European researchers are worried about antimony, a toxic chemical element, appearing at possibly unsafe levels in various juice brands:

Writing in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, scientists at the University of Copenhagen studied antimony levels in 42 juice drinks and found antimony concentrations above EU limits for drinking water in eight of them.

This discovery is of concern to the soft drinks industry because antimony is a suspected carcinogen that resembles arsenic on a chemical level. read more…

What you need to know:

Antimony is a toxic chemical element. In small doses, it can cause headaches, dizziness, and depression. Larger doses can lead to violent and frequent vomiting, and death in a few days.

So how does antimony get into juice drinks? The answer may lie in the containers, not the liquid itself.  Antimony leaches from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles into liquids stored within.

And why, dear lord, one asks, is a toxin used in food bottles?

Turns out that antimony is used as a catalyst in the production of plastic bottles. Despite it’s role solely as a facilitator of a chemical reaction, there’s always a minuscule bit of antimony that is left over in the resulting bottle.

There are strict standards as to how much antimony is allowed in water to be considered safe. In the US it’s 6 part per billion (ppb). In the EU – 5 ppb. But this is a definition for water in general. There are no standards specifically for bottled juices.

The British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) responded to the study claiming that the 44 ppb found in several bottles does not mean they’re unsafe, as

“there is no read across between the levels of antimony permitted in drinking water and those that might be acceptable in a fruit juice or a juice drink. It is not uncommon that different product types should have different regulatory requirements.”

What to do at the supermarket:

Another reason to fret about buying and consuming plastic bottled drinks? Not really.

We wouldn’t put antimony at the top of our list of worries. There are plenty of other good reasons to switch to tap water, including weight lost, money saved, and planet greened.

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Remember the proposed soda tax? The added penny per fluid ounce, generating $50 billion in funds to combat obesity in the next 10 years?

Well, forget about it.

Never mind obesity. To hell with diabetes.

The beverage industry needs to grow its bottom line, and no one is going to to tax its products. Certainly not a bunch of do gooders on behalf of the “nanny-state”.

You see, in this great democracy called America, money votes. And through a series of contributions and investments of the American Beverage Association, the proposed tax has been all but buried.

In a saddening-as-much-as-it-is-enlightening article in the Los Angeles Times, the money trail is revealed. A series of well planned moves by beverage industry lobbyists included:

1. Discrediting researchers from Yale and UCLA who linked soft drink consumption with obesity.

2. Funding of research that showed no relationship between soft drink consumption and obesity. The researchers are or have been on the payroll of the beverage industry at one time.

3. Contribution to Hispanic organizations. Reasoning: the soda tax will hit the poor the most. Hispanic groups are now against the tax, despite diabetes hitting Latino youths especially hard.

4. A $10 million Ad campaign aired on prime time and playing on chords of hard working moms not needing to pay extra in these tough times.

5. Enlisting the aid of other industries in order to thwart the tax:

“The industries in our coalition realized that this is a slippery slope, that once government reaches into the grocery cart, your business could be next,” said Kevin Keane, senior vice president, public affairs, for the American Beverage Assn.

6. A big bribe (north of $600,000) to the American Academy of Family Physicians, to be used to underwrite “educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions.”

What you need to know:

Make no mistake, soda pop and sweetened beverages are a major contributing factor to obesity. The price poor people are paying for their soda now is minuscule compared to their health expenses 10 or 20 years down the road.  Unfortunately, there is no ANTI-Beverage-Association with deep pockets to coordinate a counter offensive.

As long as companies externalize the true cost of their products, gullible consumers will choose cheap and sweet satisfaction now, with heart disease and heartache down the road. This must end, but as you can see, there are no effective mechanisms, even at government levels, to stave off the power of corporate lobbies.

And with the recent supreme court decision to allow unlimited campaign contribution by companies to our politicians, you can rest assured Washington DC will NOT make an effort to change things.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you want to impact change, stop buying liquid calories. Switch to tap water. Switch your whole family. Switch as many of your friends and neighbors as you can to do the same. You’ll save money, you’ll save your health.

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Care for some water? No way, get me a Diet Coke, or a Coke Zero.

Water is for washing hands, not drinking. And regular soft drinks and juice are full of sugars and calories.

So you decided a long time ago to go with artificial sweeteners. After a while, you didn’t even notice the slightly different taste compared to sugar sweetened beverages. And, diet drinks are zero calories. Win-win. Both taste buds AND body are happy. A no-brainer, right?

Not so fast.

A fascinating article – Artificially Sweetened Beverages Cause for Concern – recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), challenges the notion that artificial sweeteners are risk free.

The article’s author, David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD,  a Harvard professor and Founding Director of the Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) clinic at Children’s Hospital, Boston, makes three important points, especially in the context of artificially sweetened drinks:

1. Our body gets confused by artificial sweeteners – the dissociation between sweet taste and calorie intake may put the regulatory system that controls hunger and body weight out of sync, thus sabotaging weight loss plans. A study on rodents showed that those fed saccharin actually gained weight compared to rodents fed sucrose.

2. We’re “Infantilizing” our taste sense – Artificial sweeteners are a hundredfold sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). By getting ourselves used to so much sweet, normal sweet flavors, of fruit for example, become bland and so do other healthful foods such as grains and vegetables, thus reducing our willingness to consume them and ultimately the quality of our diet.

3. Long term effects unclear – while there have been many studies on artificial sweeteners and disease such cancer, very few focused on long term weight gain. A seven year study, (San Antonio Heart Study), showed a relationship between diet drink consumption and obesity, but the causation is not clear. Consumption of artificial sweeteners is growing yearly. According to Ludwig,

If trends in consumption continue, the nation will, in effect, have embarked on a massive, uncontrolled, and inadvertent public health experiment. Although many synthetic chemicals have been added to the food supply in recent years, artificial sweeteners in beverages stand out in their ability to interact with evolutionarily ancient sensorineural pathways at remarkably high affinity.

What to do at the supermarket:

Whether sweetened with sugar, or artificially, our body does not need anything but water. And while switching overnight from a life sin H2O seems impossible, you can opt for baby steps such as watering down juice, consuming soda only during predefined meals / weekly activities, and getting your sweet tooth filled with juicy fruits such as oranges, melons, pears, and apples. If money is your motivator – think about the $500 a year a family of four can save by just switching to tap water.

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If you’ve been following this blog, you know we preach to ditch soft drinks in favor of plain old water. But not the expensive bottled water. From the faucet – tap water. Water is healthy because it has no extra calories, no artificial colorings, and no preservatives or additives. And it takes a weight off of your wallet – the savings for an average American family of 4 that quits soft drinks are over $500 a year.

And for most western world locations, tap water is absolutely safe, we reported in the past. That’s why we were so upset to read The New York Times story about toxicity in American tap water:

• The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 and required monitoring of 20 dangerous chemicals.
• The list of toxins grew to 91 by the late 1990’s.
• It is still miserably short when one considers the SIXTY THOUSAND chemicals that are used in this country, hundreds of which are known carcinogens and many of which have found their way into our water systems.
• Tens of millions of people could be affected by multiple contaminants in their drinking water.
• The EPA says that very long studies are needed to verify the effects, but even then it’s hard to determine causality because pollution is also in the air we breath, food we eat, our clothes, toys, homes, and pretty much everywhere.

The Times article is part of a series called Toxic Waters, a frightening and interesting read.

What you need to know:

So we must drink bottled water, right?

Not so fast.

Where do you think all the bottled water comes from? Many bottlers take their water from the same sources as municipal tap. True, they filter it, but do you think they do more testing for toxins than the minimum they should by law? Not!

Large public water supplies are tested for contaminants up to several times a day. But the FDA requires bottlers to test their water just once a month or year.

And bottled water is stored in plastics that leach out PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, another carcinogen. Not to mention the huge environmental impact of billions of plastic bottles polluting our planet.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re debating between tap and bottled water, you’re already in a good place, not drinking soft drinks. Many people choose bottled water because they have gotten used to the taste. Before you commit yourself one way or the other, check out your local water supply safety reports. You can also opt for home purifying and filtering systems.

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The December Edition of Consumer Reports, already out, is bringing BPA, a controversial chemical, back to the headlines. The non-profit publisher, Consumers Union, tested various canned foods for BPA and found alarmingly high values in daily staples such as tuna, beans and soups. You can read more about it here.

This is a good opportunity to get reacquainted with a chemical we  all consume in some form, whether we know it, like it, or not.

What you need to know:
1. Bisphenol-A  is a chemical compound used as a building block of several polymers and polycarbonates that in turn are found in plastic bottles and cans. Which means all of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

2. The chemical has been sold since the 1940’s and starting in the 1960’s has been lining the insides of cans in order to extend shelf life.

3. 7 billion pounds of BPA are produced annually, for use in food packaging, PVC water pipes, electronics, and more.

4. In 2008, more than 22 billion cans for food and more than 100 billion cans for beer and soft drinks were produced with BPA.

5. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

6. Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies who ingest a proportionally larger amount due to their small size. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

7. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated that people consume 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight every day over the course of a lifetime. Over 40 studies have found adverse health effects in rats given less than one hundredth of that amount!

8. Over 200 animal studies that have linked BPA consumption in tiny amounts to a host of reproductive problems, brain damage, immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and behavioral oddities like hyperactivity, learning deficits and reduced maternal willingness to nurse offspring.

9. In 2008, Canada added BPA to its list of toxic substances and plans are to ban BPA from all baby bottles.

10. The FDA has zigzagged on BPA safety. In August 2008 it deemed BPA safe. However, in December 2008, the FDA’s own advisory board accused the FDA of weighing 2 industry-backed studies much more heavily than the hundreds of other independent studies. The FDA’s excuse: all the other studies did not meet the FDA’s guidelines for determining safety for human consumption, did not provide raw data, and a host of other “reasons”.

11. In March 2009, six manufacturers announced that they would voluntarily stop manufacturing bottles with BPA. Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflo, Avent America, Dr. Brown and Disney First Years decided to so in order to preempt legal action being considered at the time by several state attorney generals.

12. In May 2009, Chicago became the first city to ban sales of baby bottles and sippy cups with BPA. Denmark became the first European country to do the same.

13. Many other European countries conducted reviews in the past 2 years but decided to maintain BPA’s safe status for now.

14. If you think you’re safe, 93% of the population has BPA in their bodies, according to urine sampling conducted by the Center for Disease Control, CDC.

15. There’s hope – Many Japanese manufacturers voluntarily stopped using BPA in 1997. In a 2003 study, BPA levels in people’s urine had dropped by 50%.

What to do at the supermarket:
Here are some tips on how to reduce your family’s  BPA intake:
1. if you have a baby or toddler, purchase BPA free plastic bottles.
2. If microwaving formula, do so in a glass bottle.
3. Opt for fresh or frozen products less than canned.
4. Drink tap water instead of bottled water

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Japan gets hot in the summer. A hot Tokyo train ride during rush hour is no treat. So cold beverages are available for sale in vending machines all over town.

Now, catering to growing interest in healthy drinks, both Coca Cola and Pespico are unveiling local versions of “healthy soft drinks”. (Don’t you just love this oxymoron?)

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that while Coke is going for the classic green tea play, Pepsi  will introduce a more exotic basil leaf “Pepsi Shiso” later this month.

What you need to know:

Folks – it’s liquid candy, and we don’t care if they added a vitamin or an antioxidant to make you believe otherwise.

What to do at the supermarket:

Save $500 a year by switching to tap water! If you must get your antioxidants from a beverage, look for unsweetened iced teas.

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A bit of good news this week. 16 million less Americans are drinking sugary soft drinks now compared to 6 years ago (68% of adults vs 76%). This, from a report published by Mintel, a marketing research firm.

What are we drinking instead?
That’s the bad news:
1. 7.8 million switched to diet soft drinks.
2. 24 million added bottled water to their shopping carts. (the healthiest choice, but oh so many plastic bottles…)
3. 17 million more gulped down energy drinks. (the caffeine, the calories…)
4. 11 million additional future Olympians opted for sports drinks. (the broken dream of  enhancement…)

The study also found that 16% of Americans are concerned about high-fructose corn syrup, while 15% are worried about artificial sweeteners in diet drinks.

At the same time, an academic research report affirms what dietitians have been telling us for quite some time: cutting calories from sugary drinks may be more effective for weight loss than reducing the same amount in solid foods.

The study was  conducted by Liwei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., M.H.S., assistant professor of epidemiology, School of Public Health, LSU Health Science Center, New Orleans and published this week in  the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

One reason for this [finding] is that the body is able to self-regulate its intake of solid food. For example, if you eat too much solid food at lunch, you’ll tend to eat less at dinner. But the same self-regulation is not there for what you drink, experts say. Your body does not adjust to liquid calories, so over time, you gain more weight, Chen explained.

Thestudy “supports what many have suspected — liquid calories don’t satisfy,” said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. “In addition, the identification that [sugar-sweetened beverages] can impact weight gain more than other liquids is an important message as Americans continue to work to lower their calories.”

more details…

What you need to know:

Soft drinks are a very lucrative market for the food industry. The raw materials are dirt cheap (water, sugar, food coloring), and the returns are very high.

The top 2 players in the US, The Coca Cola Company and PepsiCo, are well aware of shifting trends in consumer preferences and have plenty to continue to offer us from their quiver of brands picked up over years of consolidation.

What to do at the supermarket:

Here’s a radical idea. Why not skip the beverage aisle next time you go shopping?

Tap water in the US is clean, refreshing, and of negligible cost.

In fact, a family of 4 will save over $500 in grocery bills by just quitting soft drinks.

What are you waiting for?

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Time Magazine has published its Top 10 of Everything issue, and the food list is filled with great insights into what we were thinking about this past year. Some of the interesting trends:

Recession dining - people are saving on food wherever they can.
Nanny-state food regulations - Obviously the Time editors don’t like menu labeling laws.
Salmonella Saintpaul – recap of this summer’s food scare.
The war on bottled water – Tap water is the new black.
Caffeinated foods – as if Red Bull and its clones weren’t enough.
The backlash against local food - not as friendly to the environment as previously perceived?

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We just wrote about the bottled vs tap water dilema a few days ago, and the media is again abuzz with findings from a recent study that bottled water is actually just the same as tap. USA Today reports:

The findings challenge the popular impression — and marketing pitch — that bottled water is purer than tap water, the researchers say.

Read full article

What you need to know:

Tiny amounts of contaminants are found in both bottled and tap water. They are all less than danger thresholds as defined by the FDA. Keep in mind – bottled water does not automatically mean mineral or spring water. In fact, the two biggest brands Dasani (owned by Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (PepsiCo), are tap water in a bottle. They do go through a few more filters though.

What to do at the supermarket:

We reiterate our earlier recommendation: It’s a personal choice. If you prefer bottled water, choose just water, and not the sugary vitamin drinks that pack extra sugar calories to mask the bitter taste of vitamins. And please don’t forget to recycle.

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As more people are switching back to tap water, to save the planet from drowning in plastic bottles and to save a few extra dollars, the LA Times brings this:

“Bottled water isn’t any safer or purer than what comes out of the tap,” says Dr. Sarah Janssen, science fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, which conducted an extensive analysis of bottled water back in 1999. “In fact, it’s less well-regulated, and you’re more likely to know what’s in tap water.”

Read full article…

What you need to know:

In most places in the western world, tap water is perfectly safe to drink, cheaper, and takes less of a toll on the environment. Bottled water is not necessarily mineral water. It can be the same tap you would get at home, just through a few more filters.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s a personal choice. If you prefer bottled water, choose just water, and not the sugary vitamin drinks that pack extra sugar calories to mask the bitter taste of vitamins.