanto had accidentally harmed its own crops dozens of times.

As far back as 2009, Monsanto and BASF received warnings about dicamba from several sources — one company called it a “potential disaster,” according to court records — but they decided to plow ahead anyway.

“DON’T DO IT; expect lawsuits,” wrote one Monsanto employee, summarizing academic surveys the company commissioned about dicamba’s use.

Dicamba Drift and Volatilization

In order to commercialize dicamba, both Monsanto and BASF worked to develop new formulations with low volatility.

Off-target movement from dicamba can happen in two main ways: drift and volatilization. Drift is when the chemical’s particles move off the field when they are sprayed, generally by wind in the seconds or minutes after it is applied. Volatilization is when dicamba particles turn from a liquid to a gas in the hours or days after the herbicide is applied.

Damage from volatilization frequently occurs through a process called “atmospheric loading,” which is when so much dicamba is sprayed at the same time that it is unable to dissipate and persists in the air for hours or days, poisoning whatever it comes into contact with.

Volatilization is particularly concerning because dicamba can move for miles and harm non-target crops, especially soybeans, and even lawns and gardens. Tomatoes, grapes, and other specialty crops are also at-risk of being damaged.

Despite being touted as less volatile, the new versions — Monsanto’s XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology and BASF’s Engenia — were unable to stop the movement entirely.

Off-Target Incidents

During its 2012-2014 testing of an older version of XtendiMax, Monsanto had at least 73 off-target incidents, according to court documents.

In 2014, Monsanto had significant dicamba damage at a training facility in Portageville, Missouri. Even in its own promotional videos, Monsanto couldn’t prevent non-dicamba tolerant soybeans from showing symptoms of damage.

The EPA took note of an incident where, through volatilization, dicamba turned into a gas and apparently floated more than 2 miles away, much farther than it was supposed to. During that incident, no one had measured how badly the crops had been damaged, and the EPA was unable to definitively determine the symptoms were caused by dicamba. The EPA decided that was an “uncertainty” and approved the use of the weed killer with a 110-foot buffer zone.

In 2015, knowing the EPA was keeping an eye on off-target movement, Monsanto decided to halt all testing of XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology. According to court records, it kept its own employees who were interested in developing recommendations for farmers from testing. And it limited trials by independent academics in order to maintain a “clean slate.” It asked BASF to halt its dicamba testing as well.

When a weed science professor at the University of Arkansas asked Monsanto for a little bit of Xtendimax to test its volatility, the company told him it would have difficulty producing enough dicamba for both him and its independent tests.

A Monsanto employee, who worked at the company for 35 years, didn’t think much of that explanation when he forwarded the email to a colleague.

“Hahaha difficulty in producing enough product for field testing,” he wrote. “Hahaha bullshit.”

Illegal Spraying a ‘Ticking Time Bomb’

Weeds cut into farmers’ profits. With low profit margins, farmers will use any tool they can to control weeds.

Monsanto recognized this in 2015 and 2016 when they released dicamba-tolerant crops without their new versions of dicamba. An internal Monsanto slide shows the company knew that many farmers would likely illegally spray older, more volatile versions and harm other farmers’ crops.

But the company decided the benefits of establishing a market share outweighed the risks and launched the cotton crops in 2015. The EPA allowed farmers to spray other weed killers on the crops, and Monsanto decided to launch the seeds with “a robust communication plan that dicamba cannot be used.”

When the seeds were sold, Monsanto put a pink sticker on each bag to indicate it was illegal to spray dicamba on the crops in 2015. The company also sent letters to all growers and retailers, among other tactics, to limit illegal applications of dicamba.

However, in internal communications in April 2015, members of Monsanto’s cotton team joked about this risky strategy.

“One sticker is going to keep us out of jail,” one wrote.

In Oct. 2015, a BASF employee reported hearing that growers sprayed older versions of dicamba on the cotton that year.

Monsanto doubled down on this risky strategy in 2016, releasing dicamba-tolerant soybean crops without a weed killer, too. Meanwhile, Monsanto also declined to investigate drift incidents in 2015 and 2016.

At a February 2016 meeting in Puerto Rico, a BASF executive expressed concerns to Monsanto that the “widespread” illegal spraying would likely become “rampant” due to the decision.

BASF also benefited from Monsanto’s decision. The company’s sales of older versions of dicamba spiked in 2016. Retailers sold $100 million worth of its older versions of the weed killer, compared to about $60 million annually in 2014 and 2015, according to internal documents. BASF documents indicated the sales increased because of dicamba-tolerant seeds.

In the summer of 2016, BASF sales representatives in the field were reporting older versions of dicamba causing damage, hinting the problem was predictable.

“The one thing most acres of beans have in common is dicamba damage. There must be a huge cloud of dicamba blanketing the Missouri Bootheel,” a BASF employee wrote in a July 4, 2016, report. “That ticking time bomb finally exploded.”

Drift Expected to Drive Sales

Dicamba drift led to widespread news coverage. Monsanto and BASF expected to turn it all into more money.

In an internal document, Monsanto told its sales teams to target growers that weren’t interested in dicamba and dicamba-resistant crops. The sales pitch? Purchasing Monsanto’s products would protect them from their neighbors.

In April 2017, a market research document prepared by Bank of America found many farmers were doing just that.

“Interesting assessment that much of the Xtend acreage was planted to protect themselves from neighbors who might be using dicamba? Gotta admit I would not have expected this in a market research document,” a Monsanto executive wrote.

In internal slides from a September 2016 meeting, BASF identified “defensive planting” as a potential market opportunity. BASF also had a market research document that found defensive planting was driving sales.

However, a “tough questions” memo distributed to BASF employees in November 2017 told employees the opposite: “We have not considered ‘defensive planting’ in our sales projections.”

Even as thousands of farms across millions of acres of cropland were being damaged, Monsanto officials were touting the damage as a sales opportunity.

“I think we can significantly grow business and have a positive effect on the outcome of 2017 if we reach out to all the driftee people,” another Monsanto sales employee wrote in an email that year.

“This is the first product in American history that literally destroys the competition. “You buy it or else.” – Billy Randles, attorney for Bill Bader

One of those customers was Bill Bader, the peach farmer who sued Monsanto for destroying his orchard. Bader testified that while he could not protect his peach trees, in 2019, he planted dicamba-tolerant soybeans to help protect his soybean crops from getting damaged.

“This is the first product in American history that literally destroys the competition,” Bader’s attorney, Billy Randles, said. “You buy it or else.”

Research Designed to Downplay Harm

For years, the EPA told Monsanto it needed to address volatility in its dicamba studies when applying for regulatory approval. But the tests Monsanto conducted did not reflect real-world conditions.

Dicamba would primarily be sprayed on soybeans. But 2015 studies submitted to the EPA were conducted at a cotton field in Texas and a dirt field in Georgia. Neither state has a large amount of soybeans. This guidance followed directives from Monsanto lobbyists that incorporated earlier Monsanto research showing that higher volatility was detected on fields with soybeans.

In addition, Monsanto did not follow the rules that would eventually be codified on the label.

During the testing in Texas, wind speeds were 1.9 to 4.9 miles per hour. In Georgia, wind speeds were 1.5 to 3 miles per hour. According to the label, the EPA-approved dicamba can only be sprayed with wind speeds between 3 and 10 miles per hour. Spraying at low wind speeds is more likely to lead to volatilization because there is increased risk of a temperature inversion, which is when cooler air is caught beneath a layer of warmer air, making gases more likely to persist near the ground.

After Monsanto submitted the tests to the EPA, the company still had a lot of unknowns about its product’s volatility, according to internal emails.

A Monsanto researcher wrote an email in February 2016 to his coworkers that underscored how little the company knew about the propensity of dicamba to damage crops.

“We don’t know how long a sensitive plant needs in a natural setting to show volatility damage. We don’t know what concentration in the air causes a response, either,” he wrote. “There is a big difference for plants exposed to dicamba vapor for 24 vs 48 hours. Be careful using this externally.”

Despite the design of the studies, and the EPA’s own studies that showed dicamba posed a risk to 322 protected species of animals and plants, the agency conditionally approved the herbicide in 2016. The agency determined that mitigation measures — such as not spraying near specialty crops and endangered species habitats, wind speed restrictions, and a ban on aerial applications — would keep spray droplets on target.

It was only approved for two years, when the agency would review its approval again.

BASF Knew the New Dicamba Was Risky

After the conditional approval, BASF knew dicamba still posed risks. While BASF told farmers dicamba drift wouldn’t hurt their bottom lines, the company privately told pesticide applicators that any drift they caused could decrease farmers’ harvests, according to internal BASF documents. A BASF executive said, “from a practical standpoint,” Engenia was not different from older dicamba versions.

Even Monsanto’s sales teams were having problems with dicamba’s reputation after the EPA approved the weed killer.

In an internal email, a Monsanto salesman took issue with BASF changing how it publicly discussed its dicamba product: It used to say volatility was not a problem, but now it said it was. Another chemical company saying volatility was bad could hurt Monsanto’s sales.

“We need to get on this right now!” the salesman emailed his colleagues. “deny! Deny! DENY!”

‘Never Admit Guilt’

In 2017, the first season that the new versions of dicamba were approved, damage reached unprecedented levels. Around 3.6 million acres of soybeans were damaged, according to an estimate from the University of Missouri.

In July of that year, Monsanto executives scheduled a meeting to discuss how to combat coverage of complaints.

“We need REAL scientific support for our product to counteract the supposition happening in the market today,” a Monsanto executive wrote in an email. “To be frank, dealers and growers are losing confidence in Xtendimax.”

“I was always told to never admit guilt.” – BASF executive

In late summer 2017, Monsanto had started to blame damage on a BASF weed killer, which is used on the main competitor to Monsanto’s own soybeans. In December 2017, Monsanto agreed to drop that argument as part of a defense strategy with BASF against farmers.

Both Monsanto and BASF took steps to shield themselves from lawsuits.

The form Monsanto told its investigators to use when examining farmer complaints was “developed to gather data that could defend Monsanto,” according to an internal company presentation. Later, Monsanto said that 91% of applicators using the form self-reported errors in spraying dicamba.

A BASF executive also edited his company’s drift investigation Q&A.

“I was always told to never admit guilt,” he said.

On top of the investigations, the label left pesticide applicators liable for damage because it was nearly impossible to follow. A 2017 survey of applicators found that most trained sprayers had issues with dicamba even when spraying in good conditions and while following the label.

With damage being reported in 2017, Monsanto also declined to pursue a study that would have given the company more information about how dicamba caused damage on real farms. A Monsanto off-target movement researcher sent a request for a project proposal to Exponent, which helped analyze the data Monsanto submitted to the EPA. The study could be done in less than two weeks and cost $6,000.

The researcher forwarded the proposal to two Monsanto executives.

The company never acted on it, one testified in the trial.

‘The Problems Have Not Gone Away’

In order to combat the damage, the EPA developed new restrictions on dicamba. In doing so, the EPA dropped an idea that Monsanto opposed, and Monsanto dictated the new restrictions that were adopted.

State officials warned the EPA the changes wouldn’t work. They were right. In 2018, at least 4.1 million acres were damaged, according to EPA documents.

Still, the EPA reapproved dicamba for the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons with new restrictions, some of which ignored agency scientists’ recommendations.

States also increasingly took measures into their own hands, implementing spraying cut-off dates and temperature restrictions.

The damage continued. Illinois, the nation’s largest soybean producing state, had more complaints than ever in 2019. Iowa had “landscape level” damage in 2020.

Aaron Hager, an associate professor of weed science at the University of Illinois, said it is clear the changes haven’t worked.

“We have revised the label and revised it again,” Hager said. “The problems have not gone away.”

The EPA’s decision was eventually voided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for failing to properly consider the impacts on farmers and the environment. The court ruled the agency gave too much deference to Bayer and also was lacking necessary data to show too much harm wouldn’t be done.

Dicamba was recently reapproved, and Bayer continues to invest in it. The company will release new soybean seeds designed to be resistant to dicamba and glufosinate, another BASF herbicide, to fill 20 million acres in 2021. The company also continues to work toward approval of other seeds that are resistant to dicamba and other herbicides.

Glazik, the organic Illinois soybean farmer, works as a crops consultant advising other farmers on what to plant. As the damage has continued, he said, more and more of his clients are “feeling bullied into” buying the dicamba-tolerant crops. Others tell him they have to spray dicamba, or else they can’t control the weeds.

But as an organic farmer, Glazik said, no single herbicide is necessary. Instead, farmers have a choice. Well-managed fields can be weed-free without using toxic chemicals, he said.

“You don’t have to have the dicamba spray to control weeds in a field,” he said.

—–

The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit, online newsroom offering investigative and enterprise coverage of agribusiness, Big Ag and related issues through data analysis, visualizations, in-depth reports, and interactive web tools. Visit us online at www.investigatemidwest.org.

Tell us in the comments:

• Were you aware of the widespread usage and problems with dicamba?
• What do you think of Monsanto and BASF’s responses to the damage they’ve caused?
• How do you control weeds when growing food — without the use of harmful chemicals?

Featured image: Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

Read Next:

• Pesticides in Food: What You Should Know and Why it Matters
• What The $289 Million Verdict Against Monsanto Means for You

The post ‘Buy It or Else’: Inside Monsanto and BASF’s Moves to Force Dicamba on Farmers appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Last spring, a man was admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn for surgery. A blood test revealed he was positive for the deadly antibiotic-resistant fungus, C. auris, and he was quickly quarantined. After three months of intensive treatment, he died. In order to eradicate traces of the germ from his room, the hospital had to acquire special cleaning equipment, rip out parts of the ceiling and floor, and get rid of some treatment tools. “Everything in the room was positive,” Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president, told The New York Times. The germ, deemed an “urgent threat” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has so far been found in two more states, New Jersey and Illinois.

Experts warn it’s only going to get worse. In 2014, the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by the UK Government and Wellcome Trust, estimated that 700,000 people around the world die each year due to drug-resistant infections. Without action, that number could grow to 10 million per year by 2050. A leading cause of antibiotic resistance? The misuse and overuse of antibiotics on factory farms.

Animal Welfare Issues on Factory Farms

Flourishing antibiotic resistance is just one of the many public health crises produced by factory farming. Other problems include foodborne illness, flu epidemics, the fallout from poor air and water quality, and chronic disease. All of it can be traced to the current industrial approach to raising animals, which values “high stocking density” over safe working conditions and farm animal welfare.

Oversight for the way factory farms operate and manage waste is minimal at best. No federal agency collects consistent and reliable information on the number, size, and location of large-scale agricultural operations, nor the pollution they’re emitting. There are also no federal laws governing the conditions in which farm animals are raised. And most state anti-cruelty laws do not apply to farm animals.

For example, Texas, Iowa, and Nebraska have excluded livestock from their animal cruelty statute and instead created specific legislation aimed at farm animal abuse that makes accepted or customary husbandry practices the animal welfare standard. After New Jersey created similar legislation, the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA) sued the New Jersey Department of Agriculture (NJDA), claiming that “routine husbandry practices” was too vague. NJSPCA won, and as a result, the NJDA has created more specific regulations.

Farm Animal Cruelty Practices

(Editor’s Note: Trigger Warning – The following details may be upsetting to read about. We in no way seek to validate or imply condoning of the horrendous animal cruelty described.) Tail docking of cattle is only allowed when performed “by a veterinarian for individual animals.” And debeaking of birds is only allowed if performed by a knowledgeable individual and in compliance with the United Egg Producers Animal Husbandry Guidelines for US Egg Laying Flocks.

In North Carolina, any person or organization can file a lawsuit if they suspect animal cruelty, even if that person does not have “possessory or ownership rights in an animal.” In this way, the state has “a civil remedy” for farm animal cruelty.

The general lack of governmental oversight results in cramped and filthy conditions, stressed-out animals and workers, and an ideal setup for the rampant spread of disease among animals, between animals and workers, and into the surrounding environment through animal waste.

Antibiotic Resistance

The Problem

In 2017, nearly 11 million kilograms of antibiotics — including 5.6 million kilograms of medically important antibiotics — were sold in the US for food animals. Factory farms use antibiotics to make livestock grow faster and control the spread of disease in cramped and unhealthy living conditions. While antibiotics do kill some bacteria in animals, resistant bacteria can, and often do, survive and multiply, contaminating meat and animal products during slaughter and processing.

What It Means for You

People can be exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria by handling or eating contaminated animal products, coming into contact with contaminated water, or touching or caring for farm animals, which of course makes a farmworker’s job especially dangerous. Even if you don’t eat much meat or dairy, you’re vulnerable. Resistant pathogens can enter water streams through animal manure and contaminate irrigated produce.

Developments

The European Union has been much more aggressive than the US in regulating antibiotic use on factory farms, banning the use of all antibiotics for growth promotion in 2006. But the US is making some progress, too. Under the FDA’s new rules, which went into effect in January 2017, antibiotics that are important for human medicine can no longer be used for growth promotion or feed efficiency in cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other food animals.

In addition, 95% of medically important antibiotics used in animal water and feed for therapeutic purposes were reclassified, so they could not be bought over the counter. And a veterinarian would have to sign off on its use in animals. As a result, domestic sales and distribution of medically important antimicrobials approved for use in food-producing animals decreased by 43% from 2015 (the year of peak sales) through 2017, reports the FDA.

However, the FDA still allows routine antibiotic use in factory farms for disease prevention in crowded and stressed animals, so these new rules aren’t nearly enough, says Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for the US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. “The FDA should implement ambitious reduction targets for antibiotic use in the meat industry, and ensure that these medicines are used to treat sick animals or control a verified disease outbreak, not for routine disease prevention,” Wellington said in a statement to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

National Resources Defense Council senior attorney Avinash Kar agrees. “We are seeing real progress, but the American meat industry continues to have a drug problem. And the clock is ticking to solve it,” she says. “Far more antibiotics important to humans still go to cows and pigs — usually when they’re not sick — than to people, putting the health of every single one of us in jeopardy.”

Water and Air Pollution

The Problem

Livestock in this country produces between 3 and 20 times more waste than people in the US produce, according to a 2005 EPA report, or as much as 1.2–1.37 billion tons of manure a year. Some estimates are even higher. Manure can contain “pathogens such as E. coli, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, silage leachate from corn feed, or copper sulfate used in footbaths for cows,” reports a 2010 report by the National Association of Local Boards of Health. Though sewage treatment plants are required for human waste, no such treatment facility exists for livestock waste.

Since this amount far exceeds what can be used as fertilizer, animal waste from factory farms typically enters massive, open-air waste lagoons, which spread airborne pathogens to people who live nearby. If animal waste is applied as fertilizer and exceeds the soil’s capacity for absorption, or if there is a leak or break in the manure storage or containment unit, the animal waste runs off into oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater.

Extreme weather increases the possibility of such breaks. Hurricane Florence, for example, flooded at least 50 hog lagoons when it struck the Carolinas last year, and satellite photos captured the damage. Eight years ago, the EPA reported that 29 states identify animal feeding operations as contributing to water pollution. To offer some idea of what that looks like, the EPA reported in 1998 that factory farm runoff polluted 35,000 miles of river in 22 states.

Whether or not the manure is contained or spread as fertilizer, it can release 400 different types of harmful gases, including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, as well as particulate matter comprised of fecal matter, feed materials, pollen, bacteria, fungi, skin cells, and silicates into the air. Manure is also an abundant source of nitrate, which seeps into groundwater and can be toxic at elevated levels.

What It Means for You

Pathogens can cause diarrhea and severe illness or even death for those with weakened immune systems. And gases like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide can cause dizziness, eye irritation, respiratory illness, nausea, sore throats, seizures, comas, and death. Particulate matter in the air can lead to chronic bronchitis, chronic respiratory symptoms, declines in lung function, and organic dust toxic syndrome.

The CDC has reported that children raised in communities near factory farms are more likely to develop asthma or bronchitis, and that people who live near factory farms may experience mental health deterioration and increased sensitization to smells. And nitrates in drinking water have been connected to birth defects, miscarriages, and poor general health. For infants, it can mean blue baby syndrome and even death.

Developments

It is difficult to hold factory farms accountable for polluting surrounding air and water, largely for political reasons. Before the 2020 election, the GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration excused big livestock farms from reporting air emissions, for instance, following a decade-long push for special treatment by the livestock industry. The exemption indicates “further denial of the impact that these [emissions] are having, whether it’s on climate or whether it’s on public health,” says Carrie Apfel, an attorney for Earthjustice. In a 2017 report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, the agency admitted it has not found a good way to track emissions from animal farms and know whether the farms are complying with the Clean Air Act. 

No federal agency even has reliable information on the number and locations of factory farms, which, of course, makes accountability even harder to establish. Two Stanford scholars are hoping to change that, however. Professor Daniel Ho and doctoral candidate Cassandra Handan-Nader published a paper in Nature Sustainability in 2019 demonstrating how a new map-reading algorithm could help regulators identify CAFOs more efficiently. They retrained an existing image-recognition model to recognize large-scale animal facilities from publicly available satellite images. The researchers estimate that their algorithm can capture 95% of existing large-scale facilities using less than 10% of the resources required for a manual census.

Foodborne Illness

The Problem

The United States has “shockingly high” levels of foodborne illness, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Guardian. And unsanitary conditions at factory farms are a leading contributor.

In a study of 47 meat plants across the US, investigators found that hygiene incidents occur at rates experts described as “deeply worrying.” One dataset covered 13 large red meat and poultry plants between 2015 and 2017 and found an average of more than 150 violations a week, or 15,000 violations over the entire period. Violations included unsanitary factory conditions and meat contaminated with blood, septicemic disease, and feces.

“The rates at which outbreaks of infectious food poisoning occur in the US are significantly higher than in the UK, or the EU,” said Erik Milstone, a food safety expert at Sussex University interviewed by The Guardian. “Poor hygiene in the meat supply chain is a leading cause of food poisoning in the US.” 

Poor sanitary practices allow bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella, which live in the intestinal tracts of infected livestock, to contaminate meat or animal products during slaughter or processing. Contamination occurs at higher rates on factory farms because crowded and unclean living conditions increase the likelihood of transmission between animals. It also stresses out animals, which suppresses their immune response making them more susceptible to disease. The grain-based diets used to fatten cattle can also quickly increase the risk of E. coli infection. In poultry, the practice of processing dead hens into “spent hen meal” to be fed to live hens has increased the spread of Salmonella.

What It Means for You

According to the CDC, roughly 48 million people in the US suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths each year. Salmonella accounts for approximately 11% of infections, and kills more people every year than any other foodborne illness.

Developments

In January of 2011, President Obama signed The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the first major piece of federal legislation addressing food safety since 1938. FSMA grants the FDA new authority to regulate the way food is grown, harvested, and processed, and new powers such as mandatory recall authority. The FSMA “basically codified this principle that everybody responsible for producing food should be doing what the best science says is appropriate to prevent hazards and reduce the risk of illness,” according to Mike Taylor, co-chairman of Stop Foodborne Illness and a former deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA. “So we’re moving in the right direction.”

However, almost ten years later, the FSMA is still being phased in due to a shortage of trained food-inspectors and a lack of funding. “Congress has gotten about halfway to what it said was needed to successfully implement” the act, Taylor said.

The Flu

The Problem

Both the number and density of animals on factory farms increase the risk of new virulent pathogens, according to the US Council for Agriculture, Science, and Technology. In addition, transporting animals over long distances to processing facilities brings different influenza strains into contact with each other, so they combine and spread quickly. Pigs are susceptible to both avian and human flu viruses, so they can serve as ground zero for all sorts of new strains. Because of intensive pig farming practices, “the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fast track, churning out variants every year,” according to a report published in Science magazine.

What It Means for You

These viruses can become pandemics. In fact, viral geneticists link the genetic lineage of H1N1 to a strain that emerged in 1998 in US factory pig farms. The CDC has estimated that between 151,700 and 575,400 people worldwide died from the 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.

Breast, Prostate, and Colon Cancer

The Problem

Factory farms in the US use hormones to stimulate growth in two-thirds of beef cattle. On dairy farms, 54% of cows are injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a growth hormone that increases milk production.

What It Means for You

The health effects of consuming animal products treated with these growth hormones is an ongoing international debate. Some studies have linked growth hormone residues in meat to reproductive issues and breast, prostate, and colon cancer, and IGF-1 has been linked to colon and breast cancer. However, the FDA, the National Institute of Health, and the World Health Organization have independently found that dairy products and meat from rBGH-treated cows are safe for human consumption. Because risk assessments vary, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, and Argentina have banned the use of rBGH as a precautionary measure. The EU has also banned the use of six hormones in cattle and imported beef.

Developments

USDA guidelines allow beef products to be labeled with “no hormones administered” and dairy products to be labeled “from cows not treated with rBST/rBGH” if the producer provides sufficient documentation that this is true. Consumers can use this information to make their own decisions about the risks associated with hormone-treated animal products.

What You Can Do

You can vote for local initiatives that establish health and welfare regulations for factory farms. But only a tiny number of states, including California and Massachusetts, are even putting relevant propositions on the ballot. Another option is to support any of the nonprofits that are, in lieu of effective government action, taking these factory farms to task. The Environmental Working Group, Earthjustice, and Animal Legal Defense Fund are among those working hard to check the worst practices of these CAFOs. Another good organization is the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), which works with local residents to fight the development of factory farms in their own backyards.

Buying humanely-raised animal products from farms and farmers you trust is another way to push back against factory farming. Sadly, products from these smaller farms make up only a fraction of the total. In the US, roughly 99% of chicken, turkeys, eggs, and pork, and 70% of cows, are raised on factory farms.

You can support “clean” burgers, chicken, and pork, by buying it once it becomes widely available. Made from animal cells, the process completely spares the animal and eliminates the factory farm. “The resulting product is 100% real meat, but without the antibiotics, E. coli, Salmonella, or waste contamination,” writes the Good Food Institute, a resource for many clean meat start-ups, which currently number 27. Says Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co., “this promising field will only continue to get bigger.”

Demanding Change

In the meantime, you can register your objection to factory farming by doing your bit to reduce demand for their products. In short, eat less meat and dairy, and more plant-based proteins. Fortunately, the days when that meant forking in soy dogs and potato burgers are long gone. More than $13B were invested in plant-based meat, egg, and dairy companies in 2017 and 2018 alone, according to the Good Food Institute. And Beyond Meat’s IPO debut marked the most successful one since the year 2000.

Lest you think that what you do on your own can’t possibly make a difference, consider one of the major drivers behind all this new investment: consumers are demanding change. Says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of Good Food Institute: “Shifting consumer values have created a favorable market for alternatives to animal-based foods, and we have already seen fast-paced growth in this space across retail and foodservice markets.”

Tia Schwab wrote this story as a News Fellow at Stone Pier Press, an environmental publishing company with a focus on food. Tia is currently working for a nonprofit in Washington, DC while completing her Master’s of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy at Vermont Law School. She received her BA in Food Systems and Public Health from Stanford University.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you eat meat from factory farms?
• Were you aware of the extent of unhealthy conditions prevalent on factory farms?
• What other ways can you think of to combat farm animal cruelty and protest factory farm conditions?

Feature image: iStock.com/dusanpetkovic

Read Next:

• Parting the Veil: What Really Happens in Factory Farms

The post Unhealthy Conditions for Farm Animals are — No Surprise — Bad for Humans, Too appeared first on Food Revolution Network.