Exploring Food Safety

Bottled water has become increasingly popular, and the marketing efforts designed to promote it are becoming more and more sophisticated. But is it purely a marketing phenomenon? Is it really no better than the stuff that comes out of the tap? So many people believe, and, to be fair, their beliefs have been backed up by a number of studies.

Recently, an association of American mayors agreed that their cities would not spend any more money on bottled water except in emergencies. They were concerned that their buying of bottled water sends an implicit message that ordinary tap water is unsafe.

There’s an excellent article in the Washington Post today about the merits, or otherwise, of bottled water. It’s often wryly funny, for example when it describes the bringing of water to the US from Fiji, where the vast majority of the population love to have running tap water like in America.

I’m not sure about this one, though. I think there are places, even in the industrialised world, where water isn’t safe. Several times in the past I attempted to abandon all my other unhealthy beverages and drink tap water only. Each time, within a few days, I ended up with a raging, unappeasable thirst, a thirst that even drinking didn’t cure. I hadn’t to give up my good resolutions and go back to the unhealthy potations I had sampled before. But the area I live in may be exceptional, because afterwards I read newspaper stories claiming its water quality was among the worst in the developed world.

As predicted, vested interests would use the current global food crisis as a way to push for acceptance of Genetically modified crops and genetically modified food. Britain’s environment minister is now coming out in favour of growing GM crops in Britain, and Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, intends to promote the GM cause at the EU level.

It cannot be said often enough that GM crops DO NOT INCREASE YIELDS. As even this pro-GM Foods editorial in the Independent admits, they may even lead to a decrease in yields. The GM propagandists are demanding that all the barriers to GM crops be cast down,  invoking the benefits of high-yield seed strains that can be grown even in drought conditions. But these crops do not exist. The main characteristic of most GM crops is that they can be survive dousing in ultra-strong pesticides. They may be able to but the other wildlife in the vicinity cannot, and what effect those pesticides ultimately have on the humans who consume the food is something to be feared.

OK, slight exaggeration. But blaming fat people seems to be in vogue, so it surely can’t be long before someone comes out with that accusation too.

Repeated studies have shown that we tend to have an instinctive contempt for fat people. We associate obesity with sloth, greed and lack of self-discipline. In recent years, there have been attempts to overcome this prejudice and to encourage acceptance of large body sizes. There was always debate about whether this was a good thing or not since obesity was never simply a matter of aesthetics, of a subjective opinion about how pleasant something looked, but correlated objectively to adverse health outcomes.

It looks like the debate is simply being thrown out the window now, however, since everyone and his dog is now pitching in with a kick to the ribs of fat people. Last month, we had academics publishing a paper in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet which blamed fat people for being a burden on the public treasury by forcing greater health-related expenditures, and hurting the world’s poor by driving up food prices. Now a UN official, Jacques Diouf, is echoing exactly the same line.

It must be terrible for fat people who were constantly bullied at school. They thought they could grow up, get to the adult world and get past all that. Now they find the United Nations is hammering them too.

Another study has confirmed what was initially greeted as hugely surprising result : Type 2 Diabetes sufferers see no benefit in health outcomes related to heart problems from reducing their blood sugar levels.

For a long time, it was simply assumed that, since high blood sugar levels were characteristic of Type 2 Diabetes, reducing them would offer health benefits. Doing so is not easy and usually involves taking a cocktail of other drugs. Now, it seems, there is no benefit to the heart at all from doing this.

A new scientific study has found that alcohol protects against rheumatoid arthritis. The effect is found in both men and women, and the more alcohol is consumed, the greater the effect is. Scientists have no real explanation for the results, but found a similar effect in mice.

Of course, it should be noted that consuming large quantities of alcohol may bring other adverse health effects, despite the protection it may offer for arthritis.