4 ms·

The highest amount in their list was 54 micrograms per serving. Most of them were under 5 µg. They seem to have just bundled everything together instead of list

by masto 3y ago

The highest amount in their list was 54 micrograms per serving. Most of them were under 5 µg. They seem to have just bundled everything together instead of listing specific amounts of specific chemicals, and chose to put the numbers in "nanograms per serving" to make them look as big as possible. I tried to look up the regulations, but whatever the value of EU regulations may be, readability and simplicity are not their strong points. Picking on DEHP because it's one CR mentions, I found these secondhand references: * https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/16th-amendment-to-eu-regulation-10-2011-on-plastic-fcms-now-in-force https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/16th-amendment-to-eu... * https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/efsa-updated-risk-assessment-of-five-phthalates https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/efsa-updated-risk-as... The first says that the "specific migration limit" for DEHP had been lowered to 0.6 mg/kg. I assume that's the amount that ends up in the product. The second refers to Tolerable Daily Intake based on body weight, of 50 µg/kg. So we're talking about, in one measure, the limit being 600000 nanograms in a kilogram of food. The serving size of Annie's Original Organic Cheesy Ravioli is 242g. So the allowable amount of DEHP in that serving would be 2,479,338 nanograms. They found 53,579, or around 2% of the acceptable amount. Looking at it from TDI, Wikipedia gives a low bound on the average adult body weight of 60 kg. That's 3,000,000 nanograms, which brings it down to 1.8%. Consumer Reports has not been a reputable publication for many years, and they continue to trade on their name as many Americans at least have it in their head that CR is some kind of unbiased arbiter of quantitative information about what's good or not. What they actually do is clickbait to sell subscriptions. This became clear to me when I realized that any time they write about a product category I have a lot of experience with, their recommendations make no sense. Thinking that they actually provide useful information but only about the things I don't have the ability to fact-check them on is a form of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

morsch 3y ago
2% isn't nothing. It's easy to get a bigger number: have a kid (30 kg) eat two servings -- hardly unrealistic -- and you're already at 8%. And that's not the only food they'll consume that day. German government research estimates that around 1% of the population consumes more than the TDI (according to another federal government press release from 2013[1]). According to that source, kids' exposition to DEHP is half from food, and half from other sources like toys and the overall environment, and the typical exposition is between 15-44 ug/kg (i.e. below the TDI). [1] https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/presseinformation/2013/13/weichmacher_dehp_wird_hauptsaechlich_ueber_lebensmittel_aufgenommen-186791.html https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/presseinformation/2013/13/weichma...
- masto 3y ago
  I appreciate that objective viewpoint and backing it up with data. If Consumer Reports presented it that way, I wouldn't have an issue with their reporting. A person can read that and have a much better understanding of the potential risk and what they want to do about it. But CR just goes for the attention-grabbing headline, a scary article with meaningless phrases like "while there is no level that scientists have confirmed as safe", no access to their raw data, and no reference to how whatever the found compares to the food safety standards (especially with the way they lumped all the phthalates together). To give them a modicum more credit: I missed the link to this PDF the first time, which at least discloses the testing methodology and has a page listing the applicable safety standards. https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1704381057/prod/content/dam/surveys/Consumer_Reports_Test_Methodology_for_Bisphenols_and_Phthalates_in_Food_01-24.pdf https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v170... There's something I find very interesting in there: they added phthalates and phthalate replacements together and reported it as phthalates. Phthalate replacements are also known as "non-phthalate plasticizers", which as the name implies, are not phthalates, and are used in products that want to be "BPA and phthalate free". To what extent are those reported numbers actually coming from DEHA in pthalate-free polyethylene wrappers? To me, this crosses the line from simple clickbait to dishonesty. I don't have a horse in this race apart from being the kind of person who just wants to know what is actually true. Industry will absolutely lie and poison us to make a buck, but at the same time, everything is chemicals, and many "natural" substances are incredibly toxic. Ultimately it is farcical to think that any of us are in a position to do or even properly evaluate research and we rely on experts and reputation to try to make sense of these technical fields. CR publishing it doesn't make it untrue, but unfortunately I think it's a mistake to rely on them either. At best it's a pointer that there may be something interesting and worth seeing if anyone else has done a better job.

by masto 3y ago

morsch 3y ago

2% isn't nothing. It's easy to get a bigger number: have a kid (30 kg) eat two servings -- hardly unrealistic -- and you're already at 8%. And that's not the only food they'll consume that day. German government research estimates that around 1% of the population consumes more than the TDI (according to another federal government press release from 2013[1]). According to that source, kids' exposition to DEHP is half from food, and half from other sources like toys and the overall environment, and the typical exposition is between 15-44 ug/kg (i.e. below the TDI). [1] https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/presseinformation/2013/13/weichmacher_dehp_wird_hauptsaechlich_ueber_lebensmittel_aufgenommen-186791.html https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/presseinformation/2013/13/weichma...

masto 3y ago
I appreciate that objective viewpoint and backing it up with data. If Consumer Reports presented it that way, I wouldn't have an issue with their reporting. A person can read that and have a much better understanding of the potential risk and what they want to do about it. But CR just goes for the attention-grabbing headline, a scary article with meaningless phrases like "while there is no level that scientists have confirmed as safe", no access to their raw data, and no reference to how whatever the found compares to the food safety standards (especially with the way they lumped all the phthalates together). To give them a modicum more credit: I missed the link to this PDF the first time, which at least discloses the testing methodology and has a page listing the applicable safety standards. https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1704381057/prod/content/dam/surveys/Consumer_Reports_Test_Methodology_for_Bisphenols_and_Phthalates_in_Food_01-24.pdf https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v170... There's something I find very interesting in there: they added phthalates and phthalate replacements together and reported it as phthalates. Phthalate replacements are also known as "non-phthalate plasticizers", which as the name implies, are not phthalates, and are used in products that want to be "BPA and phthalate free". To what extent are those reported numbers actually coming from DEHA in pthalate-free polyethylene wrappers? To me, this crosses the line from simple clickbait to dishonesty. I don't have a horse in this race apart from being the kind of person who just wants to know what is actually true. Industry will absolutely lie and poison us to make a buck, but at the same time, everything is chemicals, and many "natural" substances are incredibly toxic. Ultimately it is farcical to think that any of us are in a position to do or even properly evaluate research and we rely on experts and reputation to try to make sense of these technical fields. CR publishing it doesn't make it untrue, but unfortunately I think it's a mistake to rely on them either. At best it's a pointer that there may be something interesting and worth seeing if anyone else has done a better job.