Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t the Only Risk

“Hi. Welcome to Sam and Ella’s. I’ll be your server tonight; would you like to hear the special?

It’s a rare liver and beet mix with almost no processing. It is tasteless and is twice the price of everything else on the menu. But, it is loaded with nutrients, and I had it last night and… Oh! Don ‘t forget that food poisoning is an excellent way to lose weight.” She scuttles off in a clenched crabwalk toward the bathroom murmuring “please, please, please….

Although processing can remove nutrients from food, the primary purpose of processing is to ensure that food is safe.

As in the fictional example above, unprocessed foods can contain pathogens like Salmonella and within 12 hours may cause diarrhea, vomiting, cramps and even-life threatening dehydration or sepsis. It may also lead to reactive arthritis or meningitis that can last for years.

What Causes Foodborne Illness?

Food safety issues include pathogenic bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, Listeria, Campylobacter, and Clostridium botulinum. Other toxins found in food include fungi (e.g., molds such as mycotoxins and yeasts), viruses (Hepatitis A) parasites (tapeworms), protozoa (giardia), and prions (mad cow disease).

Food safety issues are generally acute, meaning symptoms appear relatively quickly after eating food and generally don’t last long, normally only days or months. Salmonella, for example, may be caused by raw or undercooked meats, eggs, or shellfish, or from fresh produce or other raw ingredients.

The Hidden Nature of Nutrition Problems

Food safety deals with immediate risks from contaminated or unsafe food, while nutrition issues involve long-term health problems that result from overall dietary patterns. These chronic conditions—including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—develop over time due to poor nutrition. Robert Sharf, a former FDA economist, estimates the U.S. annual cost of foodborne disease is $90 billion. Poor nutrition and the resulting chronic disease has been estimated by the Rockefeller Foundation to be $604 billion. The costs are based on the number and seriousness, including death. The costs of nutrition is likely an underestimate, suggesting that the health impacts of poor nutrition far outweigh those of food safety.

Why Food Safety Gets More Attention

Why then, up until recently, has food safety typically received more attention and funding than nutrition?

The reason is that food safety issues are typically more visible and easy to attribute to a specific source—even though some, like those resembling flu symptoms, can still be difficult to identify. The most visible signals come when there are outbreaks with multiple people getting sick, often making the news. For FDA and USDA, that sort of attention forces them to pay attention as the agencies share responsibility with companies for the outbreaks.

For food companies, there is nothing more terrifying than being responsible for a large outbreak. Costs of outbreaks include investigation and recall expenses, reputational losses which can lead to lost sales and market share, and legal battles.

Nutrition issues are less visible because of the long lag between poor diets and onset of chronic diseases. Manufacturers and restauranteurs must first satisfy consumer demands which prioritize food safety if they wish to continue selling their product.

In fact, taste (85%) and price (76%) continue to dominate consumer choices. Only recently has nutrition started to move up (62%).

One reason nutrition is now moving up for both consumers and regulators is that media and activists are shifting blame for obesity and chronic diseases away from consumer choices and towards food producers.

Demonizing Processing: A Dangerous Trend

But despite the importance of nutrition, focusing on it narrowly—while ignoring food safety and other trade-offs— is a serious and longstanding mistake.

A current example of this type of narrow policy is the growing tendency to demonize food processing.

There are many types of processing used to prevent food poisoning such as heat (including pasteurization), canning, cooling and freezing, dehydration and high pressure. For example, processing allows cans that transport food safely across great distances by removing oxygen. This ensures that one of the most dangerous pathogens in the world—C. Botulinum—does not allow its toxin to grow.

Learning from the Past

In the past, one of the most valuable processing tools, irradiation, was falsely demonized by activists—which resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable cases of foodborne illnesses and deaths.

Some processing, while necessary to prevent foodborne disease, can strip out vitamins, minerals, or fiber. That’s a trade-off, preventing acute illness associated with individual foods while slightly raising the chronic risks associated with long-term diets.

Good Policy Keeps Trade-Offs in Mind

It’s not just food safety versus nutrition.

Food companies must also navigate pressure from regulators and media on issues like climate change and agricultural yields needed to feed a growing world population.

These are not easy decisions—but policies that ignore important trade-offs are almost certainly to be misguided, and possibly dangerous.