I am fortunate to live in a state famous for its aggressive and progressive efforts to warn consumers about chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. In part, this stems from a ballot initiative, Proposition 65, which passed back in 1986. Prop 65 is formally known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. The primary state agency that enforces Prop 65 is the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), www.oehha.ca.gov. The main mission of OEHHA is to protect human and environmental health from the risk posed by hazardous substances using a careful scientific evaluation of these chemicals and their risks. Prop 65 requires anyone who manufactures or distributes a product sold in California that contains a material on a list of approximately eight hundred hazardous chemicals, identified by OEHHA as known to cause cancer or reproductive harm, to include a warning label. These labels and signs are now ubiquitous, posted in bars, restaurants, coffee shops, schools, and apartment buildings and on scores of products.
As you might expect, industry has fought hard to minimize the powers of OEHHA, and industry-supported bloggers and opinionistas regularly promote disinformation, “alternative facts,” and generally do their best to manufacture doubt about the scientific evidence concerning the hazards of almost any chemical that makes substantial profits for industry. As of this writing, the industry PR machine, together with the Monsanto legal team, is doing its best to convince the public and OEHHA that it is a good idea to use copious amounts of a carcinogenic chemical for cosmetic weed abatement, even around schools and parks frequented by children. When you see such an article, remember Merchants of Doubt, mentioned earlier217; doubt is their product, and if you doubt the science, you will continue to buy the product, irrespective of the potential harm. This is the cynical goal of such PR campaigns. Also as of this writing, industry has failed in one of its most recent campaigns—OEHHA has now listed glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the mostly widely used weed killer in the world, as a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer. This was not because a few controversial studies showed this, but rather because the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization, examined all of the published studies on glyphosate and concluded that it was a probable human carcinogen.
The Prop 65 warning labels are far from perfect, for they do not indicate what the substance is, where it is in the product, how you might be exposed to it, or the extent of the risk. They also do not offer information on how to reduce or avoid exposure. Sometimes the chemicals are man-made and avoidable and the labels obvious and somewhat redundant—does anyone really doubt that gasoline contains toxic and carcinogenic chemicals? At other times the chemicals are naturally found in foods or produced as a by-product of cooking. For example, if you are wondering why coffee shops and restaurants post Prop 65 warning signs, it is primarily because some items contain acrylamide, a substance formed in foods that are cooked at high temperatures for an extended time (as in many baked, toasted, roasted, and fried foods) by a reaction between sugars—naturally occurring or added—and a breakdown product of the amino acid asparagine. Prop 65 warning labels may also be weak because they might not always reflect the most current science—that is, they don’t include as many chemicals as they could. Despite this, Prop 65 is at least a well-intended start that gives California residents peace of mind that residents of other states may not have. In response to laws such as Prop 65, the chemical industry lobbied hard for the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (S.697), which preempts the right of California and other states to regulate chemicals that the EPA has decided to allow. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the future, when California identifies a chemical under Prop 65 that the EPA allows to be used. My bet is on California. Just today (September 13, 2017), California passed State Bill 258, which will require manufacturers to disclose the ingredients in all cleaning products, destroying the “fragrance exception” we discussed in chapter 8. No doubt this will provoke a strong response from industry and its allies. I can’t wait to see how this new battle turns out.
Most of us don’t like to be told what to do or not do. We like freedom of choice. We do not want the government to legislate how we live so long as it does not cause harm to others and the collective good of society. But in the end, at least to some degree, we do pay a price as individuals and as a society for unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and engaging in habits that fuel the obesity epidemic, particularly when we may not know the full extent of how our behavior affects our health. Cigarette packs, in fact, were among the first products to be slapped with a warning label; in 1966 the federal government mandated that they all carry the message from the surgeon general. The initial warning was relatively mild: “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health.” But the current warning is more realistic: “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy.” The surgeon general’s warning landed on alcohol in 1989. How many more years—maybe decades—will it take for us to find similar warnings on products whose ingredients may cause obesity? And should we go this far in our labeling endeavors? I think so. But one might reasonably ask whether we should draw a line, and if so, where?
We are starting to see restaurants label their menus with calorie counts. Unfortunately, restaurants did not decide to add calorie counts because they were concerned about our health; they did so because they were mandated by law to disclose nutritional data. After all, I don’t think Outback Steakhouse wants us to know that their popular Bloomin’ Onion contains more than 800 calories, including 58 grams of fat (22 grams of which are saturated fat), plus 1,520 mg of sodium. And that is before you start dipping it into the sauce. Whether or not such information deters people from ordering certain foods and/or beverages to the extent it helps stem the tide of exploding obesity rates remains to be seen. It has made a difference in the foods I choose in fast-food restaurants. I applaud measures such as these because they can help us make better, more informed decisions when it comes to behaviors that impact our health.
The challenge, however, is waiting for laws that force companies to expose their practices and ingredients and the consequences of exposure to them. Let’s also not forget that doctors once endorsed smoking and that the American Heart Association, in its recent endorsement of the use of polyunsaturated vegetable oils instead of the increasingly popular saturated fat coconut oil, neglected to mention the support they receive from the soy industry. Clearly, even so-called authorities can take a position that is biased and partly or completely wrong. Worse yet, there is so much information out on the Internet that it is difficult for any but the most skeptical and critical consumers to ferret out the true facts. It is up to each one of us to push for change in industry and demand more research where research is needed.
Indeed, personal choice and responsibility matter, but we are living in a world seemingly engineered to make and keep us fat (and unhealthy as well). Foods are made to be addictive. Subliminal messaging meets our eyes and brains daily, telling us that more is better and daring us to “eat just one chip.” Everyday products we use expose us to chemicals that have the power to change our physiology in ways we never knew before. We take for granted the pleasures and conveniences of our modern society in the Western world, where we can order as much of anything we want at the swipe of a finger on our smartphones, but we do not think about the undertow to that modernity. Millions of us are paying a huge price. Millions more will continue to pay a hefty price in future generations if we do not do something starting today. While it was once the case that this phenomenon was most prevalent in the United States, the multinational food industry is doing a great job of exporting the obesity epidemic worldwide. Despite the prevalence of unhealthy, addictive food, we are bombarded with the message that obesity is our fault alone, that we eat too much and exercise too little and have chosen this fate. By now, I hope that the messages in this book have convinced you of the truth.
Imagine if someone took money out of your bank account without telling you. He does this at random throughout the month, and there is no paper or digital trail. When trying to balance your checkbook at the end of the month, you cannot figure out what is wrong. Nothing computes according to your data, and you cannot make sense of your checkbook. You do your best to account for income and spending and to balance the checkbook, but you continue to fail. Well, that is rather similar to what is going on today with your caloric checkbook. Yes, you can count calories in and calories burned, but you will not easily be able to factor in all the other components to your weight equation. And the presence of obesogens is a big one. That thief is robbing your personal account. Worse, that hidden, silent villain is messing with your biology as you try so hard to eat well and exercise more.
My hope is that this book has armed you with the necessary knowledge to go forward and pursue a healthier life without feeling bad about yourself, to avoid thinking that only your sloth and gluttony (two of the so-called seven deadly sins) are responsible for your ever-expanding waistline and poor health. Be the change in how you live. And be a model for others, children included.