Processing

Sweeteners
Since the early 1980s, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has taken hold of the food processing industry. At its peak in 1999, industry produced 151 pounds of high fructose corn syrup for each American citizen.[1] In today’s era of processed food, high fructose corn syrup has made its way into foods where traditional recipes never included extra sweetener. The rise of sweeteners also parallels the trajectory of the obesity epidemic.[2]

• Check out the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s food safety report for a compendium of all the cancer risks of the artificial sweetener in your coffee or diet soda.
• Grist reporter Tom Philpott follows the money trail that HFCS giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) left when buying its way through the American government.

Dyes
Consumption of food dyes like Yellow 5 and Red 40 have quintupled over the past 30 years, but their safety remains open to debate and  several studies have found food dyes to affect behavior in children.[3] Strict regulations control the use of food dye in Europe and the United Kingdom, but the Food & Drug Administration in the United States has refused to take action, even in the face of mounting evidence.

• If you think food dye may be affecting your child’s behavior, the Center for Science in the Public Interest wants to hear from you.

Nitrites are used in processed foods to improve shelf life and give cured meats like hot dogs their ruddy color. Without them, they’d be gray.[4] The problem is sodium nitrite has been shown to produce nitrosamines – known carcinogens.

Preservatives like nitrites are just one of the many ways the food industry has tried to counteract the effects of long shelf life and poor sanitary procedures. During irradiation, food is zapped with gamma rays to kill microorganisms. The industry touts irradiation as the panacea for food-borne disease, but the Center for Food Safety reports that this rationale masks an underlying motivation: to skimp on sanitary measures, and it has some nasty side effects.

• Read how the food irradiation movement promotes the consolidation of corporate control over food.

Packaging
Each year, the average American eats fast food 150 times and generates 300 pounds of packaging waste.[5] Fast food packaging accounts for 20 percent of all litter on American streets, while junk food snack packaging accounts for another 20 percent.[6] These are just a few facts collected by the No Free Refills campaign, which charges the fast food industry with gratuitous packaging practices that contribute to a host of environmental disasters, from destroying the forests of the American South, to contributing to urban litter, to releasing millions of pounds of greenhouse gases.

• The full report from No Free Refills is available here.

Transportation
The average American meal travels 1,500 miles from seed to plate.[7] Forty percent of our fruit is imported from foreign countries, our broccoli travels an average of 1,800 miles to reach our dinner tables, and even a substantial portion of our meat comes from distant locations in the South Pacific.[8] All this distance requires tons of energy for transportation and refrigeration along the way, despite the fact that local farms are struggling across the country.

• Sustainable Table makes the case for buying local — find out why.