Ultra-processed foods contain many synthetic additives (incl. colors, flavors, stimulants, sweeteners, binders, emulsifiers, and preservatives, among others)!
I never paid much attention to them until Chris van Tulleken published his “Ultra-Processed People – The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food (Norton, 2023)”. He defines them as something you cannot find lying around in your kitchen. A conservative guess of the number of additives used in the USA is around 10,000, government-approved or not, while the figure used in Europe or other countries may be one-tenth (or 1,000).
Now, California is the first state to start banning ultra-processed foods, at least from being served to students in public schools. This certainly is good news, and it is about time! However, relying on governments’ actions or industries’ good will to deal with rapidly increasing toxic synthetic chemicals (drugs & additives) that keep accelerating year after year, looks like a sure loser. These synthetics by themselves are not going to abate, and in a few generations, we will be a nation of many more sick people with no unpolluted places to live.
I am not a widely read person because of a reading handicap resulting from a car incident about 10 years ago – involving the back of my head during a rear-ender by a dishonest young real estate agent and a bunch of crooked lawyers. I bought Chris van Tulleken’s book months after it was published when I read about its theme that coincided with what I have been working on for decades. My work has been mostly on natural herbs and chemicals, and I was trained in natural food, drug, and cosmetic ingredients. My “Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics” was published in 1980. It is now in its 3rd edition (published in 2010) retitled “Leung’s Encyclopedia of Common…”. It has been one of Wiley’s bestsellers.
I have spent most of my career, especially the past 4 decades, on synthetic drugs vs. natural chemicals. The former have existed for only around 150 years while the latter millennia or countless years. Yet most of us don’t seem to be aware of the differences between the two. Thus, in our pursuit of using synthetic chemicals in therapy, we ignore or are unaware of what we have done for millennia with natural materials. Instead, we concentrate solely in trying to prove the new synthetic drugs made from toxic petroleum, coal tar, or other fossil fuels are not that toxic. Hence, we experiment with animal tissues in vitro, in vivo and in small live animals, then in us humans (the last we call clinical trials) to show that they don’t kill them outright. Then, after they are approved for patient use, we have found out they all have side effects that can end up as new diseases. These new diseases then require more new toxic drugs to treat, ad infinitum, creating the vicious cycle (VC).
This VC is not the one defined by health professionals, many of whom seem to be unaware of the inherently toxic characteristics of all synthetic chemicals (drug & additives) because of their brand-new existence on our planet which are derived from toxic inedible materials like fossil fuels. They are there, longer than any of our lifespan; and it’s the weak will of some of us who are addicted to them. Furthermore, many of us scientists are so involved in our work, especially specializations, that we may not even have thought about our experiences and wisdom as legitimate, gained over the centuries/millennia of testing natural materials (herbs, microbes, mushrooms, etc.) by trial and error. Some prominent critics of traditional (herbal) medicines used to refer to them as voodoo derogatively, up to maybe 10 or 15 years ago. They have probably died prematurely because of the accumulative toxicities from the drugs and additives they voluntarily take, and pollutants like microplastics from the drinking waters in our environment. Some drug-oriented colleagues who are so involved in their specializations (deep holes in the ground) that they are oblivious to our body’s infinitely complex nature and only view ourselves as a single human unit, the way we see ourselves from a distance. Perhaps that is how the confusion of synthetics and naturals came about. However, when this is monetized by our VC of synthetic drug therapy, no one wants to rock the boat by disturbing our money tree, especially the people who work in the food and drug industries. Hence, they all have kept quiet. Over the past many decades, few, if any, of us have brought up the issues of toxic side effects of synthetic drugs and additives. They are real. I have been vocal in these fields because I have survived by consulting in different fields after having been employed and fired by 2 companies during 5 years of my early career in the 1970s.
Here, I am bringing back ‘broken record’ again. The VC is not possible when dealing with natural chemicals (substances from nature) because they have been with us for many (or countless) generations. Whatever present as impurities in our edibles (foods or herbs) has also been with us since our ancestors started trying potential foods or medicines countless years ago. They survived to pass their experience and wisdom on to us. The impurities in these natural ingestible chemicals are not toxic because countless generations since our ancient ancestors’ first trials, followed by later ones, have already proven their safety and effectiveness. Our modern generations have tried our modern synthetic drugs and additives for less than 2 centuries tops, we have already encountered unsurmountable problems and difficulties as evidenced by the VC firmly established during this short period. Our scientific endeavors in this field only help us continue to cope with the ‘monster’ we have created. Hence, we have to deal with side effects, new diseases, and continue to suffer all their consequences.
Is this all our current ‘sciences’ can do? Or are there better alternatives? Please seriously ponder them, my scientific colleagues! The solutions are around us. We just need to be more sensible and practical. Forget about sticking to precision in our scientific principle. If there is indeed such a principle when we have a flawed scientific system?
As I have said many times before, our health sciences dealing with our drug therapy process is not really scientific, despite all the different maneuvers (in vitro & in vivo studies followed by clinical trials in humans), we simply still end up following the same trial-and-error process on humans ‘invented’ by our ancestors eons ago. Contrary to our belief or science, the way we approach the drug-therapy process is not scientific, especially when we demand precision. How precise can it be if our key involved element is our body – an extremely complex living organism consisting of millions and billions of chemicals and cells each has its own agenda and function therein. No two people’s bodies are alike, and we cannot control most of their contents because we don’t build our bodies as we do robots. The fact is that we may think our health science is precise and reproducible, we have a big flaw in this thinking. Unless you can control every cell and chemical in our body, we cannot be sure of our science involving our complex body with countless living chemicals and cells.
I have no experience with robots. But I think if a robot is out of order, we can fix or replace a malfunctioning part. Not so with our ill body as we can’t order a healing chemical or cell to go to a certain part in our body and right its illness. We are not yet there until we know how to use cosmic elements to move chemicals and cells around in our body to the location where our ill health started and resolve the problem.
In the meantime, we have the experiences and wisdom from our traditional medicines, especially the well-documented Chinese medicines (CM) and Ayurveda, among others. With CM, it is not based on scientific precision (an illusion) but on tried-and-true experiences and wisdom gained over a long, long time! Hence, it is now practical, and it works. I have grown up with it, and I still used some of the formulas for my family and friends, especially for colds, flus, sore throat, cough, canker sores, pimples, and joint pain, among others. Unlike modern drugs (e.g., OTC drugs), the CM therapies are also less rigid, and one or more herbal ingredients in a formula can be replaced by comparable herbs. Millennia of try-and-true experiences have shown many CM formulas to work. I have used a few dozen over my lifetime and they have not only benefited me, but also my family and some close friends.
Since many of the CM formulas are sold as supplements, most of which of unknown identity and quality, the fastest way to show their authenticity is by fingerprinting commercial products with HPTLC to show fake ones so that consumers can skip buying them. This is a sure way to start improving the poor quality of herbal supplements as I have so often described.
Whenever my PBN Naturals Worldwide Consortium is launched, the first action I take will be using HPTLC fingerprinting on commercial psychedelic products, since no public agencies are doing anything about them (not FDA or USP/NF). We will pick the best-known brands, analyze them and simply let people see the differences. They will make their own decisions as to which one to buy. Only with the participation of educated and experienced fellow humans can we eventually solve our major health problems caused by synthetic chemicals drugs and additives. We can’t afford to take another 5 or 6 generations because at the current rate of progression we and/or our environment would no longer be there!