Saturday, February 19, 2005
Why we have nothing to fear from "toxic" food
"Carcinogenic dye in hundreds of food products" screams the headline in today's Guardian. "359 foods in cancer alert" is the Daily Mirror's take. According to this story - carried prominently by all the other UK dailies and a major item on yesterday's television and radio news - "More than 350 food products were swept off supermarket shelves yesterday in the biggest safety scare since the BSE crisis." The Food Standards Agency website was swamped with hits, and many people were doubtlessly sorting through their stocks of food (with shaking hands).
The truth is rather less frightening. A batch of chilli powder, imported from India, had been found to contain traces of a dye - Sudan 1 - which is not approved for food use. Before this was detected, the chilli powder had been used to make Worcester sauce, which in turn had been used as an ingredient of a wide range of prepared foods. So, a trace of a non-permitted additive was diluted, say, 100 fold when the sauce was made. This, in turn, was diluted probably another 100 fold when the sauce was used in the various recipes. The likelihood is that the dye was not even detectable in the Worcester sauce, let alone the food products on the shelf.
But this fact seems to be an even greater cause for concern. According to the Guardian article "Consumers are demanding ever greater information about the food they eat and the uncomfortable truth is that the dye seems to have been present often at undetectable levels." So we're told to worry about an infinitesimal potential risk when we are consuming much greater levels of known carcinogens from natural sources daily, with little apparent ill effect (I'm not aware that coffee drinkers like myself have an increased mortality rate, for example).
Not only that, but we don't even know that Sudan 1 is carcinogenic. According to the BBC on-line report (Food recalled in cancer dye scare), 'Dr Julie Sharp, of Cancer Research UK, said the people who had already eaten foods that had been contaminated had no reason to panic.She said: "The risk of cancer in humans from Sudan I has not been proven and any risk from these foods is likely to be very small indeed." ' But this didn't stop a good example of the kind of pithy quotes which journalists love. Turning this particular recall into an attack on the modern food chain, Joanna Blythman, a "food campaigner", said "But because supermarkets now control 80% of the nation's food basket, if there is a problem it spreads like head lice through a nursery."
Clearly, the affected foods had to be recalled, because they had been made with an ingredient containing a trace of an illegal colour. However, I'm willing to bet that much more harm befell the people clearing the shelves (in the form of cuts and bruises) than would have resulted if all the contaminated food had been eaten.
The truth is rather less frightening. A batch of chilli powder, imported from India, had been found to contain traces of a dye - Sudan 1 - which is not approved for food use. Before this was detected, the chilli powder had been used to make Worcester sauce, which in turn had been used as an ingredient of a wide range of prepared foods. So, a trace of a non-permitted additive was diluted, say, 100 fold when the sauce was made. This, in turn, was diluted probably another 100 fold when the sauce was used in the various recipes. The likelihood is that the dye was not even detectable in the Worcester sauce, let alone the food products on the shelf.
But this fact seems to be an even greater cause for concern. According to the Guardian article "Consumers are demanding ever greater information about the food they eat and the uncomfortable truth is that the dye seems to have been present often at undetectable levels." So we're told to worry about an infinitesimal potential risk when we are consuming much greater levels of known carcinogens from natural sources daily, with little apparent ill effect (I'm not aware that coffee drinkers like myself have an increased mortality rate, for example).
Not only that, but we don't even know that Sudan 1 is carcinogenic. According to the BBC on-line report (Food recalled in cancer dye scare), 'Dr Julie Sharp, of Cancer Research UK, said the people who had already eaten foods that had been contaminated had no reason to panic.She said: "The risk of cancer in humans from Sudan I has not been proven and any risk from these foods is likely to be very small indeed." ' But this didn't stop a good example of the kind of pithy quotes which journalists love. Turning this particular recall into an attack on the modern food chain, Joanna Blythman, a "food campaigner", said "But because supermarkets now control 80% of the nation's food basket, if there is a problem it spreads like head lice through a nursery."
Clearly, the affected foods had to be recalled, because they had been made with an ingredient containing a trace of an illegal colour. However, I'm willing to bet that much more harm befell the people clearing the shelves (in the form of cuts and bruises) than would have resulted if all the contaminated food had been eaten.
