MADRID, February 10 (IPS) – The food industry continues to use many harmful chemicals in their products, some of which cause heart disease and death. Trans fats are just one of them, contributing to the pollution of fertilizers, pesticides, microplastics and more.
“Trans fat is a toxic chemical that can kill people, and shouldn’t be in food,” warning Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO)WHO), reported that trans fats have no known benefits and significant health risks that incur huge costs to the health system.
“Simply put, trans fat is a deadly toxic chemical and shouldn’t be in food.”
What is trans fat?
Trans fat, or trans unsaturated fatty acid, is a type of unsaturated fat found in foods. Of all the fats, trans fats are the worst for health. Used heavily, it increases the risk of heart disease and death.
Trans fats can be found in commercially baked goods, such as cakes, cookies, fried foods, margarine, packaged foods, cooking oils, and spreads among many others.
Industrially produced trans fats are responsible for 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year, WHO speak.
Currently, 9 of the 16 countries with the highest estimated coronary heart disease mortality due to trans fat intake do not have a best practice policy.
These are Australia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and South Korea.
Annual report has been published by WHO in collaboration with Determined to save livesa nonprofit organization that supports action to remove industrially produced trans fats from the national food supply.
Food industry doubles profits in just one year
Besides oil and gas corporations, food companies have more than doubled profits by 2022 at a time when more than 800 million people are hungry and 1.7 billion workers live in countries with higher-than-wage inflation. , report Oxfam International.
Industrial food system destroys
about this, Navdanya International warns that in a few decades, industrialized food systems have destroyed Earth’s systems, health and livelihoods because it has directly violated ecological laws and laws of justice.
Now we are witnessing a global agenda to eradicate land based cultures, destroy real farms, real farmers, real food to create a The world is backward on “farmless agriculture” and “farmless food” as false totalitarian solutions to climate change, the report adds in its Call to Action. “Our Bread, Our Freedom” 2022.
“The time has come to abandon our resource-intensive and profit-driven economic systems that have wreaked havoc on the world, disrupted the planet’s ecosystems, and destroyed the planet’s ecosystems. health, justice, and democracy of society.”
Navdanya and the Navdanya movement was created by Dr. Vandana Shiva 30 years ago in India to protect the sovereignty of Seeds and Food as well as smallholder farmers around the world.
For its part, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report that more than 600 million people get sick and 420,000 die each year from eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemicals.
More losses, more profits
The huge losses caused by the food business add up to many other losses. One of them is the exploitative marketing tactics of infant formula conglomerates, which the world’s leading health organization on February 8, 2023 called “a swift crackdown”. quickly” for such trading tactics.
In a previous report Scope and impact of digital marketing strategies to promote breast milk substitutes Over the so-called ‘dangerous’ online marketing of baby formula, the world’s leading health organization has warned that the US$55 billion baby formula industry must cease operations. exploitative online marketing practices targeting parents, especially mothers.
The WHO report found that companies are paying social media platforms and influencers to “directly reach pregnant women and mothers at certain vulnerable times”. most of their lives”, through personalized content “often not identified as advertising”.
Big business pays social media influencers
“Through tools such as apps, virtual support groups or ‘kids’ clubs, social media influencers are paid, promotions and contests, and forums or translations are available. consulting services, formula companies may purchase or collect personal information and send personalized promotions to women and new mothers. “
The report summarizes the results of a new study that sampled and analyzed 4 million social media posts about infant feeding, published between January and June 2021 using a platform. commercial social listening platform.
These posts have reached 2.47 billion people and generated more than 12 million likes, shares or comments.
“This new study highlights the enormous economic and political power of the major formula companies, as well as the devastating public policy failures that keep millions of women from breastfeeding.” speak Nigel Rollins, one of the authors of a series on the $55 billion a year industry and their marketing playbook, published in the medical journal The Lancet.
He added: “Actions across different sectors of society are needed to better support mothers to breastfeed for as long as they like, in addition to efforts to tackle the marketing of public milk. exploitative knowledge once and for all.
650 million women lack ‘maternity protection’
Currently, about 650 million women lack adequate maternity protections, the study notes.
Developed by a team of doctors and scientists, it examines how formula marketing tactics undermine breastfeeding and targets parents, health professionals and Politicians, as well as feeding practices, women’s rights, and health outcomes, are determined by power imbalances and political and economic structures.
Misleading claims by dairy lobbyists
WHO It is recommended that infants be exclusively breastfed for at least six months. This practice has huge benefits for babies and young children, from reducing the risk of infections to reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases later in life.
Globally, however, only about half of babies are breastfed within the first hour of life, WHO warns.
© Inter Press Service (2023) — All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service
