Never mind Big Brother; your beer’s isotopes knows where you are.

By Andrew Schneider

That mug of microbrew you hoisted after work today tasted good, didn’t it? Would it have gone down as easy if you knew that it left a chemical marker showing what city you were in when you drank it? So do bottled and tap water as well as soft drinks.

It’s true. Your cellphone isn’t the only thing that can tell others your location. Scientists who can precisely measure hydrogen and oxygen isotopes can also tell where a crime victim spent the past year or whether that milk came from the farm down the road or across the country.

Biologists, geologists and analytical chemists at the University of Utah and a Salt Lake City laboratory called IsoForensics, Inc. are using this technology to help test food quality and solve cold cases for detectives around the country.

At the heart of the process is the water that is used in all beverages, from booze to baby formula. The body removes hydrogen and oxygen atoms from water and beverages that contain it and leaves a natural chemical imprint or fingerprint, explained Lesley Chesson and her colleagues in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. “What we found is that human hair records the isotopic composition of the water that you drink,” she explained.

Chesson, an analytical chemist and the lead author of the study, explains it this way: The isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water vary in ways that can be predicted accurately, and they reveal the latitude, elevation and proximity to coastline.

Lesley Chesson

“A distinct chemical fingerprint in your hair could be used to track your travels,” Chesson says.

There are implications for this beyond tracking human whereabouts. It’s also a way to find fraudulent food.

The Utah team is collecting honeycomb from beekeepers across the country in hopes of tracking where honey originates. If this works, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will finally have a way to stop the smuggling of mislabeled, often unsafe Chinese honey.

It might also be a way to determine if that pricey bottle of wine is really worth it.

Three scientists from the University of Utah and IsoForensics – Jason West, James Ehleringer, and Thure Cerling have used the technique of measuring hydrogen and oxygen stable isotopes to detect and confirm the origin of wine.  They found that the water in the wine does indeed provide a record of where the water came from—meaning the wines were clearly distinguishable by growing region.

The criminal-case uses for this technology is right out of CSI. The first case it was used on was that of a woman whose body was found in 2000 in an old bathhouse on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It had been converted into a concert hall called Saltair.

Seven years after the woman was found, a few strands of her hair yielded a staggering number of details.

“We were able to get a snapshot of the victim’s life back through time…week by week, determine what she drank and thus her location during the period,” Chesson says.

For example, they found that the victim had made periodic moves in the two years leading up to her death, back and forth between two regions in Idaho and Utah every six or eight months.

Chesson began collecting water and hair samples from across the United States in 2007. Next she collected samples of beverages found in almost every community – Dasani brand bottled water, Coca-Cola Classic soda, and Budweiser beer.

The Utah team collected a database of the chemical characteristics of drinking water in 450 U.S. communities.

Chesson and her colleagues found that the soda, bottled and tap water offer a consistent and accurate database. (They found that Budweiser might not be a good way to track someone—the brewer, Anheuser-Busch Inc., operates 12 breweries in the U.S. A consumer could be tipping a Bud that traveled hundreds of miles to their local market.)

The team also collected milk and cow drinking-water samples from eight locations in six states and Puerility Rico then bought milk from supermarkets in 30 cities within 18 states. Yes, they can track the origin of that milk mustache.

Chesson and the other scientists from IsoForensics have put out the word to beekeepers across the U.S. to send in samples of well-identified honeycomb. so the group can refine a method to accurate identify where the honey originated. I’ve was writing about honey laundering before my former newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, closed 14 months ago and since I began covering public health for AOL News.

Believe me the bogus honey continues to flow though U.S. and onto store shelves. Honest honey importers and packers, and there are many, are trapped between shady importers who actually bounce Chinese honey from country-to-country, or just falsify the shipping papers, and the inability to actually have the golden nectar tested for country-of-origin by any laboratory outside of Germany.

If the analytical wizards in Salt Lake City can develop and confirm the accuracy of this technique, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will have a long-sought-after tool in U.S. efforts to halt the smuggling of mislabeled and adulterated Chinese honey.

In May, I reported that Texas A&M University palynologist and an anthropology professor Vaughn Bryant said he is doing melissopalynology – the study of pollen in honey that allows identification of its country of origin. From what Chesson told me it sounds like IsoForensics approach could wind up being more accessible and perhaps less costly than the German process.

Once you get beyond the gee-whiz factor, the Utah team’s tracking technology has  big-time implications for making sure any number of food products are safe, and accurately labeled.

Here is a link to a longer version of what I wrote today for AOL News .

(Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett contributed to this report.)

The ratio of isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen differ by geographic region.

Honey safety back in the news

That cute little bear-shaped honey bottle you grab off the supermarket shelf might not be as healthy as it looks.

For the details, see “Honey laundering bust highlights sticky problem,” a piece I wrote this week for AOL news.

–Andrew Schneider

GAO report raises alarm on ‘GRAS’ — a gigantic food-additive loophole

There are four little words that give food manufacturers an enormous loophole. The phrase “Generally regarded as safe” is one that food-industry watchdogs have long wanted to erase.

Photo Yale Food Proj.

Now consumer-advocates and health-safety folks have some new ammunition. It comes in the form of a report, months in the works, from the Government Accountability Office.

For the most part, the FDA regs demand extensive examination of what manufacturers put into food, but for 50 years there has been an enormous loophole that allowed the food makers to skirt the agency’s scrutiny.

GAO’s report exposes the practice by food-makers of slipping in certain additives without spending years (and piles of money) on safety tests. These manufacturers lean on the exceptions provided by that handy designation, GRAS.

Countless spices, artificial flavors, binders, vitamins and minerals; and preservatives have been designated GRAS since the term surfaced in 1958. But the only experts who know whether not the additives are actually safe are those working for the food companies that use them. And those findings are not required to be reported to the FDA.

GAO said that the food safety agency told it that complaints and public concerns could prompt them to reconsider the safety of a GRAS substance.

Yet the FDA’s actions present a different picture.

More than 40 years ago, the GRAS-labeled artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned after allegations of serious health effects. That was pretty much it for decades.

A more serious debate over another GRAS additive is going on today and is generating repeated demands from unions, public health experts and others for another ban.

The substance is diacetyl, a chemical butter flavoring that has killed a handful of workers and sickened hundreds of others in microwave popcorn plants, bakeries, candy makers and other food processors.

What angers worker and food safety specialists even more is that many manufacturers say they have switched to a substitute for the old lung-destroying flavoring additive that government researchers have determined contains just as much or more diacetyl than the old concoction.

It too is listed as GRAS and the FDA knows it, but has done nothing.

What did the FDA say in response to this report? The agency agrees with many of the faults that GAO documented but said that it would be necessary to seek authority from Congress in order to tighten up the GRAS loophole. Which, of course, would cost a pile of tax dollars and further tax FDA’s already stretched resources.

Truth in food labeling: Coming to a box near you?

If you’ve ever peered at the nutrition-information label on your bottle of organic cranberry juice, or, for that matter, the one on the side of the Pop-Tarts box, you’ve felt the pain. You know the one: that drilling ache right between the eyes as your brain tries to decode the calories, fat, fiber, sugar and other ingredients in the product.

If the Center for Science in the Public Interest has its way, and the group’s cogent report,  “Food Labeling Chaos: The Case for Reform,” gets the attention they want, such headaches might ease.

In the 16 years since it became law, food labeling, like warnings on tobacco products, household cleaners and prescription drugs, has been an evolving practice. The public now regards such labeling as commonplace; the debate has become about the clarity and accuracy.

So, what needs fixing? Among the points made by the CSPI report are these recommendations:

–Nutrition info on food packaging should be simplified and made more user-friendly. (That vague calories-per-serving measure should be “Amount Per ½ Cup Serving” for example.)

–Practices that allow manufacturers to obfuscate nutrition measurements for multi-item packages or single-ingredient products (including meat and poultry) should be eliminated.

–Loose regulation of terms such as “all natural” or inaccurate claims of health benefits should be policed.

CSPI sent the report to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting in a cover letter that recent efforts by the agency to regulate labeling are commendable…but not far-reaching enough. The letter points out that a system requiring (and enforcing) accurate, accessible food-labeling products fits nicely with the Obama administration’s campaign to reduce diet-related disease for children and adults.

Chicken ‘plumping’: One part hype, three parts salt

Remember that healthy chicken dinner you whipped up the other night? The one made with “100 percent all-natural” chicken?

Bad news: It could have had as much salt as an order of McDonald’s fries. And to add insult to injury, you paid too much for it.

Here’s why: During the “plumping” process used by some poultry purveyors, various additives and good ol’ saltwater are injected into the birds to make them bigger. Then the birds are labeled “all natural” and priced accordingly. The consumer ends up with a salt-sodden bird and a per-pound price that includes a lot of water.

Chicken wranglers who raise and sell healthy, un-plumped birds are understandably peeved about these labeling practices. The well-known Foster Farms folks have been making a lot of noise, saying it’s time to shore up the loose labeling regulations that allow companies to misrepresent foods as healthy alternatives.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest has raised its voice a bit too. (After all, nagging people to lower sodium levels isn’t going to work very well if unnaturally salted, bloated chickens are being passed off as healthy stuff.)

Now the matter is getting more air time and column inches: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), has called for the USDA to tighten such food-labeling regs.  Boxer, who represents a huge agricultural constituency, goes to bat regularly on food-related issues, and has a knack for cutting through process and making real change. Wisely, the emphasis from her corner seems to be on the false-weight issue, which will probably get the plumpers out there in line faster than arguing about the salt levels.

Democrats who anguished over dangerous popcorn butter flavoring are doing little now that they have the power.

The chemical in butter flavoring for popcorn and other foods that has sickened hundreds of workers, killed a handful and destroyed the lungs of at least three microwave popcorn addicts may be back.

In fact, it appears it never went away, despite promises from the food industry.

So what is the Obama Administration going to do about it? Nothing meaningful, at least for another year, it said this week, stunning unions, members of Congress, public health activists and physicians who have pleaded for government action to protect workers and consumers from the butter flavoring.

Two years ago this month, the nation’s leading popcorn purveyors proclaimed that they’d done away with the chemical culprit diacetyl, believed to be the harmful element in the food flavoring.

But now, government health investigators are reporting that the “new, safer, butter substitutes” are, in some cases, at least as toxic as what they replaced. (more…)

Absence of food labeling laws keep U.S. consumers from knowing whether or not their food is genetically altered.

Back a couple of months, a couple of you asked how you could determine whether or not your food contained genetically modified organisms. It took a while, but I found a bit of information that might help you better understand this bomb-filled arena, or just add to your confusion.

Here’s one point that’s indisputable. It is difficult for consumers to know whether the food they’re buying was genetically modified, especially in this country. Most of the industrialized countries demand that GMO products be labeled as such. But not the U.S.

The Pew Research Foundation reported that more than 90 percent of American shoppers want food labeled as to its contents, including GMO. Unless I missed it, there was nothing in the farm bill that finally passed last week that will give us a clue to the presence of GM ingredients.
GMO By Rediscover Biology

Monsanto, which has a chokehold on the world’s use of genetically modified seeds, is now using its extensive network of lawyers and lobbyists to pressure state agriculture agencies not to allow milk producers to label dairy products as not coming from cows fed with GM food or bovine growth hormone.

To learn more about Monsanto, check out this link to Don Barlett and Jim Steele’s very well done and balanced investigative report in this month’s Vanity Fair.

As with almost everything controversial, all the opinions on GMO have to be weighed by considering the source of the information. The Institute for Responsible Technology makes no pretense about its concern over the danger of using genetically modified substances in our food.

The institute, founded in 2003 by Jeffery Smith, the author of “Seeds of Deception,” says many consumers in the U.S. mistakenly believe that the FDA approves GM foods through rigorous, in-depth, long-term studies. In reality, the agency has absolutely no safety testing requirements.

Smith says it’s easy to understand the FDA’s industry-friendly policy on regulation of GMOs when you see the revolving door between agency regulators and the companies they regulate.

The FDA has claimed it was not aware of any information showing that GM crops were different “in any meaningful or uniform way” from non-GMO crops and therefore didn’t require testing. But Smith says that 44,000 internal FDA documents made public by a lawsuit show that this was not true.

But getting back to the original question of how to identify GMO-tainted food, the institute has released a four-page guide on what to watch out for, including a lengthy list of food items containing GM ingredients.

The guide and other GMO information can be found at the institute’s Web site at this link.

As expected, Monsanto says its processes are safe and beneficial and it “helps farmers grow food more efficiently and in a more sustainable manner. We do this through science and the development of agricultural technology. Our products have changed the way food is grown, to the benefit of both farmers and consumers,” its Web site states.

For the rest of the story, or at least Monsanto’s side of the GMO issue, this link will take you to a long list of stories that the worldwide chemical company has presented on its position.

Good luck sorting through all of this.

Wouldn’t shopping be an easier and possibly safer chore if all food were properly labeled?

It’s difficult to know if corporate honesty exists in the world of labeling where food came from and what’s in it.

When I look at the dozens of questions that readers send me every week, issues of labeling are often at the head of the list of puzzlements. Typically, they deal with country of origin or ingredients – where does your food come from and what’s really in it?

I’d like to think that all food producers and distributors aren’t intentionally trying to mislead consumers. You know lie, fib, fabricate, falsify, misrepresent or otherwise deceive us on the wholesomeness and quality of their products. I’d like to think that corporate dishonesty is not universal.

We can often get a clue where the melons came from by looking at the empty boxes below the display rack. And, we might wonder why printing on the boxes says “Honduras,” where the recall for E. coli or salmonella is still under way, while the small sticker on each lope proclaims “Grown in Guatemala.”

The sleuthing for safety becomes far more difficult when you attempt to decipher the ingredient list of the side of every can or box.

Food additives can fall into a variety of categories based on their functions, says Pamela Stuppy, nutritionist for Phillips Exeter Academy writing in the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald.

Some of the major categories include adding or preserving color, for sweetening, for added fiber, for thickening the food, as emulsifying agents (used to combine oily foods and water-based foods), stabilizing agents, flavor enhancers, for adding vitamins and/or minerals, to slow food spoilage, or as “functional ingredients” (for adding nutritional value beyond vitamins and minerals).

This link will take you to her report where she offers up a great guide to sweeteners, the world of mannitol, maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, thickeners, emulsifiers and other frightening stuff,

It’s worth the read.