Healthy people depend on healthy food. New research on barley raises concerns about plastic pollution’s effects on the soil that nourishes our crops—and separate studies are finding troubling signals inside the human body. Listen to the audio version of this story: THE TOPLINE Plastic pollution can disrupt the systems that grow our food. A greenhouse barley study found that high microplastic concentrations reduced photosynthesis and altered soil nutrients, enzyme activity, and microbial communities. Human research raises additional concerns. Studies have detected plastics throughout the body and linked their presence to cardiovascular risks, while other evidence suggests possible reproductive, digestive, and respiratory harm. Prevention requires individual choices and broader action. Reducing exposure from drinking water, food containers, and household dust should accompany efforts to curb agricultural plastic pollution and protect soil health. We cannot build a healthy population without healthy food. And protecting the quality of our food begins long before anyone walks into a grocery store or sits down to dinner. It begins with how we care for the land that feeds us. That is why a new barley study deserves attention. Under controlled greenhouse conditions, high concentrations of microplastics disrupted processes in both plants and the surrounding soil. The experiment adds to concerns that plastic pollution could interfere with the biological systems on which agriculture depends. For ANH, protecting the land that feeds us belongs at the center of disease prevention. We cannot build a healthy population without nourishing food, and we should not take our ability to produce that food for granted. What the Barley Study Found Researchers grew barley for 60 days in rhizoboxes—containers used to study roots and surrounding soil—with polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride (PVC) microplastics. Plastic additions amounted to 2% or 4% of dry soil mass, with three replicates per treatment. The higher polyethylene dose and both PVC treatments reduced photosynthesis by approximately 18–25% and altered antioxidant enzyme activity. Researchers also found changes in nutrient availability, soil-enzyme hotspots, and the organization of bacterial and fungal communities near roots. Some measures increased while others declined, indicating a complex response. Healthy Soil Is a Human Health Issue What happens to our food when we disrupt the living systems that help produce it? As ANH recently explored, soil organisms help cycle nutrients, while growing conditions can influence the minerals and beneficial plant compounds in food. Diverse plant foods, in turn, supply fibers and polyphenols that support our health, like fostering a healthy gut microbiome. Our earlier reporting on agriculture and food quality showed how the move towards large, industrialized farms that tend to rely heavily on chemical inputs has coincided with a substantial decrease in the amount of nutrients in our food. That story also presented evidence that a lack of micronutrients can make us vulnerable to chronic disease. Whether it’s pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers, or plastics, the way in which our food is deeply connected to human wellbeing.   How Widespread Is the Problem? Plastic is deeply embedded in food production. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimatedthat agricultural value chains used 12.5 million metric tons of plastic in plant and animal production in 2019, plus37.3 million metric tons in food packaging. These are amounts used, not measurements of plastic released into soil. But FAO identifies agricultural films left behind after use as a source of fragments that can accumulate in farmland. The problem also extends into everyday drinking water. A 2024 study examining three bottled-water brands estimated an average of 240,000 plastic particles per liter, approximately 90% of them nanoplastics—particles smaller than one micrometer. Researchers have also detected plastic particles in human blood, lungs, and reproductive tissues, including the placenta. Troubling Signals for Human Health Those exposures have consequences. One of the strongest human warning signals comes from a 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers followed 257 patients after surgery to remove plaque from their carotid arteries. Over roughly three years, heart attack, stroke, or death from any cause occurred in 20% of patients with microplastics or nanoplastics detected in their plaque, compared with 7.5% of those without detectable particles. Other research points toward possible reproductive, digestive, and respiratory effects. A 2024 systematic review evaluated three human observational studies and 28 animal studies, concluding that microplastics are suspected of harming these systems. Findings included adverse effects on sperm quality and signals involving inflammation, intestinal changes, and lung injury. A healthcare strategy centered on prevention must take the quality of our food and environment seriously. We cannot expect to nourish healthy people while neglecting the land that feeds them. Which Purchases Deserve Attention? Consumers understandably want to know which products contribute most to their exposure, but it isn’t an easy question. Swallowing particles, breathing them in, and applying them to skin are different exposures, and particle counts alone do not tell us how much is absorbed or retained. A 2023 exposure review identified indoor air and drinking water as major sources in the evidence it assessed. A 2025 systematic evidence map also found that food-contact materials were a significant contributor. These findings suggest several practical places to focus: Start with what you drink. Bottled water is a documented source of plastic particles, so good home water filtration systems are a good alternative. In the kitchen, plastic containers and other food-contact materials can shed particles, although the amount varies with the material and how it is used. Choose suitable glass or ceramic containers for heating food, and replace badly worn plastic items. Synthetic clothing, carpets, and furnishings can also shed fibers into indoor air and dust. Reduce accumulated dust and consider durable, lower-shedding materials when replacing household items. Some makeup and personal-care products contain microplastics that contact skin or wash into wastewater. Using these products increases the risk of exposure to microplastics. Look for manufacturers that clearly disclose whether their products contain solid plastic particles. Prevention Begins Before the Dinner Plate For ANH, the implications reach beyond asking consumers to make better choices. People should be able to choose nourishing foods without having to unknowingly bear the risk of exposure to pollution introduced throughout production, processing, and packaging. We need research that connects realistic agricultural exposures with soil function, crop performance, and food quality. We also need practical support for farmers to reduce plastic losses, recover agricultural films, and adopt effective alternatives where feasible. Pollution prevention should accompany efforts to rebuild soil health. As suggested above, we can also all work to reduce our microplastic exposure from food and drink. Following are some important ways: Drink filtered tap water instead of bottled water, which can contain hundreds of thousands of plastic particles per liter. Filter water with a reverse osmosis system or carbon pitcher filter. You may want to add selected minerals to this water, and re-structure the water using one of the many devices for this purpose on the market. Store and reheat food in glass, ceramic, or stainless steel rather than plastic. Never microwave plastic—transfer food to glass or ceramic first, as heat increases microplastic and chemical release. Avoid plastic and polymer-based tea bags (which can release billions of particles per cup); use loose-leaf tea with a metal or glass steeper. Replace plastic cutting boards, spatulas, and spoons with wood, bamboo, or stainless steel. Please share this article widely in your networks and consider donating to support our work.The post Soil Plastic in Your Food? Study Exposes New Microplastic Risk first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Higher costs and regulatory hurdles could keep promising supplements out of reach—and leave consumers paying more for fewer options. Action Alert! Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE FDA’s new guidance could mean fewer supplement choices and higher prices by making it more expensive for companies to bring ingredients to market. Documentation and testing expectations could discourage innovation, including products based on traditionally used herbs, higher-dose formulations, and improvements to existing ingredients. ANH urges FDA to preserve a workable path to market by giving appropriate weight to historical use and existing research, and tying additional testing to specific safety concerns. Imagine a small supplement company developing a new herbal product. The plant has been used for generations, and the company has research supporting its safety. But bringing it to market could require detailed records of decades-old use or additional testing the business cannot afford. The company shelves the product. You never get the chance to try it. That is the kind of outcome ANH fears from FDA’s newly finalized guidance on new dietary ingredients. The document describes the safety information FDA expects companies to provide for certain supplement ingredients. It can get somewhat technical, but our main concern is access: if bringing products to market becomes too expensive, fewer choices will reach store shelves and consumers will lose out. How Paperwork Can Become a Barrier For new dietary ingredients (NDIs, or supplements that are considered “new”, i.e. they came to market after 1994), companies must notify FDA at least 75 days before marketing and provide evidence supporting the product’s expected safety. ANH has long warned that FDA could turn this notification process into something resembling a pre-market approval system—one in which the expense of satisfying the agency becomes a barrier to selling supplements. That appears to be exactly what is happening and guess where the template for more red tape is coming from? You’ve guessed it: the EU and its draconian Novel Food Regulation. FDA’s broader draft guidance on NDIs threatens supplement access on two fronts: it makes NDI compliance more costly while expanding the range of ingredients subject to those requirements. Even changes to how an existing ingredient is manufactured could trigger the need for an extensive safety submission—creating expensive hurdles for improvements to familiar products. This guidance lays out what FDA expects supplement companies to show about certain new ingredients before selling them—including what the ingredient is, how it is made, and why the proposed amount is expected to be safe, either from historical use evidence or other evidence of safety, which the agency says can include genetic toxicity testing, 90-day animal studies, and, in some circumstances, clinical human studies. It all sounds like a good thing. But imagine how many so-called ‘old’ ingredients might get caught in the ‘NDI trap’ simply because they use a more modern processing method that, for example, increases the bioavailability of a nutrient?    As we’ve said for ages now: expecting a swathe of clinical studies from drug companies for drug licensing is one thing, since drugs are typically patented and approved drugs are granted a period of exclusivity, meaning the costs of producing the studies for FDA approval can be recouped. Supplements, being natural, cannot generally be patented as strongly, nor can they be sold at prices that are comparable to drugs, so it can become cost prohibitive to put together these safety studies. Generations of Use, but Not Enough Records When companies rely on historical use alone, FDA now says at least 25 years of widespread use is needed. Just like the EU. It also expects details about that use and how it compares with the proposed supplement. Consider an herb traditionally prepared as a tea. People may have consumed it for generations without keeping precise records of how much they drank, how often, or at what ages. A company may therefore have considerable evidence of traditional use but still lack the documentation FDA wants. Filling those gaps could require expensive research. Traditional use does not automatically establish that every dose is safe. But the FDA is setting up a situation in which potentially useful ingredients could be priced out of the market because modern research records are not available for supplements or herbs used for decades. Higher-Dose Options Could Become Harder to Offer The guidance also raises concerns about higher-dose products. When companies use animal studies to support safety, FDA recommends calculations that reduce the amount considered acceptable for people to account for uncertainties. For a product going through this process, those calculations could leave the company with evidence supporting a lower serving than it intended to offer. It might then need to fund additional studies or reduce the dose. The concern is that the cost of supporting a higher dose could discourage companies from offering it, narrowing options for consumers and practitioners. Improvements Could Come with a Bigger Price Tag Imagine a company developing an ingredient that the body absorbs more easily, potentially allowing consumers to take fewer capsules. For a product subject to notification, research on the original ingredient may not fully support the improved version. The company may need additional evidence explaining how the change affects safety. You can bet the FDA will consider even the most basic manufacturing changes enough to trigger the need for more studies. You can see the game being played here. In the name of “safety,” the FDA erects all these obstacles for supplement innovation and market entry. As we’ve said for years, the FDA isn’t protecting us: supplements are, and have been for decades, overwhelmingly safe. The FDA is really protecting drug industry profits by making it harder and harder for supplements to compete. Consumers Pay the Price A product does not have to be banned to become unavailable. Sometimes, the company simply cannot afford to launch it. Businesses with large research budgets may be better positioned to absorb the costs. Smaller companies may abandon products, and those that proceed may pass additional expenses on to customers. Consumers deserve safe supplements and meaningful choice. FDA should give appropriate weight to credible historical use and existing research, and tie additional testing requests to specific safety questions. Protecting consumers should include preserving a workable path for responsible companies to bring supplements to market. Action Alert! The post FDA’s New Guidance Could Mean Fewer Supplement Choices first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

What if persistent fatigue, brain fog and other chronic health problems are being influenced by environmental exposures we rarely consider? In his new documentary, Body Burden: The Toxins We Carry, environmental health investigator Nicolas Pineault explores the chemicals and pollutants we encounter through our food, water, air and everyday surroundings. Through his own experience and the stories of patients working with environmental medicine practitioners, he examines how identifying exposures, reducing contact with harmful substances and supporting the body’s natural processes may contribute to better health. The film challenges the tendency to treat symptoms in isolation while overlooking the environments in which we live. It’s a timely reminder that prevention isn’t just about what we put into our bodies, but also what we can keep out. The 61-minute documentary is available to watch free until October 26. Watch it here: https://bodyburdenmovie.com The post The Mike Drop: Nick Pineault first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new Cochrane review strengthens the case for getting drug company marketing out of the exam room and restoring independent medical judgment. Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE A Cochrane review of 93 studies associated gifts and payments to doctors with more prescribing and less appropriate prescribing. Even gifts as small as company-sponsored meals were associated with more prescriptions for sponsors’ drugs, including opioids. Stronger limits on industry interactions may improve prescribing and help protect discussions of all appropriate options, including natural and preventive approaches. When your doctor recommends a medication, you should be able to trust that the recommendation reflects your health needs. But a new review raises a disturbing question: how much influence does the company selling that medication have over the person prescribing it? A Cochrane review published October 9 examined 93 studies, including 82 from the United States. Its findings reinforce a concern ANH has raised for years: pharmaceutical marketing is associated with prescribing that serves drug company interests at patients’ expense. The clearest evidence concerned gifts and payments. Doctors receiving them prescribed more medicines and prescribed less appropriately. Advertising and industry education, including sales representative visits, were also linked to more prescribing. The Influence Can Start with Lunch The review’s accompanying announcement describes a marketing apparatus that reaches into everyday medical practice: meals, travel expenses, consulting fees, advisory board payments, and visits from sales representatives. Doctors may believe a free lunch is too trivial to influence their judgment. The evidence gives patients reason to question that confidence. Researchers found a consistent pattern linking more company-sponsored meals to more prescribing of the sponsor’s medicines, across several drug classes. The opioid findings were particularly troubling. Even inexpensive meals were associated with increased opioid prescribing, while larger payments were linked to a greater likelihood of prescribing dangerously high doses. Almost all the studies were observational, so they cannot establish that marketing caused the prescribing changes. The review also calls for more research on actual patient health outcomes. But those limitations do not erase the consistent associations it identified. Patients deserve safeguards against influences that can compromise their care. A Longstanding Problem Across Medicine ANH has been reporting on pharmaceutical influence for many years, including concerns about industry relationships with researchers and the role of drug company money in medical education. In 2015, we highlighted federal Open Payments data showing $6.49 billion in payments from drug and device manufacturers to doctors and hospitals in 2014. That total included research payments; it was not a tally of promotional gifts alone. Still, it revealed the enormous financial ties connecting manufacturers with the institutions and professionals patients rely on. Our 2016 coverage of the American Academy of Pediatrics raised questions about industry funding of professional organizations and the independence of their policy positions. More recently, we examined pharmaceutical funding of patient advocacy groups and the conflicts created when organizations representing patients receive money from companies selling their treatments. What Gets Left Out of The Conversation For ANH, this raises a broader concern: whose priorities shape the options patients are offered? A drug manufacturer has a commercial reason to promote its own products, and that promotion is clearly paying dividends. There is no comparable market force driving doctors to discuss non-pharmaceutical interventions such as nutrition, physical activity, trauma therapy, social or nature prescribing, or any of the dozens of other non-drug approaches that may be scientifically and medically valid for addressing a patient’s needs. Doctors are not getting lunch bought for them by Big Salad. Our concern is about a system in which companies selling medicines have routine access to the professionals deciding which medicines patients receive. Patients need independent evaluation of all appropriate options, including natural and preventive approaches, with honest discussion of benefits, risks, costs, and uncertainties. Commercial influence makes that independence harder to protect. Another source of the problem is something we’ve discussed for years: most doctors lack training in nutrition and lifestyle medicine. It’s why we support RFK Jr.’s drive to increase nutritional education in medical schools. Patients should ask practical questions in the doctor’s office: Why this medicine? Is there a safer or less expensive alternative? What non-drug options are appropriate? And now, the following questions should be added: Do you receive payments from the manufacturer of the drug you’re recommending I take? Medical decisions should put patients’ health, their needs, and their right to informed choices first. This review gives medical institutions another reason to stop treating pharmaceutical promotion as an ordinary, harmless part of patient care. Please share this article in your networks and consider donating to support our work. The post Big Pharma Payments Worsen Doctors’ Prescribing first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

3D-printed steaks are reaching supermarket shelves—but are safety reviews and food labels keeping pace with the technologies transforming our food? Action Alert! Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE 3D-printed meat alternatives are reaching supermarkets, joining cultivated meat and precision-fermented ingredients in a growing market of engineered foods. Matching selected proteins, taste, or texture does not establish that a substitute offers the nutritional complexity or long-term health effects of traditional foods. We need stronger independent oversight, publicly available safety evidence, and clear labels so consumers understand how these products are made, what their composition is, and how healthy or safe they are—all prerequisites of informed choice. Plant-based steaks built with 3D printers are reaching supermarket shelves across the Northeast. Israeli company Steakholder Foods has launched its Perfecta brand with five alternatives: marbled steak, filet mignon, chicken breast, salmon patties, and white fish patties. The products are reportedly already in approximately 30–35 stores, with plans to expand. The launch brings yet another version of engineered food to American dinner plates. It also raises questions ANH has been asking about cultivated meat and precision-fermented foods: How were they made? What evidence supports their safety and health benefits? Will their labels tell consumers enough to allow them to make an informed choice? What the Printer Actually Does To make 3D printed food, a food printer follows a digital design, depositing edible mixtures in controlled patterns. Plant proteins, fats, and other ingredients can be arranged to imitate muscle fibers, texture, and marbling. The newly launched 3D-printed foods are a blend of plant-based and cultivated ingredients. The goal is to reproduce the experience of eating a whole cut of meat; lab-grown or cultivated meat, by contrast, tend to be in sausage, patty, or nugget form. The technology with 3D-printed foods may be different, but we’re dealing with similar issues we’ve discussed in relation to lab-grown meat: these companies seem to believe that meat is nothing more than a combination of proteins and fats, when in fact the nutritional profile of real meat is highly varied and far more complex (more on this below). Different Technologies with Overlapping Possibilities It’s worth differentiating these different technologies, as it can all get a bit confusing. Cultivated meat is made by growing animal cells in nutrient media. The harvested cells then become foods like chicken nuggets. The products consist of animal cells, but no animals were slaughtered. Precision fermentation uses microorganisms, usually genetically engineered, to manufacture selected ingredients, such as milk or egg proteins. Those ingredients are recovered and purified before being added to foods. For example, precision fermentation is used to produce the heme that is added to plant-based Impossible Burgers and the milk proteins that are the basis of “animal-free dairy milk.” These methods can overlap. A 3D-printed food could contain plant proteins, cultivated animal cells, fermentation-produced ingredients, or a combination. Cultivated meat can also involve genetic engineering: FDA’s UPSIDE Foods review describes both cells selected for continued growth and cells engineered with an added chicken gene to keep multiplying. It also discusses recombinant growth proteins used in the culture medium. The big issue here is not whether or not these foods reach our supermarket shelves. It’s really much more about transparency or, more specifically, the lack of it: consumers need to know which methods and ingredients were actually used in a given product and how these combinations of ingredients affect the human body when consumed. As we discussed previously, many of these foods will not likely have to be labeled as containing genetically engineered (GE) or “bioengineered” ingredients due to loopholes in the labeling law. Copying A Protein Is Not Recreating a Food The promise behind these products is that familiar taste, texture, and selected nutrients can be recreated through industrial design. ANH’s concern is that this approach vastly understates the complexity of food. Human beings evolved eating complex foods from plants and animals with various combinations of microorganisms. These newly designed substitutes have no comparable history as whole foods in the human diet. Recreating nature’s complexity in a factory is an enormous challenge; matching a few components does not establish that the resulting food will have the same effects on health. As we have argued previously, meat contains far more than a few proteins and fats. Its physical structure and the interactions among nutrients and other compounds also matter. Likewise, producing one milk protein does not recreate milk. The finished product’s nutrition depends on its full formulation, processing, and the availability of its nutrients to the body. What Regulatory Review Actually Means It’s important to emphasize that the entire federal government’s approach to regulating GE products is fundamentally flawed. Other than the sham labeling law, Congress has not passed legislation to address the unique health and ecological impacts of this new generation of GE foods. Instead, the government relies on a decades-old framework that fragments oversight of GE products across multiple agencies, shoehorning a new generation of GE products into laws largely written for other purposes. A key principle of this approach is that regulators focus on the finished product rather than the process. In plain language: if it looks and smells like a tomato, the government will treat it like a normal tomato even if it was produced through genetic engineering. All of this is to say that the oversight over these newer GE foods is, in our opinion, rather lax. For printed plant-based foods, FDA generally does not approve the finished food before sale. Ingredients must have a lawful basis for use, and manufacturing, food-contact materials, and labeling must meet applicable requirements. Precision-fermented ingredients frequently use the Generally Recognized as Safe, or GRAS, pathway. Companies can currently reach their own GRAS conclusions without notifying FDA, though that is set to change with the FDA’s proposed rule. Some submit notices and receive “no questions” letters, meaning the FDA has reviewed the company’s safety data, seen no issues, and given the company the green light. Cultivated livestock and poultry products follow a different route: FDA reviews cell production through voluntary premarket consultations, while USDA oversees harvest and subsequent processing, inspection, and labeling. FDA examines manufacturing methods, genetic changes, and potential residues. Much of the safety case, again, depends on manufacturer-provided information and comparisons with conventional foods. For foods being promoted as replacements for traditional staples, we believe this is too light a regulatory touch. The idea often described as “substantial equivalence” should not become a shortcut for assuming comparable long-term health effects. Similarity of a target protein cannot, by itself, answer every question about the finished food. Safety Questions Deserve Public Answers Despite what their proselytizers say, there are some key questions that remain unanswered about the safety of these foods. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) conclusions supplied to international food regulators identify concerns about allergenicity, purification, strain stability, and scaling fermentation to industrial volumes. They also emphasize hygienic printer design and gaps in knowledge about some post-printing treatments. One established concern is allergy. FDA’s milk-protein review recognizes that fermentation-produced beta-lactoglobulin can cause reactions in people allergic to milk. “Animal-free” does not mean allergen-free. And what about the 92 previously unknown compounds found in precision-fermented milk? Remember, life depends on gene expression—and gene expression is regulated by epigenetics. Food is one of the most powerful environmental signals affecting gene expression. Introducing novel, engineered proteins into the diet is an open-air science experiment, and we’re the guinea pigs. Low-level inflammation triggered by unfamiliar proteins or contaminants would not announce itself dramatically. It will be a low hum in the background undermining our health if regulators do not take a closer look at these foods. Will Shoppers Know What They Are Buying? Not necessarily from the label alone. A printed plant-based product must identify its ingredients, but there is no universal federal requirement for a prominent “3D printed” disclosure. Listing plant proteins does not necessarily explain how the product was assembled. Cultivated meat has more explicit differentiation: USDA has approved the term “cell-cultivated chicken.” But a production term is useful only if shoppers understand it. It also does not, by itself, explain whether genetic engineering was involved in developing the cells or producing their growth inputs. Precision fermentation presents another transparency gap. As ANH has reported, an ingredient name can identify a familiar protein while revealing little about the engineered microbes that produced it. Under USDA’s currently operative bioengineered-food rules, disclosure depends on the final product, modified genetic material, and applicable exceptions. Genetic engineering in production does not automatically guarantee a bioengineered disclosure on the package. The framework is changing: a court ordered key provisions of the GE labeling law, including the exemption for undetectable modified genetic material, vacated effective January 1, 2028. That still does not establish that every precision-fermented ingredient will require disclosure. Consumers need clear information about production methods without having to unravel these legal distinctions. ANH believes the standard should be straightforward: meaningful independent scrutiny, publicly accessible safety evidence, and plain-language labels explaining how these foods were made. Our previous coverage has challenged the assumption that replacing farming with engineered substitutes improves health or sustainability. Those benefits must be demonstrated for the actual product and process. A printed steak may look familiar. The decision to eat it should rest on honest information and credible evidence. Consumers deserve to choose foods rooted in nature, and they deserve to recognize an engineered substitute before it reaches their plate. Action Alert! The post Health Warning! 3D Printed Meat In US Supermarkets first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.