Is Our Food Safe? A Consumer's Guide to Protecting Your Health and the Environment

CHAPTER ONE IF OUR FOOD IS SO SAFE, WHY ARE WE WORRIED? Confusing messages about food are everywhere. For example, government leaders tell us we have the safest food supply in the world, but they also ask us to memorize complicated food-handling instructions. Are Americans who question the safety of their food being overcautious, or are there really serious problems with what we eat? In short, is food safety a major concern or not? At first glance, the situation in America today certainly looks good compared to what it was in the past. After all, we could be living in New York City in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Back then, the public water supply smelled from pollutants and any- one who could afford it paid for water trucked in from the country- side. The milk was so contaminated that newspapers accused the dairies of murder. The cows' meager diet of "swill" residue from the city's distilleries, caused the milk to appear a sickly blue that had to be hidden by artificial coloring. It was then delivered unrefrigerated to local neighborhoods in the same wagons that trucked out cow manure.1 The bread wasn't much better. Health reformer Sylvester Graham accused commercial bakers of increasing their profits by adding "chalk, pipe clay and plaster of Paris" to their bread to cover up impurities and to make it heavier and whiter. New York was by no means unique. At every location and every time in history, people have gotten sick from what they ate. Poor food preservation techniques, inadequate understanding of sanitation, and contaminants in the food supply caused serious illnesses such as cholera and typhoid fever. Even today, 2 million people die each year in developing countries from diarrheal disease, primarily transmitted through food and water.3 Most people throughout history have had diets lacking key nutrients. Before the American Revolution, many of the colonists ate an unvarying diet consisting almost exclusively of bread and meat. For most of the year, they ate few, if any, fruits or vegetables. Even today, many poor people around the world subsist primarily on a single food such as rice. From the lack of vitamins and other essentials, they frequently become sick or blind or even die. So, viewed through the long lens of history, the modern American food system is a marvel of productivity, cleanliness, and safety. For a visitor from an earlier generation, or from many developing countries today, an American supermarket, with its endless aisles of food choices, including fresh fruits and vegetables stacked high year-round, would be a technological wonder as impressive as computers, video cameras, and cell phones. This abundance has had real health benefits. People grow taller and live longer than ever before, at least in part because they have more plentiful and better food. We know so much more about nutrition than earlier generations, and our food even comes with informative ingredient lists and nutrition labels. We also use more sophisticated methods to prepare and preserve food safely. Farmers and food processors have raised their standards of sanitation. Government regulators take consumer safety more seriously. Perhaps most impressive of all, it takes remarkably few people to provide us with all this food. In 1900, more than 2 out of 5 Americans lived on farms, since that was the only way in which society could produce sufficient food. Today, only 1 out of each 40 American workers works in agriculture; and because of their remarkable productivity, the rest of us are free to pursue other occupations and live away from the land. THE DOWNSIDE TO ALL THAT FOOD Unfortunately, at the same time that we have increased the variety, quantity, and overall safety of our food, we have created new and serious problems that threaten our well-being. Here are three reasons why we should be concerned. 1. Changes toLeon, Warren is the author of 'Is Our Food Safe? A Consumer's Guide to Protecting Your Health and the Environment', published 2002 under ISBN 9780609807828 and ISBN 060980782X.