Popcorn as a snack food is healthy. It's a whole-grain food, high in fiber and antioxidants and,if you don't add too much butter, is a filling and relatively low-calorie snack. But microwave popcorn, sold in bags to place in your microwave in which pop, have been in the news recently and caused some concern and controversy.
Specifically, there are two issues debated:
1. Does something in the bags cause cancer?
2. Does the buttery flavor additive, Diacetyl, cause Alzheimer's or other health problems?
The microwave bag in which the popcorn is cooked that many experts say is
the problem. The bag is lined with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and other
chemicals. PFOA is also used to make Teflon and other stain- and
stick-resistant materials, including pizza boxes. It's one of a number of
compounds that have been established to cause liver, testicular and
pancreatic cancer in animals. According to a recent study at the University
of California, Los Angeles, the chemicals may also be linked to infertility
in women,
In 2012, a study found that these chemicals may prevent
childhood vaccinations from working properly. Children who had higher
concentrations of the chemicals in their blood had a lower level of
protection against some childhood diseases for which they had been
vaccinated.
When you microwave the popcorn, the chemicals in the bag
vaporize, and if you are lose to it, become inhaled and enter our
bloodstream according to Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist for the
Environmental Working Group. "They stay in your body for years and
accumulate there," she told Prevention magazine for an article titled, "7
Foods That Should Never Cross Your Lips."
PFOA is so pervasive that
it has been detectable in the blood of 95 percent of Americans.
Diacetyl, or 2,3 butanedione, is a naturally occurring chemical that is
produced as a byproduct of yeast during the fermentation process. It is
naturally found in different oils, butter, wine, beer, vinegar and coffee.
It gives butter its buttery taste, lends a creaminess to certain foods, and
gives wine and beer a discernible "slipperiness," known to certain brands or
types.
Diacetyl is used in a wide variety of food products. It is
best known as a flavoring in buttered popcorn, particularly, microwave
buttered popcorn. It is also used to both flavor and affect the creaminess
of some dairy products including sour cream and cottage cheese, as
Dr. Weil There are two safety issues involving the chemicals added into
many brands of microwave popcorn. The first stems from the use of diacetyl
in artificial butter flavor. Diacetyl has been linked to a rare type of lung
disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, also called "popcorn worker's lung"
because it has been seen primarily in workers at microwave popcorn
factories. This disease destroys the lungs and can be cured only by a lung
transplant. Diacetyl appears to damage lungs when it is repeatedly inhaled
in vaporized form; one case involved a consumer who ate two bags of
extra-butter-flavored microwave popcorn daily for more than 10 years and
reported that he habitually inhaled the buttery fumes as he opened the bags.
Most manufacturers have removed diaceytl from their products, but there
are some allegations in news reports that the ingredient now used to provide
the butter flavor is just another version of the same chemical. Government
scientists have been quoted as saying that the new "diacetyl free" microwave
popcorn poses the same danger as the old stuff. But here the greatest hazard
is still to workers in the popcorn factories, not consumers. Diacetyl does
its damage when inhaled, not when it is eaten.
The other safety issue
has to do with the chemical PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8),
used in the lining of microwave popcorn bags. PFOA is also used to make
Teflon and other stain-and stick-resistant materials including pizza boxes.
In June 2005, a scientific advisory panel to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) identified PFOA as a "likely carcinogen" but drew no
conclusions as to whether products made with it pose a cancer risk to
humans. However, animal studies have identified four types of tumors in rats
and mice exposed to PFOA.
In a 2009 agreement with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, eight U.S. companies, including DuPont,
agreed to remove all PFOAs from their products (excluding Teflon) by 2015
(it was completed by 2013) and to reduce manufacturing emissions by 95 percent as of this year (2010).
While scientific studies have not established a link between microwave
popcorn bags and other products containing trace amounts of PFOA to
increases in cancer in humans, the chemical has been shown to cause cancer
and birth defects in animals, and it is so pervasive that it's detectable in
the blood of 95 percent of Americans.
Hundreds of factory workers
have developed a condition called "popcorn lung," also known by the medical
name bronchiolitis obliterans. The condition is caused by inhalation of
diacetyl fumes, which cause scarring in the lungs. Sufferers of popcorn lung
have difficulty exhaling, and when severe, the condition can be fatal. In
many cases of severe bronchiolitis obliterans, only a lung transplant will
save a patient's life. Some former popcorn factory workers died while
waiting for transplants.
In September 2007, the murmurs of concern
surrounding microwave popcorn became louder as some began to wonder whether
consumers were in danger as well. The publicity, caused in part by a
suspected case of popcorn lung in a consumer, led four major popcorn makers
to announce that they planned to drop diacetyl. The companies -- Weaver
Popcorn Co., ConAgra Foods Inc., American Popcorn Company and General Mills
Inc. -- had, as of early September, phased out use of the chemical or
claimed they would within a year.
This comes from an artificial flavoring called diacetyl, which is a
natural byproduct of fermentation found in butter, beer and vinegar... and
also a chemical made synthetically by food companies because it gives foods
that irresistible buttery flavor and aroma.
Many companies who
manufacture microwave popcorn have already stopped using the synthetic
diacetyl because it's been linked to lung damage in people who work in their
factories.
But now a new study at the University of Minnesota shows
that diacetyl is not only a risk to workers' lungs... it may also pose a
risk to your brain.
Microwave Popcorn Chemical Linked to Alzheimer's
Disease
Researchers conducting test-tube studies revealed that
diacetyl has several concerning properties for brain health. Not only can it
pass through the blood-brain barrier, which is intended to help keep toxins
out of your brain, but it can also cause brain proteins to misfold into the
Alzheimer's-linked form known as beta amyloid. It also inhibits mechanisms
that help to naturally clear the dangerous beta amyloid from your brain.
It's not known at this time whether eating diacetyl-containing foods
(it's used not only in microwave popcorn but also in other snack foods,
baked goods, pet foods, some fast foods and other food products) increases
your risk of Alzheimer's, but the finding that it may contribute to brain
plaques linked to Alzheimer's at very low concentrations is concerning, to
say the least.
Aug. 8, 2012 -- The flavorant that adds buttery taste to
foods and a smooth feel to beverages may also trigger Alzheimer's disease,
new studies suggest.
The flavorant, diacetyl, already is linked to
lung damage in people who work in microwave popcorn factories. This led many
microwave popcorn makers to stop using diacetyl in their products. But now
other workers exposed to diacetyl -- and possibly consumers as well -- may
face another scary risk.
University of Minnesota drug-design expert
Robert Vince, PhD, and colleagues find that diacetyl causes brain proteins
to misfold into the Alzheimer's-linked form called beta amyloid. Moreover,
the popcorn butter flavorant can pass through the blood-brain barrier and
can inhibit the brain's natural amyloid-clearing mechanisms.
"Whether
toxic levels of diacetyl are achieved in various body compartments upon mere
(over) consumption of diacetyl-containing food substances is an unanswered
but an important question," Vince and colleagues note.
. Even if Watson had known that the "inhalation of butter
flavoring chemical mixtures, including diacetyl, has been associated with
severe obstructive lung disease popularly known as 'popcorn lung,'" he may
well have inhaled deeply anyway because the popcorn labels almost certainly
did not list diacetyl as an ingredient, never mind contain any warnings.
On a recent investigative trip to my local grocery store I did not find
a single butter-flavored brand of microwave popcorn that listed diacetyl as
a flavoring ingredient. (See photos.) The labels read simply: "natural and
artificial flavoring." (ConAgra's labeling did indicate that its popcorn
contained no diacetyl flavoring, but it failed, however, to specify what it
used instead.)
Popcorn labeling does not generally include all
the many chemicals that go into the flavoring. And that is too bad, recent
research suggests.
One reason diacetyl is missing from popcorn labels is
that listing such ingredients is not a requirement. And the Food and Drug
Administration, in its capacity as an overseer of food safety, considers
diacetyl to be a food substance "generally recognized as safe." Now, perhaps
diacetyl has escaped FDA regulation because its effects come from
respiration (not ingestion,) or because the FDA's safety finding was
published in 1980, decades before popcorn lung was identified. Since more
recent scientific findings on the chemical have come to light the FDA has
been asked about revoking the safety finding. Recent correspondence with the
FDA indicates that, at the very least, a new review is underway:
We
also intend to address the issue of diacetyl-containing substitutes in our
response. Although it is highly unusual for the FDA to contemplate food
ingredient regulation on the basis of inhalation, we have not ruled out any
regulatory option.
A group of CDC experts commenting on a blog post they wrote on "Diacetyl
and Food Flavorings" has the following advice:
"Currently, even
though there is little to suggest significant risk to normal consumers, a
sensible precautionary approach is appropriate. Consumers could take simple
precautions to minimize the amount of diacetyl and other chemicals that they
breathe... the popped bags should be allowed to cool before they are opened,
which will also decrease exposure to vapors."
TheGreenGrok's Simple
Microwave Popcorn Recipe: Bag the Bag
But here's a better (imo), buttery
solution that avoids all the problems associated with toxins (such as PFOA
and BPA as well as diacetyl) lurking around microwave popcorn.
Place
a covered glass bowl loaded with a layer of popcorn moistened by cooking oil
into the microwave for about six and a half minutes on high. (If you try
this, be careful retrieving the bowl from the microwave -- it can be very
hot.) Add real butter, if so desired. Some tips: I use an inverted dinner
plate to cover the popcorn bowl and I like to melt my butter before popping
the corn by zapping it in the microwave for 45 seconds on medium power. And
here's my new wrinkle: adding salt with the oil before popping to cook in
that salty flavor.