Half of Americans recognise the health benefits of a vegan diet, but they need reassurance from their primary care doctors to eat more plants.
While a majority of Americans say they are happy to eat more plant-based food and know it’s good for them, a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals keeps them at bay, according to a new survey.
In the 2,200-person poll, Morning Consult and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) found that half of the respondents believe vegan diets can improve their health, while only about a third think otherwise. Another 17%, meanwhile, are unsure.
“What’s missing is support and guidance from health care professionals,” contended Xavier Toledo, a registered dietitian with the PCRM. “This represents a huge missed opportunity to turn interest into action – and to reduce the risk of chronic diseases that affect millions.”
Doctors can be a force of dietary change
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
The survey revealed that only 1% of Americans follow a vegan diet, and another 1% are lacto-ovo vegetarians. In fact, 91% of respondents said they eat meat at least once a week, and 88% said the same for dairy. On the other hand, over a quarter (28%) say they rarely or never eat seafood.
Among those who believe plant-based food can improve health and reduce chronic diseases, the sentiment was most popular with Gen Zers and millennials, those with a college degree, high-income households, non-white Americans, urban residents, and Democrats.
Only one in five survey respondents have had their primary care doctor speak to them about the benefits of a vegan diet, with these consumers skewing young, male, Black or Hispanic, and urban. Over half (57%) of Americans said their primary care practitioners have not discussed this with them.
This leaves a major gap, as Toledo noted. It’s because when Americans are shown evidence of how plant-based diets can enhance their health, their willingness to try such a diet jumps by 15 percentage points – nearly two-thirds (65%) are open to eating vegan if they’re shown the science.
This sentiment is similar for both men and women, but is more common with younger, college-educated respondents who vote Democrat, earn over $50,000 per year, and are Black or Hispanic. Meanwhile, only a quarter (26%) said this wouldn’t influence their dietary habits.
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
It highlights the impact of doctors speaking to their patients about how plant-based diets can help them. “The teaching and training of healthcare professionals in general is still based around omnivorous diets when it comes to nutrition,” Dr Shireen Kassam, a consultant haematologist and founding director of medical association Plant-Based Health Professionals UK, told Green Queen last week.
“Nutrition training in most non-nutrition healthcare courses is still lacking, with education on plant-based diets being even less well covered,” she added. She was responding to a recent study showing that only 72% of midwives feel prepared to advise pregnant patients on plant-based nutrition, though her comments covered the broader medical profession.
“It is clear from our own research that health professionals, including dietitians, would benefit from more teaching and training on plant-based and vegan diets, given they are becoming more popular and given that they are recognised as being necessary for their co-benefits for environmental health.”
Health in the spotlight in MAHA era
Courtesy: MAHA
The poll comes at a time when health is in full focus in the US, thanks in part to the continued post-Covid wave of wellness and nutrition, and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement.
The US health secretary has taken a stick to ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and what he calls “fake meats”, which have contributed to the ongoing slowdown in sales of plant-based food in the US. Last year, meat alternative sales were down by 7%, and purchases of non-dairy milk by 5%.
This latest poll shows fathere is an appetite for plant-based food, mirroring another survey by Morning Consult and PCRM, which found that nearly half (48%) of Americans would consider eating vegan food to reduce their climate footprint.
Courtesy: GFI
Evidence of health being a primary consumption driver is mounting. Research by the American Heart Association last year found that 77% of Americans would like to eat healthier. Meanwhile, another survey showed that 48% feel plant-based foods are healthier than animal proteins, and 45% want to eat less meat and dairy due to personal health concerns (a 7% rise since 2023).
Among consumers identified as the “addressable market” for plant-based meat, two in five find meat or protein good for health. At the same time, though, 43% say health is a top benefit they seek from both meat and vegan alternatives, and a third of them believe the latter are better for heart health.
That’s a fact confirmed by tons of research, including a recent Harvard study. An 11-country review has also found that plant-based meat and dairy are either on par or better than animal protein in terms of their nutritional profile. And in 2023, a meta-analysis of two million people found that higher adherence to plant-based diets is linked to significantly lower risks of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and early death.
Plant proteins were a major talking point in discussions for the upcoming update to the national dietary guidelines, with scientists recommending the US Department of Agriculture prioritise plants over meat.
Ellen Stromdahl was at a garden party in coastal Virginia in June 2023 when her friend Albert Duncan stood up from where he was sitting and abruptly fainted away. Duncan is an outdoorsman in his mid-80s — still active and healthy for his age. Stromdahl, an entomologist who works for the United States Army Public Health Center, the army’s public health arm, rushed to his side. As Duncan came to, she noticed that his tanned skin was tinged with yellow. “This man looks jaundiced,” she thought to herself.
Duncan spent the next several days in and out of the emergency room. His doctors administered countless blood tests and ruled out the usual suspects for an octogenarian — heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia. Finally, on Stromdahl’s recommendation, Duncan’s wife, Nancy, asked his doctors to test him for babesiosis, a rare malaria-like disease caused by microscopic parasites carried by black-legged ticks. The test came back positive not just for babesiosis, but also for Lyme disease, another, far more common illness caused by the same type of tick.
If Duncan’s doctors had caught the infections sooner they could have eradicated them with a combination of oral antibiotics and antiparasitic medications. But Duncan, weeks into his illness, needed a procedure called an exchange transfusion. Doctors pumped all of the infected blood out of his body and replaced it with donor blood. About two weeks after the garden party, he was well again.
Babesiosis is rare — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports around 2,000 cases in the United States every year. But what made Duncan’s case even more unusual is that he contracted babesiosis in Virginia, a state that registered just 17 locally-acquired cases of the disease between 2016 and 2023.
It got Stromdahl wondering if babesiosis could be becoming more common in Virginia and neighboring states. She spent the following two years working with a team of 21 tick researchers from across the eastern U.S. and South Africa to assess the prevalence of Babesia microti, the parasite that causes babesiosis, in ticks and humans in those states from 2009 to 2024.
The results of the study, published in April in the Journal of Medical Entomology, reveal that the Babesia parasite is rapidly expanding through the mid-Atlantic. This shift, which has coincided with changing weather patterns, could pose a serious threat to people in communities where the disease has long been considered rare.
“Wherever we found positive ticks, there were cases,” Stromdahl said. “They’re small numbers, but that’s why we want to give the early warning before more people get sick.”
Babesiosis, which can be confused with malaria, is caused by parasites of the genus Babesia. Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images
One in four cases of babesiosis are asymptomatic. People who do develop symptoms, especially older adults and immunocompromised people, can get quite sick with fever, chills, anemia, fatigue, and jaundice. Untreated, the parasites, which infect and destroy red blood cells, can lead to organ failure and death.
Babesiosis is typically found in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. Between 2015 and 2022, case counts in the states that regularly report the disease — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin — rose by 9 percent every year, a development researchers attribute in large part to warmer temperatures caused by climate change, which afford black-legged ticks more opportunities to bite people in a given year and more habitat to spread into.
Climatic conditions in the southern mid-Atlantic have always been welcoming for ticks, but warmer-than-average winters that have been occurring with grim regularity in recent years are turning some states in the region into year-round breeding sites for ticks and small rodents like mice, chipmunks, and shrews — the critters that carry Lyme bacteria and the Babesia parasite in their blood. Above-normal annual rainfall, which saturates the soil and adds to overall humidity in the region, also encourages the proliferation of ticks. The 2023 to 2024 winter season across much of the mid-Atlantic was 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, and many states had some of their wettest Decembers and Januaries on record.
Stromdahl has been studying the movement of ticks and the diseases they carry for decades. She’s seen it all — including the northward spread of the Lone Star tick, which can impart a lifelong, sometimes deadly reaction to red meat. But even she was shocked to discover how far the Babesia parasite had spread.
She and her co-authors collected 1,310 ticks in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware and found the B. microti parasite in all three states, indicating that there is potential for more human cases across the southern mid-Atlantic. None of those states had ever found the parasite in ticks before.
Many of the ticks the authors looked at were also infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. The Lyme-babesiosis connection is an active area of research. Experts suspect ticks infected with one of the diseases are more predisposed to be infected with the other, but they still don’t know why, exactly. What they do know is that Lyme is a harbinger of babesiosis. Previous studies on tick-borne illness found that areas that saw rising cases of Lyme disease from the 1980s to the early 2000s reported more babesiosis cases one to two decades later.
“The findings in the Stromdahl paper are consistent with what we’ve seen in the Northeast: Babesia infection seems to spread where Lyme infection is already present,” said Shannon LaDeau, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies who was not involved in the study.
Scientists collect Lone Star ticks, which can cause an allergic reaction to red meat, for research.
Ben McCanna / Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
The authors also examined where human cases of babesiosis were clustered. Of particular concern were two hotspots: the five counties surrounding and encompassing the city of Baltimore, and the Delmarva Peninsula — an 180-mile-long coastal landmass comprising parts of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Fifty-five percent of Maryland’s cases were from the Baltimore area, and some 38 percent of cases from Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia combined were from the Delmarva Peninsula.
Experts believe babesiosis cases are severely underreported due to lack of physician awareness. Stromdahl and her colleagues hope their findings will inspire health departments in the mid-Atlantic to recognize that babesiosis is a growing concern, conduct surveillance for infected ticks, and put out public health warnings. If doctors in the region know to test for babesiosis, severe cases like Duncan’s can be avoided.
“Jurisdictions in the southern mid-Atlantic region should expect babesiosis cases,” the authors warn. “Tick range expansion is occurring at such a precipitous rate that public health guidance regarding tick-borne disease prevention and treatment can be rapidly rendered obsolete.”
Climate change isn’t the only environmental factor driving the rising density and expansion of tick populations. Efforts over the past few decades to reforest barren areas have encouraged herds of whitetailed deer, animals that pick up ticks and carry them miles before the arachnids drop off into the leaf litter, to proliferate. Declining rates of recreational and subsistence hunting are adding to deer overpopulations. At the same time, an ongoing expansion of suburban development pushing into forested zones is putting more people into contact with ticks and the diseases they carry.
“The most important take-home is that tick-borne disease is a growing risk,” LaDeau said. The big question as tick populations increase, she added, is to figure out where and when infected ticks overlap with people. “There is still a huge need for data to understand how often these infected ticks come into contact with humans.”
In an international study, experts suggest that ultra-processed foods and the “artificial” additives in them can raise the risk of premature death.
Between 4-14% of premature deaths in eight countries are attributed to the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), according to a new global study.
Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers from Latin America suggest that each 10% increase in UPF intake raises the risk of death before reaching 70 by 3%.
It’s not just the high amount of salt, sugar or fat that makes UPFs a threat, according to the study, it’s also the use of emulsifiers, artificial flavourings, and other additives, a finding that throws cold water on arguments that processing isn’t directly connected to health.
“UPFs affect health beyond the individual impact of high content of critical nutrients (sodium, trans fats, and sugar) because of the changes in the foods during industrial processing and the use of artificial ingredients, including colourants, artificial flavours and sweeteners, emulsifiers, and many other additives and processing aids,” explained lead investigator Eduardo Augusto Fernandes Nilson, from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil.
Death rates are highest in countries with heightened UPF consumption
Graphic by Green Queen
UPFs represent the bottom (read: least healthy) rung of the Nova classification, developed by a team of scientists in Brazil in 2009. The research was led by Dr Carlos Monteiro, who is a co-author of this new study.
According to the Nova classification, UPFs are produced via industrial formulations and techniques like extrusion or pre-frying, combined with cosmetic additives and substances of little culinary use, such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils or modified starch. This includes products like ice creams, sugary cereals, fizzy drinks, ready-to-eat meals, processed meats, and in some cases, plant-based meat alternatives.
Previous studies have focused on specific dietary risk factors instead of food patterns; this latest research modelled data from nationally representative dietary surveys and mortality data from eight countries – Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the UK, and the US – to link dietary patterns and the extend of industrial food processing to death from all causes.
The authors found that death rates are highest in countries where the population gets the largest percentage of energy calories from UPFs. In the US, 60% of all calories come from UPFs, and according to this study, more than 124,000 early deaths in 2018 – or 13.7% of the total – were “attributable to UPF consumption”.
Similarly, in the UK, where they make up 57% of calorie consumption, if no UPFs had been consumed, it would have prevented over 17,700 of all deaths (13.8% of the total) in 2019.
The death rates were lower in countries like Colombia (4%), Brazil (5%), and Chile (6%). “It is concerning that, while in high-income countries UPF consumption is already high but relatively stable for over a decade, in low- and middle-income countries, the consumption has continuously increased, meaning that while the attributable burden in high-income countries is currently higher, it is growing in the other countries,” said Nilson.
Experts question findings, but conclude UPFs ‘unlikely to be healthful’
Courtesy: Springer
Previous research has linked UPFs to 32 harmful health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, poor mental health, and early death. However, many nutrition experts have called into question the use of the Nova classification to determine health outcomes.
“Products like breads and cereals often contain higher amounts of fibre, which, according to the Nova system, wouldn’t technically classify as UPFs,” Jenny Chapman, a Churchill Fellow who authored a study about plant-based meat and UPFs, told Green Queen last year. “It’s crucial to recognise the limitations of the Nova system, which does not account for nutritional content, leading to potential misclassification.”
Responding to the current study, Nerys Astbury, a nutrition scientist and an associate professor of diet and obesity at the University of Oxford, noted that the research “does not mean that these deaths were caused by UPF consumption”. “The methods of this study simply cannot determine this,” he said.
“There are limitations to this paper, including the points the authors themselves raised,” added Nita Forouhi, a professor of population health and nutrition at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study either. “Nonetheless, evidence on the health harms of UPFs [is] accumulating, and this paper does add to that body of evidence, and UPFs are unlikely to be healthful.”
The authors call for a reduction of UPFs to be included in national dietary guidelines and addressed in public health policies. “Policies that disincentivise the consumption of UPFs are urgently needed globally, promoting traditional dietary patterns based on local fresh and minimally processed foods,” said Nilson.
For his part, Astbury said “rushing to add recommendations on UPFs” wasn’t necessary. “Many national dietary guidelines and recommendations already advise the reduction of consumption of energy-dense high-fat high-sugar foods, which typically fall into the UPF group,” he explained.
“Adding additional recommendations based on UPFs could cause consumer confusion – some foods may be considered unhealthy by nutrient standards, but not so by Nova classification (and vice versa),” he added.
UPF backlash changing the plant-based food landscape
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
“The Nova system, which defines foods according to different levels of food processing, has many limitations, including arbitrary definitions and overly broad food categories, the over-emphasis of food ingredients [as] opposed to the processing per se, and the difficult practical application of the system in accurately classifying foods,” said Astbury.
Nevertheless, the study is another blow to products like plant-based meat analogues, which have come under fire for their processing methods and use of emulsifiers and additives. On top of that, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has been highly vocal against UPFs, and has previously suggested that “fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food”.
Concerns around UPFs have led to a slowdown in purchases of plant-based meat in certain markets – in the US, these products suffered a 5% decline in sales last year. Meanwhile, traditional plant proteins like tofu and tempeh enjoyed a 7% rise, while whole-food-focused brands such as Actual Veggies doubled revenues.
In the UK, this has resulted in the emergence of new plant protein formats like Oh So Wholesome’s Veg’chop and THIS’s Super Superfood.
As nutritionists and gut health experts encourage consumers to eat 30 different plants a week, counting ‘plant points’ could be an effective nudge to get people to transition to plant-forward diets.
There’s a reason why Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world – and it has to do with diversity.
Diversity, that is, in ingredients. Research conducted by Tsuduki Tsuyoshi, an associate food and molecular bioscience professor at Tohoku University, has found that the secret to Japan’s longevity is in the “large number of small dishes” and a diet rich in soy products, tubers, fresh and pickled vegetables, fruits, seafood and seaweed, mushrooms, and tea.
“The traditional formula for a basic Japanese meal – ‘soup and three’ – helps to guarantee dietary variety,” writes Tsuduki. “In practice, this generally means one main dish (frequently fish or another protein) and two side dishes (often vegetables), in addition to rice and soup.”
It’s why food journalist Michael Pollan’s adage stands the test of time. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he wrote 18 years ago in his seminal book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
The idea that the optimal diet should be made up of mostly plants and as many different plants as possible has been gaining steam of late, with concepts like ‘plant points’ and ’30 plants a week’ become more mainstream.
The ’30 plants a week’ mantra encourages people to eat 30 different plant-based foods each week. To be clear, diversity is the game here.
UK plant-based food brand Gosh!, for example, recently jumped on the trend, refreshing its packaging to highlight the number of plant points in each of its products. Take the brand’s Caponata Burger: it boasts a whopping 8 plant points, thanks to a variety of plant ingredients including aubergine, courgette, thyme and chilli.
Courtesy: Gosh!
Why you should be eating 30 plants a week
Eating a variety of plant foods on a regular basis boosts your gut microbiome, which has become a prominent health goal for many consumers over the last couple of years, popularised by the rise of GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic, documentaries like Hack Your Health, and research that shows just how much gut health is central to overall wellbeing.
While the Japanese have been practising plant-forward diet diversity for centuries, the more recent trend of eating 30 plants a week as a healthy habit emerged from a 2018 study by the American Gut Project that tracked 10,000 people. The study authors found that those who ate at least 30 plant-based foods weekly had a more diverse (read: healthier) gut microbiome than participants who consumed less than 10.
Subsequent research offers similar results. In January, a study of more than 21,500 people by UK personalised nutrition app Zoe, which analysed the participants’ stool samples, came to the same conclusion as the American Gut Health research: the more plants you eat, the greater the diversity of microbes in your gut.
Courtesy: Zoe
“We found that a plant-rich diet, particularly one high in a variety of fruits and vegetables, leads to a healthier microbiome composition, which is important for better health outcomes in the long run, including a reduced risk of chronic diseases,” said Tim Spector, medical expert and Zoe’s foundera vocal who has been a longtime advocate for eating 30 plants a week.
Why is the diversity of microbes in your gut so important? There are a myriad health benefits. A healthy gut microbiome helps improve the immune system, protects against pathogens, strengthens the gut barrier, balances blood glucose levels, and lowers inflammation, among other benefits. By ingesting more plants, you’re also introducing more phytonutrients to your body, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
Low microbiota diversity, on the other hand, is linked to a host of health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, celiac disease, arthritis, and inflammatory bowel syndrome, to name a few.
Whole-food plant-based options on the rise
Eating 30 plants every week may seem like a tall order, but it’s much easier than one would think. This is because the 30 includes whole grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. It’s not just quinoa, oats, sweet potatoes, carrots and almonds; coffee, dark chocolate, tofu, and even paprika carry a plant point each, as do different colours of bell peppers.
It’s important to note that not all plant-derived ingredients count towards the 30. White bread, pasta or rice are all stripped of the fibre-rich bran, so these refined foods don’t represent plant points. However, whole-grain versions of these same foods do – so the trick is to stick with whole foods.
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
This is why brands are now developing products that focus on whole-food plant-based nutrition. In the UK, Oh So Wholesome’s Veg’chop line is a fibre-packed protein made from red lentils, quinoa, yellow split peas, mushrooms, and more, boasting over 10 plants per pack. Even meat alternative brand THIS has launched Super Superfood, packing fava beans, mushrooms, spinach and a range of seeds into a plant protein block to rival tofu and tempeh.
This philosophy has informed Gosh! too, which is imploring consumers to move past the National Health Service’s five-a-day philosophy and focus on 30-a-week instead. The company claims it helped the UK rack up 30 million plant points last year.
“With our new redesign, we’ve made tracking it easier than ever as part of our commitment to make plant-based eating accessible for everyone,” said marketing director Caroline Hughes.
Taking inspiration from the Weight Watchers point system
Courtesy: Weight Watchers
Could it have the Weight Watchers effect? The world-famous weight-loss programme assigns a points value to ingredients, and uses a calculation based on a person’s weight, age and activity level to determine a Points Budget they can spend on food. The healthier a food, the fewer points it’ll have, while the healthiest ones (like fruits, vegetables and lean proteins) are deemed ZeroPoint Foods.
Tech-forward solutions and GLP-1 drugs have pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy, but research has proven that the points system works, and WeightWatchers has been recognised by many experts as a genuinely helpful diet programme.
At its peak, the weight-loss facilitator had five million members all over the globe– and one of the reasons for its popularity was how easy it was to follow its points system. Breaking down something as complex as weight loss into easy-to-count numbers proved a winning strategy.
There are many ways for people to improve their diets, but it’s hard to beat counting plants in terms of simplicity. People following the 30 plants a week regime don’t need to eliminate or replace any particular foods; all they need to do is add some plants. The gamification of it all no doubt helps people stay motivated.
The move comes at a difficult time for the push towards plant-forward diets. While experts have long been banging the drum about shifting towards plant-rich eating for better human and planetary health, the needle hasn’t really moved.
meat and dairy, while 12% would like to increase their consumption.
Existing campaigns to get folks to shift their diets, from Meatless Mondays and Veganuary to celebrity-backed marketing drives, have proved lacklustre.
In the US, meat sales reached an all-time high in 2024, despite scientists advising the Department of Agriculture to prioritise plant proteins and advise cutting back on red and processed meat in the upcoming dietary guidelines. Today, only 22% of Americans want to eat less meat, a five-year low. Plant-based proteins – including tofu, tempeh, and meat and dairy alternatives – still only make up 1% of total retail food sales in the US.
In the UK, too, more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) – despite half of them acknowledging that it causes harm to the planet. And across Europe, less than one in five people (18%) avoid animal products. And moving forward, only a quarter would like to phase out meat and dairy, while 12% would like to increase their consumption.
However, coordinated campaigns can nudge positive behaviours. Take the Danish Whole Grain Partnership, a collaboration between the government, health organisations, and the food industry. Over a decade, their initiative increased the nation’s per capita whole grain consumption by over twofold in just a decade, leveraging annual awareness events (involving schools, hospitals and prisons alike), product reformulation, and supermarket discounts.
Denmark also established a national action plan for plant-based foods in 2023 and will begin taxing meat and dairy farmers from 2023, the goal being to diversify its protein sources and reach its climate goals.
Can labelling influence Brits to eat more plants?
Campaigns like Gosh!’s, which make it easy and fun to eat a variety of plants, could be another catalyst for change. The brand is hoping that putting the number of plants front-of-pack will make it even easier for consumers to keep count, all while helping to improve their health, as well as that of businesses and the planet alike.
Research by public health group NSF shows that while 76% of Brits read food labels before purchasing, only half feel current labels provide sufficient information to help them make healthy food choices. Interestingly, 60% of 18- to 34-year-olds find on-pack health claims trustworthy, though this falls to 25% among those over 55.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (64%) of Brits are willing to pay an extra 10% for more sustainable packaged foods. And over half of them (53%) trust eco labels at least somewhat, according to YouGov polls in 2024.
This chimes with a 2023 study showing that 64% of UIK consumers would be deterred from purchasing meat if it had an eco score in the red, while 52% would consider buying a meat alternative if it had a better rating. Meanwhile, 58% said they’re interested in eco-labels, but require more information, highlighting the need for more education and awareness among consumers.
Another survey from 2022 showed that 73% of Brits felt it was important for food and drink to have low carbon footprints, while 49% wanted to see carbon footprint labelling on products.
Gosh! says it’s betting on its revamped packaging. “We believe eating more plants should be simple, delicious and make you feel good,” said Hughes. “This is why we’re championing ‘plant points’, helping consumers to easily add goodness to their plates.”
As nutritionists and gut health experts encourage consumers to eat 30 different plants a week, counting ‘plant points’ could be an effective nudge to get people to transition to plant-forward diets.
There’s a reason why Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world – and it has to do with diversity.
Diversity, that is, in ingredients. Research conducted by Tsuduki Tsuyoshi, an associate food and molecular bioscience professor at Tohoku University, has found that the secret to Japan’s longevity is in the “large number of small dishes” and a diet rich in soy products, tubers, fresh and pickled vegetables, fruits, seafood and seaweed, mushrooms, and tea.
“The traditional formula for a basic Japanese meal – ‘soup and three’ – helps to guarantee dietary variety,” writes Tsuduki. “In practice, this generally means one main dish (frequently fish or another protein) and two side dishes (often vegetables), in addition to rice and soup.”
It’s why food journalist Michael Pollan’s adage stands the test of time. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he wrote 18 years ago in his seminal book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
The idea that the optimal diet should be made up of mostly plants and as many different plants as possible has been gaining steam of late, with concepts like ‘plant points’ and ’30 plants a week’ become more mainstream.
The ’30 plants a week’ mantra encourages people to eat 30 different plant-based foods each week. To be clear, diversity is the game here.
UK plant-based food brand Gosh!, for example, recently jumped on the trend, refreshing its packaging to highlight the number of plant points in each of its products. Take the brand’s Caponata Burger: it boasts a whopping 8 plant points, thanks to a variety of plant ingredients including aubergine, courgette, thyme and chilli.
Courtesy: Gosh!
Why you should be eating 30 plants a week
Eating a variety of plant foods on a regular basis boosts your gut microbiome, which has become a prominent health goal for many consumers over the last couple of years, popularised by the rise of GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic, documentaries like Hack Your Health, and research that shows just how much gut health is central to overall wellbeing.
While the Japanese have been practising plant-forward diet diversity for centuries, the more recent trend of eating 30 plants a week as a healthy habit emerged from a 2018 study by the American Gut Project that tracked 10,000 people. The study authors found that those who ate at least 30 plant-based foods weekly had a more diverse (read: healthier) gut microbiome than participants who consumed less than 10.
Subsequent research offers similar results. In January, a study of more than 21,500 people by UK personalised nutrition app Zoe, which analysed the participants’ stool samples, came to the same conclusion as the American Gut Health research: the more plants you eat, the greater the diversity of microbes in your gut.
Courtesy: Zoe
“We found that a plant-rich diet, particularly one high in a variety of fruits and vegetables, leads to a healthier microbiome composition, which is important for better health outcomes in the long run, including a reduced risk of chronic diseases,” said Tim Spector, medical expert and Zoe’s foundera vocal who has been a longtime advocate for eating 30 plants a week.
Why is the diversity of microbes in your gut so important? There are a myriad health benefits. A healthy gut microbiome helps improve the immune system, protects against pathogens, strengthens the gut barrier, balances blood glucose levels, and lowers inflammation, among other benefits. By ingesting more plants, you’re also introducing more phytonutrients to your body, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
Low microbiota diversity, on the other hand, is linked to a host of health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, celiac disease, arthritis, and inflammatory bowel syndrome, to name a few.
Whole-food plant-based options on the rise
Eating 30 plants every week may seem like a tall order, but it’s much easier than one would think. This is because the 30 includes whole grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. It’s not just quinoa, oats, sweet potatoes, carrots and almonds; coffee, dark chocolate, tofu, and even paprika carry a plant point each, as do different colours of bell peppers.
It’s important to note that not all plant-derived ingredients count towards the 30. White bread, pasta or rice are all stripped of the fibre-rich bran, so these refined foods don’t represent plant points. However, whole-grain versions of these same foods do – so the trick is to stick with whole foods.
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
This is why brands are now developing products that focus on whole-food plant-based nutrition. In the UK, Oh So Wholesome’s Veg’chop line is a fibre-packed protein made from red lentils, quinoa, yellow split peas, mushrooms, and more, boasting over 10 plants per pack. Even meat alternative brand THIS has launched Super Superfood, packing fava beans, mushrooms, spinach and a range of seeds into a plant protein block to rival tofu and tempeh.
This philosophy has informed Gosh! too, which is imploring consumers to move past the National Health Service’s five-a-day philosophy and focus on 30-a-week instead. The company claims it helped the UK rack up 30 million plant points last year.
“With our new redesign, we’ve made tracking it easier than ever as part of our commitment to make plant-based eating accessible for everyone,” said marketing director Caroline Hughes.
Taking inspiration from the Weight Watchers point system
Courtesy: Weight Watchers
Could it have the Weight Watchers effect? The world-famous weight-loss programme assigns a points value to ingredients, and uses a calculation based on a person’s weight, age and activity level to determine a Points Budget they can spend on food. The healthier a food, the fewer points it’ll have, while the healthiest ones (like fruits, vegetables and lean proteins) are deemed ZeroPoint Foods.
Tech-forward solutions and GLP-1 drugs have pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy, but research has proven that the points system works, and WeightWatchers has been recognised by many experts as a genuinely helpful diet programme.
At its peak, the weight-loss facilitator had five million members all over the globe– and one of the reasons for its popularity was how easy it was to follow its points system. Breaking down something as complex as weight loss into easy-to-count numbers proved a winning strategy.
There are many ways for people to improve their diets, but it’s hard to beat counting plants in terms of simplicity. People following the 30 plants a week regime don’t need to eliminate or replace any particular foods; all they need to do is add some plants. The gamification of it all no doubt helps people stay motivated.
The move comes at a difficult time for the push towards plant-forward diets. While experts have long been banging the drum about shifting towards plant-rich eating for better human and planetary health, the needle hasn’t really moved.
meat and dairy, while 12% would like to increase their consumption.
Existing campaigns to get folks to shift their diets, from Meatless Mondays and Veganuary to celebrity-backed marketing drives, have proved lacklustre.
In the US, meat sales reached an all-time high in 2024, despite scientists advising the Department of Agriculture to prioritise plant proteins and advise cutting back on red and processed meat in the upcoming dietary guidelines. Today, only 22% of Americans want to eat less meat, a five-year low. Plant-based proteins – including tofu, tempeh, and meat and dairy alternatives – still only make up 1% of total retail food sales in the US.
In the UK, too, more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) – despite half of them acknowledging that it causes harm to the planet. And across Europe, less than one in five people (18%) avoid animal products. And moving forward, only a quarter would like to phase out meat and dairy, while 12% would like to increase their consumption.
However, coordinated campaigns can nudge positive behaviours. Take the Danish Whole Grain Partnership, a collaboration between the government, health organisations, and the food industry. Over a decade, their initiative increased the nation’s per capita whole grain consumption by over twofold in just a decade, leveraging annual awareness events (involving schools, hospitals and prisons alike), product reformulation, and supermarket discounts.
Denmark also established a national action plan for plant-based foods in 2023 and will begin taxing meat and dairy farmers from 2023, the goal being to diversify its protein sources and reach its climate goals.
Can labelling influence Brits to eat more plants?
Campaigns like Gosh!’s, which make it easy and fun to eat a variety of plants, could be another catalyst for change. The brand is hoping that putting the number of plants front-of-pack will make it even easier for consumers to keep count, all while helping to improve their health, as well as that of businesses and the planet alike.
Research by public health group NSF shows that while 76% of Brits read food labels before purchasing, only half feel current labels provide sufficient information to help them make healthy food choices. Interestingly, 60% of 18- to 34-year-olds find on-pack health claims trustworthy, though this falls to 25% among those over 55.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (64%) of Brits are willing to pay an extra 10% for more sustainable packaged foods. And over half of them (53%) trust eco labels at least somewhat, according to YouGov polls in 2024.
This chimes with a 2023 study showing that 64% of UIK consumers would be deterred from purchasing meat if it had an eco score in the red, while 52% would consider buying a meat alternative if it had a better rating. Meanwhile, 58% said they’re interested in eco-labels, but require more information, highlighting the need for more education and awareness among consumers.
Another survey from 2022 showed that 73% of Brits felt it was important for food and drink to have low carbon footprints, while 49% wanted to see carbon footprint labelling on products.
Gosh! says it’s betting on its revamped packaging. “We believe eating more plants should be simple, delicious and make you feel good,” said Hughes. “This is why we’re championing ‘plant points’, helping consumers to easily add goodness to their plates.”
In conflict-hit zones on the eastern and western border regions of Myanmar, health workers are reporting rising cases of tuberculosis and other diseases amid global aid cuts from the U.S and other international donors.
Myanmar had meager investment in the health sector, even before the military seized power in a coup four years ago, triggering widespread fighting. Strain on the system has intensified with a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on March 28 that killed more than 3,800 people.
Drastic cutbacks by the Trump administration at the Agency for International Development, or USAID, are impacting local health organizations that vulnerable populations rely on, particularly in border regions.
A worker packs medicine delivered into the country by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Yangon, March 7, 2013.(Soe Than Win/AFP)
The Mon State Federal Council of Humanitarian and Rescue Department does public health reporting and provides medication and malaria testing kits to parts of eastern Myanmar’s Mon and Kayin states. They say their capacity has been slashed to a fraction of what it once was.
“I think thousands of people may have a lack of access in this area out of our 300,000 [population] before,” said department head Mi Soa Ta Jo, adding that they can only provide 30% of the malaria testing kits and medication they previously could to communities requesting it. Delayed testing and medication for malaria can have serious consequences like brain damage, impacting already overburdened caregivers, she said.
The group, one of many receiving USAID funding through intermediary organizations, says the cuts coincide with a rise in diseases like tuberculosis and HIV.
An HIV-infected woman in Yangon, Nov. 29, 2014(Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)
It‘s not just the U.S. that is scaling back its aid. The United Kingdom and France have also announced decreases in global development spending, with France cutting its overseas development assistance by 35% in February and launching a commission to investigate the funding’s impact.
“If there are consequences of the funding cuts from the U.S, from Europe, from everywhere — it’s not only the U.S., it’s everybody who’s cutting funding – we will see them first on things like tuberculosis and vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Dr. Francois Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit working on the Thai-Myanmar border. “That’s what we are concerned about.”
The four years of fighting, which has displaced 3 million people and killed thousands, has already disrupted vaccinations. From 2021 to 2023 in Myanmar, the World Health Organization reported an increase in cases of diphtheria, measles, Japanese encephalitis and a significant rise in acute flaccid paralysis, an indicator for polio.
Cuts to programming
In Myanmar’s northwestern region of Chin state, conflict between ethnic armed groups and junta forces has led to mass displacement.
Dr. Biak Cung Lian, the program manager for health and protection at the Chin Human Rights Organization, said that medical supply chains from cities have been disrupted. Health problems are being exacerbated by malnutrition and poor immunity.
A makeshift hospital in Demoso, Kayah state, Myanmar, Nov. 10, 2024.(Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA)
The cuts in USAID funding have affected his group’s efforts to treat tuberculosis, or TB, which spreads easily in crowded conditions. It has two mobile health programs focusing on TB screening, gender-based violence and psycho-social support. They have already laid off 60 staff.
The doctor also worries that HIV may spread more easily than before. Recently, many young people tested positive in a camp for displaced people on the border between the region of Sagaing and Chin state.
“Recently we heard that anti-retroviral therapy [for HIV] would be withheld because of the funding disruption. I’m not sure whether we will be able to procure (anti-retroviral therapy) drugs with our network,” he said, referencing medication taken by HIV patients to reduce the risk of transmission and slow the progression of the virus into AIDS.
“So we are in a state where we can’t do anything yet, but hopefully there will be something we can figure out,” Biak Cung Lian said.
A post-surgery recovery ward at a makeshift hospital in Demoso, Kayah state, Myanmar, Nov. 6, 2024.(Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA)
Lack of support for those displaced will also make it harder for other groups to treat illnesses compounded by malnutrition and poor immunity, health workers say.
“There is a certain level of difficulty in providing nutritional services to children under five years of age,” said Thitsar, a doctor from the Karenni Loyalty Mobile team, a nonprofit medical group in northeastern Myanmar’s Kayah state.
The group is helping to treat common illnesses like malaria and tuberculosis with limited medicine. The mobile clinic, set up by medical personnel participating in the protest for civil servants against Myanmar’s military, the Civil Disobedience Movement, is one of the few groups providing regular healthcare to internally displaced people in the region for communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Patients in a tent opened after the March 28 earthquake in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, Friday, April 4, 2025.(AP)
“There is malaria, and it’s expected to increase during the upcoming monsoon season. There is a limited amount of medicine available. We could not tell the exact numbers, the situation on the ground is quite challenging,” Thitsar, who goes by one name, said.
The U.S. State Department responded to RFA’s request for information about its ongoing commitment to public health funding in Myanmar by emphasizing its continued support for Myanmar following the recent earthquake.
But it made no mention of any ongoing commitments to assist public health programs in Myanmar.
RFA Burmese journalist Khin Khin Ei contributed reporting. Edited by Ginny Stein and Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kiana Duncan for RFA.
Only 72% of midwives feel prepared to advise pregnant patients on plant-based nutrition, highlighting the need for further education.
While most midwives have a positive attitude towards plant-based pregnancies, many feel unprepared to provide advice to these patients due to a lack of time or because they feel unqualified to do so, according to a new study.
Published in the BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth journal, the research revealed that micronutrient deficiencies and supplementation are the main concerns around plant-based pregnancies. Midwives who don’t eat meat, meanwhile, are much more likely to feel confident about advising their patients on plant-based pregnancies, but they only make up 23% of the total.
The researchers conducted interviews with 133 midwives in New Zealand. While 96% say they feel equipped to give their patients advice on general nutrition, this level of preparedness falls to just 72% for plant-based nutrition. 14% say they’re wholly unprepared to advise on meat-free pregnancies.
“The teaching and training of healthcare professionals in general is still based around omnivorous diets when it comes to nutrition. Nutrition training in most non-nutrition healthcare courses is still lacking, with education on plant-based diets being even less well covered,” says Dr Shireen Kassam, a consultant haematologist and founding director of medical association Plant-Based Health Professionals UK.
“In addition, most country-based dietary guidelines do not provide sufficient advice and guidance on supporting people to eat a healthy plant-based diet,” she adds.
“From the evidence and guidance we have, a well-planned vegan diet can support a healthy pregnancy. Like with all diet patterns, some knowledge and skills around healthy plant-based eating are useful. And given that it’s still rare to find health professionals who understand vegan diets for pregnancy and lactation, we would always recommend seeking support from a nutrition professional with expertise in vegan diets.”
Why many midwives don’t feel qualified to give plant-based advice
Courtesy: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
While 45% don’t experience any specific barriers towards discussing plant-based nutrition, 36% cite a lack of time, and 30% say they feel unqualified to provide such advice. Other hurdles include client disinterest, concerns about how advice may be perceived as a judgment of lifestyle choices, a lack of knowledge regarding plant-based diets, and the challenge of keeping up to date with changing nutrition advice.
Ensuring that plant-based patients have access to evidence-based dietary information should be a primary objective of maternal care. As the researchers write: “Midwives are frequently recognised as important sources of dietary information during pregnancy. Current findings suggest a potential gap in maternity support for plant-based diet followers.”
To that end, while almost all midwives believe that nutrition is important during pregnancy, nearly 70% say clients are responsible for educating themselves about nutrition. Despite only half agreeing that their patients are knowledgeable about their nutrition needs, 76% expect plant-based clients to have a good knowledge base.
Meanwhile, only 7% and 3% of midwives think plant-based diets are better for mothers’ and babies’ development, with around three in 10 disagreeing – most remain neutral (63% and 68% for mothers and babies, respectively). Even so, more midwives (92%) recommend omnivore patients to adjust their diets to meet nutritional needs, compared to 84% for plant-based clients.
“We don’t have sufficient studies on vegan diets and pregnancy at present, which is probably why there are a variety of answers to this question. In addition, the current media narrative around plant-based diets centres around them being restrictive and nutrient-deficient, and this tends to shape the views and attitudes of healthcare professionals, including midwives,” explains Kassam.
Micronutrient deficiencies are the chief concern. Most midwives believe that plant-based diets leave patients more susceptible to iron deficiency or anaemia (78%) and a lack of vitamin B12 (75%). Over a quarter of midwives discuss vitamin and mineral intake with pregnant patients who follow meat-free diets, and a sixth recommend supplementation.
Less than 1% encourage them to add animal proteins to their diets. And nearly three in 10 say these patients are less likely to develop hypertensive disorders of pregnancy than those who eat meat.
Courtesy: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
Public health resources need an overhaul
The study found that most midwives have had patients who follow restricted diets, including vegetarians (encountered by 90% of care professionals) and vegans (63%).
Meanwhile, those who follow an omnivore diet themselves are less likely to agree with the statement that vegan diets are better for expecting mothers and their infants. “Given the influence of midwives’ own diets on their attitudes and beliefs about plant-based diets, it is important midwives have access to reliable evidence-based information to inform their own diet choices,” the authors say.
The gap in confidence in providing nutritional advice on plant-based pregnancies is nothing new – previous research shows that this phenomenon has had little improvement over 28 years of analysis, with midwives feeling unprepared to advise on plant-based diets (thanks to a lack of knowledge), and feeling least equipped in advising vegetarian clients (compared to other common nutrition-related conditions).
Midwives’ practices towards pregnant patients on plant-based diets versus omnivorous diets | Courtesy: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
That said, the preparedness to advise on general and plant-based nutrition in this latest study was higher than in previous research – in one study, 87% reported moderate to high confidence in providing general nutrition advice, but only 41% aid so for vegetarian diets.
“Although the prevalence of formal nutrition training appears to have increased, it is possible the education standards regarding nutrition require more plant-based-diet-focused content, or recent curriculum changes are yet to be reflected within the workforce,” the researchers write.
“Gaining relatively specialised knowledge from general public health resources is challenging, and there remains a significant information gap in terms of plant-based diets,” they add. “There is a clear need for an evidence-based, public-health resource specifically for plant-based diets during pregnancy, to minimise midwife burden and ensure clients can easily access relevant information.”
Kassam adds: “It is clear from our own research that health professionals, including dietitians, would benefit from more teaching and training on plant-based and vegan diets, given they are becoming more popular and given that they are recognised as being necessary for their co-benefits for environmental health.”
Tucked inside the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago’s far South Side, there’s a yellow brick wall filled with hundreds of names. It stands as a memorial to the friends and family members in this community who died, often due to disease or other health complications.
The Gardens, as it’s commonly referred to, stands closer to the Indiana border than Chicago’s downtown and is wedged between toxic landfills, old steel mills, chemical factories, and an oil refinery. The housing development was built for Black veterans returning from World War II.
It’s unclear exactly how the memorial wall first began.
“People just started putting up names on the wall for the people who died of cancer and other respiratory problems,” said Cheryl Johnson, who runs the local nonprofit People for Community Recovery.
The Memorial Wall in the covered breezeway at Altgeld Gardens holds several hundred names of deceased loved ones.
Rich Cahan
Environmental justice was born here. Johnson’s mother, Hazel Johnson, originally from New Orleans, is celebrated as “the mother of the environmental justice movement.” Her lifelong fight to make city and federal officials confront how poor, Black and Latino communities face disproportionate exposure to pollution turned Altgeld Gardens into a launchpad for the national movement.
When President BIll Clinton signed the first executive order recognizing “environmental justice” in 1994, Johnson was standing right next to him. Now, 30 years later, Johnson’s legacy is under siege.
President Donald Trump struck down Clinton’s executive order on his first week in office. In the 100 days since, as part of a plan to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, from the federal government, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to dismantle environmental justice protections and programs across the United States.
According to Debbie Chizewer, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental legal group Earthjustice, the Trump administration’s message to environmental justice communities across the country is loud and clear: “We’re not going to do this work anymore.”
Chizewer added that the Trump administration isn’t just making it harder for the federal government to respond to environmental racism, but also for communities to advocate for themselves.
It’s targeting bedrock civil rights protections, Chizewer said, going after Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin under any programs that receive federal funding.
In the past, environmental justice groups fighting industrial pollution have used the provision to get the federal government to intervene in local issues. In Chicago for example, Cheryl Johnson was part of a civil rights complaint that resulted in a 2023 settlement agreement requiring the city of Chicago to fix zoning policies that concentrated heavy industry in poor and minority communities.
The national success of the legal tool may be fleeting.
A home sits near a coal-fired power plant in Cheshire, Ohio. The EPA has invited industrial polluters to seek exemptions from federal rules on air pollution. Joshua A. Bickel / AP Photo
Earlier this month, Trump’s Department of Justice terminated a 2023 settlement agreement that required Alabama’s officials to update a failing septic system which released raw sewage onto lawns in Lowndes County, Alabama. The Justice Department said it was ending the settlement as part of its mandate to end “illegal DEI and environmental justice policies.”
“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release.
“I was not surprised,” said Catherine Colman Flowers, a Lowndes County environmental justice activist who helped file the civil rights complaint that secured the 2023 settlement, given the Trump administration’s track record. Alabama’s Department of Public Health agreed to continue funding the septic replacement program until funds run out.
In the long term, Colman Flowers said the decision to end the settlement means “a lot of families will not get sanitation and will still be living in America with sewage on the ground.”
President Joe Biden had appointed Colman Flowers to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, or WHEJAC, whose mission was to provide poor and minority communities a direct line of communication with the White House and a mechanism for raising awareness of environmental justice issues in their local communities. Earlier this month, she received an email from the EPA notifying her that the Trump administration had disbanded the council.
The ongoing silencing is increasingly evident in the Great Lakes region, where Trump’s “national energy emergency” has fast-tracked federal review of the controversial Great Lakes Tunnel, a massive fossil fuel project that would replace a segment of the Line 5 pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac separating Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Nearby Indigenous communities have voiced concern for years that any potential leaks from the proposed pipeline tunnel, which is projected to traverse their land, could irrevocably impact their life on the Great Lakes.
“There is no national emergency,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, noting that the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Critics of the project maintain that only about 10 percent of the natural gas products that run through Line 5 stays in Michigan, while the overwhelming majority continues on back to Canada.
“To see it steamrolled ahead effectively silences the tribes vocalizing their concerns or sharing any of that reasoning with the decision-makers,” said Gravelle.
Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin invited industrial polluters to seek exemptions from federal rules on air pollution, a move Ana Baptista, an environmental policy professor at The New School in New York, called “a cue to industries that they have free reign.”
President Trump will then decide whether heavy industry, oftentimes located near environmental justice communities, will be able to leapfrog standards for toxic pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and ethylene oxide.
“It feels like we’re going back to the era where people denied the existence of environmental injustice and communities were really on their own,” she said. The only difference this time around, Baptista added, there’s now more than 30 years of empirical evidence documenting how poor and minority communities are stuck with the brunt of pollution and its dangerous health effects.
On Earth Day 2025, Cheryl Johnson gives Mayor Brandon Johnson a tour of her far South Side neighborhood in Chicago which faces disproportionate pollution impacts.
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Back on the South Side of Chicago, where the environmental justice movement took its first steps, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson surveyed the Altgeld Gardens Memorial Wall on Earth Day, calling it a potent reminder that the ultimate goal of any good policy is “to create equal environmental protection for everyone.”
Mayor Johnson introduced an ordinance named after Hazel Johnson to the Chicago City Council earlier this month that would require the city to investigate the pollution impacts of new industrial projects before approving them.
“Even with the attacks coming from the federal government, we’re going to do everything in Chicago to protect working people.” Johnson said. “It also is an effort to double down in our work to ensure that environmental justice prevails.”
The UK government is planning to remove the exemption for sweetened dairy and plant-based milk from its sugar tax – what does this mean for non-dairy alternatives?
Sweetened oat and almond milk could now carry the same levy as Pepsi and Coke in the UK, according to a new government proposal.
The Treasury confirmed proposals to extend the soft drinks industry levy (SDIL) to dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, and non-dairy alternatives with added sugar, in a move first hinted at by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the autumn budget last year.
The recommendations have been put out for consultation, and include plans to lower the threshold at which drinks become subject to the levy from 5g to 4g of added sugar per 100ml.
Why is the UK adding non-dairy milk to its soft drinks levy?
Courtesy: Oatly
The SDIL was first introduced by the Conservatives in 2018 to tackle rising obesity in the UK, and has raised nearly £2B for the government. For the 2023-24, the tax revenue reached £338M, with most of this paid at the higher rate (for drinks with over 8g of sugar per 100ml).
It caused widespread reformulation within the soft drinks industry, leading to a 46% average reduction in sugar. Today, 89% of fizzy drinks sold in the UK are not subject to the SDIL, with most falling just below the 5g threshold.
Until now, milk-based drinks and dairy-free milks (with at least 120mg of calcium per 100ml) have been exempted from the tax due to concerns about calcium intake, especially among the youth. However, the government said that young people only get 3.5% of their calcium from milk-based drinks, so “it is also likely that the health benefits do not justify the harms from excess sugar”.
“By bringing milk-based drinks and milk substitute drinks into the SDIL, the government would introduce a tax incentive for manufacturers of these drinks to build on existing progress and further reduce sugar in their recipes,” the Treasury noted.
The move is geared towards improving the overall health of people in the UK, where obesity has doubled in the last 30 years (affecting 29% of the population). As of 2022, 37% of children aged 10-11 were overweight or living with obesity. The combined economic costs of adult obesity and associated lower productivity amount to £35B, which is around a third of the UK’s education spending. Meanwhile, British children consume more than twice the recommended amount of added sugar.
The government suggests that by lowering consumption of high-sugar drinks, the proposed changes to the SDIL could lead to positive health and economic outcomes, with calorie reduction equivalent to health and economic benefits of around £4.2B over the next 25 years.
How will plant-based milk be affected by the sugar tax?
Courtesy: Sproud/Green Queen
The current exemption included products like chocolate-flavoured soy milk too, as long as it contained 120mg of calcium per 100ml. This offered “parity with the current treatment of milk-based drinks”, the Treasury explained.
It adds that removing the exemption on plant-based milk will actually “have a negligible effect” on how it’s taxed, since this affects a “very small minority” of products. Only a handful of non-dairy milks on the market have sugars above 4g per 100ml.
For example, Alpro’s Original soy milk contains 2.5g of sugar per 100ml, while its No Sugars range contains none. Even most barista milks fall under the 4g threshold, such as Sproud’s pea milk (1.8g of sugar per 100ml) or Califia Farms’ almond milk (2.7g).
There is an important caveat with milk alternatives made from grain like oats and rice. These products contain natural sugars released during the manufacturing process, similar to how the human body converts starch to sugar during digestion. This, however, is not added sugar, but forms part of the total sugar content found on the nutrition label.
The UK government clarified that the “sugars derived from the principal or ‘core’ ingredient” will be excluded from the definition of added sugar in these plant-based milks. Take Oatly, for instance. Its core lineup contains 3.4g of sugar, all from the oats themselves.
Another good example is Rude Health’s range, which relies on rice milk as a base for most of its drinks – its almond milk has 4.7g of sugars, though none of this is added sugar.
Graphic by Green Queen
Flavoured plant-based milk in the spotlight
Under the UK dietary guidelines, unsweetened, calcium-fortified plant milks count as part of the ‘milk and dairy’ group in the Eatwell Guide, and can also be given to children aged one and above “as part of a healthy balanced diet”.
The only products in this category affected by the exemption are the sweetened flavoured non-dairy milks. Alpro’s vanilla soy milk contains 6.8g of sugar, meaning it would be subject to the new SDIL rules (should they be finalised).
That product currently retails for £2.10; once the levy is applied, this would rise to £2.28. Some critics have raised concerns about the impact of the SDIL on families, especially as the cost of living continues to remain significantly high. As health-conscious consumers look away from sugary foods and beverages, it could serve as a further incentive for them to switch to low- and no-sugar alternatives.
For brands like Alpro, it would likely necessitate a reformulation to bring the added sugar content in flavoured milks under 4g per 100ml. Others, whose products are already under the threshold, stand to win, such as Sproud’s vanilla pea milk, which only contains 3g of sugar and Califia Farms’s unsweetened vanilla almond milk, which has zero added sugar.
Danone’s Nutri-Score U-turn
Courtesy: Danone/Green Queen
The discourse around the sugar content in plant-based milks and comparing them with soft drinks got heated last year, after the classification system of the Nutri-Score label, which uses a five-colour, A-to-E rating to denote a product’s health credentials, moved non-dairy products from the ‘general foods’ category to the ‘beverage’ category.
It meant that only water got an A rating on the nutrition label in the beverage category, with some dairy and plant-based alternatives now being viewed in the same vein as soft drinks. The move led Danone, Alpro’s parent company and a former advocate of mandatory Nutri-Score labelling, to remove the label from its products.
“We have always supported consistent science-based, interpretive nutrition labelling and were pioneers in displaying, on a voluntary basis, the Nutri-Score on our packaging in Europe,” a Danone spokesperson told Green Queen last year.
“However, we do not agree with the revision of the algorithm, which switches drinkable dairy and plant-based alternatives into the beverage category,” they added. “This development gives an erroneous view of the nutritional and functional quality of drinkable dairy and plant-based products, not in line with food-based dietary guidelines in Europe.”
The company’s decision was met with backlash from nutritionists and consumer groups. “Danone’s U-turn on the Nutri-Score ignores consumers’ desire for clear nutritional information on packaging,” said Suzy Sumner, the Brussels head of consumer organisation Foodwatch. “It is unacceptable that Danone should decide to backtrack on the Nutri-Score because the products of some of its brands would score less well.”
Now that the UK government is targeting sugary plant-based milk, companies like Danone may have their hands forced. If they can revise product recipes to lower the sugar thresholds, it would result in a win for public health, consumers’ wallets, and businesses’ own bottom lines.
Campaign group EveryDoctor has raised the alarm over the “incredibly concerning” financial links between politicians and private healthcare sector. Notably, off the back of its recently published research, it has continued to expose Labour Party government ministers’ significant connections to lobbyists shilling for big players in private health.
EveryDoctor: Labour and the lobbyists
In April, EveryDoctor put out a new piece of damning research uncovering the scale of private healthcare connected political donations MPs have been raking in. In particular, it pored over donations that the current crop of elected MPs have accepted between 2023 and 2025.
It found that MPs had bagged more than £2.7m in donations from individuals and companies directly or indirectly linked to the private healthcare sector.
And crucially, it was Labour MPs that took more than £2m of those £2.7m donations. It accounted for four times the amount of every other political party combined.
Now, the group is honing in on some of the key offenders in Cabinet. And what’s notable is the sizeable chunk of donations lobbyists linked to privatised health have been pouring into the pockets of key government ministers.
So far, the group has unearthed that lobbyists ploughed £110,000 into MPs’ political donations during 2023 and 2024. And these lobbyists count some of the most prominent private healthcare companies among their clients.
Rachel Reeves in bed with private healthcare lobbyists
Chancellor Rachel Reeves was one such more-than-willing recipient. She accepted a free campaign advisor from political lobbying firm FGS Global between February and May 2024. This amounted to a donation-in-kind worth more than £17,000.
FGS Global also funded a further £12,929 of “logistical costs” for Reeves at the Labour Party conference in October 2024.
Why is this significant? It’s because FGS Global has a link to US private healthcare group United Health.
Specifically, FGS Global went on to lobby the government on behalf of Optum between July and September 2024. This is the UK subsidiary of US private healthcare group United Health.
The firm’s other clients have included Ernst and Young, which has been criticised for billing the NHS more than £2,000 a day for its consultants. Accord Healthcare is another. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) previously fined the UK drug company for overcharging the NHS.
Meanwhile, education secretary Bridget Phillipson and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds also accepted a total of £5,900 in sponsorship from lobbying firm Public First for a
pre-election media reception. Public First’s clients include the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), an industry group representing private health firms operating in the UK.
The money moving through Westminster
Ultimately, EveryDoctor says it is:
incredibly concerned at the way that money is moving through Westminster, and the links between our politicians and those with private healthcare interests.
It argues that:
Important questions need to be asked about who is really driving healthcare policy in the UK, and for the benefit of whom? Decisions about the NHS should be solely driven by what is best for patients, and what can be done to support our hardworking staff to do their important work properly.
The campaign group’s incisive research has – quite literally – put the damning scale of the MPs private healthcare donations on the map. EveryDoctor has consistently held politicians of every stripe to account. Now, it’s latest work is no exception – scrutinising Labour with no fear, no favour.
Moreover, the group has said that this is only the start of its research. There’s more to expose where all that came from. Therefore, it’s building a “living map”, and will be adding more data soon.
EveryDoctor founder Dr Julia Grace Patterson has issued a plea for public support:
We are desperately concerned about the welfare of millions of NHS patients and staff, because of what politicians have done to the NHS. We think it’s time to step things up and build a movement to push back, and we need your support to do it!
It’s evidently vital EveryDoctor can continue its work throwing a spotlight on dodgy political donations, because already, it’s clear that private healthcare lobbyist have won the ear of this Labour government.
Bright red, tart, and sweet, cherries are now coming into season (typically from May to July) and eating them all summer long comes with a bevy of health benefits. Previously, cherries have been linked with improvements in sleep quality due to their content of tryptophan and melatonin, which are both vital for regulating sleep cycles.
Cherries have also shown potential in reducing hemoglobin A1C and improving lipid profiles for individuals with diabetes. Plus, the fruit can also help with gout—a painful inflammatory condition caused by excess uric acid crystallization in the joints.
Researchers at UC-Davis previously found that consuming around 45 Bing cherries for breakfast can significantly reduce urate levels in the blood, which is a critical factor in gout attacks. This suggests that cherries might be a useful dietary addition for those looking to manage or prevent gout.
Enginakyurt | Pexels
Further research has expanded on the health benefits of both sweet and tart cherries. These studies indicate that cherries can decrease markers of oxidative stress in the majority of cases and reduce inflammation markers in a substantial number of studies.
They are rich in antioxidants, with a standard one-cup serving containing up to 4,873 antioxidants—compounds that help protect cells from oxidative stress, which can lead to various chronic diseases.
Cherries are especially rich in anthocyanins, which not only give cherries their vibrant color but also have heart-health benefits, such as protecting against cardiovascular disease by inhibiting plaque formation and reducing inflammation.
Additionally, published reports “indicate that consumption of cherries decreased markers for […] exercise-induced muscle soreness and loss of strength, and blood pressure” shortly after ingesting the fruit.
This wide range of benefits suggests that incorporating cherries into your diet could contribute positively to overall health and wellness, alongside their specific benefits in managing gout.
Getting the most out of cherries
While nothing beats eating fresh cherries, we turned to celebrity chefs for fun ideas to get more of these powerful summer fruits on your plate.
Here are some cherry-inspired recipes curated from the kitchens of Oprah, Martha Stewart, and Bobby Flay, all easily made plant-based with minimal swaps.
Alana Hale
1Rainier Cherry and Apple Pie With Potato Chip Crumble
This Rainier Cherry and Apple Pie With Potato Chip Crumble recipe from Oprah Daily uniquely combines the tartness of Rainier cherries and the sweetness of Granny Smith apples under a salty, crunchy topping of crushed potato chips. In fact, all three components are an homage to Washington state. “The state grows more sweet cherries than any other region in the nation,” says recipe developer Stacey Mei Yan Fong. “Washington is also a top apple-producing state, responsible for 50 percent of the nation’s apples.” Tim’s Cascade Style chips, the base for the potato chip crumble, also hail from Washington.
The pie features a buttery crust filled with a sweet and tart fruit mixture, topped with a crumble that includes oats and cinnamon for a traditional flavor paired with the novel texture of potato chips. This inventive recipe, baked initially at a lower temperature to set the filling and finished at a higher temperature to crisp the topping, showcases a creative blend of textures and flavors that reflect the state’s agricultural bounty.
For this panna cotta, Martha Stewart creates a simple, yet very luxurious, dessert that creatively blends the robust flavors of oven-roasted cherries with the smooth, custard-like texture of silken tofu. In this recipe, sweet cherries are tossed with honey and lemon juice and roasted to enhance their natural flavors. Fresh raspberries are added after roasting for a burst of tartness.
The tofu, a plant-based alternative to traditional panna cotta, is gently steamed and combined with the fruit mixture. Alternatively, the “silken tofu can also be heated in the microwave until warmed through,” or heated “over a pot of simmering water, covered” for about 20 to 25 minutes Stewart advises.
Pro tip: Substitute honey for a bee-free alternative that will deliver the same sweetness without harming the little pollinators. Get the recipe
Fabbri
3Fresh Cherry Margaritas
Food Network celebrity chef Bobby Flay has a well-documented affection for cherries, particularly the Amarena variety from the Bologna and Modena regions of Italy that the chef religiously stocks in his pantry.
For his Fresh Cherry Margaritas, Flay incorporates different types of cherries in a recipe that perfectly combines the tartness of fresh Bing cherries with the sweetness of agave nectar and the robust flavor of tequila.
This easy-to-make drink includes lime juice and maraschino cherry liqueur to enhance the cherry flavor, and is garnished with lime wedges and cherries—Amarena, if you please.
Pro tip: If you’re worried drinking alcohol might cancel out the benefits of cherries, you can easily turn this into a virgin margarita with an alcohol-free spirit instead. Get the recipe
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Bright red, tart, and sweet, cherries are now coming into season (typically from May to July) and eating them all summer long comes with a bevy of health benefits. Previously, cherries have been linked with improvements in sleep quality due to their content of tryptophan and melatonin, which are both vital for regulating sleep cycles.
Cherries have also shown potential in reducing hemoglobin A1C and improving lipid profiles for individuals with diabetes. Plus, the fruit can also help with gout—a painful inflammatory condition caused by excess uric acid crystallization in the joints.
Researchers at UC-Davis previously found that consuming around 45 Bing cherries for breakfast can significantly reduce urate levels in the blood, which is a critical factor in gout attacks. This suggests that cherries might be a useful dietary addition for those looking to manage or prevent gout.
Enginakyurt | Pexels
Further research has expanded on the health benefits of both sweet and tart cherries. These studies indicate that cherries can decrease markers of oxidative stress in the majority of cases and reduce inflammation markers in a substantial number of studies.
They are rich in antioxidants, with a standard one-cup serving containing up to 4,873 antioxidants—compounds that help protect cells from oxidative stress, which can lead to various chronic diseases.
Cherries are especially rich in anthocyanins, which not only give cherries their vibrant color but also have heart-health benefits, such as protecting against cardiovascular disease by inhibiting plaque formation and reducing inflammation.
Additionally, published reports “indicate that consumption of cherries decreased markers for […] exercise-induced muscle soreness and loss of strength, and blood pressure” shortly after ingesting the fruit.
This wide range of benefits suggests that incorporating cherries into your diet could contribute positively to overall health and wellness, alongside their specific benefits in managing gout.
Getting the most out of cherries
While nothing beats eating fresh cherries, we turned to celebrity chefs for fun ideas to get more of these powerful summer fruits on your plate.
Here are some cherry-inspired recipes curated from the kitchens of Oprah, Martha Stewart, and Bobby Flay, all easily made plant-based with minimal swaps.
Alana Hale
1Rainier Cherry and Apple Pie With Potato Chip Crumble
This Rainier Cherry and Apple Pie With Potato Chip Crumble recipe from Oprah Daily uniquely combines the tartness of Rainier cherries and the sweetness of Granny Smith apples under a salty, crunchy topping of crushed potato chips. In fact, all three components are an homage to Washington state. “The state grows more sweet cherries than any other region in the nation,” says recipe developer Stacey Mei Yan Fong. “Washington is also a top apple-producing state, responsible for 50 percent of the nation’s apples.” Tim’s Cascade Style chips, the base for the potato chip crumble, also hail from Washington.
The pie features a buttery crust filled with a sweet and tart fruit mixture, topped with a crumble that includes oats and cinnamon for a traditional flavor paired with the novel texture of potato chips. This inventive recipe, baked initially at a lower temperature to set the filling and finished at a higher temperature to crisp the topping, showcases a creative blend of textures and flavors that reflect the state’s agricultural bounty.
For this panna cotta, Martha Stewart creates a simple, yet very luxurious, dessert that creatively blends the robust flavors of oven-roasted cherries with the smooth, custard-like texture of silken tofu. In this recipe, sweet cherries are tossed with honey and lemon juice and roasted to enhance their natural flavors. Fresh raspberries are added after roasting for a burst of tartness.
The tofu, a plant-based alternative to traditional panna cotta, is gently steamed and combined with the fruit mixture. Alternatively, the “silken tofu can also be heated in the microwave until warmed through,” or heated “over a pot of simmering water, covered” for about 20 to 25 minutes Stewart advises.
Pro tip: Substitute honey for a bee-free alternative that will deliver the same sweetness without harming the little pollinators. Get the recipe
Fabbri
3Fresh Cherry Margaritas
Food Network celebrity chef Bobby Flay has a well-documented affection for cherries, particularly the Amarena variety from the Bologna and Modena regions of Italy that the chef religiously stocks in his pantry.
For his Fresh Cherry Margaritas, Flay incorporates different types of cherries in a recipe that perfectly combines the tartness of fresh Bing cherries with the sweetness of agave nectar and the robust flavor of tequila.
This easy-to-make drink includes lime juice and maraschino cherry liqueur to enhance the cherry flavor, and is garnished with lime wedges and cherries—Amarena, if you please.
Pro tip: If you’re worried drinking alcohol might cancel out the benefits of cherries, you can easily turn this into a virgin margarita with an alcohol-free spirit instead. Get the recipe
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
For decades, chicken has enjoyed its status as the “healthy” meat—low in fat, high in protein, and widely promoted as the smarter choice over red or processed meats. Yet, two new studies are now upending this conventional wisdom, suggesting the supposed benefits of poultry come with caveats for both personal health and the planet’s future.
A growing number of scientists now say there is a measurable threshold for how much meat is genuinely sustainable for people and the environment. At the same time, troubling new data from Italy points to a direct link between even moderate chicken consumption and an increased risk of cancer and all-cause mortality—raising urgent questions about the true cost of those skinless breasts and lunchtime salads.
Angela Bailey
New research redefines sustainable meat intake
A landmark study published in Nature Food led by Caroline Gebara, an environmental scientist at the Technical University of Denmark, aims to give clarity on one of the biggest questions in modern nutrition: how much meat is actually okay?
“Most people now realize that we should eat less meat for both environmental and health reasons. But it’s hard to relate to how much ‘less’ is and whether it really makes a difference in the big picture,” Gebara said in a statement.
Researchers calculated a figure meant to guide grocery lists everywhere: 255 grams, or nine ounces, of poultry or pork per week. This equates to about two chicken breasts. For context, it is six to 10 times less meat than the average person in the US or Europe consumed in 2021, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Adobe
The study’s takeaway is even starker for red meat, particularly beef. “Our calculations show that even moderate amounts of red meat in one’s diet are incompatible with what the planet can regenerate of resources based on the environmental factors we looked at in the study,” Gebara says.
The rationale is rooted in the carbon cost of livestock, especially cattle and sheep, which require extensive land and water and release high amounts of methane and nitrous oxide—both greenhouse gases many times more potent than carbon dioxide. A single cow can emit as much as 80 to 110 kilograms of methane per year, amplifying the climate impact of beef far beyond other foods.
According to the United Nations Environment Program, animal agriculture accounts for 14.5 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions globally, with beef responsible for about 41 percent of that total. But meat’s planetary toll is not limited to emissions. The environmental footprint of animal products includes land degradation, deforestation for feed crops, and the heavy use of water and fossil fuels to raise, process, and transport livestock products to market.
Unsplash
Gebara’s team of researchers developed a model that takes into account both nutritional needs—32 key requirements—and environmental sustainability benchmarks. The conclusion: while cheese, eggs, fish, and white meat can be part of otherwise plant-forward healthy diets, these foods must be consumed within strict limits. Red meat, however, does not fit within planetary boundaries at all.
Still, the study acknowledges its limitations: “Our study focused on the biophysical limits of human nutrient intake and environmental impacts, but overlooked other aspects such as accessibility, affordability, and cultural acceptance,” the authors write. “Achieving truly sustainable diets requires universal availability, which must be supported by policymakers at all levels.”
Poultry’s health halo slips as new evidence links chicken to higher mortality, cancer risk
If the environmental argument for less meat seems familiar, the health data behind chicken’s halo is getting a major revision. A new long-term cohort study led by researchers at Italy’s National Institute of Gastroenterology tracked the diets and health outcomes of 4,869 adults over nineteen years. The results challenge poultry’s reputation as a “noble food.”
While the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend chicken as a lean, protein-rich staple to be consumed one to three times per week, this new study found that those eating more than 300 grams of chicken per week—just under four standard servings—were 27 percent more likely to die from any cause compared to those eating less than one serving. Even more concerning: higher poultry intake was linked to a more than double increase in risk of death from gastrointestinal cancer.
“Our results showed that men have a higher risk than women of dying from [gastrointestinal cancer] for the same proportion of poultry consumed,” the authors said.
Men consuming over 300 grams per week were 2.6 times more likely to die from digestive cancer than those who ate less than 100 grams.
The study raises several possibilities for this association. Industrialized chicken production may expose consumers to pesticides, medications, or hormone residues left in the meat, while high-temperature or prolonged cooking methods can generate mutagens that damage DNA. The researchers also note that while combining red meat with vegetables has been shown to mitigate some health risks, this effect was not seen with poultry.
Interestingly, as the proportion of white meat increased in the diet, the mortality risk also rose—a trend not observed for red meat at the same consumption levels. The research team suggests that estrogen in females may play a role in how the body metabolizes nutrients and fights disease, contributing to the lower risk in women.
However, the authors are quick to acknowledge the study’s limitations. The dietary questionnaire did not distinguish between cuts of poultry, preparation methods, or whether the chicken was processed or organic—factors that could significantly influence health outcomes.
Getty
“We believe it is beneficial to moderate poultry consumption, alternating it with other equally valuable protein sources […] We also believe it is essential to focus more on cooking methods, avoiding high temperatures and prolonged cooking times,” the authors advise.
For those hoping to sidestep potential contaminants, organic chicken comes with a price tag: an average of four dollars more per pound compared to conventional chicken breasts. Yet, as researchers push for more studies on processed poultry, consumers face tough choices as they try to balance health, ethics, and budget.
With environmental and health experts converging on the message that moderation—if not minimization—of animal meat is key, there is increasing pressure on policy, food companies, and consumers alike to reconsider what fills our plates. For now, it seems the only noble approach is transparency, variety, and a renewed focus on plant-forward diets.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced late last week that the number of measles cases across the United States is approaching 900, with most of those who have contracted the virus being unvaccinated children. Measles is a dangerous and potentially deadly virus. While it is most recognized by the appearance of skin abrasions on a person’s body, infection can also cause…
It’s fair to say that ultra-processed foods are receiving a fair amount of negative attention right now. Foods like potato chips, soda, fast food, processed meats, and candy have been linked with everything from premature aging to cognitive decline. This is largely because these foods tend to be devoid of important nutrients, like fiber, vitamins, and minerals, and full of saturated fat, salt, and sugar. They are also often made with ingredients like colorants, artificial flavors, sweeteners, and emulsifiers.
And unfortunately, the situation is getting worse. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has analyzed data from eight countries, including the US, Canada, and the UK, and discovered a link between premature death and high consumption of ultra-processed foods.
According to lead investigator Eduardo Augusto Fernandes Nilson, DSc, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Brazil, the research suggests that for every 10 percent increase in the dietary share of ultra-processed foods, the risk of death increases by 3 percent.
High consumption of ultra-processed foods has been linked with everything from diabetes to cancer to cardiovascular disease. In fact, in total, these foods have been associated with 32 different diseases.
Pexels
This is particularly concerning for countries where ultra-processed food consumption is extremely high. In Colombia, for example, consumption is around 15 percent, but in the US it’s around 50 percent. Nilson notes that in countries with lower consumption of ultra-processed foods, the percentage of premature deaths attributable to them is around 4 percent. In countries with higher consumption, this figure rises to nearly 14 percent.
To underline just how prevalent the issue is, Nilson explained that in 2018, it’s likely that 124,000 premature deaths could be linked to ultra-processed food consumption.
The research also expresses concern that the consumption of ultra-processed food is rising everywhere. “This shows that policies that disincentivize the consumption of ultra-processed foods are urgently needed globally,” he said. “Promoting traditional dietary patterns based on local fresh and minimally processed foods.”
The answer to more longevity might be more plants
The new research follows a recent study, published in the journal Nature, which highlighted the longevity benefits of a traditional Tanzanian diet from the rural Kilimanjaro region. The study suggested that those who eat more traditional, minimally processed plant-based foods, like okra, plantain, and beans, had lower levels of inflammatory proteins in their bodies, fewer markers of metabolic dysregulation, and a better immune response than people who consumed more ultra-processed foods.
“It’s often when people move away from [traditional] patterns toward more modern, Western diets that we see increases in chronic disease risk,” Sapna Peruvemba, MS, RDN of Health by Sapna, told VegNews.
Pexels
Another new study in Nature, published in early April, found that older adults who eat more plant-based protein than animal-based protein tend to live longer, healthier lives. It concluded that a shift toward more plant-based protein could help improve health outcomes, especially in older people.
Both studies support the findings of the Blue Zones, which are five areas around the world where meat consumption is low and people eat predominantly minimally processed, plant-based foods. The five Blue Zones are Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, CA in the US. You can read more about them here.
The need for nuance in the ultra-processed discussion
No doubt, growing research confirms that many ultra-processed foods are damaging to our health. However, recently, many experts have also called for more nuanced discussion around this particular topic.
In 2023, for example, one study suggested that ultra-processed foods can be healthy if they’re made with mostly plant-based ingredients. Think canned beans and instant oatmeal, for example. These foods are still nutritious, with fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals, and they are easier and more convenient for consumers to prepare.
Pexels
The following year, a paper published in Plos Medicine also called for more nuance. The research, conducted by two British scientists, expressed concern that urging the public to avoid all ultra-processed foods wasn’t helpful messaging. They pointed out that although many ultra-processed foods are unhealthy because of their high salt, refined sugar, and saturated fat content, several still provide nutritional value. They also highlighted that these foods play a crucial role in offering accessible and affordable food options for many individuals.
“Believe it or not, some UPFs can actually play a role in a well-balanced diet,” said Peruvemba. “Many fortified plant milks and yogurts fall into this category—they’re often enriched with nutrients like calcium, vitamin D, and B vitamins.”
“The ones to watch out for are those calorie-heavy, nutrient-light snack foods that leave you hungry for more,” she added. “Chips, candy, soda—you know the drill.”
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
The Port of Oakland’s surrounding Black communities have fought for decades for their right to cleaner air. Now that dream is within reach. In October 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the port a $322 million grant to transition its cargo handling operations to zero emissions. Matched by the port and local partners, the total investment will be close to half a billion dollars, all flowing into green, sustainable energy. This effort will reduce the more than 69,000 tons of yearly greenhouse gas — the equivalent of burning more than 160 Statues of Liberty’s weight in coal — emitted by drayage trucks, cranes, forklifts, and tractors.
Finland’s Solar Foods has developed a protein shake to help you pump your macros. The kicker? The ready-to-mix powder ditches dairy for CO2.
As it prepares to enter the US market, Finnish food tech firm Solar Foods is targeting a food format precious to Americans today: protein shakes.
The maker of Solein – a protein derived from microbes and gases – has developed a ready-to-mix powder to help you hit your daily protein goals.
It’s the first readily available protein powder made from thin air, and is aimed at a consumer base obsessed with protein. Americans are eating more of the macronutrient than ever before, with six in 10 Americans increasing their intake last year, and 85% want to continue to do so in 2025.
87% of them believe you need animal products to get enough protein, despite vast evidence to the contrary – and that’s before you account for the climate impact of livestock farming, which is making it increasingly difficult to meet America’s growing demand for food.
As it begins its next phase under new CEO Rami Jokela, Solar Foods aims to challenge that with its gas protein, which it has described as “the most sustainable protein in the world”.
New Solar Foods CEO Rami Jokela | Courtesy: Solar Foods
Solar Foods targets US performance nutrition market
The Solein Protein Shake has been unveiled in a Salty Caramel flavour, and contains no sugar. It’s designed as a daily protein supplement to support active lifestyles and conditions-based nutritional needs.
Solar Foods says Solein’s unique properties eschew the need for any other protein sources. Each 16g serving of the powder boasts 10g of protein, with the ingredient containing all essential amino acids (including branched-chain), as well as iron and vitamin B12.
“Solein is especially well-suited to be used in different kinds of ready-to-mix protein powders, as it blends well with liquid, bringing richness and indulgent, creamy consistency without dairy,” says chief commercial officer Juan Manuel Benitez-Garcia.
“Solein Shake is one example of such a protein powder, ready for consumers as it is, or to be adjusted to different consumer needs from healthy snacking to fulfilling even demanding protein needs. By increasing the amount of Solein, the shake is also ideal for boosting performance as well as muscle growth and maintenance,” he adds.
The company is positioning the product towards athletes and gymgoers looking to enhance their performance and recovery. That aligns with its commercialisation strategy for the US, which focuses on the health and performance nutrition market. Consumers in this segment consume 500,000 tonnes of protein powder worth $10B annually, according to Solar Foods.
“Ready-to-mix protein powders are usually made with dairy-based whey protein, as it has been the top choice in taste, bringing fresh flavour to products without the off notes typical to plant-based proteins,” says Benitez-Garcia, before pointing out that the demand for whey is outgrowing supply.
“When you’re a health and performance nutrition brand with a big part of your business based on whey but struggling to see where future supply will come from, you’re actively looking for better options,” he explains. “Thanks to Solein’s mild taste, it matches the freshness of whey, also bringing the upsides of sustainability as well as price and quality stability.”
Solein’s protein powder is the latest in a growing list of animal-free protein powders looking to serve the ever-growing appetite for functional protein ingredients without the environmental cost.
Perfect Day, one of the first companies in the world to create an animal-free whey protein powder, lent its ingredient to CPG protein powder brand Strive Nutrition, as well as online sports nutrition giant Myprotein. And last year, Nestlé released a Better Whey product under its Orgain line last year, featuring the same ingredient.
France’s Bon Vivant has also introduced a three-strong range of functional animal-free dairy protein powders. Dutch microbial protein maker Farmless is also working on a ‘brewed’ protein powder. And this week, Balletic Foods entered the space with three fermentation-derived protein powders, one of which is focused on recovery.
How Solein is produced
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Solar Foods produces Solein at its demo plant in Finland, dubbed Factory 01, which can churn out 160 tonnes of the protein per year (rising to 230 tonnes next year). In addition, the company is building a much larger Factory 02, which would be able to manufacture 12,800 tonnes of product annually.
It produces the protein by feeding microbes on carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen instead of sugar. Doing so eschews the need for farmland to grow sugarcane, alongside any irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides. The ingredient is not dependent on water or weather either, allowing it to be produced in climates like the desert, the Arctic and even outer space.
The microbes are grown in a liquid form, and later dried into an orange-yellow powder that is flavourless and has 78% protein by dry weight, 6% fat, and 10% dietary fibre. Its macronutrient profile is said to be akin to dried soy or algae – but it outperforms both plant and animal proteins on sustainability.
Since the main raw materials required for its production are carbon dioxide and renewable energy, Solein results in emissions equal to just 1% of those generated by conventional meat, and 20% of plant proteins.
The ingredient received novel food approval in Singapore in 2022, debuting as part of a vegan chocolate gelato at Italian eatery Fico. In addition, it was the base of a Taste the Future chocolate snack bar released by Fazer (a majority shareholder of Solar Foods) in the city-state, and a line of mooncakes and ice cream sandwiches rolled out by Japanese food giant Ajinomoto.
Moreover, the company achieved self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status in the US last year, and registered Factory 01 with the Food and Drug Administration to import Solein protein stateside. At the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California last month, it announced Solein Protein Bites – Nut Mix Edition as a concept product to showcase Solein’s capabilities.
Solar Foods, which has raised over €43M ($47M) in equity funding and €30M ($32M) in debt financing, has applied for novel food approval with the European Food Safety Authority, expecting the green light in 2026. In February, it gave the region a taste of Solein through a partnership with Italy’s KelpEat, which showcased a high-protein snack with the ingredient at the Pitti Taste food fair in Florence.
As one of the world’s largest plant-based meat companies, Beyond Meat has hit back at the livestock industry with a new documentary.
Is beef just the new tobacco?
That’s one of the central claims in a new short film by Beyond Meat, a plant-based giant looking to clear the headwinds that have plagued it in the last few years.
In Planting Change, a fast-paced nine-minute documentary, the El Segundo-based firm tackles the health and environmental impacts of plant-based meat, the effect on farmers, and, of course, the misinformation campaigns from the meat industry.
“American beef producers are following a very similar playbook to the tobacco industry – of undermining science and of creating counternarratives that suggest that plant-based products are somehow harmful,” says Dr Robert K Jackler, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and the founder of the Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising group.
Really, though, the livestock industry is only concerned about one thing: its bottom line. “Their concern is that plant-based meats will begin to eat into their sales and harm their profits,” says Jackler.
The meat industry has used the tobacco playbook to spread misinformation | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
And for a while, they were. At the turn of the decade, Beyond Meat was at the height of its popularity, with a successful IPO and major celebrity endorsements taking the brand’s valuation to $14B at its peak. With Covid-19 soon confining Americans to their homes, they became more health-conscious and actively began swapping out beef.
Of the $10.7B invested in plant-based food companies since 2015, $4.2B came in 2020-21, when sales of meat alternatives reached record highs. And in the two years since the pandemic, conventional meat consumption dropped by 4kg per person in the US.
Things have taken a turn in the year since. In 2024, meat made a comeback – driven by a shifting cultural and political landscape – with sales reaching record highs. Purchases of vegan alternatives, however, were declining.
So the “playbook” Jackler says the beef industry employed has been successful. Beyond Meat, one of this campaign’s biggest and most frequent targets, has felt the squeeze, with sales sliding for nine consecutive quarters until the latter half of 2024. The documentary, it seems, is its answer to Big Meat.
Beyond Meat tackles UPF concerns through documentary
Plant-based meat can be reformulated, cows cannot | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
For a while now, there’s one statistic that Ethan Brown – Beyond Meat’s founder and CEO – has been using to illustrate the impact of the meat industry’s misinformation campaign: in 2020, more than half of Americans felt that plant-based meat was good for them, a number that fell to 38% two years later.
Amid attacks on long ingredient lists and ultra-processing, the company changed tack in 2023, airing a marketing campaign focused on farmers. Months later, it took another turn, this time going all-in on health.
“We faced a fundamental choice, and that was to either bang our fists on the table and explain the health benefits of our products. Or, to take a look inward and say: ‘How do we make our products even healthier? How do we make them unassailable from a health perspective?’” Brown says in the documentary.
Beyond Meat did a little bit of both. It reformulated its core product line in collaboration with “leading medical and nutrition experts”, including Stanford professor Dr Christopher Gardner (who was behind the famous ‘twin study‘ featured in Netflix’s You Are What You Eat) and renowned dietitian Joy Bauer. At the same time, the company refreshed its packaging to put health claims like ‘75% less saturated fat’ and ‘no cholesterol’ compared to beef.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat | Graphic by Green Queen
Dr Kristi Funk, a breast cancer surgeon and advocate of whole-food plant-based nutrition, explains the difference in the film. When you cook meat, as soon as the heat interacts with the creatinine, it forms highly carcinogenic compounds.
“When you grill, sauté or barbecue a Beyond Meat burger, you’re not making any appreciable carcinogens,” says Funk. “The protein sources are healthful foods – peas, lentils, brown rice, faba beans.”
Dr Matthew Nagra, who led research on the heart health impact of meat and vegan alternatives, explains: “One of the underappreciated aspects of plant-based meat alternatives is that we can reformulate them. You can’t do that with a cow.”
The documentary also sheds light on how Beyond Meat’s faba bean steak is made, in an effort to answer critics of ultra-processed foods. “The farmer plants the crop. The plant is harvested. Then it’s milled. The flour is placed in the air chamber. Because the density and size of protein and starch are different, they naturally separate,” explains Brown.
“We then take the protein, blend it with wheat, and we run it through heating, cooling and pressure to restructure the form of that protein into animal muscle,” he continues. This is then mixed with natural flavours and colours and plant-based oils to form the Beyond Steak.
What about the farmers?
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond health, one of the other major criticisms of plant-based meat surrounds the people who grow our food. If we eat plants, what happens to our ranchers?
This argument misses the reality of climate change. There’s simply not enough land or water to feed Americans as much beef as they’re projected to eat over the coming decades. When it comes to polluting foods, beef is as bad as it gets.
Our insatiable demand for meat has led the industry to convert wild habitats into land for livestock grazing, resulting in significant biodiversity loss. Producing Beyond Meat requires 97% less land and water, and generates 90% fewer emissions.
“For us to solve climate change, beef consumers have to consume less,” says Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. “Not none,” he adds, “but less.”
The short film also features several endorsements from farmers in the Midwest. For one farmer in Montana, having red lentils has made a big difference for his farm, as well as agriculture across the state. This is because the pulse crops grown for Beyond Meat don’t need as much water or any synthetic fertilisers.
He also suggests that these crops are fuelling some hope into the younger generation to take up the profession – a major point of concern for the industry. A fava bean farmer in North Dakota, meanwhile, says the return on investment has been 20-25% higher than other crops.
Oswald Schmitz, a population and community ecology professor at Yale University’s School of the Environment, puts it best. “One of the really cool opportunities for cattle ranchers is to get them to change their mindset from being livestock producers to carbon ranchers.
The short film does feature some compelling arguments about the need to diversify our protein sources, but in an America where regenerative beef and tallow are all the rage, and UPFs are public enemy number one, will consumers bite?
Brown ends the film with a hopeful message: “[If] you fearlessly confront the questions of our time and refuse to go numb in defeat, there is truly hope and a path forward in eating closer to the sun.”
In a recent development from Washington, Donald Trump has become the subject of intense speculation regarding his notable weight loss, sparking discussions about his potential use of Ozempic. According to the Daily Beast’s exclusive coverage in their newsletter the Swamp, Trump’s physical transformation has caught the attention of both medical experts and political insiders. Maybe it’s actually Ozempic that’s on Trump’s dinner menu?
Trump taking Ozempic? Why not?
At the age of 78, the president’s “glow up” is officially credited by his physician Sean Barbabella to an “active lifestyle” and frequent golfing victories. However, close observers and health specialists express scepticism about such explanations fully accounting for the dramatic change. Trump’s weight reportedly dropped from an unofficial 254 lbs to an official 224 lbs, marking a 12 percent loss in body weight — a shift considered unusually rapid for lifestyle modifications alone.
Dr. Lisa Oldson, an expert in obesity medicine, expressed doubts to the Swamp about the possibility of such swift weight loss without medical aid. She stated, “Most people don’t lose [weight] that fast without meds,” adding that significant drops, such as 30 to 100 pounds, are often linked to newer pharmaceutical treatments known as GLP-1 receptor agonists. These drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy, serve to assist patients with diabetes and obesity by moderating appetite and improving metabolism – patients like Trump.
Similarly, dietitian Dr. Carolyn Williams of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, acknowledged the likelihood that Trump’s weight loss involved GLP-1 drugs but noted that these medications often come with side effects that make users feel unwell — a condition seemingly absent in Trump’s current public appearances.
While Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, dismissed these claims entirely, asserting to The Swamp that his “peak physical and mental condition” results from his “strenuous schedule working 20 hours per day, his exercise on the golf course, and his diet courtesy of the exceptional White House chefs,” this narrative does little to explain the broader political context.
Ozempic for Trump, but not for you
Notably, despite Trump’s personal possible benefit from such medications — which can cost upwards of $1,200 per month — his political stance took a turn this month when he scrapped former president Joe Biden’s proposal to cover obesity drugs under Medicare.
This plan aimed to make these potentially life-changing medicines accessible to millions of Americans at a time when obesity rates are soaring across the Global North. Trump’s decision to block the initiative fits a wider pattern of budget cuts and austerity measures targeting social welfare, even as he enjoys the privileges his wealth affords.
The controversy deepens with the presence of Dr. Mehmet Oz, freshly appointed head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who has a history of promoting dubious weight-loss products, including one that was scientifically discredited and had its research paper retracted. This juxtaposition highlights the ongoing disconnect between commercial interests, political power, and public health – a chasm often experienced by populations in the Global South while wealthy elites engage in health trends and treatments inaccessible to many.
Billionaire narcissists don’t see what the rest of us see when they look in the mirror
Elon Musk, another billionaire frequently in the limelight for his reliance on GLP-1 drugs, has voiced on social media the urgent need to make these medications affordable to the public. The contrast between Musk’s calls and Trump’s rejection of public funding for these drugs underscores a broader crisis where those with resources prioritise their own health advantages while the wider population bears the brunt of systemic neglect.
As this political saga unfolds, it vividly displays how the personal health choices and political manoeuvres of Trump reflect not just individual concerns but larger structural inequalities.
The president’s continued participation in elite pursuits like golf, alongside his refusal to extend vital health benefits, raises stark questions about the priorities of leadership touted as “making America great again” while ignoring the health crises affecting most of its people.
For now, Trump’s slimmer figure is a striking symbol of growing global disparities shaped by politics and profit.
NHS trusts across the country misdiagnosing patients and leaving them in needless pain have paid out millions in compensation over the past few years.
Figures obtained by Medical Negligence Assist found that, since 2019, NHS Trusts across the country have had to pay out nearly £1bn to patients who have lodged claims following a misdiagnosis.
NHS misdiagnoses: letting thousands of patients down
With an overstretched NHS, increasing patient numbers, and mounting pressures on staff, misdiagnoses are becoming alarmingly common.
When healthcare professionals fail to diagnose an illness or injury correctly, patients can endure painful and potentially fatal consequences. This is due to clinicians not providing the right medical care and treatment.
A person affected by misdiagnosis can, in some cases, make a medical negligence claim against the NHS. Compensation is covered by insurance policies, meaning frontline care is unaffected by negligence claims.
Between 2019 and 2024, 8,067 claims regarding misdiagnoses were lodged against NHS Trusts, with 5,677 of these claims being settled.
The highest number of claims came in 2019/20. This was when 1,824 patients made claims against the trusts. A year later, this number decreased to 1,660 claims. The trusts have seen a rise in the number of claims over the past year, compared to 2022/23, with a total of 1,539.
A fifth of clinical negligence NHS compensation claims down to misdiagnosis
According to NHS Resolution, diagnostic errors contribute approximately 20% of all clinical negligence claims. The reasons for misdiagnosis naturally vary from case to case, but NHS Resolution highlights two consistent failings across England, one of which is diagnostic errors, particularly early incorrect diagnoses of soft-tissue injuries.
The second is issues with requests for imaging, reporting, interpretation, and follow-up. This includes failure to complete further imaging, such as CT or MRI, as indicated in national guidance. In 2023, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) conducted a study that found approximately 1 in 18 patients in primary and secondary care are affected by misdiagnosis.
The BMJ also found that misdiagnosed cancers, strokes, and heart attacks were among the most serious cases, often leading to life-altering consequences or death.
Medical Negligence Assist obtained figures on how much NHS Trusts have paid out for misdiagnosis claims since 2019. Over the past five years, the trusts have paid out a total of £970,716,751, with the highest amount being paid in 2022/23, at £240,921,060.
Gareth Lloyd is a medical negligence solicitor for JF Law – which owns the Medical Negligence Assist brand. He said:
Misdiagnosis is an all-embracing clinical negligence case type and covers a wide range of clinical situations from the simple diagnosis of a fracture to potentially fatal cancer diagnoses.
These cases can be a matter of life and death, and whether someone lives or dies will be determined by the success of the diagnosis.
Physician associates part of the problem
Based on figures gathered from NHS Resolution, the trusts with the highest compensation costs since 2019 have been revealed.
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust had the highest compensation costs at over £32m, while University Hospitals Sussex and Northern Care Alliance NHS Trusts also had costs of over £28m.
According to the Guardian, Surrey assistant coroner Karen Henderson wrote to 12 health leaders, including UK health secretary Wes Streeting, to express concerns over the limited training that physician associates (PA) have. This was after a woman was diagnosed as having a nosebleed despite having severe abdominal problems, which the PA had a “lack of understanding” about, and she was sent home the same day.
Pamela Marking, 77, returned to the hospital two days later after seeing her health deteriorate before undergoing surgery for complications arising from a femoral hernia, but died on 20 February 2024. Henderson said the PA had acted independently in the diagnosis, treatment, management and discharge of Marking without independent oversight by a medical practitioner.
Leaving patients in pain
NHS Resolution also revealed the most common injuries and outcomes that resulted from misdiagnosis claims against NHS Trusts. The most common outcome for misdiagnosis claims was unnecessary pain, which was lodged 1,005 times, with the trusts paying £45,839,691 in compensation, followed by fatalities, which saw 470 claims submitted.
NHS compensation claims: a last resort?
Speaking to Medical Negligence Assist, Gareth Lloyd said:
Misdiagnosis can have a huge impact on people’s lives. A common case of misdiagnosis is a scaphoid fracture, where typically someone uses their hands to break a fall.
I’ve had a specific case in the past whereby a man in his early twenties suffered a fractured scaphoid that was initially diagnosed as a sprained wrist. As it went undiagnosed for a number of months, the client ended up having a fixation of his wrist, resulting in him not being able to use the hand and, as a consequence, has not been able to continue with his job.
Medical Negligence Assist offers support to patients who may have suffered harm as a result of a misdiagnosis and can see if they have grounds to submit a claim. They operate a 24-hour helpline and claim online form, which you can access on their website.
Researchers have found that rising emissions and temperatures are linked to increased arsenic levels in rice, putting billions at greater risk of cancer and other diseases.
Climate change is making the world’s most consumed grain more toxic, raising fears about the potential health risks of a dietary staple in Asia, researchers have found in a concerning study.
Half the world depends on rice for most of its food requirements, and 95% of the grain is produced and consumed in developing countries. These populations already bear the brunt of climate change, and now face further threats through their diets.
Scientists in the US and China have uncovered that high temperatures coupled with increased carbon levels in the atmosphere – both a result of rising greenhouse gas emissions – could significantly impact arsenic concentrations in rice.
The presence of arsenic in rice has been a long-known issue. The naturally occurring chemical can build up in the soil of paddy fields and be absorbed by the grains of rice. Exposure to small amounts of inorganic arsenic (a form that doesn’t contain carbon) through food or water consumption can cause cancers, heart disease, diabetes, as well as neurological problems in infants.
The amount of arsenic found in rice can vary greatly and has led researchers to find ways to reduce its levels. “Previous work has focused on individual responses – some on CO2 and some on temperature, but not both, and not on a wide range of rice genetics,” said Lewis Ziska, an associate environmental professor at Columbia University.
“We knew that temperature by itself could increase levels, and carbon dioxide by a little bit. But when we put both of them together, then wow, that was really something we were not expecting,” he noted. “You’re looking at a crop staple that’s consumed by a billion people every day, and any effect on toxicity is going to have a pretty damn large effect.”
How climate change will make rice more toxic
Courtesy: Gethinlane/Getty Images
Over a 10-year period, the researchers grew 28 strains of rice in four different locations in China, measuring the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions on the crops. As both carbon emissions and temperatures increased, in line with global climate projections, the amount of arsenic grew in 90% of the rice.
This is because of changes in soil chemistry that favour arsenic, which can then be more easily absorbed into rice grains. The problem is related to irrigated paddy fields, where 75% of rice is grown. While rice can be swamped by weeds and other crops, it grows well in water.
Farmers flood the fields after planting the seedlings, though this too poses a problem: it leaves no oxygen in the soil. This leads anaerobic bacteria to arsenic to accept electrons as they breathe, thus reacting with other minerals in the soil that make the arsenic more bioavailable.
This changes the microbiome of the soil, with a massive influx of arsenic-friendly bacteria. This is what would get worse with temperature and CO2 concentration rises. As the bacteria in the soil receives more carbon and gets warmer, it becomes more active.
Inorganic arsenic – more toxic to humans because it’s less stable – has been classified as a “confirmed carcinogen” by the World Health Organization. “From a health perspective, the toxicological effects of chronic inorganic arsenic exposure are well established, and include cancers of the lung, bladder, and skin, as well as ischemic heart disease,” said Ziska.
“Emerging evidence also suggests that arsenic exposure may be linked to diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes, neurodevelopmental issues, and immune system effects.”
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, consuming 0.13 micrograms of inorganic arsenic per kg of body weight would raise the risk of bladder cancer by 3% and diabetes by 1%. While these may feel small, when you consider countries with high per-capita rice consumption, it adds up.
Researchers call on regulators to step up
Courtesy: Tonhom27/Getty Images
As part of the study – published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal – Ziska and his colleagues projected the increases in disease risk in the world’s seven largest rice consumers, all based in Asia. In each of the countries, there was a sharp rise of ill health effects by 2050.
In China, the number of cancers linked to rice-based arsenic exposure could reach between 13.4 and 19.3 million by mid-century. These projections are based on a worst-case scenario where global temperatures reac 2°C above preindustrial levels – 94% of scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say the world will cross this threshold by the end of the century.
The study did have some limitations. It assumed that people will keep eating the same amount of rice in 2050 as they do now, even though consumption tends to drop with rising incomes. On the flip side, it took into account that white rice would still be as dominant as it is today. A shift towards higher brown rice intake could actually be worse, since white rice – despite being less nutritious – contains less inorganic arsenic than brown rice.
“Our study underscores the urgent need for action to reduce arsenic exposure in rice, especially as climate change continues to affect global food security,” said Ziska.
Policy interventions have been few and far between, with the study calling such measures “largely voluntary, inadequately comprehensive, or unenforced”. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration recommends a non-regulatory action level of 0.1 micrograms of inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal, but doesn’t formally regulate the chemical’s presence in any food.
The EU, meanwhile, has set enforceable limits of 0.2-0.3 micrograms per kg for rice and other products containing the grain, while China has proposed a similar limit. Under the elevated temperatures and CO2 concentrations projected in the study, more than half of the rice sampled would exceed these limits.
“We believe there are several actions that could help reduce arsenic exposure in the future,” said Ziska. “These include efforts in plant breeding to minimise arsenic uptake, improved soil management in rice paddies, and better processing practices. Such measures, along with public health initiatives focused on consumer education and exposure monitoring, could play a critical role in mitigating the health impacts of climate change on rice consumption.”
The startups trying to save rice and the planet
Graphic by Green Queen
Climate change and rice have a reciprocal relationship. Rice cultivation is responsible for 9% of anthropogenic methane emissions and accounts for around 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. For context, the entire aviation industry makes up 2% of the latter total.
However, increasing temperatures could shrink rice yields by 40% by the end of the century. In China, extreme rainfall has reduced rice yields over the last 20 years. And in Vietnam, where rice generates more emissions than the entire transportation sector, almost 250,000 acres of land in the Mekong Delta – its rice bowl – is being taken out of production, partly due to climate change.
This has led several startups to try and tackle the impact of rice on the planet, and vice versa. This includes Indian-American firm MittiLabs and France’s CarbonFarm, both of which use AI and satellite tech for carbon credits, though the efficacy of the voluntary carbon market has been called into question multiple times.
In Singapore, Rize buys seeds, fertilisers, and other inputs in bulk and sells them to farmers who implement alternate wetting and drying. This practice, which could lead to a 55% reduction in methane emissions in combination with other technologies, is also promoted by another Southeast Asian startup, AgriG8, whose gamified digital platform helps rice farmers lower emissions.
Early in the morning last Monday, a group of third graders huddled in the garden of Mendota Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. Of the dozen students present, a handful were busy filling up buckets of compost, others were readying soil beds for spring planting, while a number carefully watered freshly planted radishes and peas. The students were all busy with their assorted tasks until a gleeful shout rang across the space. Everything ground to a halt when a beaming boy triumphantly raised his gloved hand, displaying a gaggle of worms. The group of riveted eight- and nine-year-olds dropped everything to cluster around him and the writhing mass of invertebrates.
“They’re mending the soil one week, and then the next week they’re going to start to see these little seedlings pop through the soil, because they’re healthy and they’re happy and they have sunshine, and they’ve watered them,” said Erica Krug, farm-to-school director at Rooted, a Wisconsin nonprofit community agricultural organization that helps oversee the garden.
Krug stopped by the school that day to join the class, which her team runs together with AmeriCorps. Outdoor programming like this, said Krug, positions students to learn how to grow food — and take care of the planet that bears it.
First established some 25 years ago, in a historically underserved area that has long struggled with access to healthy food, the small but thriving garden is now a mainstay in the Mendota curriculum. The produce grown there is routinely collected and taken to local food pantries. Later this spring, the third grade class plans to plant watermelon and pumpkin seeds. Come summer, the garden will open to the surrounding community to harvest crops like garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, collards, and squash, and take home what they need.
Farm-to-school work, said Krug, isn’t limited to partnering with farmers to get locally grown foods into school meals, but also includes supporting schools in lower-income neighborhoods with working gardens, and providing students with agricultural and health education they won’t get otherwise. That can take the shape of after-school gardening clubs, field trips to local farms, and cooking classes. “We want kids to understand where their food comes from. We want them to be able to have that experience of growing their own food,” she said. “It’s really, really powerful.”
Back in January, the Rooted team applied for a $100,000 two-year grant through the Department of Agriculture’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School program, intended to provide public schools with locally produced fresh vegetables as well as food and agricultural education. Rooted had plans to “use a huge chunk of those funds” to continue supporting school garden activities and food programming at three local schools, including Mendota.
Then, late last month, the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, sent them an email announcing the cancellation of funding for grants through the program. The email, shared with Grist, noted that the cancellation is “in alignment with President Donald Trump’s executive order ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government and DEI Programs and Preferencing.’”
The loss of the funds is “so upsetting,” said Krug, and the reasoning provided, she continued, is “ridiculous.”
“When they talk about ‘Make America Healthy Again,’” Krug argued, “they don’t mean everybody. Because if they’re saying that they’re canceling this program because it’s ‘radical’ and ‘wasteful’ and ‘DEI,’ then that means that they don’t want non-white kids having access to fruits and vegetables.”
A group of third grade students tend to the garden outside of Mendota Elementary School on April 14, 2025 in Madison, Wisconsin. Erica Krug / Rooted
Scenarios like these are playing out across the nation as the USDA, working with the initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency, continues to cancel funding for multiple food and farm programs. Five USDA programs have had their funding pulled since President Trump’s inauguration, while at least 21 others remain frozen.
Last month, the agency terminated some $1.13 billion slated to be distributed through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. The move has had a resounding impact on the livelihoods of thousands of people, as charitable organizations have shuttered food donations, regional food hubs cut staff, and small farmers have gone bankrupt. The cancellation of this year’s farm-to-school funding was announced roughly two weeks after the USDA ended the billion-dollar funding stream.
In prior years, Krug said, “we were being asked ‘What are you doing to address equity? To address diversity? How are you making sure your project is for everyone?’ And now we’re going to be penalized for talking about that.”
The team at Rooted is now working overtime to find other funding sources to continue the work, including hosting a fundraising drive and benefit concert next month at their urban farm site. Krug hopes the proceeds will help offset some of the loss. “We’re not ready to say, without this funding, that we’re going to abandon this program, because we believe so strongly in it,” she said.
First established by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed in 2010, the Patrick Leahy Farm to School program was created by the Obama administration to address rising hunger and nutritional needs in public schools. The program has since awarded over $100 million in grants to schools that support millions of students in tribal, rural, and urban communities nationwide.
Nutrition advocates and legislators are calling the USDA’s decision to cancel the farm-to-school funding contradictory to the stated goals of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission. Many see it as a sign that the government is dismantling local food systems — hurting people and the planet. The fallout, experts say, will be gradual, but no less devastating.
Advocates are also questioning whether it’s legal.
“This program is authorized. It’s a direction from Congress for USDA to carry it out. So carrying it out is not optional,” said Karen Spangler, policy director of the nonprofit National Farm to School Network, which advocated for the program.
From its inception, the program has had a $5 million baseline allocation every year that the legislation mandates, and lawmakers have the ability to add discretionary funds. A total of $10 million was allocated to it for this fiscal year.
To some policymakers, watching as the USDA revoked the funding came as a shock. A letter penned by federal lawmakers on April 4 urged Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to clarify why the administration “abruptly” cancelled the grants. The letter, spearheaded by longtime anti-hunger advocate Representative James McGovern of Massachusetts, and signed by 37 other House Democrats, also asked Rollins to explain the scope of the cancellation and to clarify “the authority” the agency is using to terminate funding, “given that Congress directed USDA to carry out this program.”
Though an April 11 deadline for response was given, McGovern told Grist that, as of the time of this story’s publication, they have not received an answer.
“The Trump Administration is slashing programs that help support our farmers and provide people in communities across the country with better access to local food. It’s pathetic,” said McGovern, who is also a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee. “Termination of these programs has caused tremendous uncertainty for schools, food banks and pantries, farmers, and hardworking families.”
Grist reviewed the official notice shared with grantees and applicants from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which stated that the agency will not review applications, nor will it award grants this year. The agency did, however, note that it was “making plans for an improved competition funding opportunity.”
In an email, a USDA spokesperson told Grist that, in alignment with Trump’s executive order, the agency had “paused” this year’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program competition, and is now “revising the application” for the next fiscal year.
“Secretary Rollins and the Food and Nutrition Service are committed to creating new and greater opportunities to connect America’s farmers to nutrition assistance programs and Farm to School is a critical component of this work,” the spokesperson added. They also noted that the “updated” application will provide “opportunities to support bold innovations in farm to school that encourage more applicants and better impacts, which reflect the realities of the intent and tremendous progress in farm to school made by states and communities over the past 15 years.”
The USDA did not address Grist’s requests for clarification about the authority the agency is using to withhold the money, and did not clarify when or how it plans to award it.
Sophia Kruszewski, a lawyer and deputy policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, explained that the USDA may technically have the legal authority to cancel this year’s grants through the program. In both the underlying statute and the appropriations text, there is language indicating that the funding for this program is to be “available until expended,” which, in most cases, gives the agency the ability to roll over unobligated funding from year to year.
But Kruszewski isn’t convinced the move is in line with the spirit of the law. “It seems highly doubtful that Congress intended to give the agency carte blanche to simply choose not to spend any of the money directed toward the program,” said Kruszewski, “particularly when the call for proposals has already happened and applicants have spent significant time developing and submitting proposals.”
All the while, Rollins has publicly championed the president’s national nutrition overhaul. Earlier this month, the agriculture secretary joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia. The two spoke to students, staff, and onlookers about the importance of advancing nutrition in public schools. The event took place a little more than a week after the cancellation of the farm-to-school funding.
“Secretary Kennedy and I have a unique once-in-a-generation opportunity to better align our vision on nutrition-related programs to ensure we are working together to advance President Trump’s vision to make our kids, our families, and our communities healthy again,” said Secretary Rollins in a press release. “Our farmers, ranchers, and producers dedicate their lives to growing the safest most abundant food supply in the world and we need to make sure our kids and families are consuming the healthiest food we produce. There is a chronic health problem in our country, and American agriculture is at the core of the solution.”
Kennedy, for his part, championed the end of ultra-processed foods in public schools and tightening nutrition program restrictions. During the visit, Rollins underscored how the USDA should be supporting “moving farm-fresh produce, as much as is possible, into the schools.”
Katie Wilson, former Obama administration USDA Deputy Under Secretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, and executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance, argues that the event, and the USDA’s bigger MAHA campaign, are nothing more than a “facade” to distract from the agency’s subtler efforts to do the opposite. “Having these little kids around you — it’s a camera opp. So that’s the distraction, while I’m over here slicing and dicing the program, right?” Wilson said. “Just remember this funding was for unprocessed, local, fresh food, and so it’s about as healthy and as wonderful as it can get.”
As for Rollins’ stated goal to bring more local food into schools, Wilson only sees more contradictions. “We’ve been doing that, but you just took the rug completely out from under us,” she said. For larger school districts, planning for budgets, programs, and things like meals runs typically a year out. The loss of the farm-to-school grant and uncertainty about the future of the program means that schools across the country are now scrambling to find money, said Wilson. “Contracts don’t go away just because your funding got cut. Where does that money come from? Do you raise the price of school meals for kids? I mean, what do you do? Do you cut staff?”
For decades, advocates and policymakers have looked to strengthen local food systems as a plausible solution to rising hunger rates. Localized food systems have also been championed as a climate solution.
The climate footprint of transportation in the food supply chain, or the movement of crops, livestock, and machinery, contributes considerably to global agricultural emissions. Long-distance shipping of perishable fruit and vegetables in particular ramps up the amount of CO2 emissions generated. The same goes for emissions-intensive food waste: The longer the supply chain, the larger the proportion of food typically lost or thrown away.
According to Jenique Jones, executive director at global nonprofit WhyHunger, small and regional producers are not only much less of a strain on the planet, but they also address systemic issues caused by the “monopoly” that a handful of national producers have on America’s food supply. Localized food systems allow for small farmers to be paid fair wages, she said, and healthier, better quality food to be made accessible to their communities.
The gutting of grants through this program, along with other recent funding decisions by the USDA, signals to Jones that the administration is intentionally dismantling local food systems — which she believes will bring in big costs. The legislation that underwrote the Leahy program, for one, mandated that the agency prioritize geographic diversity and equitable distribution among tribal, rural, and urban communities. Between 2013 and 2024, roughly one in every 20 farm-to-school projects supported Native communities.
These cuts show the administration’s priority, she said, which is “definitely not local food systems, and more importantly than that, it’s not people.”
Among those that may feel some of the harshest burdens from the loss of farm-to-school funding are communities in lower-income, rural swaths of America. One such place is just outside of Bolivar County, in the heart of the Mississippi River Delta, where Sydney Bush has to travel 20 or so miles just to buy fresh vegetables. The closest grocery store is a 40-minute drive from her house.
Bush works in food justice with the nonprofit Mississippi Farm to School network. Early this year, in partnership with the Cleveland School District, the organization submitted an application for almost $50,000 in a farm-to-school grant. That money would have been used to launch a pilot project to establish procurement plans between regional farmers growing fresh food and the district’s 10 local schools. It would have supported more than 2,800 students.
The cancellation of the funding pot, a crucial lever in achieving truly local food sovereignty and remedying nutrition inequity across America’s resource-strapped rural communities, said Bush “isn’t just about this pilot not happening, it’s about what comes after.” Without it, groups like hers will have to work twice as hard to fill in the gaps. “Food is power,” she said. “There are folks in this country that don’t have the same access to nutrition as everyone else. It’s a systemic problem.”
Now, because of the rescinded grant, that dream of a localized food chain, the culmination of work that started in 2020, appears to be over before it even began.
I long for peace and ease as stress and anxiety overtake me. How can I be an active part of the resistance against the fascist regime bludgeoning my people and still hope for some comfort along the way?
Many of us elders who are seasoned activists are halted at rocky crossroads: Do we put on our protective masks, dig out our marching boots and join the protests flooding the streets of our towns and cities? We’re not those sure-footed, fearless, feisty, determined warriors we once were.
We have osteoporosis, bronchitis, vestibular imbalance, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis. … We’re vulnerable and afraid.
Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk has provided a grant worth 50 million kroner ($7.6M) to the University of Copenhagen to develop less processed plant-based proteins.
As meat alternatives continue to be scrutinised for their level of processing, a new University of Copenhagen project aims to tackle this with food science and artificial intelligence (AI).
Running over the next seven years, the AI4NaturalFood project is backed by a 50 million kroner ($7.6M) grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns the eponymous pharmaceutical giant famous for diabetes and obesity medications like NovoRapid, Ozempic, and Wegovy.
The investment is part of the company’s Recruit grant, which aims to help Danish universities attract top researchers and build strong ecosystems within certain areas of support.
It comes weeks after Novo Nordisk came under heavy criticism by nutrition researchers for another project, which aims to create the “next generation” of the Nova classification, the tiered system that groups foods by the amount of processing.
Mild processing is more complex – AI can help simplify it
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
The AI4NaturalFood project is being helmed by Remko Boom, who spent 26 years studying plant-based foods at Wageningen University & Research, and is starting a new research group at the university’s food science department, called Food Materials Engineering.
He will work with data scientists from the university to develop new experimentation processes that generate sufficient data and create AI models to interpret the information.
“Food is fundamentally very complex. A piece of bread contains hundreds of different substances interacting with each other: there’s a molecular structure, a colloidal structure, a microscale structure, [a] macroscale structure – there’s structure everywhere. And this structure largely determines the properties,” he explained.
“In food science, we traditionally tried to reduce these complexities, to make it possible to understand what is happening. I think that now is the time that we, as food scientists, should not shy away from the complexity, but instead aim for it. With the availability of AI, we can begin to capture all these interactions and use them rather than trying to avoid them.”
Boom argued that mild processing retains more of the plant’s natural structure and composition, which makes it more complex to work with. This is where AI comes in. “Rather than the elaborate and costly process of breaking down raw materials and then rebuilding a product from the resulting refined ingredients, we’re going to use much simpler methods to create enriched fractions and then use AI to predict how we can combine them into good foods,” he said.
“It could perhaps ultimately predict how food products will turn out before even starting the production process. In the future, it could even help us determine which crops are best suited for specific food applications.”
With these “simpler” methods, he noted that proteins sourced from legumes, seeds and other plants would be able to retain more of the original structure and nutrients from the raw materials. “We have already proven the principle and got some very nice products from it. And most importantly, we can do it with a lot less energy and water use,” he said.
Nutrition experts slam Novo Nordisk’s ‘Nova 2.0’ project
Courtesy: Pixelshot/Canva, Novo | Composite by Green Queen
Novo Nordisk has had a profound impact on the food system, thanks to the immense popularity of its appetite-suppressing drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. They’re part of a class of GLP-1 agonist drugs that have taken the US by storm – and now, the world – by storm.
The company is not only targeting weight loss and less processed foods, it’s also aiming to redefine what ‘ultra-processed’ means. Plant-based meat products have been stuck with this tag, which has partly contributed to their slowdown in sales and investment over the last couple of years.
In October, Novo Nordisk announced a two-year project to “develop a scientifically based understanding” of the importance of different food processing methods. In other words, the research is focusing directly on the nutritional content of foods, rather than the production process.
However, the effort has been labelled “deeply problematic” by over 90 health and nutrition scientists, who wrote an open letter calling out the company’s “vested financial interests”. It was co-signed by experts like NYU Professor Emerita Marion Nestle and infectious disease doctor Chris van Tulleken (author of Ultra-Processed People).
“This initiative involves, and is being promoted by, scientists who have been paid by food companies in the past, including Arla, McDonald’s, McCain Foods, Nestlé and others,” said Phillip Baker, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, another signatory of the letter.
Professor Carlos Monteiro, who led the University of São Paulo team that developed the original Nova classification, strongly denounced Novo Nordisk’s ‘Nova 2.0’ project: “Do not use the term Nova in the title or objectives of your project. Do not refer to your project as an improvement or new version of the Nova classification. Do not suggest that your project has any connection with the Nova classification or its creators”.
Novo Nordisk is yet to respond to the reaction, and is pressing ahead with its initiative for now. As for the AI4NaturalFood project, it opens to bridge the gap between food and data science, adding to a growing list of AI-led efforts to advance alternative proteins.
“Historically, food scientists and AI researchers have operated in separate worlds,” said Boom. “Food scientists focus on experimentation, while AI experts often work on, for example, logistical problems. With this grant, we’re in these fields together, working on the same thing. And this is how we can really create something new and innovative.”
The Swiss government has published its nutrition strategy for the next eight years, expanding the focus to sustainability, plant-based diets and food waste.
Swiss citizens are eating too much meat, animal fat, sugar and salt, and very few fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. With diet-related diseases and greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, their consumption habits need an overhaul, according to the government.
The Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) has published the country’s latest nutrition strategy for 2025-32, spotlighting plant-based diets, food waste reduction, and sustainability as core goals, in addition to balanced eating and greater nutritional literacy.
“The new nutrition strategy is broader in scope than the old one,” said Élisabeth Baume-Schneider, a member of the Federal Council and head of home affairs. It’s no longer based exclusively on the National Strategy for the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases – it now integrates sustainability-led approaches, including the national climate and agriculture goals for 2050, and the food waste action plan.
“This holistic perspective is essential to strengthening the effectiveness of the Swiss nutrition strategy. It also requires close cooperation between the relevant federal agencies, stakeholders from the nutrition and food sector, as well as science and civil society,” explained Baume-Schnieder.
Why Switzerland needed a new nutrition strategy
Courtesy: SGE/SSN
Around a quarter of the Swiss population (2.2 million) suffers from a non-communicable disease, and that share is rising. A major factor is diet, with current eating patterns skewed towards animal products and unhealthy foods high in salt, sugar, and fat. Meanwhile, 15% of the country’s children and teenagers are overweight or obese, rising to 43% of adults (up from 30% three decades ago).
At the same time, the food system accounts for a quarter of Switzerland’s emissions, and food waste itself is responsible for a quarter of that impact. The nation produces 2.8 million tonnes of avoidable food waste annually, or about 330kg per person.
The national strategy to tackle this issue aims to halve food waste by 2030 (from a 2017 baseline), which would lower agrifood emissions by 10-15%.
Switzerland’s nutrition plan for the next eight years takes all of this into account, with the hope that it “strengthens healthy food supply, reduces the ecological footprint, and supports research in the areas of nutrition and food”, noted Baume-Schneider.
The strategy has six key objectives: promote a balanced and healthy diet with sufficient nutrient intake, boost nutritional literacy, strengthen plant-based nutrition, involve all food industry actors, create healthy and sustainable food environments, and reduce food waste.
The focus on plant-based builds on the country’s latest dietary guidelines for adults, published last August, which recommend eating more whole foods and plant proteins. It’s a trend occurring in more and more countries, including Canada, Germany, Austria, Norway, Finland, and potentially even the US.
Swiss consumers are already eating less meat and dairy – thanks to a large flexitarian population – with mushrooms, vegetables and legumes gaining popularity. Plant-based meat alternatives, however, only attract 15% of flexitarians, behind proteins like tofu and tempeh (21%). That said, environment and health are the largest dietary drivers for these consumers.
Switzerland to create an action plan to implement nutrition strategy
Courtesy: FSVO
While the nutrition strategy is a good first step, how it will be implemented is more important. The FSVO will develop an action plan with measurable goals by the end of this year to show how it plans to effect these changes.
Covering a period between 2025 and 2028, this plan will contain measurable goals across four areas. The first area is information and education to help the Swiss connect health, nutrition and sustainability. This involves further publicising the dietary guidelines, reducing household food waste, training teachers and caregivers on nutrition, and promoting healthy and sustainable diets in schools.
The government notes that food composition, advertising, and availability all impact eating habits, and politicians and businesses share equal responsibility in promoting the right food environment. So it is important to promote healthy and sustainable catering, reduce salt and sugar in processed products, create clear food labelling, and restrict food advertising aimed at children.
Coordination between the federal government, cantons, cities and the food industry needs to be expanded too. Pooling resources will help create the necessary structures for a future-oriented nutrition policy that serves both the people and the planet. The country should more actively participate in international networks like the World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and more.
Finally, since an effective nutrition strategy is based on scientific principles, supporting research is key. As part of this, the federal government will collect additional data on nutrition and food to be made available to researchers and the public, monitor the nutritional behaviour of both adults and children, and fund studies to develop and test effective measures to promote healthy diets.
“The science is clear – and while the government’s upcoming action plan might shape important steps on education, regulation, and collaboration, the real test will be in how boldly it’s implemented,” said Pascal Bieri, co-founder of Swiss vegan leader Planted.
He called for public procurement measures in schools and hospitals to reflect the strategy, fair market conditions for all protein sources (“not just the ones with the most expensive lobby”), and educational resources to help the Swiss make better choices “without shame or complexity”. “The policy is slowly catching up,” he noted. “Now it’s time for implementation that’s focused on real impact – not just optics.”
Thanks to growing research and reports in recent years, there’s increasing global recognition that the Mediterranean diet—rich in fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, and beans, and low in meat—is among the healthiest ways to eat.
It is the eating pattern followed by people in Ikaria, Greece and Sardinia, Italy, for example, which are two of the world’s Blue Zones (regions renowned for longevity). The other Blue Zones in Loma Linda, CA; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Okinawa, Japan also emphasize plants and very little meat (as well as moderate exercise, a purposeful life, and a full social circle).
As the Blue Zones demonstrate, a plant-heavy diet seems to come with an abundance of benefits. Research suggests that due to their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, plant-based whole foods may help educe the risk of a myriad of diseases that plague the Western world, including heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, seem to do the opposite, increasing the risk of common chronic diseases.
Pexels
But new research suggests the Blue Zones and the Mediterranean regions of the world are far from alone in adopting a plant-heavy diet. A new study, published in the journal Nature, focused not on the Mediterranean, Asia, or South America, but Africa. It found that those in Tanzania, specifically, who eat the way their ancestors ate (more plants and less meat) are far healthier than those who follow a more Western-style diet.
“This study is yet another reminder that the foundations of many traditional diets—whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and fermented foods—support health in a variety of ways,” Sapna Peruvemba, MS, RDN of Health by Sapna, told VegNews.
“It’s often when people move away from [traditional] patterns toward more modern, Western diets that we see increases in chronic disease risk.”
The benefits of the Tanzanian Kilimanjaro diet
The new study consisted of two groups of men from Tanzania, totaling around 77 people. Half the men followed a traditional rural Kilimanjaro heritage-style diet, which is high in foods like okra, plantains, beans, and drinks like mbege, which is made with fermented banana and millet. The other half followed a more Western-style diet, full of processed foods like sausages, white bread, and French fries.
Researchers found that the men who switched from the rural diet to the urban diet showed elevated levels of inflammatory proteins in their bodies, markers of metabolic dysregulation, and a reduced immune response. However, those who moved from urban diets to more traditional rural foods experienced the opposite effect. The researchers noted that these health impacts were still detectable four weeks after the study, showing that diet changes can have long-lasting effects.
“Our study highlights the benefits of these traditional food products for inflammation and metabolic processes in the body,” said lead author and infectious disease specialist Quirijn de Mast from the Netherlands’ Radboud University Medical Center. “At the same time, we show how harmful an unhealthy Western diet can be.”
Peruvemba agrees that, in general, ultra-processed foods can be detrimental to our health. This is largely because “they’ve been stripped of protective nutrients,” she says. Think fiber, which is essential for gut and digestive health, as well as antioxidants and phytochemicals, which repair cell damage and reduce inflammation. Instead, ultra-processed foods often contain high amounts of sugar and sodium, and even carcinogens.
“Processed and red meats like sausages are especially problematic—they’re high in saturated fats and contain compounds like carnitine, which can fuel inflammation and harm cardiovascular health,” explains Peruvemba. “They’re also classified as Group One carcinogens by the World Health Organization, meaning there’s strong evidence linking them to cancer.”
Michal Collection | Canva
The Kilimanjaro heritage diet is not just rich in antioxidants and fiber, but thanks to fermented drinks like mbege, it is high in gut-friendly probiotics, too. “It’s worth noting that mbege is alcoholic,” adds Peruvemba. “So any probiotic benefits may be counteracted by alcohol’s known pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic effects.”
For anyone who wants to reap the benefits of the rural Tanzanian diet, Peruvemba recommends building meals around vegetables and legumes, snacking on fruit, and eating more whole grains, as well as opting for more fermented foods like sauerkraut or kimchi, for example. “Don’t underestimate the power of returning to the basics,” she adds. “Whether that means embracing your own cultural food roots or simply prioritizing more whole plant foods in your meals, these shifts can make a big difference.”
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
En enero de 2018, Vanessa Domínguez y su marido llevaban unos años coqueteando con la idea de mudarse a otro barrio de El Paso, Texas. Su hija estaba matriculada en una de las mejores escuelas primarias del condado, pero como la familia vivía justo fuera de los límites del distrito, su posición era tenue. Los administradores de la escuela podían decidir devolverla a su distrito de residencia en cualquier momento. Mudarse más cerca le garantizaría su plaza. Y cuando el dueño de la casa notificó a Domínguez que quería duplicarles el alquiler, ella y su marido sintieron más urgencia de mudarse.
Finalmente, llegó su oportunidad. El jefe de Domínguez era propietario de una casa de tres dormitorios y dos baños en Ranchos del Sol, un barrio de clase media-alta del este de El Paso, y buscaba un nuevo inquilino.
Con una isla de cocina, techos altos y un parque al otro lado de la calle donde los niños jugaban a menudo al fútbol, la casa era perfecta para la joven familia. Y lo más importante, la propiedad estaba dentro de los límites del distrito escolar.
«La propiedad en su conjunto parecía atractiva y el barrio bastante tranquilo», recuerda Domínguez.
Unos niños juegan en un parque del barrio situado detrás del almacén de Cardinal Health en el este de El Paso Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
En la misma calle que la casa de Vanessa Domínguez, un hombre limpia su coche mientras su nieta juega. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Unos niños juegan en un parque del barrio situado detrás del almacén de Cardinal Health en el este de El Paso. En la misma calle que la casa de Vanessa Domínguez, un hombre limpia su coche mientras su nieta juega y Cindy Martínez barre mientras su nieta, Emerie, juega. Sus casas se encuentran justo detrás del almacén de Cardinal en el este de El Paso. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cindy Martínez barre mientras su nieta, Emerie, juega. Sus casas se encuentran justo detrás del almacén de Cardinal en el este de El Paso. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Una vez instalados, la hija de Domínguez se aficionó a corretear por el jardín, donde había un cerezo en flor, y la familia solía hacer barbacoas al aire libre. Domínguez apenas se fijó en el almacén que se encontraba justo detrás del muro de adoquines de su jardín. No fue hasta el mandato de permanecer en casa de COVID-19 en 2020 cuando se fijó en el flujo de camiones que entraban y salían de las instalaciones. A veces oía el estruendo de los camiones de 18 ruedas a las seis y media de la mañana.
Aun así, no le dio mucha importancia. No se daba cuenta de que el almacén era propiedad de Cardinal Health, uno de los mayores distribuidores de dispositivos médicos del país, ni de que formaba parte de una amplia cadena de suministro de la que depende la población estadounidense para recibir una atención médica adecuada.
Pero para Domínguez y su familia, lo que parecía poco más que una molestia menor era en realidad una amenaza creciente, que según un análisis de datos de Grist basado en registros estatales sugiere que podría estar exponiéndolos a niveles peligrosamente altos de un producto químico tóxico.
Las casas en la calle detrás del almacén de Cardinal Health al este de El Paso tienen vistas al muelle de carga de la instalación. Un análisis de datos realizado por Grist reveló que es probable que los residentes de ciertas zonas del barrio estén expuestos a niveles peligrosamente altos de óxido de etileno. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cardinal Health utiliza ese almacén, y otro al otro lado de la ciudad, para guardar dispositivos médicos que han sido esterilizados con óxido de etileno. Entre los miles de compuestos que liberan cada día las instalaciones contaminantes, éste es uno de los más tóxicos, según la EPA, que descubrió en el año 2016 que el producto químico es mucho más peligroso de lo que se creía. Un análisis independiente de 2021 concluyó que es responsable de más de la mitad del riesgo excesivo de cáncer derivado de las operaciones industriales en todo el país. La exposición a largo plazo a este producto químico se ha relacionado con cánceres de mama y de los ganglios linfáticos, y la exposición a corto plazo puede causar irritación de la cavidad nasal, dificultad para respirar, sibilancias y constricción bronquial, según la Agencia para el Registro de Sustancias Tóxicas y Enfermedades. La familia de Domínguez llegaría a experimentar algunos de estos síntomas, pero sólo años más tarde sospecharían que estaban relacionados con la exposición al óxido de etileno.
Almacenes como los de El Paso son omnipresentes en todo el país. A través de solicitudes de acceso a la información y trabajo de campo, Grist ha identificado al menos 30 almacenes en Estados Unidos que almacenan productos esterilizados con óxido de etileno. Los utilizan empresas como Boston Scientific, ConMed y Becton Dickinson, así como Cardinal Health. Y no se encuentran sólo en zonas industriales de las ciudades: están cerca de colegios y parques infantiles, gimnasios y complejos de apartamentos. Desde fuera, los almacenes no llaman la atención. Parecen cualquier otro centro de distribución. Muchos ocupan cientos de miles de metros cuadrados y decenas de camiones entran y salen cada día. Pero cuando estas instalaciones cargan, descargan y trasladan productos médicos, expulsan óxido de etileno al aire. La mayoría de los vecinos no saben que estos edificios poco llamativos son una fuente de contaminación tóxica. Tampoco lo saben la mayoría de los camioneros, que a menudo son contratados de forma temporal, ni muchos de los empleados de los almacenes.
Almacenes que albergan productos esterilizados con óxido de etileno
Grist recopiló una lista de bodegas en Estados Unidos que informaron que almacenan productos esterilizados con óxido de etileno y otros utilizados por los principales fabricantes y distribuidores de dispositivos médicos.
Confirmados
Potenciales
Cargando datos del mapa…
Fuente: Análisis de Grist
Mapa: Lylla Younes / Clayton Aldern / Grist
Puede hallar una lista completa de las direcciones de los almacenes y las respuestas que las compañías le dieron a Grist aquí.
Grist identificó a los principales fabricantes y distribuidores de dispositivos médicos del país y recopiló una lista de aproximadamente 100 almacenes de los que son propietarios o que utilizan. Algunas de estas empresas han informado a los reguladores estatales o federales de que gestionan al menos un centro de distribución que almacena productos esterilizados con óxido de etileno. Otros fueron identificados en persona por los reporteros de Grist como destinatarios de productos procedentes de instalaciones de esterilización. Pero como las empresas utilizan múltiples métodos de esterilización, no está claro si cada uno de ellos emite óxido de etileno. No obstante, Grist decidió publicar la información para demostrar la magnitud del problema potencial: es casi seguro que hay docenas, si no cientos, de almacenes más que los 30 de los que tenemos certeza, y miles de trabajadores más expuestos al óxido de etileno sin saberlo.
Identificar estos almacenes y los cerca de 30 que emiten alguna cantidad de óxido de etileno fue un proceso laborioso, en parte porque la información acerca de estas instalaciones no está fácilmente disponible. Los reporteros de Grist vigilaron las instalaciones de esterilización, hablaron con camioneros y trabajadores de almacenes, y buscaron en bases de datos de propiedades.
El problema es «mucho mayor de lo que todos suponemos», afirma Rick Peltier, catedrático de Ciencias de la Salud Medioambiental de la Universidad de Massachusetts. «La falta de transparencia sobre el destino de estos productos nos preocupa».
Un conductor camina hacia su camión momentos antes de salir del almacén de Cardinal en el este de El Paso. Los conductores de camiones están entre las personas que no son conscientes de su exposición a las emisiones de óxido de etileno de la instalación. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
En el almacén de El Paso, detrás de la casa de Domínguez, Grist habló con varios empleados de Cardinal que dijeron que sabían poco sobre los riesgos de estar expuestos al óxido de etileno. Cardinal Health, que emplea a una mano de obra mayoritariamente latina en el almacén, exige que algunos obreros lleven monitores y mantengan ventanas y rejillas de ventilación abiertas para la circulación. Pero los trabajadores con los que habló Grist no sabían qué es lo que está monitorizando la empresa.
«Creo que se debe a un tipo de gas que estamos respirando», dijo un trabajador a Grist mientras descansaba. «No sé cómo se llama».
A lo largo del último año, Grist se ha puesto en contacto con Cardinal Health en múltiples ocasiones. La empresa no facilitó representantes para entrevistas ni respondió a preguntas concretas por escrito. En respuesta a la lista de almacenes de Cardinal que Grist identificó, un portavoz señaló en un breve comentario que la «mayoría de las direcciones que usted ha enumerado ni siquiera son instalaciones médicas». Sin embargo, las ubicaciones de los almacenes se corroboraron con información disponible en el sitio web de la empresa.
Un cartel que dice «Aquí trabajan héroes de la salud» cuelga afuera del almacén de Cardinal Health cerca del aeropuerto de El Paso. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Las operaciones de Cardinal se extienden al otro lado de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México. La empresa tiene una fábrica en Ciudad Juárez (México), donde se empaquetan gasas, batas quirúrgicas, sábanas, escalpelos y otros utensilios médicos en kits que proporcionan «todo lo que un médico necesita» para llevar a cabo una intervención quirúrgica, según explica un trabajador. Los kits terminados se transportan en camión de vuelta a El Paso o a Nuevo México, donde son esterilizados con óxido de etileno por terceras empresas contratadas por Cardinal. A continuación, los productos se transportan en camión a uno de los dos almacenes de Cardinal en El Paso, donde permanecen hasta que se envían a los hospitales de todo el país. Durante todo el trayecto, en los camiones que los transportan y en los almacenes que los guardan, la superficie de los dispositivos esterilizados desprende óxido de etileno, un proceso llamado desgasificación.
La Agencia de Protección Ambiental de Estados Unidos (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency o EPA) regula las instalaciones donde se esterilizan los productos sanitarios, controlando los procesos y los protocolos de seguridad para mantener las emisiones de óxido de etileno en niveles seguros. Pero por múltiples razones, el gobierno federal —y la gran mayoría de los estados— ha hecho la vista gorda con los almacenes. Y ello a pesar de que estos centros de almacenamiento liberan a veces más óxido de etileno y suponen un riesgo mayor que las instalaciones de esterilización. Los reguladores de Georgia encontraron que ese era el caso en 2019, y un análisis de Grist encontró que el almacén junto a la casa de Domínguez planteaba una amenaza mayor que la instalación de esterilización de Nuevo México de la que Cardinal recibe productos.
Una señal de advertencia sobre el óxido de etileno en las instalaciones de Santa Teresa.Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Camiones cargan y descargan productos en un centro de esterilización de Santa Teresa, Nuevo México. La instalación utiliza óxido de etileno y forma parte de una amplia cadena de suministro médico.Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
«La EPA sabe que los riesgos del óxido de etileno se extienden mucho más allá de las paredes de la instalación de esterilización», dijo Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, abogado de la organización medioambiental sin fin de lucro Earthjustice que trabaja con sustancias químicas tóxicas, «que la sustancia química permanece con el equipo cuando se lleva a un almacén, y que sigue liberándose, amenazando a los trabajadores y amenazando a las comunidades circundantes.»
«La EPA tenía la obligación legal de abordar esos riesgos», añadió.
En 2009, Cardinal Health se puso en contacto con la Comisión de Calidad Medioambiental de Texas (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality o TCEQ), el regulador medioambiental estatal, para solicitar permisos para sus emisiones de óxido de etileno. En ese momento, no se sabía que el compuesto químico era tan tóxico como lo es en realidad, y los funcionarios de la TCEQ hicieron pocas preguntas sobre el efecto que las emisiones tendrían para los residentes cercanos. El informe de Grist indica que la empresa no tenía ninguna responsabilidad legal de informar a las autoridades estatales, pero parece haberlo hecho como un acto de responsabilidad. La empresa no parece estar infringiendo ninguna norma estatal ni federal.
Las solicitudes de la empresa incluían un diagrama rudimentario de un camión llegando a un almacén, una flecha apuntando al aire para indicar las emisiones de óxido de etileno de la instalación, y un camión saliendo del almacén. «Debido a la descarga de los camiones con remolque, Cardinal Health está registrando el EtO fugitivo que se escapa al abrir cada uno de los remolques», señaló, utilizando la abreviación para el óxido de etileno.
Para calcular qué cantidad de la sustancia química se escapaba de los camiones que transportan productos esterilizados, Cardinal Health, siguiendo las instrucciones de la TCEQ durante el proceso de obtención de permisos, utilizó un modelo de la EPA desarrollado para los sistemas de tratamiento de aguas residuales y multiplicó la estimación por el número de camiones que esperaba que dejaran productos cada año. No está claro por qué la agencia dio instrucciones a Cardinal Health para que utilizara un modelo de aguas residuales para un contaminante atmosférico cuando existían alternativas, pero estos cálculos imprecisos llevaron a la empresa a calcular que sus operaciones de almacenamiento emitían al menos 479 libras al año. La TCEQ concedió los permisos a Cardinal sin exigir a la empresa que tomara medidas para reducir la contaminación ni que avisara a los residentes.
Cuatro años después, la empresa parecía haber hecho un esfuerzo por determinar cálculos más precisos. En un experimento realizado en 2013, la empresa instaló sopladores en un camión y midió la cantidad de óxido de etileno emitido, pero no incluyó otros detalles relevantes —como cuándo se realizaron las mediciones y cuántos productos transportaba el camión— en los registros de la TCEQ que Grist revisó. Cardinal descubrió que, en los primeros cinco minutos después de que un camión entra en el almacén, los productos esterilizados emiten óxido de etileno en sus niveles más altos. Pero después de cinco minutos, en lugar de reducirse a cero, los niveles de desgasificación se mantuvieron estables en 7 partes por millón durante las dos horas siguientes.
Después de ser esterilizados con óxido de etileno, los productos
médicos se empaquetan y se cargan en camiones.
Jesse Nichols / Parker Ziegler / Grist
Los documentos disponibles al público no ofrecen detalles sobre la procedencia de los camiones, el número de paquetes que transportaban o el tiempo que hacía que se habían esterilizado los productos —detalles clave que determinan la velocidad a la que el óxido de etileno se desprende, según Peltier. Si los dispositivos médicos en el camión que examinó Cardinal recorrieron una distancia corta o si el camión estaba casi vacío cuando se realizó el experimento, la empresa podría haber subestimado enormemente las emisiones.
«Demasiadas veces, estos permisos son sólo esperanzas y sueños», dijo Peltier. «En la práctica, como hemos aprendido en muchas de estas instalaciones, nuestras esperanzas y sueños no siempre se cumplen, y a veces tenemos emisiones mucho mayores de las que esperábamos. Y eso es lo que esperaría aquí».
Además, los análisis no tomaron en cuenta las emisiones de óxido de etileno una vez que los productos fueron trasladados al interior de las instalaciones de Cardinal.
Los toxicólogos llevan mucho tiempo identificando el óxido de etileno como una sustancia química peligrosa. En 1982, el Centro de Recursos para la Salud Laboral de la Mujer de la Universidad de Columbia publicó una serie de hojas informativas para educar a los trabajadores sobre esta sustancia química, y en 1995, la Biblioteca del Congreso publicó un estudio sobre los riesgos de utilizar el gas para desinfectar materiales de archivo. Sin embargo, no fue hasta 2016 cuando la EPA actualizó el valor de toxicidad del óxido de etileno, una cifra que define la probabilidad de desarrollar cáncer si uno está expuesto a una determinada cantidad de una sustancia química a lo largo de la vida. Ese mismo año, la agencia publicó un informe en el que reevaluaba el óxido de etileno utilizando un estudio epidemiológico de más de 18.000 trabajadores de instalaciones de esterilización. Los toxicólogos de la agencia determinaron que el producto químico era 30 veces más tóxico para los adultos y 60 veces más tóxico para los niños de lo que se creía anteriormente.
Datos sobre el óxido de etileno
¿Qué es el óxido de etileno? El óxido de etileno es un gas tóxico, incoloro e inodoro, que se utiliza para esterilizar productos médicos, fumigar especias y fabricar otros químicos industriales. Según la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos (FDA, por sus siglas en inglés), aproximadamente la mitad de todos los dispositivos médicos estériles en Estados Unidos se desinfectan con óxido de etileno.
¿Cuáles son las fuentes de exposición al óxido de etileno? Las fuentes industriales de emisiones óxido de etileno se dividen en tres categorías principales: fabricación de productos químicos, esterilización médica y fumigación de alimentos.
¿Cuáles son los efectos en la salud de la exposición al óxido de etileno? El óxido de etileno, al que la EPA ha catalogado como carcinógeno, es dañino en concentraciones por encima de 0.1 partes por trillón si se está expuesto a él a lo largo de la vida. Numerosos estudios lo han vinculado con el cáncer de pulmón y el cáncer de mama, así como con enfermedades del sistema nervioso y daño pulmonar. La exposición aguda al químico puede provocar pérdida del conocimiento, convulsiones o coma.
¿Cómo regula la EPA el óxido de etileno? Una norma de 2024 exige que las instalaciones de esterilización instalen equipo que minimice la cantidad del químico que se libera al aire. Sin embargo, la nueva regulación no contempla las emisiones de otras partes de la cadena de suministro de los dispositivos médicos, como los almacenes y los camiones que los transportan. La administración de Trump ha indicado que derogará la norma.
Determinaron que el óxido de etileno era uno de los contaminantes del aire más tóxicos regulados por el gobierno federal. La exposición prolongada se relacionó con tasas elevadas de linfoma y cáncer de mama entre las trabajadoras. En un estudio de 7.576 mujeres que habían pasado al menos un año trabajando en una instalación de esterilización médica, 319 desarrollaron cáncer de mama. Según un análisis de la organización sin fines de lucro Unión de Científicos Conscientes, aproximadamente 14 millones de personas en Estados Unidos viven cerca de una instalación de esterilización médica.
Como resultado de la nueva evaluación de la EPA, las empresas de todo el país se vieron sometidas a un mayor escrutinio, y algunas instalaciones de esterilización comenzaron a recibir inspecciones más frecuentes. Pero los reguladores de Texas cuestionaron el informe de la EPA. En 2017, ocho años después del primer permiso concedido a Cardinal Health, la TCEQ lanzó su propio estudio sobre el producto químico y estableció un umbral para las emisiones de óxido de etileno que era 2.000 veces más permisivo que el de la EPA, lo que desencadenó una batalla legal que aún se está desarrollando en los tribunales. En el caso de los almacenes, que no están sujetos al escrutinio federal, la actitud permisiva de la TCEQ se tradujo en una supervisión prácticamente nula.
A principios de 2020, la gente de todo el mundo tenía poca energía para otra cosa que no fuera la pandemia de COVID-19. Y, sin embargo, el aumento de la demanda de dispositivos médicos esterilizados y luego mascarillas significaba que más camiones con más materiales pasaban por almacenes como el que está justo detrás del patio trasero de los Domínguez.
Para calcular aproximadamente el nivel de exposición de su familia al óxido de etileno durante ese periodo, Grist pidió a un experto en modelización del aire, que pasara las emisiones declaradas por Cardinal Health por un modelo matemático que simula cómo se dispersan las partículas contaminantes por la atmósfera. (Este mismo modelo es utilizado por la EPA y las empresas, incluida Cardinal, durante el proceso de obtención de permisos). Grist recopiló la información sobre las emisiones a partir de los archivos de permisos que la empresa había presentado al estado.
Los resultados indicaron que las concentraciones de óxido de etileno en el bloque de Domínguez equivalían a un riesgo de cáncer estimado de 2 entre 10.000; es decir, si 10.000 personas están expuestas a esa concentración de óxido de etileno a lo largo de su vida, cabría esperar que dos desarrollaran cáncer a causa de la exposición.
1 milla
La EPA nunca ha sido muy clara sobre el nivel de riesgo de cáncer que considera aceptable para la población. En cambio, ha utilizado «puntos de referencia» de riesgo para guiar las decisiones sobre la autorización de nuevas fuentes de contaminación cerca de las comunidades. El límite inferior de este espectro de riesgos es 1 en 1 millón, un nivel por encima del cual la agencia ha dicho que se esfuerza por proteger al mayor número posible de personas. En el extremo superior del espectro está 1 entre 10.000 —un nivel que los expertos en salud pública han argumentado durante mucho tiempo que es demasiado permisivo, ya que el riesgo de cáncer de una persona por exposición a la contaminación se acumula al riesgo de cáncer que ya tiene por factores genéticos y ambientales. El riesgo para Domínguez y su familia es incluso mayor.
Según los resultados del modelizador del aire, 603.000 residentes de El Paso, aproximadamente el 90% de la población de la ciudad, están expuestos a un riesgo de cáncer superior a 1 en 1 millón sólo por los dos almacenes de Cardinal Health. Más de 1.600 personas, incluidos muchos vecinos de Domínguez, están expuestas a niveles superiores al umbral de aceptabilidad de la EPA de 1 entre 10.000. El análisis también estimó que el riesgo del almacén de Cardinal Health es mayor que el de una instalación de esterilización médica de Sterigenics, situada a apenas 35 millas en Santa Teresa, Nuevo México. Estos resultados subrayan la cantidad de óxido de etileno que puede acumularse en el aire simplemente por la liberación de gases. Grist proporcionó estos resultados a Cardinal Health, la TCEQ y la EPA. Ninguno de ellos respondió específicamente a las preguntas sobre estos hallazgos.
1 milla
En 2021, Domínguez dio a luz a su segundo hijo y, en los años siguientes, tanto ella como sus hijos empezaron a sufrir problemas respiratorios. Su hijo pequeño, en particular, desarrolló graves problemas respiratorios, y un neumólogo le recetó un inhalador y medicamentos antialérgicos para ayudarle a respirar mejor. Su hija, ya adolescente, se quejaba de dolores de cabeza persistentes. Y ella también empezó a tener dolores de cabeza sinusales.
Mientras tanto, Cardinal Health estaba ampliando sus operaciones. En 2023, la empresa solicitó a la TCEQ una actualización de su permiso «lo antes posible». En el almacén al otro lado de la ciudad de donde vive Domínguez, la empresa pronto esperaba recibir casi cuatro veces más camiones que transportaban productos esterilizados —potencialmente hasta 10.000 camiones al año— y el aumento del tráfico de camiones «podría incrementar las emisiones potenciales» de óxido de etileno.
Cardinal se basó en el experimento de 2013 para estimar las emisiones de la instalación, simplemente multiplicando esa concentración por el nuevo número máximo de camiones que la instalación estaría autorizada a recibir. El cálculo aproximado llevó a la empresa a estimar que el almacén situado al otro lado de la ciudad de Domínguez aumentaría sus emisiones a 1.000 libras de la sustancia química al año.
Camiones aparcados frente a un almacén de Cardinal Health cerca del aeropuerto de El Paso. La empresa solicitó un permiso para aceptar cargamentos de hasta 10.000 camiones al año en 2023. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cardinal también calculó que el equipo médico emitiría 637 libras de óxido de etileno al año dentro del almacén. Sin embargo, alegó que esas emisiones son «de minimus», es decir, fuentes insignificantes de contaminación. Según la legislación del estado de Texas, las emisiones mínimas, como los vapores que pueden formarse en un armario de limpieza donde se almacenan disolventes o los gases producidos por el funcionamiento de aparatos de aire acondicionado o calefactores, pueden quedar excluidas de los permisos.
«A ver, si soy profesor de universidad, no quiero estar pensando en los compuestos orgánicos volátiles que salen de los marcadores con los que escribo en la pizarra», dijo Ron Sahu, ingeniero mecánico y consultor con décadas de experiencia trabajando con reguladores medioambientales estatales y federales y con operadores industriales. Sin embargo, las excepciones arriba, continuó Sahu, «no se pensaron para compuestos altamente tóxicos como el óxido de etileno».
Como exigen las normas de Texas, Cardinal estudió instalaciones de todo el país que emiten cantidades comparables de óxido de etileno e hizo un resumen de la tecnología que utilizan para reducir las emisiones. Dado el volumen de las emisiones del almacén, las instalaciones más análogas eran las propias esterilizadoras. La empresa encontró dos esterilizadoras en Texas que utilizan equipos capaces de reducir sus emisiones en un 99%.
Pero estas opciones, concluyó Cardinal, tenían un «coste excesivo» y las emisiones del almacén eran «muy bajas». En su lugar, la empresa dijo que simplemente «restringiría» el número de camiones que descargan productos esterilizados: sólo tres por hora y 10.000 al año. En otras palabras, ampliaría sus operaciones, pero de forma controlada, con el fin de evitar métodos probados para reducir las emisiones de óxido de etileno.
Grist envió a la TCEQ preguntas detalladas por escrito sobre los permisos que concedió a Cardinal. Aunque las preguntas se basaban en documentos que la agencia ya había hecho públicos, un portavoz requirió que Grist enviara una solicitud formal de acceso a los registros «debido al nivel de exigencia y a la cantidad de información técnica que solicita».
Finalmente, en 2023, la TCEQ concedió el nuevo permiso a Cardinal.
Al mismo tiempo que Cardinal Health ampliaba sus operaciones en Texas, la lucha por lograr una supervisión más estricta del óxido de etileno se extendía por todo el país. Individuos de Lakewood, Colorado, presentaron demandas privadas por daños sanitarios relacionados con la exposición al óxido de etileno; otros se unieron a demandas colectivas contra empresas de esterilización y la EPA.
Finalmente, en abril de 2023, la EPA propuso regulaciones largamente esperadas para reducir las emisiones de óxido de etileno de las esterilizadoras. Si bien el proyecto de norma abarcaba las emisiones de los centros de almacenamiento ubicados en las propias instalaciones, no incluía los almacenes externos. Tampoco se incluyeron en el proyecto de norma otras disposiciones que los defensores del medio ambiente esperaban, como el control obligatorio del aire en las proximidades de las instalaciones.
De acuerdo con el procedimiento estándar, la EPA abrió un periodo de 75 días para comentarios públicos y posibles revisiones del proyecto de norma. Earthjustice organizó una reunión de defensores comunitarios de todo el país para aumentar la presión sobre la agencia para que reforzara su propuesta. Residentes de California, Texas, Puerto Rico y otros lugares con instalaciones de esterilización pasaron dos días en Washington, D.C., haciendo peticiones a los miembros del Congreso, reuniéndose con la EPA y compartiendo sus historias de exposición.
Daniel Savery, un representante legislativo de Earthjustice que ayudó a organizar el evento, dijo a Grist que la reunión con la Oficina de Aire y Radiación de la EPA contó con una buena asistencia y que los líderes expresaron empatía por las historias que escucharon. Pero cuando la agencia publicó la norma definitiva en marzo de 2024, no se incluyeron ni los almacenes externos ni la vigilancia obligatoria del aire. La normativa hace referencia al problema de los almacenes externos e indica la intención de la agencia de recopilar información sobre ellos, un primer paso que Savery cree que no se habría incluido en la norma si no fuera por la presión de las reuniones de Washington. No obstante, añadió, la EPA debería haber recopilado información sobre los almacenes de suministros médicos hace mucho tiempo.
«Esta no es su primera vez en el ruedo», dijo Savery, aludiendo a los ocho años que los defensores llevan presionando a la agencia para que aborde la exposición al óxido de etileno desde que se determinó su alta toxicidad en 2016. La Oficina del Inspector General de la EPA, un organismo de control independiente de la agencia, había pedido a los reguladores federales ya en 2020 que hicieran un mejor trabajo informando al público sobre su exposición al óxido de etileno de la industria de la esterilización. «En gran parte, el país sigue con una venda en los ojos respecto a estas fuentes de emisiones», señaló Savery.
El almacén de Cardinal Health en el este de El Paso está a unos cientos de metros de un barrio residencial. La empresa tiene permisos del estado para emitir óxido de etileno, pero los residentes no son conscientes de su exposición al producto químico. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Los esfuerzos para frenar las emisiones de óxido de etileno parecen poco probables durante el segundo mandato del presidente Donald Trump. El nominado de Trump para dirigir la oficina de calidad del aire de la EPA, Aaron Szabo, fue cabildero de la industria de la esterilización, y la agencia hace poco pidió a las esterilizadoras que buscan una exención de las reglas de óxido de etileno que envíen sus peticiones a una dirección de correo electrónico dedicada al gobierno. Desde entonces, la administración de Trump también ha dicho en presentaciones judiciales que planea «revisar y reconsiderar» las normas para las empresas de esterilización.
Un portavoz de la EPA dijo que no pueden «hablar de las decisiones de la administración Biden-Harris» y citó la reciente decisión de la agencia de ofrecer exenciones a las esterilizadoras. El portavoz también se refirió a otra decisión de la EPA de regular el óxido de etileno como pesticida. Esa decisión «podría requerir un estudio específico para recopilar datos sobre la exposición de los trabajadores al EtO en dispositivos médicos fumigados», dijo el portavoz. Sin embargo, al igual que con la regla de las esterilizadoras, la administración de Trump también podría decidir rescindir la determinación de pesticidas.
«El óxido de etileno de estos almacenes simplemente no está regulado», dijo Sahu, el ingeniero mecánico. «No hay ningún control, así que todo acabará tarde o temprano en el aire ambiente».
El pasado agosto, una mañana nublada en el este de El Paso (Texas), cuando la mayoría de la gente apenas empezaba su día, los trabajadores de Cardinal Health estaban sentados en sus coches aparcados en una calle cerca del almacén, a tiro de piedra del patio trasero de Domínguez. Habiendo empezado sus turnos a las 5 de la mañana, todos estaban de descanso. Un joven trabajador hablaba con su novia. Otro miraba Facebook. Y otro comía Takis, manchándose los dedos de un rojo vivo.
Algunos de sus trabajos requieren mover palés del tamaño de un frigorífico llenos de dispositivos médicos esterilizados. Otros abren con mucho cuidado los palés envueltos en plástico, trasladan las cajas de cartón que contienen los kits médicos al interior del almacén y los vuelven a empaquetar para enviarlos en camiones a hospitales de todo el país. Lo hacen con guantes protectores, mascarillas básicas y redecillas para el pelo —precauciones que la empresa exige para garantizar la esterilidad de los equipos médicos, no la protección de los trabajadores.
Un camión cargado de dispositivos médicos sale del almacén de Cardinal Health en el este de El Paso. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Grist habló con varios de ellos mientras descansaban o salían de sus turnos. Aunque ninguno de los trabajadores quiso hablar con los reporteros de Grist de forma oficial, por miedo a represalias de su empleador, compartieron sus experiencias sobre el trabajo en el almacén. La mayoría no sabía que estaban expuestos al óxido de etileno. Algunos habían oído hablar del producto químico, pero desconocían su grado de exposición y los riesgos que entrañaba.
Grist también distribuyó folletos a los trabajadores y a los residentes cercanos explicando los riesgos de la exposición al óxido de etileno. Dos trabajadores llamaron a Grist utilizando el número de contacto del folleto y dijeron que habían desarrollado cánceres después de empezar a trabajar allí. Los tipos de cáncer que se les habían diagnosticado se han relacionado con la exposición al óxido de etileno.
Desde que se enteró de las emisiones del almacén, Domínguez dice que ahora se lo piensa dos veces antes de dejar jugar a su hijo pequeño en el patio trasero. «Estamos dentro de la casa la mayor parte del tiempo por esa razón», dijo.
Domínguez había estado considerando comprar la propiedad de su jefe, pero ahora el futuro de su familia en su casa es incierto.
Nota del editor: Earthjustice es anunciante de Grist. Los anunciantes no tienen ningún papel en las decisiones editoriales de Grist.
Creamos una guía informativa —disponible en inglés y español— en colaboración con organizaciones comunitarias, organizaciones sin fines de lucro y residentes que, durante años, han impulsado una mayor regulación del EtO. Este folleto contiene información sobre el EtO, así como maneras de lograr que los funcionarios públicos aborden el asunto de las emisiones, recursos legales de referencia y más. Puede verlo, descargarlo, imprimirlo y compartirlo.
Si usted es un periodista local o un miembro de la comunidad que quiere saber más sobre cómo investigamos este problema y los pasos a seguir para obtener más información sobre los almacenes en su zona, lea esto.
The long-awaited and much-government-touted ME Delivery Plan is shaping up to be, predictably, largely a whitewash. As ministers slowly drip out pieces of information about the upcoming publication, it’s becoming increasingly obvious the plan is set to offer little more than lukewarm gestures, rather than anything remotely resembling meaningful change for people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
However, it’s a wonder that anyone in the ME community is even mildly shocked at this. Nothing has really changed about the abusive, gaslighting government and NHS patient culture for people living with the devastating disease. That’s painfully evident in the fact multiple patients with severe ME are still trapped in a vicious ouroboros of NHS physician arrogance and ignorance – one feeding the other in a harrowing hospital care catalogue of continued errors.
So why exactly would anyone think that it’s about to turn this appalling situation on its head now?
The ME Delivery Plan: no new funding is NOT a shock
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: new funding for ME research.
We’ve known since at least February that the government has no new funding forthcoming for this. In particular, parliamentary under-secretary for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Ashley Dalton confirmed it. This was in a response to a written question.
An article in the Timespresented this like it was a shock, reporting how:
Charities and MPs said they were “incredibly disappointed” and that without extra funding efforts to improve the lives of people with ME would fail and it would be hard to unlock new treatments.
The Times quoted one of the usual suspects, namely a long-controversial leading ME charity. This was Action for ME (AfME) chief executive Sonya Chowdhury. The non-profit has nothing if not a problematic past. It’s one of holding back, or even actively sabotaging progress for patients, wrapped up as it was in the junk PACE trial part-funded by the DWP. For all its rumblings that it has reformed to centre patients, it still rubs shoulders with prominent biopsychosocial (BPS) circles and proponents.
Behind the scenes, Chowdhury has literally been working with successive governments on the delivery plan. Specifically, she represents AfME on the ME/CFS Delivery Plan Task & Finish Group. It’s therefore hard, to nigh-on impossible really, to imagine Chowdhury would be unaware of the government’s intentions for funding.
Arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic crisis in ME care
Now, a new response from Dalton has only drove all this home further. Specifically, in another written question reply on 4 April, she said in one crucial part that:
We also intend to provide additional support to ME/CFS researchers to develop high quality funding applications and access existing National Institute for Health and Care Research and Medical Research Council research funding. All research funding applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality. Our forthcoming ME/CFS delivery plan will outline the additional support we will offer to the research community to increase the volume and quality of applications and, therefore, increase the allocation of funding to this area.
To put it simply: there’s no new funding. When the government talks of “boosting” it for ME research, as Dalton said earlier in her answer, all that really seems to mean in practice is giving researchers some advice on how to make grant applications. That might actually seem more than a little insulting to researchers as well. It’s basically implying the lack of quality research for ME revolves around their failures to secure funding. This is in lieu of the glaring lack of it available in the first place.
The Canaryhas also highlighted before how the funding focus has largely revolved around harmful psychologising treatments. So ring-fenced funding for causes and genuine curative treatments is essential. Not so to the upcoming ME Delivery Plan it seems. ME research will continue to compete with research for other better-recognised conditions. But don’t worry. Researchers will have DHSC top tips to pip other patient communities also desperately needing more research funding to the post.
It’s another case of the government trying to look like it’s doing something. In reality, all it’s doing is “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”. This sinking ship of a spiralling crisis that is surging numbers of people living with ME and long Covid with no lifeboat curative treatments in sight.
Connect the dots: this government couldn’t care less about ME patients
Moreover, while we say we’ve known since February, in reality, this has been obvious for a good time longer. A government that can’t even commit to real-terms public funding increases for the NHS is hardly about to plough more funding into tackling one specific, and frankly, under-recognised disease.
Throw in the fact that Labour’s rhetoric around the DWP cuts has been leaning heavily into ableist ‘work-shy scrounger’ narratives and it’s really no major surprise.
The Canary has after all, also connected the dots between its attack on chronically ill and disabled people unable to work, and its plans to coerce them into its new workfare programmes. In fact, we revealed how the biopsychosocial lobby and model is deeply embedded in one key work programme – WorkWell – the DWP has been trumpeting.
The BPS model has long been a feature of the Labour right’s approach to disability benefits. Crucially, it was under Tony Blair’s New Labour government that a chief medical adviser for the DWP – Mansel Aylward – embedded this into the government’s approach to welfare. You can read more about this murky history here.
But the point is that Blairites’ neoliberal Starmerite successors are picking up this mantle and running with it. Far be it for a Labour government fixated on more austerity through public service cuts to put its money where its mouth is for ME patients. Instead, schemes like WorkWell and controversial Independent Placement and Support (IPS) are more on-brand.
That is, forcing ME patients into work will save it money overall, so that’s where Labour is more likely heading. It will publish the ME Delivery Plan in this context. In short: it was only too predictable that new funding was never going to happen.
New ME specialist services? Not likely with the ME Delivery Plan
To sum up then: work programmes cost less money than funding research, or ensuring a stable and sufficient social security safety net. It means more ME patients shunted into work – a boon in Labour’s mind for business, tax revenues, and the welfare purse. Though obviously, it’s all at the significant risk of severely worsening their health. Those unable just lose out on DWP disability entitlements regardless.
No matter – not Labour’s problem, because there’s no real treatments or services ME patients can access anyway. So, any concern it has that exacerbating ME patients’ health condition might overload an already stretched NHS and eat into its budget, is moot. It’s counting on ME patients not accessing services at all – because they won’t exist.
And it’s sure looking like Labour doesn’t intend to change the provision available now. From what we can glean ahead of the delivery plan itself, this very likely won’t set out more government support for specialised ME services either. Notably, Dalton responded to another question that Labour MP Chris Ward submitted. This concerned:
what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact on clinical support staff of referring patients with long covid to ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome specialist services.
Dalton replied that the government has made no such assessment, only that:
NHS England has published commissioning guidance for post-Covid services which sets out the principles of care for people with long COVID.
There is also specific advice for healthcare professionals to manage long COVID. Patients should be managed according to current clinical guidance, such as that published and updated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Whilst NICE guidelines are not mandatory, the Government does expect clinicians and healthcare commissioners to take them fully into account.
On top of this, she highlighted that:
Commissioning, service provision and staffing for both myalgic encephalomyelitis services and long COVID services are the responsibility of local integrated care boards.
Reading between the lines then, it implies that through the delivery plan, the government won’t mandate the commissioning of new services. Nor, again, will it deign to fork up new funding allocations for it. But then, why would it? See again: all the above. This is another instance in which it was something already supremely obvious.
Not that we can trust Labour or the NHS anyway
All that said, it’s rather hard to trust that the government and NHS would bring forward genuinely decent services for ME patients anyway.
As anyone living with it will tell you, the ‘specialist clinics’ for ME that do exist are absolutely woeful. At best, they’re abysmally underequipped to help ME patients. Since there’s no current treatments or cures, it’s largely advice-based. The most these can usually do is suggest symptom management techniques like pacing.
At worst, these have been a hotbed of actively harmful so-called ‘treatments’ like graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for years.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) that Dalton referenced may have removed GET as a treatment recommendation, and downgraded CBT in its new 2021 guidelines, but that hasn’t stopped specialist services promoting them anyway. That is, even now, some of these services are offering slyly rebranded versions of this, such as Bristol ME service’s lead Peter Gladwell’s ‘pacing up’ approach. NICE guidelines are, after all, not mandatory.
Will the delivery plan do anything to hold healthcare providers accountable for this? Once again, it’s doubtful. And, there was nothing in the December 2024 interim delivery plan that suggested it would either.
Did we mention arch BPS promoter Simon Wessely is still on the NHS England board? The NHS commissioning new services without a BPS approach is looks a lot less likely while he has a steer.
Severe ME services seem even more unlikely with the ME Delivery Plan
Moreover, while it would be nice to think the plan will commit to commissioning specialist NHS services for severe ME patients, similar problems abound.
This narrative around the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital having a protocol for severe ME in an inpatient setting is admirable.
But let’s be realistic: all any of this will do is possibly – not definitely – stop severe/very severe ME patients from starving to death.
If the interim delivery plan is anything to go by again, there won’t be a lot on this in the forthcoming publication either. All we got was another “work with stakeholders to consider” type promise to:
better support health commissioners and providers to understand the needs of people with ME/CFS, what local service provision should be available and how existing national initiatives to improve accessibility of health services can be adapted or best utilised for people with severe or very severe ME/CFS – by July 2024.
That’s a far cry from a pledge to fund and commission new specialist severe ME services. And these would be arguably even more complex to implement – as nothing like it currently exists.
Dalton’s response on general service commissioning seems to pass the buck onto Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). So, this Labour government – always one to rest on its laurels rather than take concerted action – is not about to break a habit of its to-date parliamentary term lifetime.
More than three years of waiting, and it’s just more hollow hand-wringing that awaits us
According to Dalton on 2 April, the repeatedly delayed publication is now coming at the end of June.
By then, it’ll have been over three years since then Conservative health secretary Sajid Javid launched work on the damn thing.
The Tory government at the time originally promised to publish this by the end of 2022. Then, it was meant to be by the close of 2023. Then, it was going to be published in 2024 – with ministers rather cagey on the definitive dates. To be frank, we’ve lost count of the number of times first the Tories, and now Labour have delayed its publication. Most recently, Labour had promised it for March. Yet, that came and went with not a delivery plan document on DHSC site.
Purportedly, the government needs another couple of months to shore up its document with stakeholders. This is to – we kid you not – ensure its “as ambitious as possible”. Because apparently, two years and ten months wasn’t quite enough time to do that.
In May 2024, I wrote for the Chronic Collaboration about the Westminster debate for ME Awareness Day. In this, I expressed how:
At a previous debate in 2018, the Chronic Collaboration’s Steve Topple wrote for the Canary that parliament had offered a “ray of hope” to the ‘millions missing’ with the devastating disease. Six years on and this glimmer of possibility has all but faded. Not least because at this latest parliamentary affair, ministers were still hand-wringing over all the same problems raised over half a decade ago.
Now as the auspicious 12 May is rapidly approaching again, the ME community will still be minus the delivery plan. However, with the way it’s shaping up, a meagre but at minimum, benign document full of monumental “hand-wringing”, might be the best that we can hope for.
By January 2018, Vanessa Dominguez and her husband had been flirting with moving to a different neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, for a few years. Their daughter was enrolled in one of the best elementary schools in the county, but because the family lived just outside the district’s boundary, her position was tenuous. Administrators could decide to return her to her home district at any moment. Moving closer would guarantee her spot. And when their landlord notified Dominguez that she wanted to double their rent, she and her husband felt more urgency to make their move.
Finally, their opportunity came. Dominguez’s boss owned a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Ranchos del Sol, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in east El Paso, and was looking for a new tenant.
With a kitchen island, high ceilings, and a park across the street where kids often played soccer, the house was perfect for the young family. Most importantly, the property was within the school district’s boundaries.
“The property as a whole seemed attractive, and the neighborhood seemed pretty calm,” Dominguez recalled.
Kids play in a park in the neighborhood behind Cardinal Health’s warehouse in east El Paso.
Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
A man cleans his car as his granddaughter plays on the street directly behind Cardinal Health’s east El Paso warehouse.
Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Kids play in a park in the neighborhood behind Cardinal Health’s warehouse in east El Paso (top). On the same street as Vanessa Dominguez’s house, a man cleans his car as his granddaughter plays, and Cindy Martinez sweeps as her granddaughter, Emerie, plays. Their homes are directly behind Cardinal’s east El Paso warehouse. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cindy Martinez sweeps the street as her granddaughter, Emerie, plays. Their home is directly behind the Cardinal’s east El Paso warehouse.
Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
After they moved in, Dominguez’s daughter quickly took to running around in the backyard, which featured a cherry blossom tree, and the family often grilled outside. Dominguez barely noticed the warehouse just beyond the cobblestone wall at the back. It really wasn’t until the COVID-19 stay-at-home mandate in 2020 that she noticed the stream of trucks pulling in and out of the facility. Sometimes, she would hear the rumble of 18-wheelers as early as 6:30 a.m.
Still, she made little of it. She didn’t realize that the warehouse was owned by Cardinal Health, one of the largest medical device distributors in the country, or that it is part of a vast supply chain that the American public relies on to receive proper medical care.
But for Dominguez and her family, what seemed little more than a minor nuisance was actually a sprawling menace — one that a Grist data analysis found was exposing them to exceedingly high levels of a dangerous chemical.
Homes on the street behind Cardinal Health’s east El Paso warehouse overlook the facility’s loading dock. A Grist data analysis found that residents in parts of the neighborhood are likely being exposed to dangerously high levels of ethylene oxide. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cardinal Health uses that warehouse, and another one across town, to store medical devices that have been sterilized with ethylene oxide. Among the thousands of compounds released every day from polluting facilities, it’s among the most toxic, responsible for more than half of all excess cancer risk from industrial operations nationwide. Long-term exposure to the chemical has been linked to cancers of the breast and lymph nodes, and short-term exposure can cause irritation of the nasal cavity, shortness of breath, wheezing, and bronchial constriction. Dominguez’s family would go on to experience some of these symptoms, but only years later would they tie it to ethylene oxide exposure.
Warehouses like the ones in El Paso are ubiquitous throughout the country. Through records requests and on-the-ground reporting, Grist has identified at least 30 warehouses across the country that definitely emit some amount of ethylene oxide. They are used by companies such as Boston Scientific, ConMed, and Becton Dickinson, as well as Cardinal Health. And they are not restricted to industrial parts of towns — they are near schools and playgrounds, gyms and apartment complexes. From the outside, the warehouses do not attract attention. They look like any other distribution center. Many occupy hundreds of thousands of square feet, and dozens of trucks pull in and out every day. But when these facilities load, unload, and move medical products, they belch ethylene oxide into the air. Most residents nearby have no idea that the nondescript buildings are a source of toxic pollution. Neither do most truck drivers, who are often hired on a contract basis, or many of the workers employed at the warehouses.
Warehouses storing products sterilized with ethylene oxide
Grist assembled a list of U.S. warehouses that have reported storing products sterilized with ethylene oxide and others used by major medical device manufacturers and distributors.
Confirmed
Potential
Loading map data…
Source: Grist analysis
Map: Lylla Younes / Clayton Aldern / Grist
A full list of the warehouse addresses and company responses to Grist questions can be found here.
Grist identified the country’s top medical device manufacturers and distributors, including Cardinal Health, Medline, Becton Dickinson, and Owens & Minor, and collated a list of the more than 100 known warehouses that they own or use. Some of these companies have reported to state or federal regulators that they operate at least one distribution center that stores products sterilized with ethylene oxide. Others were identified in person by Grist reporters as recipients of products from sterilization facilities. But since companies use multiple sterilization methods, it’s unclear whether each of these emits ethylene oxide. However, Grist still chose to publish the information to demonstrate the scale of the potential problem: There are almost certainly dozens, if not hundreds, more warehouses than the 30 we are certain about — and thousands more workers unknowingly exposed to ethylene oxide.
Identifying these warehouses and the 30 or so that emit some amount of ethylene oxide was a laborious process, in part because information about these facilities isn’t readily available. Grist reporters staked out sterilization facilities, spoke to truck drivers and warehouse workers, and combed through property databases.
The problem is “much bigger than we all assume,” said Rick Peltier, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts. “The lack of transparency of where these products go makes us worried.”
A driver walks to his truck moments before leaving Cardinal’s east El Paso warehouse. Truck drivers are among those who are unaware of their exposure to the facility’s ethylene oxide emissions. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
At the El Paso warehouse behind Dominguez’s house, Grist spoke to several Cardinal employees who had little knowledge of the risks of being exposed to ethylene oxide. Cardinal Health, which employs a largely Latino workforce at the warehouse, requires some laborers to wear monitors and keep windows and vents open for circulation. But the workers Grist spoke to were unsure what the company is monitoring for.
“I think it’s because of a kind of gas that we are breathing,” one material handler told Grist while on break. “I don’t know what it’s called.”
In response to the list of Cardinal warehouses that Grist identified, a spokesperson noted in a brief comment that the “majority of addresses you have listed are not even medical facilities” and that “the majority of the locations you’ve listed aren’t relevant to the topic you’re focused on.” However, the company did not provide specific information, and the warehouse locations were corroborated against materials available on the company’s website.
A “Healthcare heroes work here” sign hangs outside Cardinal Health’s warehouse near the El Paso airport. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cardinal’s operations extend across the U.S.-Mexico border. The company runs a manufacturing plant in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where gauze, surgical gowns, drape sheets, scalpels, and other medical equipment are packaged into kits that provide “everything a doctor needs” to conduct a surgery, as one worker put it. The finished kits are trucked back to El Paso or to New Mexico, where they’re sterilized with ethylene oxide by third-party companies that Cardinal contracts with. Then, the products are trucked to one of the two Cardinal warehouses in El Paso, where they remain until they’re shipped to hospitals across the country. All along the way, in the trucks that transport them and the warehouses that store them, ethylene oxide releases from the surface of the sterilized devices, a process called off-gassing.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates the facilities where medical devices are sterilized, controlling the processes and safety protocols to keep ethylene oxide emissions to safe levels. But for myriad reasons, the federal government — and the vast majority of states — has turned a blind eye to warehouses. That’s despite the fact that these storage centers sometimes release more ethylene oxide and pose a greater risk than sterilization facilities. Georgia regulators found that was the case in 2019, and a Grist analysis found the warehouse in Dominguez’s backyard posed a greater threat than the New Mexico sterilization facility that Cardinal receives products from.
Trucks load and unload products at a sterilization facility in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The facility uses ethylene oxide and is part of a vast medical supply chain.
Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
An ethylene oxide warning sign is seen at the Santa Teresa facility.Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
“The EPA knows that the risks from ethylene oxide extend far beyond the walls of the sterilization facility,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a lawyer at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice who works on toxic chemicals, “that the chemical remains with the equipment when it is taken to a warehouse, and that it continues to be released, threatening workers and threatening surrounding communities.
“EPA had a legal obligation to address those risks,” he added.
In 2009, Cardinal Health reached out to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, the state environmental regulator, seeking permits for its ethylene oxide emissions. At the time, the chemical compound was not known to be as toxic as it is, and TCEQ officials asked few questions about the effect the emissions would have on residents nearby. Grist’s reporting indicates the company had no legal responsibility to inform state officials but appears to have done so as a responsible actor.
The company’s applications included a rudimentary diagram of a truck pulling up to a warehouse, an arrow pointing up into the air to denote ethylene oxide emissions from the facility, and a truck pulling out of the warehouse. “Due to the unloading of the tractor trailers, Cardinal Health is registering the fugitive EtO that escapes upon the opening of each of the tractor trailers,” it noted, using an abbreviation for ethylene oxide.
To calculate how much of the chemical escaped from trucks carrying sterilized products, Cardinal Health used an EPA model developed for wastewater treatment systems at TCEQ’s direction and multiplied the estimate by the number of trucks it expected would drop off products every year. It’s unclear why the agency instructed Cardinal Health to use a wastewater model for an air pollutant when alternatives existed, but these imprecise calculations led the company to figure that its warehouses emitted at least 479 pounds per year. TCEQ granted Cardinal’s permits without requiring the company to take measures to reduce the pollution or notify residents.
Four years later, the company appears to have made an effort to determine more precise calculations. In a 2013 experiment, the company fit blowers to a truck and measured the amount of ethylene oxide emitted — but withheld other relevant details, like when the measurements were taken and how many products the truck transported, from the documents it submitted to TCEQ. Cardinal found that, in the first five minutes after a truck pulls into the warehouse, the sterilized products off-gas ethylene oxide at their highest levels. But after five minutes, rather than dropping to zero, the off-gassing levels stayed steady at 7 parts per million for the next two hours.
After medical products are sterilized with ethylene oxide, they’re
packaged and loaded onto trucks.
Jesse Nichols / Parker Ziegler / Grist
Publicly available documents do not provide details about where the trucks were coming from, how many packages they held, or how long ago the products had been sterilized — crucial details that determine the rate at which ethylene oxide off-gases. If the medical devices in the truck that Cardinal observed traveled a short distance or if the truck was mostly empty when the experiment was conducted, the company could have vastly underestimated the emissions.
“The numbers they’re using are just science fiction,” said Peltier. “For something as powerful as a carcinogen like this, we ought to do better than making up numbers and just doing some hand-waving in order to demonstrate that you’re not imposing undue risk to the community.”
What’s more, the analyses did not take into account the ethylene oxide emissions once the products were moved inside Cardinal’s facilities.
Toxicologists have long identified ethylene oxide as a dangerous chemical. In 1982, the Women’s Occupational Health Resource Center at Columbia University published a series of fact sheets educating workers about the chemical, and in 1995, the Library of Congress released a study on the risks of using the gas to fumigate archival materials. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that the EPA updated ethylene oxide’s toxicity value, a figure that defines the probability of developing cancer if exposed to a certain amount of a chemical over the course of a lifetime. That year, the agency published a report reevaluating ethylene oxide utilizing an epidemiological study of more than 18,000 sterilization facility workers. The agency’s toxicologists determined the chemical to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously known.
Ethylene Oxide Facts
What is ethylene oxide? Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless toxic gas used to sterilize medical products, fumigate spices, and manufacture other industrial chemicals. According to the Food and Drug Administration, approximately half of all sterile medical devices in the U.S. are disinfected with ethylene oxide.
What are the sources of ethylene oxide exposure? Industrial sources of ethylene oxide emissions fall into three main categories: chemical manufacturing, medical sterilization, and food fumigation.
What are the health effects of being exposed to ethylene oxide? Ethylene oxide, which the EPA has labeled a carcinogen, is harmful at concentrations above 0.1 parts per trillion if exposed over a lifetime. Numerous studies have linked it to lung and breast cancers as well as diseases of the nervous system and damage to the lungs. Acute exposure to the chemical can cause loss of consciousness or lead to a seizure or coma.
How is the EPA regulating ethylene oxide? A 2024 rule requires sterilization facilities to install equipment that minimizes the amount of the chemical released into the air. But the new regulation does not address emissions from other parts of the medical device supply chain, such as warehouses and trucks. The Trump administration has also indicated it will rescind the rule.
Ethylene oxide, they determined, was one of the most toxic federally regulated air pollutants. Prolonged exposure was linked to elevated rates of lymphoma and breast cancer among the workers. In one study of 7,576 women who had spent at least one year working at a medical sterilization facility, 319 developed breast cancer. According to an analysis by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, roughly 14 million people in the U.S. live near a medical sterilization facility.
As a result of the EPA’s new evaluation, companies throughout the country came under greater scrutiny, with some sterilizers experiencing more frequent inspections. But regulators in Texas disputed the EPA’s report. In 2017, eight years after Cardinal Health’s first permit, officials with the TCEQ launched its own study of the chemical and set a threshold for ethylene oxide emissions that was 2,000 times more lenient than the EPA’s, setting off a legal battle that is still playing out in court. For warehouses, which do not receive federal scrutiny, TCEQ’s lenient attitude meant virtually no oversight.
By early 2020, people around the world had little energy for anything but the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet, the spike in demand for sterilized medical devices — and now masks — meant that more trucks with more materials passed through warehouses like the one just beyond Dominguez’s backyard.
To approximate how high her family’s exposure was to ethylene oxide during this period, Grist asked an expert air modeler to run Cardinal Health’s stated emissions through a mathematical model that simulates how pollution particles disperse throughout the atmosphere. (This same model is used by the EPA and companies — including Cardinal — during the permitting process.) Grist collected the emissions information from permit files the company had submitted to the state.
The results indicated that ethylene oxide concentrations on Dominguez’s block amounted to an estimated cancer risk of 2 in 10,000; that is, if 10,000 people are exposed to that concentration of ethylene oxide over the course of their lives, you could expect two to develop cancer from the exposure.
1 mile
The EPA has never been perfectly clear about what cancer risk level it deems acceptable for the public to shoulder. Instead, it has used risk “benchmarks” to guide decisions around the permitting of new pollution sources near communities. The lower bound in this spectrum of risks is 1 in 1 million, a level above which the agency has said it strives to protect the greatest number of people possible. On the higher end of the spectrum is 1 in 10,000 — a level that public health experts have long argued is far too lax, since a person’s cancer risk from pollution exposure accumulates on top of the cancer risk they already have from genetics and other environmental factors. The risk for Dominguez and her family is just beyond even that.
According to the air modeler’s results, 603,000 El Paso residents, about 90 percent of the city’s population, are exposed to a cancer risk above 1 in 1 million just from Cardinal Health’s two warehouses. More than 1,600 people — including many of Dominguez’s neighbors — are exposed to levels above EPA’s acceptability threshold of 1 in 10,000. The analysis also estimated that the risk from Cardinal Health’s warehouse is higher than that of a Sterigenics medical sterilization facility, located just 35 miles away in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. These findings underscore how much ethylene oxide can accumulate in the air simply from off-gassing. To be clear, these figures are based on Cardinal’s own data. Given the questions surrounding the company’s estimates, the risk to Dominguez, her neighbors, and the facility’s workers could be higher.
1 mile
In 2021, Dominguez gave birth to her second child, and over the next few years, both she and her children began suffering from respiratory issues. Her young son, in particular, developed severe breathing problems, and a respiratory specialist prescribed an inhaler and allergy medication to help him breathe better. Her daughter, now a teenager, complained of persistent headaches. And she, too, began developing sinus headaches.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Health was expanding its operations. In 2023, the company applied to the TCEQ for an updated permit “as quickly as possible.” At the warehouse across town from Dominguez, the company soon expected to receive nearly four times as many trucks carrying sterilized products — potentially up to 10,000 trucks a year — and the increased truck traffic “may increase potential emissions” of ethylene oxide.
Cardinal relied on the 2013 experiment to estimate the facility’s emissions, simply multiplying that concentration by the new maximum number of trucks the facility would be permitted to receive. The back-of-the-envelope calculation led the company to estimate that the warehouse across town from Dominguez would increase its emissions to 1,000 pounds of the chemical per year.
Trucks parked outside a Cardinal Health warehouse near the El Paso airport. The company applied for a permit to accept shipments from as many as 10,000 trucks per year in 2023. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Cardinal also estimated that the medical equipment would off-gas 637 pounds of ethylene oxide inside the warehouse every year. However, it claimed that those emissions are “de minimus,” or insignificant sources of pollution. Under Texas state law, minimal emissions, such as the vapors that might form in a janitorial closet storing solvents or gas produced by running air conditioners or space heaters, may be excluded from permitting requirements.
“Like, if I’m a college professor in school, I don’t want to consider the volatile organic compounds coming out of the marker pens that I’m writing with on the board,” said Ron Sahu, a mechanical engineer and consultant with decades of experience working with state and federal environmental regulators and industrial operators. The exceptions, he said, “were not based on highly toxic compounds like ethylene oxide.”
As required under Texas rules, Cardinal surveyed facilities around the country that emit comparable amounts of ethylene oxide and summarized the technology they use to reduce emissions. Given the volume of the emissions from the warehouse, the most analogous facilities were the sterilizers themselves. The company found two sterilizers in Texas that utilize equipment to reduce their emissions by 99 percent.
But these options, Cardinal determined, were “cost excessive” and emissions from the warehouse were “very low.” Instead, the company said it would simply “restrict” the number of trucks unloading sterilized products — only three per hour and 10,000 per year. In other words, it would expand its operations, but in a controlled way, in order to forego proven methods of reducing ethylene oxide emissions.
Grist sent TCEQ detailed written questions about the permits it issued to Cardinal. Even though the questions were based on documents the agency has already made publicly available, a spokesperson requested that Grist send a formal records request “due to the level of involvement and the amount of technical information you are requesting.”
Ultimately, in 2023, TCEQ granted Cardinal’s new permit.
At the same time that Cardinal Health was expanding its operations in Texas, the fight to have stricter oversight of ethylene oxide was spreading across the country. Individuals in Lakewood, Colorado, filed private lawsuits for health care damages related to ethylene oxide exposure; others joined class action lawsuits against sterilization companies and the EPA.
Finally, in April 2023, the EPA proposed long-overdue regulations to reduce ethylene oxide emissions from sterilizers. While the draft rule covered emissions from storage centers located on-site, it neglected to include off-site warehouses. Other provisions advocates had hoped for, like mandatory fence-line air monitoring near facilities, were also missing from the draft rule.
Following standard procedure, the EPA then opened a 75-day period for public comment and potential revision to the draft rule. Earthjustice organized a convening of community advocates from across the country to increase pressure on the agency to strengthen its draft. Residents from California, Texas, Puerto Rico, and other places with sterilizers spent two days in Washington, D.C., petitioning members of Congress, meeting with the EPA, and sharing their stories of exposure.
Daniel Savery, a legislative representative at Earthjustice who helped organize the event, told Grist that the meeting with the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation was well attended and that leadership expressed empathy for the stories they heard. But when the agency released the final rule in March 2024, neither off-site warehouses nor mandatory air monitoring was included. The regulations do reference the problem of off-site warehouses and indicate the agency’s intention to collect information about them — a first step that Savery believes wouldn’t have made it into the rule were it not for pressure from the Washington meetings. However, he added, the EPA should have collected information about medical supply warehouses a long time ago.
“This is the EPA’s eighth rodeo on this issue,” Savery said, alluding to the many years advocates have pressed the agency to address ethylene oxide exposure since the chemical was found to be highly toxic in 2016. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General, an independent agency watchdog, had asked the federal regulators as early as 2020 to do a better job informing the public about their exposure to ethylene oxide from the sterilization industry. “The wool is sort of over the country’s eyes for the most part about these emissions sources,” Savery said.
Cardinal Health’s warehouse in east El Paso is a few hundred feet from a residential neighborhood. The company has permits from the state to emit ethylene oxide but residents are unaware of their exposure to the chemical. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Efforts to rein in ethylene oxide emissions seem unlikely during President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump’s nominee to lead the EPA’s air quality office, Aaron Szabo, was a lobbyist for the sterilization industry, and the agency recently asked sterilizers seeking an exemption from ethylene oxide rules to send their petitions to a dedicated government email address. The Trump administration has since also said in court filings that it plans to “revisit and reconsider” the rule for sterilizers.
A spokesperson for the EPA said they cannot “speak to the decisions of the Biden-Harris administration” and cited the agency’s recent decision to offer exemptions to sterilizers. The spokesperson also referenced a separate EPA decision to regulate ethylene oxide as a pesticide. That decision “could require a specific study for monitoring data on fumigated medical devices to better understand worker exposure to EtO from fumigated medical devices,” the spokesperson said. However, much like the sterilizer rule, the Trump administration could also decide to rescind the pesticide determination.
“Ethylene oxide from these warehouses is just unregulated,” said Sahu, the mechanical engineer. “There’s no control, so everything will eventually find its way to the ambient air.”
Last August, on a cloudy morning in east El Paso, Texas, when most people’s days were just getting started, workers at the Cardinal Health warehouse were sitting in their cars, a stone’s throw from the Dominguez backyard. Having started their shifts at 5 a.m., they were all on break. One young worker was talking to his girlfriend. Another was scrolling on Facebook. And another snacked on Takis, staining her fingers bright red.
Some of their jobs require moving refrigerator-size pallets filled with sterilized medical devices. Others carefully cut open the pallets wrapped in plastic, moving the cardboard boxes containing the medical kits into the warehouse and repackaging them to be trucked to hospitals across the country. They do this with protective gloves, basic face masks, and hairnets — precautions the company urges to ensure the sterility of the medical equipment, not the protection of the workers.
A truck carrying medical devices leaves Cardinal Health’s east El Paso warehouse. Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist
Grist spoke to several of them while they were on break or leaving their shifts. Although none of the workers agreed to speak with Grist reporters on the record, due to a fear of retaliation by their employer, they shared their experiences about working at the warehouse. Most were unaware they were being exposed to ethylene oxide. Some had heard of the chemical but didn’t know the extent of their exposure and its risks.
Grist also distributed flyers to workers and nearby residents explaining the risks of ethylene oxide exposure. Two workers called Grist using the contact number on the flyer and said they had developed cancers that research links to ethylene oxide exposure after they started the job.
Since learning about the warehouse’s emissions, Dominguez said she now thinks twice before letting her young son play in the backyard. “We’re indoors most of the time for that reason,” she said.
Dominguez had been considering buying the property from her boss, but her family’s future in their home is now uncertain.
“I really changed my mind about that,” she said.
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
We created an informational guide — available in English and Spanish — in collaboration with community organizations, nonprofits, and residents who have pushed for more EtO regulation for years. This booklet contains facts about EtO, as well as ways to get local officials to address emissions, legal resources you can reference, and more. You can view, download, print, and share it here.
If you’re a local journalist or a community member who wants to learn more about how we investigated this issue and steps you can take to find out more about warehouses in your area, read this.
Enginakyurt | Pexels
Angela Bailey
Adobe
Unsplash
Getty
Pexels
Pexels
Pexels
Pexels 
Michal Collection | Canva
