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Ep 104  |  Jane Muncke

Jane Muncke: “Perils of Plastic Packaging”

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TGS104 Jane Muncke The Great Simplification

Show Summary

On this episode, toxicology scientist Dr. Jane Muncke joins Nate to discuss the current state of food production and the effects of ultra processed foods and their packaging on our health. Over the last century processed food has taken over our supermarkets and our diets, and at the same time the containers they’re sold in have evolved as well – to be more eye-catching and keep food ‘good’ for longer. But what have we sacrificed in exchange for efficiency, ease, and convenience? How do the chemicals used in packaging and processing transfer into the food we eat and subsequently end up in our bodies? Will switching away from these toxic food practices require more local food supply chains – and correspondingly simpler diets and lifestyles?

About Jane Muncke

Jane Muncke holds a doctorate degree in environmental toxicology and a MSc in environmental science from the ETH Zurich. Since 2012 she has been working as Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer at the charitable Food Packaging Forum Foundation (FPF) in Zurich, Switzerland. FPF is a research and science communication organization focusing on chemicals in all types of food contact materials. She is a full scientific member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), the Society for Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology (SETAC), the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Endocrine Society. Since 2019, she has been an elected expert member of the Swiss Organic Farming Association Bio Suisse’s committee on trade and processing where she contributes to further developing the standards for processing and packaging of organic food. She is a director of the FAN initiative, a collective of experts warning about resource overshoot, the polycrisis, and related societal collapse.

In French, we have a motto that says that a simple drawing is often better than a long explanation. Jean-Marc Jancovici Carbone 4 President

That’s very understandable because with left atmosphere thinking, one of the problems is that you see everything as a series of problems that must have solutions. Iain McGilchrist Neuroscientist and Philosopher

We can’t have hundreds and hundreds of real relationships that are healthy because that requires time and effort and full attention and awareness of being in real relationship and conversation with the other human. Nate Hagens Director of ISEOF

This is the crux of the whole problem. Individual parts of nature are more valuable than the biocomplexity of nature. Thomas Crowther Founder Restor

Show Notes & Links to Learn More

00:00 – Jane Muncke works and info

00:58 – Jeremy Grantham + TGS Episode

03:01 – Just Stop Oil Frankly

04:43 – Zebrafish and Research

06:10 – Bisphenol A

06:33 – Frederick vom Saal

08:39 – Ultra Processed food

09:21 – Robert Lustig + TGS Episode

12:01 – Energy Storage

12:45 – Nicolas Appert | Biography & Facts

13:22 – Food packaging science

14:07 – Major food corporations produce all of their products in very few facilities

15:05 – Food packaging machines are expensive, product specific, and take a long time to make returns, creating a technological lock in

16:14 – Plastic Pollution, persistent plastic

16:46 – Charles Moore

16:55 – Plastic accumulation in the oceans, plastic found on remote islands

18:10 – Plastic outweighs all living animals, More Plastic Than Fish in the Oceans

18:39 – Health effects of plastic pollution

19:02 – Plastic production

19:24 – Chemical Migration

21:16 – Unknown complexity of chemical composition of plastic

22:33 – Chemical exposures and the difficulty of testing for them

23:56 – 20% of plastic production is for food packaging

24:39 – EU is ahead on legislation regulating plastic pollution, but doesn’t really enforce them

25:20 – Rwanda the first country to ban plastic bags

27:19 – Switzerland organic regulation and plastic packaging

29:08 – Haber Bosch

30:31 – Accelerants of chemical migration in food packaging

31:24 – The Perils Of Polystyrene

31:57 – Plastic particles found in blood

33:40 – Endocrine Disruptors, Health effects

35:12 – Chronic disease globally increasing

36:29 – Top social media execs don’t allow their children to use social media

38:11 – Vicious cycle in the food system

38:44 – Chemical migration in paper and cardboard packaging

39:28 – True circularity of glass

42:19 – Lipophilic 

44:34 – Slow Food Movement

44:50 – 40% of the global population are overweight, 10% are obese, and in the U.S. 40% are obese

45:31 – Chris van Tulleken , Ultra-Processed People

46:16 – Food processing equipment and chemical migration

47:48 – Perchlorate, organophosphates

More:

The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food – Consumer Reports

Chemicals Used in Plastic Materials: An Estimate of the Attributable Disease Burden and Costs in the United States | Journal of the Endocrine Society | Oxford Academic

Guidance on PFAS Exposure, Testing, and Clinical Follow-Up | The National Academies Press

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