My latest Victual Reality column looks at how perfectly wonderful foods like corn and butter get twisted up by food-industry marketers and flavor engineers, confusing people and often sending them scurrying in search of dubious, unhealthy, artificial substitutes -- which the food industry is only too willing to provide.
As if on cue, out comes a New York Times piece on the horrors of microwave popcorn. Those unpleasant fumes that cloud the office when one of your co-workers pops a bag of Orville Redenbacher into the microwave? They really are noxious.
(Thanks to reader Erica Stephan for alerting us to this.)
The Times reports that in California food-flavoring factories (dear God, remember when food's flavor came from farms?), workers have been turning up with a lung condition called bronchiolitis obliterans, "for which there is no cure or treatment." The article adds:
Usually found only in people who are poisoned by chemical fires or chemical warfare or in lung transplant patients, bronchiolitis obliterans renders its victims unable to exert even a little energy without becoming winded or faint.
The common denominator in such cases is exposure to fumes from a substance called diacetyl, which turns out to be a natural byproduct of the fermentation process. Evidently, guys in lab coats have discovered that diacetyl, when isolated by who knows what industrial process, gives food a "buttery" flavor.
(Funny, I've discovered that butter does the same thing, with no need for industrial isolation. Maybe I should set up shop as a flavor scientist?)
It also turns out that in vapor form, diacetyl can obliterate one's lungs. The Times article cites all manner of foot-dragging by the flavor industry and the government agencies that monitor it to actually do anything about the menace -- concerns about which date back to the 1970s.
Meanwhile, the food industry has been blithely dumping diacetyl into microwave popcorn and margarine. Might the fumes created by nuked popcorn, or from margarine used as a sauteing medium, be harming consumers?
The Times piece doesn't address that factor. The Baltimore Sun did last year, though, reporting that all relevant federal agencies had declined to study the issue.
"The problem with a chemical like diacetyl is that the route of exposure -- inhalation -- does not fit easily the jurisdiction of any of these agencies [FDA, etc.]," a law professor told the Sun. Oh -- so it must not be dangerous?
Even if the Times neglected this angle, I do love the way the paper ended its piece. An industry shill makes the following jaw-dropping statement on why diacetyl must remain in popcorn and margarine: "There is no single substance that can replace diacetyl, because it is the single substance most responsible for the 'buttery note.'"
No substitute for the butter substitute, eh? What's a few workers' lungs, anyway?
Comes the stinging retort from California assemblywoman Sally Lieber, who's sponsoring a bill to protect the workers:
We are talking about a potentially devastating disease caused by buttering flavor. And there are alternatives out there. Including butter.
Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things
Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots
Comments
View as Flat
Ron Steenblik Posted 12:58 am
11 May 2007
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 1:51 am
11 May 2007
That made me laugh out loud. Good stuff!
grist.org
Permalink
Liz Borkowski Posted 2:41 am
11 May 2007
There's obviously a serious hazard in the workplace, but we really don't know how much risk people run by popping microwave popcorn at home. We've repeatedly asked the EPA to divulge the results of their study on microwave popcorn emissions, and they keep telling us it's going to be published in a scholarly journal sometime soon.
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 3:37 am
11 May 2007
Onward through the fog
Permalink
GreenEngineer Posted 3:38 am
11 May 2007
Permalink
Dawn Pillsbury Posted 7:19 am
11 May 2007
Flavor engineering - another field to pull your investments from.
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 5:08 am
13 May 2007
I think we'll find out that melamine and diacetyl is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. In the food ingredient listed on most consumer products, only those used in significant amounts (maybe 95 to 99% by weight volume) are reported; NON-FOOD CHEMICALS ARE OFTEN NOT.
Aluminum silicate keeps powders powdery and strange emulsifiers keep liquids from separating. I wish I knew more about the artificial flavoring and food chemistry issues, but hey man, we're eating that stuff! Stabilizers, flavoring agents, acids, emulsifiers, insecticides, rodenticides, dyes, hydrogenated vegetable oil for lubricating food processing machinery, residual cleaning solutions, and all kinds of crap are in many packaged products. Interestingly, some of this crap even finds is way into products that claim to be "organic."
It's enough to make you want to scrimp of the budget and only buy from trusted farmers market people. Tomatoes - we know they are picked green and hard as can be, then set in cold storage sheds and pumped with ethylene gas to ripen them and a nice chemical soup to make sure the bugs don't take over. Orange juice, hah, that's the smelliest factory you ever saw because much of their produce is rejects for the picked fruit market, and are all "rejects." They really have to work to stabilize the product and get rid of that nasty rotten orange smell. It's all done with chemicals, gases, washes, steam, cold sheds, powers, and stuff you'd never dream of.
One of the worst is beer. Industrial beer (as opposed to microbrew and homebrew) has to the pasturized and then somehow stabilized; the list of treatments for canned beer is even more extensive - since beer is slightly acidic and would otherwise eat through the can. Naw, industrial sausage is even worse. It's usually soaked in nitrates so it doesn't rot. Sulfites, now that's a good one! Many people are allergic to sulfites. Remember Red Dye #1, heck man, that turned out to cause cancer. I still won't eat a Maraschino Cherry to this day. One has to wonder how much Global Warming is caused in the name of all these wonderful chemicals and food treatments.
/sammie
Onward through the fog
Permalink
germ Posted 4:39 am
21 May 2007
Permalink
CathyYingling Posted 12:43 am
24 Sep 2007
Cathy Yingling, for Weaver Popcorn
Permalink