Watch what you eat. It’s a directive we lost sight of, but one that’s increasingly relevant.

By Kris Foster

Cows were mad and milk went bad. With Salmonella spinach was soiled and tomatoes were spoiled. E. coli found its way into burgers and Listeria was found deep within meat processing plants. Over the past year food scares around the world caused consumption reticence in the average consumer, but the incidence of food safety issues provided steady fodder for media. From soil to plant to animal to processing to consumption, it became obvious that our health was tied to each step of the food chain. And with each step, evidently, there was room for error.

These issues, combined with the rise of diet-related health issues—coronary disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes—make Hippocrates’ ancient decree “Let food be thy medicine” seem dated at best.

And although the health benefits of food are widely known, food can also act like poison rather than medicine. One reason for this is the ever-changing relationship that we have with what we put in our mouths.

Life in the fast-food lane

“We stopped cooking and now we know nothing about food preparation,” says Louise Heslop, professor in the Sprott School of Business and expert on consumer behaviour. “We don’t understand food anymore because life changed.

These changes, says Heslop, are numerous and interrelated. The pace of life changed—households contain multiple careers and those careers are surrounded by family activities, doctor appointments and other responsibilities. Our lives demand convenience, and so highly processed foods enter the picture. From frozen burritos to microwavable roast beef, getting dinner to the table after work is simpler, at least as far as household preparation is concerned

Because of our reliance on processed food, what we eat no longer comes from our backyard or from our neighbour’s farm. Often we haven’t got the faintest clue as to the origin of the previously frozen teriyaki chicken stir fry we ate for dinner. Beyond that we don’t know how it was produced and what’s actually in it

“We don’t know where it comes from and what to do with it,” explains Heslop. “For a long time that was okay because as manufacturers took over preparation there weren’t a lot of changes, so you basically understood what you were eating. But now it is far more complicated—the distance between preparation and consumption has grown and grown and grown.”

And as the production process grows, so too does the room for error. Each step in the process presents another opportunity for mistakes, contamination and the introduction of pathogens and toxins. “With more links in the chain it is inevitable that things will go wrong,” says Heslop, whose background includes certification as a professional dietitian and who is an expert in consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods. “When they go wrong, they go wrong on a massive scale.”

Processing it all

Attitudes toward food in North America are underdeveloped, says Louise Heslop, professor in the Sprott School of Business.

The production process is no longer on par with canning your own tomatoes, says Heslop. “If something went wrong with your tomatoes, only a household would get sick, not 3,000 people down the road,” she explains. Now the processing system and distribution scale are so huge that errors are huge in scope too.

“Maple Leaf is a perfect example of that,” says Heslop. “It’s a company that, by all accounts, is a very responsible company, but it’s so big and has such a wide spread of activities that when there is a failure in quality control it has a massive impact.”

Two Maple Leaf products from one contaminated plant in Toronto were recalled by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) when they tested positive for a strain of Listeria in August 2008. The recall came too late for the 20 people who died and hundreds more who suffered illnesses linked to the contamination. The meat recall was the largest in Canadian history. Unfortunately, this is but one recent example of how the food processing system can fail.

“In general we assume what’s in the marketplace is safe,” says Heslop. In addition to this inherent trust we have in the industry, we also have government watchdogs looking out for our health. Food safety is the CFIA’s number one priority—it exists to protect Canadians from food hazards by regulating everything from eggs and meat to labeling and packaging. Yet unsafe food still makes its way to our tables.

We need more processes to control the chance of error if we are going to have an industry we can trust.

“Relying on spot checks, which is standard practice, isn’t good enough,” says Heslop. “We need more processes to control the chance of error if we are going to have an industry we can trust.”

That trust has certainly been tested, says Heslop, and we are now at the point that we are questioning large institutions of all kind—corporate farms, processors and government.

Obviously, the recent rash of food-borne illnesses is the reason the food industry has been placed under the proverbial microscope. But is the level of scrutiny justified? Yes, but despite the current concern about the safety of our food, food-borne illnesses aren’t just a present-day occurrence.

“We have always had problems with these micro-organisms,” says Tyler Avis, assistant professor in the department of chemistry, who delivered one of the first courses in the Food Science and Nutrition program this winter. “It’s just that we didn’t have the means or the technology to know what some of these problems were.”

In Avis’s opinion the recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are emblematic of the current structure of the food industry rather than being a system-wide failing. “We have a lot of large processing firms and large farms. If you have a problem in a large organization which produces food and distributes it to a large segment of the population, that’s when there is a higher possibility to affect a large proportion of people,” explains Avis, echoing Heslop. “That’s one of the reasons we have been getting more reports on food-borne illness: there is a greater chance more people will be affected.”

There are never simple solutions, explains Avis, and while science continues to develop methods to combat particular problems—Listeria, Salmonella, E. coli—new problems arise. “Finding out which steps in the food chain are contributing to pathogen contamination and developing better means of controlling them are preventive measures that should be a main focus to ensure food safety,” explains Avis. “However in some cases, new strains of a harmful micro-organism occur and there isn’t much we can do from a preventive standpoint, you have to manage these outbreaks as best you can as they arise.”

Avis’s colleague in the Food Science and Nutrition program, Apollo Tsopmo, sees another reason—in addition to the outbreak of food-borne illnesses—for the level of inquiry into the industry.

“It deserves the scrutiny, because, simply, we should know what we are eating and what’s been added to it,” says Tsopmo, assistant professor in the department of chemistry. “Indeed food used to be simple and now with nutrients, sweeteners, preservatives, colours and flavours being added to what we eat, people want to know if it is safe.“

For the most part what food processors add is safe, says Tsopmo, and in many cases there are benefits to what is added. “Preservatives increase shelf life and some may actually kill bacteria,” explains Tsopmo.

But the concern remains that through processing some of the nutritional value is depleted. “Health Canada requires those vitamins and minerals to be added back—white wheat flour, for example, has essential elements added back in, making the quantity similar to what it was before processing,” explains Tsopmo. “Sometimes processed foods are even more nutritious and better tasting than before.”

We are essentially faced with one of the greatest problems in terms of health.

One cog in the machine that drives the industry has been overlooked altogether. And that’s us, the consumers. The onus isn’t solely on those who produce what we eat.

“We know that the vast majority of food poisoning results from bad practices in the home,” explains Heslop. “Food could be stored or refrigerated incorrectly, badly prepared, there could be cross contamination, any number of things.”

The truth is consumers are all too quick to point fingers and avoid blame. We are what we eat, and what we eat is our responsibility too.

“We have to get back to understanding what it is about food that we need to protect ourselves from,” says Heslop.

All-consuming behaviour

“Everybody has a responsibility, including the food processor and the food industry,” says Tsopmo. “But what actually drives the food industry is what people are going to buy.”

It is a simple case of supply and demand. When consumers clamour for the triple cheeseburger with six slices of bacon and an extra, extra large side of French fries, they will receive a triple cheeseburger with six slices of bacon and an extra, extra large side of French fries. When consumer winds changed and whole wheat and essential fatty acids gained favour and trans fats and carbohydrates fell out of favour, lo and behold, the food industry mirrored consumers’ tastes.

Apollo Tsopmo, assistant professor, department of chemistry.

“The industry doesn’t really care about how many calories or how much fat is in a product, if the product will be bought, it will be produced,” explains Tsopmo.

“It is amazing how market driven diet changes are,” agrees Heslop. “Manufacturers and marketers are wildly successful in shifting demand. If you say trans fats are bad, and the manufacturer figures out how to get trans fats out, make money and label it ‘trans fat free’, they will shout it from the rooftop, and make sure that everyone knows they shouldn’t have trans fats.”

And that is a major problem. We are quick to listen to every “expert” or advertisement for nutritional advice while very few search out the knowledge and information themselves. If we show little interest or concern over what we put in our mouths, why should food producers be concerned?

“We have attitudes towards food in North America that are underdeveloped,” says Heslop. “We are a developing nation in the way we approach food and nutrition.”

And public health in Canada reflects this sentiment. Although smoking remains the number one health risk in Canada, obesity is tipping the scales as a major risk to public health—as staggering as it is, Statistics Canada reports that two out of three adult Canadians are obese or overweight; and child obesity has nearly tripled over the past 25 years.

“We are essentially faced with one of the greatest problems in terms of health,” says Alfonso Abizaid, assistant professor in the department of psychology, who researches the biology, brain chemistry and environmental factors that contribute to over-eating and cravings. “When we talk about obesity we are not just talking about people being overweight, but also people with a host of secondary diseases that come from being obese, like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, possibly even neurodegenerative disorders, you name it. All can come from poor eating habits and being overweight.”

According to Abizaid we are fighting biology and evolution in this battle of the bulge. “A million years ago we couldn’t just call the pizza place when we felt hungry, we had to go out and look for food, and because of that we evolved to consume calories at every meal, many of which were stored for use later,” explains Abizaid. “I think we became addicted to those foods that, in the distant past, were the ones that allowed us to survive by providing extra calories, the sugary and fatty foods. We have been selected by evolution to prefer these foods.”

It becomes less of a mystery, then, as to why grocery store aisles are stocked full of packaged products that are high in fructose, fat, corn syrup and calories. We eat fatty foods, knowing they aren’t good for us, but perhaps we can’t help it. Interestingly enough, research at the National Institute for Drug Addiction has identified that the brain chemistry for drug cravings is exactly the same as it is for food cravings.

“The scary part of this pandemic is that obesity may be the cause of the first decline in life expectancy in over 150 years in North America,” says Abizaid. “We have been increasing our life expectancy steadily and now because of obesity and eating disorders we may actually experience a decline in life expectancy. The sad part about it is that we can actually do little things to counteract this, like exercising and decreasing calorie intake—relatively easy things to do—but we don’t do that. Why is that? Because it is an addiction.”

“It’s clear that we don’t pay enough attention to what we put in our bodies,” says Heslop. “We have to look at what we eat as more than just fuel, but also as a way to stay healthy, prevent illness and a way to help our children understand and develop healthy eating and developmental habits.”