In the US, the strangest food additives are legal, but not so in Europe. I don't know how the UK now regulates food chemistry in imported goods (Brexit: outside EU regulation). Do they have own strict rules now or did they (mis)used Brexit to liberalize the blacklist of illegal food ingredients.

It's a completely different story with air pollutants. There, the authorities in the US (or is it just California?) exert real pressure on, for example, car manufacturers, while European manufacturers for decades dared to cheat because they always got away with it in Europe. Real (financially painful) penalties were never to be expected here, let alone prison sentences for those responsible. The US authorities really taught VW a multi-billion-dollar lesson and at least one of their managers served time in a U.S. prison (until now no one was sentenced to prison here; ongoing law-suits).

However, I believe that food chemistry significantly shortens people's lives and/or triggers chronic illnesses. The air here, on the other hand, is as clean as it hasn't been since the early Middle Ages. It's a strange prioritization of air over food for public health related rules and laws.

Primarily California. It all started in Los Angeles. It is a basin so it traps pollution. Back in the 50's seeing a half mile through the air was a rare event. Everyone had trash incinerators. The 60's brought petrochemical smog, because mass transit was swapped for car culture. Then the air was brown, real smog. Then by the mid 70's cars had regulations to reduce emissions. Things started to get better. Then more things began to get regulated. Things continued to get better. Today on most days everyone in Los Angeles can see the mountains that ring the basin most every day.

Thank The South Coast Air Quality Management District for that.

I know what the air(?) quality in LA was like in the late 1970s, and dread to think what it was like a decade earlier.

After a few months in LA I returned to the UK and spent the next few weeks coughing up slime, initially a dirty brown colour, but gradually faded to a pale yellow - yuk.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Literally sliming our food landscape:


More than 520 chemicals found in English soil, including long-banned medical substances
wrote:

Fertilising arable land with human waste leaves array of toxins [to] re-enter food chain

... including pharmaceutical products and toxins that were banned decades ago...

... Soil pollution is understudied compared with wastewater and river research, despite soil being so important for human and environmental health, and the fact contaminants can persist for decades...

... It is not the fault of farmers for spreading this, she said, as it is what they have been told to do in order to be sustainable.

“We need to regulate for them properly and we need education to make sure that everybody knows what is being applied and what the potential risks are that are associated with that,”...

... An ongoing no-cost route for dumping costly-to-dispose-of deadly chemicals?...


Stay healthy folks!!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

What's with your daily bread?


8 UK Bread Brands You Must Avoid


Can't say it any better myself for those examples.

BUT...

Not only for only those 8 brand names...

Beware your insides!...


Instead:

Eat healthy!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Fertilising arable land with human waste leaves array of toxins [to] re-enter food chain

... including pharmaceutical products and toxins that were banned decades ago...

The farmers in my suburban/rural greater Fort Worth Texas area have been battling this for quite a few years and have even sued over the toxic sludge "bio waste" that has killed or damaged their livestock... From the Texas Tribune:
Texas farmers say sewage-based fertilizer tainted with “forever chemicals” poisoned their land and killed their livestock

The fertilizer was promoted as an environmental win-win for years. An untold number of farmers and ranchers across Texas have spread it on their land.

It was heavily promoted as a cheap and sometimes free "green alternative to traditional fertilizer."

I sure as he77 wouldn't be putting that toxic sh1t on my property. I don't care how "green" it is.

Based on what I have read about the "processing" of the crap, there was too much unknown information right from the get-go they didn't want anyone to know about.

I think the best thing to do is make your own, then you know what goes in it.
Get a bread maker and you can enter your kitchen, first thing in the morning, to the smell of freshly baked bread.

Or you could look around for horse farms in your region... those for valuable racehorses. They're sure to get the best organic feed so they don't get sick or die prematurely. Then you organize a load from there once a year... well... manure for your own vegetable garden. That's truly organic. My great-grandfather did it that way in his home village... never to leave a 'road apple' unused on the streets...

Fertilising arable land with human waste leaves array of toxins [to] re-enter food chain

The last time I read about such a stupid idea... it was from North Korea where the starving rural population had no other choice to fertilize their acres.

But I thought we're aware of the consequences of human waste, the bacteria threatening human's health in potable water or food. They learned that the hard way in the terrible 19th century Cholera epidemics in most growing cities in the western hemisphere until they re-invented the (Roman) sewer system and remote water works with wells far from population centers.

That is not the chocolate that you are looking for:


Toffee Crisp and Blue Riband can't be called chocolate anymore
wrote:

Toffee Crisp and Blue Riband bars can no longer be called chocolate after maker Nestle changed their recipes...

... Nestle is not alone in recent reformulations.

In October, McVitie's Penguin and Club bars switched to be labelled as as "chocolate flavour" because the amount of cocoa they contain has been reduced after parent company Pladis chose to use cheaper alternatives...

"Buyer beware"?...

Instead...

Eat healthy!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Why don't they introduce flexible consumer retail prices? ... a 'cocoa surcharge'...

A complex mathematical formula includes the cocoa price (daily fixing at some commodities exchange) ... of course reserving some headroom for a 'fair' (that is: generous) profit.

When I was a 10 years old we lived in a socialist scarcity economy. Some of the most sought-after luxuries back then: bananas, cocoa, chocolate, and roasted coffee:

"In 1974, a new chocolate regulation stipulated that the minimum cocoa content in milk chocolate had to be reduced from 25 to 7 percent due to raw material shortages. To compensate, the fat content was increased, and instead of expensive almonds, hazelnuts were processed into a paste with ground peas. Since milk chocolate now only contained traces of cocoa, the chocolate bar managed perfectly well without such a precious ingredient..."

Source: Berliner Zeitung (newspaper): Martin Z. Schröder - Wir lieben unseren Stangenkäse. 2000-01-29 (in German only):

Secret chocolate bar receipts finally disclosed:

Der Spiegel (magazine): Geheimsache Süßtafel. 1991. (Secret matter: the chocolate bar) translated from German.

https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/politik/geheimsache-suesstafel-a-80fc0754-0002-0001-0000-000013490070?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Very costly slimy:


Synthetic chemicals in food system creating health burden of $2.2tn a year
wrote:

... some of the synthetic chemicals that help underpin the current food system are driving increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions and infertility, while degrading the foundations of global agriculture.

The health burden from phthalates, bisphenols, pesticides and Pfas “forever chemicals” amounts to up to $2.2tn a year – roughly as much as the profits of the world’s 100 largest publicly listed companies...

... Most ecosystem damage remains unpriced, they say, but even a narrow accounting of ecological impacts, taking into account agricultural losses and meeting water safety standards for Pfas and pesticides, implies a further cost of $640bn...

... Unlike with pharmaceuticals, there are few safeguards to test for the safety of industrial chemicals before they are put into use, and little monitoring of their effects once they are. Some have been found to be disastrously toxic to humans, animals and ecosystems, leaving governments to pick up the bill...

"... there’s no single factor there … but the evidence is very clear that increasing exposure to hundreds, maybe even thousands of manufactured chemicals is a very important cause of disease in [children]"...

... “Bisphenol would be the classic example, that get into people’s bodies at every age, damage the liver, [damages] cholesterol metabolism, and result in increased serum cholesterol, increased obesity, increased diabetes, and those internally to increase rates of heart disease and stroke.”...

"... And until one of them causes something obvious, like children to be born with missing limbs, we’re going to go on mindlessly exposing ourselves.”

That is a deadly high cost to ourselves.

Note that what isn't costed in there is the damage that our industrial food is doing to our wildlife and the rest of our world...


All very deadly greedily profitably slimy.

Instead:

Eat healthy?
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)