Loneliness and social isolation don’t just break hearts. Find out why social disconnection is a modern day disease epidemic and what we can do about it.

This article has been adapted from an article by Chimnonso Onyekwelu and Meleni Aldridge for our sister organization, ANH International. Read the full article here.

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THE TOPLINE

• Loneliness and social isolation are whole-body health risks, triggering stress, inflammation, impaired immunity, cardiovascular problems, sleep disruption, cognitive decline, and changes to the gut microbiome.
• Modern isolation is driven by factors including shallow digital interaction, car-centered communities, declining civic and neighborhood ties, dispersed families, remote work, long hours, and financial pressures.
• Rebuilding social health requires intentional habits such as regular check-ins, face-to-face activities, tech-free time, community participation, and the “5-3-1” approach: connect with five people weekly, nurture three close relationships, and aim for one hour of quality interaction each day.

Can human connection be so fundamental that losing it changes our biology?

Yes. Absolutely. 

Loneliness doesn’t just make people sad. Our brains interpret loneliness and social isolation as a survival threat.

And that level of threat can trigger a host of negative outcomes, including stress, inflammation, impaired immunity, cardiovascular risk, cognitive decline, disrupted sleep, and changes to the gut microbiome.

In other words, loneliness is not simply an emotion—it is a whole-body biological state. Left unaddressed and unresolved, the body is set on a downward spiral into ill health.

An Unrecognized Risk

When we think about the biggest threats to health, smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise and environmental pollution usually come to mind. Yet loneliness exerts a pathological power all of its own. Finally, a growing body of conventional evidence is underpinning this very important, but far less recognized, risk factor, although the research often centers on the impacts of ‘social isolation.’

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around one in six people worldwide experiences loneliness, with social isolation linked to more than 871,000 deaths every year. Some researchers have even suggested that the health impact of chronic isolation may be comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The Power of Connection

At the heart of the issue lies something often overlooked in conversations about wellbeing: social health. Just as physical health relates to the body and mental health to the mind, social health reflects our ability to build meaningful relationships, maintain supportive connections and experience a genuine sense of belonging.

As inherently social beings, humans thrive through connection. Strong social ties have repeatedly been linked to better health outcomes and greater longevity. In one Australian study, adults over the age of 70 with the strongest social networks were 22% less likely to die over a ten-year period than those with weaker social connections.

Why Are We Becoming More Isolated?

The rise in social isolation cannot be reduced to technology alone, but digital culture has clearly reshaped how connection happens. We can now communicate constantly, yet with less depth, meaning, or emotional connection. Seventy-three percent identify technology as a contributor to loneliness, alongside concerns about excessive digital use, especially among younger groups.

The physical and social design of modern life has also changed dramatically. Many cities now prioritize cars over people, while neighborhood cohesion, communal spaces, church communities and civic participation continue to decline. Families are more fractured and geographically dispersed; fewer people live in intergenerational households, and everyday opportunities for natural social interaction have steadily reduced.

Economic and cultural pressures have further deepened this fragmentation. Longer working hours, remote work, financial strain and rising housing costs leave many people overworked, exhausted and disconnected from support systems. Over time, isolation can become cyclical, with stress, grief and mental health struggles reinforcing withdrawal from connection.

The Biological and Psychological Consequences of Isolation

One of the clearest impacts of chronic disconnection is on mental health. Loneliness has been associated with depression, anxiety, emotional dysregulation and increased stress reactivity, with lonely individuals twice as likely to experience depression. Studies (here and here) also link prolonged isolation to suicidal thoughts and reduced psychological resilience. Young people appear particularly vulnerable.

The effects are not only psychological but neurological. Research increasingly shows that prolonged social disconnection alters brain function. Social isolation has been linked to cognitive decline, impaired memory and a significantly increased risk of dementia.

We have survived evolution through the power of coherence and connection—socially as much as physiologically and biologically. Hence, the body interprets chronic disconnection as a sustained threat. Isolation activates the stress response, increasing cortisol levels and driving chronic inflammation if the ‘threat’ remains unresolved. Over time, this contributes to immune dysregulation, cardiovascular strain, and metabolic dysfunction.

Strong social ties are a protective antidote. A Swedish study involving more than 17,000 people found that stronger social connections reduced the risk of death from all causes by almost 25% over six years.

Rebuilding Human Connection in an Age of Fragmentation

This trajectory is not inevitable. Rebuilding connection requires deliberate action at personal, community and policy level, with social health treated as essential rather than optional.

Below are practical ways to restore meaningful human connection in an increasingly fragmented world:

• Stay in regular contact with people who matter: Schedule daily or weekly check-ins through calls, messages or in-person time to maintain consistent connection.
• Prioritize face-to-face interaction: Shift parts of your routine into social spaces like cafés, parks or shared work environments to create natural interactions where you can exchange energies with others.
• Build connection through shared activities: Join clubs, classes, physical activity or community initiatives where in-person interaction happens around common interests.
• Create tech-free time each day: Step away from screens to improve presence, attention and the depth of real-world relationships.
• Ground in nature on a daily basis: Move naturally in nature’s playground
• Ask about Social Prescribing: Started in the UK, social prescribing aims to connect people to activities, groups and other support to help improve health and wellbeing through connection with others.
• Adopt small, consistent social habits: Use simple structures like regular meetups or the 5-3-1 approach to make connection routine rather than occasional:
  • 5: Spend time with five different people a week.
  • 3: Nurture three close relationships.
  • 1: Aim for one hour of quality social interaction a day.
• Protect your mental and physical health: Exercise, sleep well, eat properly and engage in calming activities to reduce stress linked to isolation.
• Follow a daily routine with purpose: For some, structure can create stability and increase opportunities for social interaction.
• Practice openness and active listening: Show genuine interest in others and share honestly to build trust and deeper relationships.
• Engage with your local community: Volunteer, attend events or simply introduce yourself to neighbors to build local social ties.
• Use support systems when needed: Access community groups, social prescribing, or services that help reconnect people who are at risk of feeling isolated and lonely.

Play your part in the re-connection movement and help those in your network re-connect socially: please share this article widely.

The post The Loneliness Epidemic first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

From Michelle Perro, MD. Visit her Substack for more.

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Prior to this part launch, part rant, and of course, weed whacking, I need to give credit to my podcast producer, Anne Temple. We were prepping for the next podcast and she mentioned that in her neck of the woods, the air was horrific from the Canadian fires. She asked what happens to glyphosate when it burns?

I thought I knew all things glyphosate, but I was stumped. I wasn’t sure, so I had to dig my way through the weeds and jump in the rabbit hole.

This article is dedicated to all the wonderful Canadians I’ve had the pleasure to get to know through the most unfortunate circumstances, including those brilliant minds behind the development of the National Citizens Inquiry.

Pictured left: Michelle Perro, MD.
Image source: https://gmoscience.org/dr-michelle-perro-resources/

Here goes…

It is July 2026. Over 900 active wildfires are burning in Canada across Ontario, Manitoba, and beyond while blazes in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters have crossed the border in both directions. Smoke has engulfed the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in an orange-gray haze. Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis have registered some of the worst air quality on the planet. Major League Baseball postponed games. The Soap Box Derby canceled events. The President is threatening tariffs. Millions of Americans from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic are checking air quality apps, sealing windows, and pulling N95 masks from drawers that hadn’t been opened since the pandemic.

The models generating those air quality readings track one variable: PM₂.₅ mass per cubic meter of air. They do not ask what is on the particulate. They do not model what happens when millions of hectares of glyphosate-sprayed forest burn, and the smoke crosses a continent.

No regulator in North America has ever asked that question. Not because it’s unanswerable. Because nobody has been required to.

The Scale of the Spraying

Canada does not track its own glyphosate use federally. No national database exists. What we know comes from patchy provincial data, often extracted through freedom of information requests.

Sapinski & Surette (2023) paper on New Brunswick confirms: In Canada, no jurisdiction — federal or provincial — monitors glyphosate presence in the environment or in human populations. The only testing done is by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency who monitors levels of glyphosate residues in food.

New Brunswick: Forestry accounts for 61% of all glyphosate use. Eighty-three percent is applied by helicopter. Roughly 0.5% of forested land is sprayed annually which may be small per year, but enormous when compounded across decades. New Brunswick sprays nearly ten times more forest than similarly sized Nova Scotia, ranking second only to Ontario in total area treated.

British Columbia: Over 430,000 hectares sprayed since the 1970s, increased to 738,000 when re-sprays are included.

Ontario: Rivals or exceeds New Brunswick. Precise figures are elusive.

Quebec: Banned aerial forestry spraying in 2001. The industry survived. The practice is not essential. It is a choice.

The dominant player in New Brunswick, J.D. Irving Limited, uses glyphosate to kill deciduous trees and accelerate conifer growth for pulp and timber. The economic logic is simple: spray the hardwoods, harvest the softwoods faster. The ecological logic has never been stress-tested against fire.

The Chemistry

Glyphosate (N-phosphonomethylglycine) decomposes above 198°C. At wildfire temperatures ranging from 600 to 1200°C, it breaks down almost instantly. But destruction is transformation.

Narimani and da Silva (2020) mapped the pathway: glyphosate eliminates phosphorous acid, producing imine intermediates that react with water vapor to form simple amines and carbonyl compounds. Mackie and Kennedy (2019) went further, identifying sarcosine and dimethylamine (DMA) as decomposition products (their paper, tellingly, was commissioned to evaluate the safety of incinerating glyphosate stockpiles). Controlled conditions. Engineered temperatures. Scrubbers.

A forest fire is none of those things.

Smoldering zones burn below 500°C which is hot enough to volatilize glyphosate, but not necessarily hot enough to fully destroy it. The USDA Forest Service’s own review concedes the following from their abstract;

Studies conducted on herbicides and insecticides indicate that hot fires (>500°C) thermally degrade most pesticides. Smoldering fires (<500°C) have the potential to volatilize significant amounts of some pesticides. Exposure analyses indicate that, even under conditions of smoldering fires, no significant human health risks occur from pesticides incorporated into or on forest fuels.

…then dismisses the risk based on prescribed burn data.

And deeper in the paper, they admit their risk analysis was based on burning herbicide-treated wood in a fireplace and that the safety margins they calculated assumed “unrealistically” complete volatilization. That’s their basis for dismissing the risk. A fireplace. Not 900 wildfires. Not megafires. Not decades of accumulated AMPA in the soil.

AMPA: Worse Than Glyphosate

Glyphosate degrades in soil into aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA). It is three to six times more toxic to aquatic organisms and far more persistent. Glyphosate’s soil half-life ranges from 1.5 to 53 days, lasting longer depending on soil conditions such as pH. AMPA’s: 26 to 45 days under warm conditions, up to 958 days in some studies. In one lysimeter experiment, glyphosate and AMPA together still constituted 59% of the original application 748 days after spraying.

AMPA is also more thermally stable. Boiling point: ~358°C versus glyphosate’s 230°C. Half-life at 1000 K: 4 milliseconds versus glyphosate’s 0.1. In a smoldering fire, AMPA may volatilize without fully decomposing, re-condensing onto smoke particulate as the plume cools.

The forest floor in sprayed zones carries years of accumulated AMPA. When it burns, all of it is up for grabs.

Smoke as a Chemical Courier

The idea that fire remobilizes soil-bound chemicals is documented, not speculative.

Genualdi et al. (2009) measured pesticides (dacthal, endosulfan, and γ-HCH) in smoke from Siberian fires reaching Oregon and Washington. Soil analysis showed 34 to 100% of pesticide mass was lost from burned plots.

Primbs et al. (2008) detected elevated pesticide concentrations at a remote Oregon observatory when air masses passed over fires in Alaska and Western Canada.

A 2026 study of aged wildfire PM₂.₅ collected in Maryland which was over 1,000 miles from the source detected phosphorus-containing organic molecules. The researchers weren’t looking for glyphosate or AMPA. But both are organophosphorus compounds. Phosphorus in transcontinental smoke is consistent with what you’d expect to find if they were riding the plume.

No study has specifically measured glyphosate or AMPA in wildfire smoke. The methods exist. The funding and the mandate do not.

Our Children: The Lungs That Pay

Children breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults which is roughly double. Their airways are narrower, and their detoxification systems immature as compared to adults. When wildfire smoke spikes PM₂.₅ by 3.82 μg m⁻³ across an entire country, the math is shockingly unforgiving: more particulate per breath, more breaths per minute, more years of accumulated damage ahead.

The 64,300 chronic deaths attributed to the 2023 fires capture mortality. They say nothing about asthma diagnoses, emergency visits, missed school days, or the cognitive effects of chronic neuroinflammation from inhaled particulate. And none of the models accounted for what was riding on that particulate such as glyphosate, AMPA, dimethylamine, or phosphorus fragments: compounds never tested for inhalation toxicity in combination. Imagine that scenario in a five-year-old.

The Institutional Gap

Regulators approved aerial glyphosate based on a static model: chemical binds to soil, degrades before reaching water, exposure limited to the application window. Fire does not appear in any environmental impact assessment. It never has.

New Brunswick’s Chief Medical Officer published a health assessment in 2016 concluding that existing measures were adequate. The report arrived during the IARC controversy when the WHO had classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” the year prior and was met with skepticism. But the deeper failure is structural: the assessment couldn’t model combustion exposure because the data doesn’t exist.

No Canadian jurisdiction monitors glyphosate or AMPA in the environment or in human populations. No air monitoring. No water monitoring. No biomonitoring of exposed communities. No testing of wild-land firefighters who are indeed the canaries in this particular coal mine before, during, or after deployments on spray-zone fires.

The USDA’s own review dismisses pesticide-in-smoke risks on the logic that the smoke itself is already so toxic the pesticide adds nothing meaningful. This argument works only if you accept the baseline toxicity of wildfire smoke as acceptable. It is not. And the populations breathing it never consented to that faulty logic.

Quebec banned aerial forestry spraying in 2001. The industry survived. The rest of Canada chose otherwise. That choice carries consequences, and those consequences are now burning with a global impact.

Regulators approved aerial glyphosate on the assumption that the forest stays put. It doesn’t. The chemistry says glyphosate and AMPA decompose under heat into amines, phosphorous acid, and carbonyl compounds. The atmospheric science says fire-volatilized pesticides travel thousands of kilometers on smoke. The institutional record shows no regulator has ever connected these two bodies of knowledge and asked what it means for the people breathing the smoke.

The question isn’t whether glyphosate and AMPA decomposition products are in the smoke. The chemistry says they are. The question is why, after decades of spraying and years of mega-fires, no agency has ever measured them and what they’re afraid they’ll find if someone finally does.

What You Can Do

This is not a problem that requires new science. The analytical methods exist. The sampling protocols are standard. What’s missing is the political will to ask the question and that’s where you come in.

Contact your representatives. If you live in a state or province affected by wildfire smoke and in 2026, that’s most of North America, ask your elected officials a simple question: Has any agency measured glyphosate or AMPA in the smoke I’m breathing? If not, why not?

Demand answers from the agencies. These are the offices with the mandate, the data, or both:

• USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station — Flagstaff, AZ. Ask whether the 2000 fire-and-pesticides review has ever been updated, and whether its risk assessment applies to mega-fires burning through decades of accumulated spraying.
• EPA Office of Air and Radiation — Ask whether PM₂.₅ monitoring includes chemical speciation for pesticides or their thermal decomposition products. Ask why it doesn’t.
• Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada — Ask whether Canada maintains a national database of forestry pesticide applications, and whether it has ever overlaid spray data with fire data.
• BC Ministry of Forests — Ask whether the province has modeled glyphosate or AMPA fate during wildfire on its 738,000 hectares of sprayed forest.
• New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development — Ask whether the province has conducted any air monitoring or firefighter biomonitoring related to glyphosate — in the jurisdiction that sprays the highest proportion of its forests in the country.

Support independent monitoring. Organizations like the Breathe Project and various university-based atmospheric chemistry labs have the equipment and the expertise. They lack funding. If you have the means, direct your dollars toward groups doing air quality monitoring that goes beyond PM₂.₅ mass (the ones asking what’s in the particulate, not just how much of it there is).

Protect yourself and your family. While the institutions catch up and they will take years, invest in HEPA air filtration for your home. Wear an N95 or better when air quality indices spike. Keep windows sealed during smoke events. These measures reduce particulate exposure. They may also reduce exposure to whatever is riding on the particulate. We won’t know until someone measures it.

Don’t wait for permission to protect your lungs.

Action Alert!

The post Forest Fires and Glyphosate: An Examination of the Unspoken first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The EPA is retreating from stronger safeguards against PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge, leaving farmers, families, and the food supply exposed to toxic “forever chemicals.” Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• The EPA’s new draft guidance replaces an earlier risk assessment that warned PFOA and PFOS in sewage sludge could create serious health risks, even at very low concentrations, with largely voluntary recommendations.
• Nearly 60 percent of sewage sludge is spread on land, including agricultural fields, where persistent chemicals can contaminate soil, private wells, crops, livestock, fish, milk, meat, and eggs.
• Federal lawmakers should mandate comprehensive PFAS testing, prohibit contaminated sludge from being used on food-producing land, hold industrial polluters responsible, and phase out nonessential uses of PFAS.

The fertilizer spread on American farms may be carrying toxic “forever chemicals” into our soil, water, crops, livestock, and food. Instead of stopping that contamination, the EPA is retreating from stronger safeguards and leaving farmers and families to deal with the consequences.

On July 1, 2026, the EPA replaced a warning about serious PFAS risks in sewage sludge with weaker guidance. The agency dismissed its own earlier findings as too focused on worst-case scenarios and defended continued use of contaminated sludge as fertilizer.

But make no mistake: this is another example of the EPA rolling back protections against a dangerous class of chemicals.

The Earlier Assessment Raised Red Flags

The January 2025 EPA draft risk assessment found that PFOA and PFOS in sewage sludge could pose human health risks when sludge is land-applied, surface-disposed, or incinerated. EPA said some modeled scenarios exceeded acceptable risk thresholds by several orders of magnitude when sewage sludge contained just 1 part per billion of PFOA or PFOS.

EPA identified possible exposure through contaminated drinking water, fish, milk, beef, eggs, and certain fruits and vegetables from impacted properties. The agency also said PFOA and PFOS are persistent chemicals linked to adverse health effects, and noted that EPA classified both as likely carcinogenic to humans in 2024.

EPA now stresses that the earlier assessment focused on people living on or near impacted properties, not the general public. That is true. But it should not be used to minimize the stakes for the very people who are most exposed: farm families, rural residents, people with private wells, children playing in contaminated soil, and consumers eating food grown on affected land. Remember our pilot study on PFAS contamination in kale? Even organic samples tested positive for the presence of PFAS, and contaminated sewage sludge is one vector by which this contamination can occur. This problem affects all of us.

Let’s also not forget the propensity for PFAS chemicals to travel, even to the most remote places on Earth: they have been detected from Antarctica to the Mariana Trench.

Sewage Sludge Is a Pathway into the Food Supply

Sewage sludge is the semi-solid material left over after wastewater treatment. EPA uses the term “biosolids” for treated sewage sludge intended for land application as fertilizer or soil amendment. Under existing federal rules, biosolids may be applied to agricultural lands, forests, tree farms, golf courses, turf farms, and other land; they may also be sold in bags for lawns and home gardens. EPA’s own data says nearly 60 percent of sewage sludge is land-applied.

That should alarm anyone who cares about clean food and clean water. PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they persist. They do not simply disappear after a crop cycle. Once introduced into soil and water, they can move through the environment and into the food chain.

EPA’s new recommendations tell the public to research sludge suppliers and avoid applying sludge where children may contact soil, or in garden beds for foods such as leafy greens and root vegetables, or where egg-laying hens forage.

Read that again: the federal agency charged with protecting public health is telling families to figure out whether the fertilizer they bought may contain toxic forever chemicals. The EPA is abdicating responsibility and outsourcing its job to the American people.

The Bigger PFAS Rollback

This sewage sludge move is not happening in isolation. On May 18, 2026, EPA announced proposed changes to the national PFAS drinking water rule. One proposal would keep enforceable limits for PFOA and PFOS but allow some systems until 2031 to comply. Another would rescind drinking water regulations for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX chemicals, and a hazard-index mixture standard.

In other words, at the same time PFAS contamination is being found in water, food, sludge, soil, and consumer products, EPA is busy rolling back public protections.

EPA should require robust PFAS testing in sewage sludge, stop contaminated sludge from being spread on food-producing land, force industrial polluters to keep PFAS out of wastewater systems, and move toward a broad phaseout of nonessential PFAS uses.

Americans should not have to become chemical detectives to keep forever chemicals out of their gardens, wells, eggs, milk, meat, and vegetables.

Action Alert!

The post EPA’s PFAS Sludge Retreat Puts Farmers and Families at Risk first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Paraquat is so poisonous that a single sip can kill, yet it is still sprayed on American farmland and allowed near the food supply. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• The EPA acknowledges that one small sip of paraquat can be fatal and that there is no antidote, yet the chemical remains approved for agricultural use.
• Multiple studies and laboratory findings raise serious concerns about damage to the dopamine-producing brain cells involved in Parkinson’s.
• The bipartisan Paraquat Prevention Act would ban paraquat, prohibit the use of existing stocks, revoke allowable residues on food, and close the loophole for imported foods grown with the chemical.

Paraquat is so toxic that the Environmental Protection Agency says one small sip can be fatal. It cannot be used around home gardens, schools, parks, playgrounds, or golf courses. Yet it can still be sprayed in American agriculture, where farmers, farmworkers, rural families, and the food supply bear the risk.

That could finally change.

Representatives Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME) have introduced the Paraquat Prevention Act, a bipartisan bill that would cancel all registered uses of paraquat, revoke food residue tolerances, ban the sale and use of existing stocks, and prevent EPA from re-registering the chemical in the future.

This is exactly the kind of common-sense health freedom legislation Congress should pass. Americans should not have to depend on a slow-moving captured agency to protect them from a pesticide already banned in more than 70 countries.

EPA Knows Paraquat Is Exceptionally Dangerous

EPA calls paraquat “highly toxic” and reports that accidental ingestion from illegal transfer into drink containers causes roughly one to two deaths per year. EPA requires paraquat to be used only by trained, certified applicators and says it should never be used around residential dwellings, home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses, or playgrounds.

That raises the obvious question: if paraquat is too dangerous for a golf course, why is it acceptable where food is grown?

The Parkinson’s Evidence Keeps Building

Paraquat has been linked in multiple studies to increased Parkinson’s disease risk. A major Agricultural Health Study paper found Parkinson’s disease was strongly associated with paraquat and rotenone, pesticides used in laboratory models of Parkinson’s-related damage. A more recent study in California’s Central Valley found further evidence that agricultural paraquat exposure increases Parkinson’s risk.

The biology is deeply concerning. Parkinson’s develops as dopamine-producing neurons are damaged or lost. Laboratory research has shown that paraquat can harm dopaminergic neurons, the very cells central to Parkinson’s disease.

EPA has long resisted concluding that paraquat causes Parkinson’s in humans. But public health policy should not require absolute certainty when the stakes are irreversible neurological disease, fatal poisoning, and repeated exposure among farm communities.

The Bill Closes the Import Loophole

The Paraquat Prevention Act does more than cancel registrations. It also directs EPA to revoke any food tolerances that allow paraquat residues on food. That matters because a domestic ban without a residue ban can become a loophole: U.S. farmers lose the chemical, but imported food grown with paraquat can still enter the country.

A true ban must protect consumers, farmers, and honest competition. If paraquat is too dangerous for American fields, it should not be tolerated on imported food either.

EPA Keeps Protecting Chemicals, not the Public’s Health

Paraquat fits a familiar pattern. First, a chemical becomes entrenched in agriculture. Then health evidence accumulates. Then the agency asks for more data, more review, more time. Meanwhile, industry insists the science is unsettled, and the public keeps absorbing the risk.

This is the same failed model Americans have seen with glyphosate, PFAS, and other chemicals regulators allowed to remain on the market while independent scientists, exposed communities, and advocates raised alarms.

Congress should not wait for EPA to find the political courage to act. The agency already knows paraquat is highly toxic. The scientific record already supports urgent concern. More than 70 countries have already acted.

Now the federal government must choose: protect people, or protect a pesticide.

Action Alert! Tell Congress to support the Paraquat Prevention Act and ban paraquat nationwide.

The post One Sip Can Kill. Why Is Paraquat Still on Our Food Fields? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Real food may be more alive than regulators are willing to admit. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• Research into ultra-weak photon emissions (biophotons) indicates that living foods emit measurable light linked to metabolic activity, with early studies suggesting these emissions could become a new way to assess plant health, food quality, and the benefits of regenerative farming.
• While regenerative agriculture emphasizes healthy soil and biodiversity, recent U.S. and EU policy initiatives could use the language of regeneration to accelerate adoption of gene-edited crops, genetically engineered microbes, and other engineered agricultural technologies without adequate oversight.
• Regulators should require rigorous safety testing, independent research, and clear labeling of engineered agricultural products rather than treating them as “substantially equivalent” to conventional foods, allowing consumers and farmers to make informed choices about the future of the food system.

Scientific research on food quality may have been missing one of the most important attributes of healthy foods all along.

It was back in the in the 1920s, that Russian biologist Alexander Gurwitsch first proposed that dividing cells emit tiny amounts of ultraviolet light—“mitogenetic radiation”—which could stimulate cell division in nearby tissues, planting the idea that living systems produce ultra‑weak light signals. Then, in the 1970s, German biophysicist Fritz‑Albert Popp revived and extended this work by rigorously measuring single‑photon emissions from cells and arguing that these “biophotons” reflect highly ordered, possibly coherent regulatory processes in living organisms, helping to establish biophotonics as a modern research field.

This field of biophoton research has more recently moved to foods and it raises fascinating questions about food quality, plant vitality, and the difference between food grown in living systems and food produced with industrial inputs. At the same time, policymakers and special interests are trying to move us in a very different direction, toward lab-made foods, gene-edited crops, genetically engineered soil microbes, and regulatory shortcuts that treat engineered products as if they are “substantially equivalent” to conventional food.

We face a fork (pun intended) in the road. One path asks how farming can restore soil, plant health, nutrient density, and food vitality. The other asks how quickly government and industry can redefine engineered foods and farm inputs as “green” while ignoring their vitality or healthfulness.

The Hidden Light of Living Foods

Every living cell produces tiny flashes of light as a natural consequence of metabolism.

These ultra-weak photon emissions (UPE) are not visible to the naked eye—they are roughly a thousand times weaker than human vision can detect—but highly sensitive cameras can measure them. Scientists now understand that these biophotons arise when reactive oxygen species generated during normal metabolism create electronically excited molecules that release photons as they return to their resting state.

Far from being fringe science, UPE has become an active area of research in plant biology, food science, and medicine.

What Does This Have to Do with Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture seeks to improve soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem function while producing more resilient crops. Until recently, evaluating those benefits has often required labor-intensive chemical analyses or long-term ecological studies.

Biophoton research offers a fascinating possibility.

Because UPEs reflect ongoing metabolic activity and oxidative processes, researchers are investigating whether these light emissions can serve as a rapid, inexpensive, non-invasive way to monitor plant physiology, oxidative stress, disease, ripening, and food quality without damaging the product being tested.

Commenting on the possible implications of UPE research on foods, Rob Verkerk, PhD, ANH’s executive and scientific director, said, “It’s of course not just the amount of light that is emitted that’s likely to be important, it’s also the quality and coherence of the light. It could be, for example, that unadulterated, natural foods that are free from interference from modern biotechnology—that haven’t been genome-edited, that have been cultivated on real, living soils, teaming with microbes that also haven’t been genome-edited—have different, potentially more coherent emission profiles.”

The science is still developing, but the direction is intriguing: healthier growing conditions may leave measurable signatures that extend well beyond nutrient content alone.

Dr. Verkerk added, “UPEs may also provide in the future another layer of information that could expose additional problems associated not only with GE foods but also with ultra-processed foods.”

Evidence Is Beginning to Accumulate

One particularly interesting study examined eggs produced under different farming conditions.

Researchers compared eggs from conventional battery-caged hens with eggs from free-range hens using ultra-weak photon imaging. They found that eggs from free-range hens exhibited approximately eight times greater biophoton emission than eggs from conventionally raised birds.

The study demonstrated that production methods can produce measurable differences in the biological properties of food that conventional analyses may not fully capture.

The Bigger Picture

For decades, ANH has argued that food should not be evaluated solely by calories or a short list of nutrients.

Healthy soils produce healthier plants. Healthy plants support healthier animals and healthier people. While conventional nutritional testing remains essential, emerging fields like biophoton research suggest there may be additional dimensions of food quality that science is only beginning to understand.

As scientists continue exploring the faint light emitted by living foods, they may also be illuminating a new way to think about the relationship between agriculture, nutrition, and health.

But Washington’s “Regenerative” Agenda Has a Trap Door

On June 25, 2026, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience.” The order uses promising language. It says regenerative practices can strengthen soil health, reduce input costs, improve chemical efficiency, maintain yields, increase market value, and strengthen rural economies. It also directs federal agencies to support regenerative agriculture research and expand public-private partnerships.

That all sounds good, but as always, “the devil is in the details.”

Section 2(d) directs Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, to prioritize research into “new, innovative, and cost-effective technologies” that reduce reliance on conventional chemical crop protection tools.

That language could support genuinely regenerative approaches. But it could also become a federal green light for genetically engineered soil microbes and other engineered biological inputs marketed as alternatives to chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

This is the danger ANH has been warning about. Big Ag can read the public mood. Americans are increasingly concerned about glyphosate, pesticides, fertilizer runoff, ultraprocessed food, and chemical-intensive farming. The corporate response is not necessarily to move toward real food and living soil. It is to rebrand engineered biology as “regenerative” and “green”.

Genome-Edited Crops and Microbes Don’t Fit With Regen Ag

Genetically engineered microbes are being sold as the next climate-smart agricultural breakthrough: living organisms designed to fix nitrogen, reduce fertilizer use, improve yields, and help farmers lower chemical inputs. But once released into the environment, microbes are not like conventional chemicals. They can reproduce, mutate, spread, and exchange genetic material. ANH previously warned that GE microbes risk becoming “living pollution” because they may persist and move through ecosystems in ways that cannot be recalled.

We are seeing a similar effort from Big Ag and regulators to portray gene-edited crops as a natural extension of regenerative agriculture. These crops are marketed as tools to increase yields, strengthen resilience, reduce pesticide use, and improve nutrition. Because many are developed without inserting foreign DNA, they often avoid the more rigorous oversight applied to earlier genetically engineered crops and are sometimes presented as effectively “GMO-free.” This regulatory shortcut overlooks the fact that gene editing is still a form of genetic engineering and leaves important questions about long-term environmental effects, transparency, and consumer choice unanswered.

Current U.S. oversight of this new generation of genetically engineered microbes and gene-edited crops remains fragmented across outdated statutes, with no comprehensive federal framework specifically designed to assess their unique environmental and ecological risks.

If federal “regenerative” programs end up subsidizing or accelerating engineered microbial inputs or gene edited crops without robust long-term safety testing, transparency, and labeling, consumers and farmers could be pushed from one form of dependency to another: from chemical inputs to patented biological inputs.

The “Substantial Equivalence” Problem Is Spreading

This same logic is now reshaping food law internationally.

In the European Union, new rules for plants produced by certain New Genomic Techniques were adopted by the European Parliament and Council. The European Commission says Category 1 NGT plants are “equivalent to conventional plants” and will be treated like conventional plants rather than subject to GMO legislation. Category 2 plants, involving more complex modifications, remain under GMO rules.

This is the heart of the problem. “Equivalent” becomes the magic word that removes the consumer’s right to know.

For decades, regulators and biotech companies have argued that many engineered products should be treated like conventionally bred foods if they appear similar by selected criteria. But consumers are not asking only whether a gene-edited crop fits a technical equivalence test. They are asking whether it was engineered, who owns it, whether it is patented, whether it was tested for long-term ecological effects, whether it can contaminate organic or non-GMO supply chains, and whether they can avoid it if they choose.

Real Regeneration or Engineered Substitution?

If policymakers truly want regenerative agriculture, they should support farmers who build soil organic matter, reduce toxic inputs, protect biodiversity, improve nutrient density, and produce real food for real communities. They should fund independent research into soil health, plant vitality, nutrient quality, biophoton science, cumulative chemical exposure, and the long-term effects of agricultural practices on human health.

But they should not use the language of regeneration to fast-track engineered microbes, gene-edited crops, precision fermentation foods, or other “green” technologies without transparent labeling and precautionary oversight.

Regenerative agriculture is not just another branding opportunity for biotech. It is a chance to rebuild the relationship between soil, food, farmers, and health.

The question is whether government will protect that future, or hand it to the same entrenched interests that helped create the chemical food system in the first place.

ANH will be watching closely. Consumers should demand full transparency, independent safety review, labeling of gene-edited and engineered biological products, and policies that protect farmers’ and consumers’ right to choose real food grown in living soil.

Action Alert!

The post Is the Future of Food Real Food That Emits Light? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

An apple isn’t what it used to be. Neither is a carrot, a head of broccoli, or a stalk of kale. And while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars managing the diseases that come from eating nutritionally hollow food, the upstream cause — the soil itself — is systematically being handed over to the same corporations that emptied it in the first place.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Modern fruits and vegetables are nutritionally hollow compared to decades past, with documented declines of 50%+ in key minerals like iron and copper over 80 years — a direct consequence of industrial agriculture’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that degrade the soil microbiome responsible for cycling nutrients into plants.
• The resulting nutrient deficiencies are likely fueling the chronic disease epidemic: the same vitamins and minerals Americans are broadly deficient in (magnesium, vitamin D, A, C, and E) are closely linked to the diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions that now consume 86% of U.S. healthcare spending — yet the medical system responds with pharmaceuticals rather than addressing the upstream cause.
• A “green” biotech pivot by the same agrichemical giants — engineering soil microbes — poses serious risks, as these living organisms can mutate, spread, and permanently alter soil ecosystems we barely understand; regenerative agriculture offers a proven alternative that rebuilds soil health naturally, without the irreversible gamble of open-air genetic experimentation.

An 80-Year Wake-Up Call

In 2021, British researchers did something nobody had done before. They pulled the UK government’s Composition of Foods Tables — a meticulous national record of what’s actually inside the fruits and vegetables people living in Britain eat — and compared three editions: 1940, 1991, and 2019.

The results should have made the front page of every newspaper. Across 80 years, the average mineral content of common fruits and vegetables had collapsed. Sodium was down 52%. Iron, down 50%. Copper, down 49%. Magnesium, down 10%. Water content, meanwhile, had crept up. The researchers, publishing in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, called for urgent investigation of the causes.

American analyses going back decades show calcium in common vegetables down by a quarter or more, vitamin C down roughly 30%, and vitamin A in many crops cut by a third to nearly two-thirds. By one estimate, you’d need to eat eight oranges today to get the vitamin A your grandparents got from one.

The sad truth is that our food supply has been slowly, quietly hollowed out — and the public health establishment is asleep at the wheel.

Sick People, Expensive Drugs, Depleted Food

Half of Americans have a chronic disease. They consume 86% of our healthcare dollars. Diabetes rates jumped eight-fold between 1958 and 2015. Obesity has tripled since the 1950s; 42% of US adults are now obese.

The standard response is to blame the patient and reach for a prescription pad: statins, metformin, GLP-1 agonists, blood pressure pills. We have built a healthcare system that excels at managing the downstream symptoms of metabolic dysfunction with expensive, often dangerous, often ineffective pharmaceuticals.

What we’ve largely ignored is the terrain. More than half of Americans don’t meet the government’s low benchmarks for magnesium. Nearly 95% fall short on vitamin D. Roughly 83% don’t get enough vitamin E; 43% are below the bar for vitamin A and nearly 40% don’t get enough vitamin C. These deficiencies are linked, in study after study, to the very chronic diseases we’re spending trillions to manage downstream.

Why the Food Got Hollow

The collapse in food quality tracks with the rise of industrial agriculture. Between 1950 and 1997, the number of US farms fell by 64.5% while average farm size more than doubled. Small, diversified operations were swallowed by sprawling monocultures of corn, wheat, and soy — the cheap commodity crops the federal government subsidizes precisely because they are the raw material for the ultra-processed foods that dominate the modern American diet.

Industrial farms don’t rotate crops. They lean on synthetic fertilizers and a torrent of pesticides — usage up 222% between 1960 and 1981. Chemical fertilizers push yield while ignoring the trace minerals plants need to build phytochemicals and human beings need to stay well. Pesticides damage the soil organisms responsible for cycling those minerals into plants in the first place.

The result is a treadmill: a new chemical kills weeds, weeds become resistant, soils go sterile, a more potent chemical is developed, more fertilizer is dumped on — and so on. Over half the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years. Soil takes at least 200 years to form a layer one centimeter deep.

A “Biological” Rebrand for the Same Old Extraction

Faced with diminishing returns from chemicals, the agrichemical industry is now pitching what it calls “biologicals” — genetically engineered (GE) soil microbes, bacteria altered in the lab and sprayed onto fields. The marketing is irresistible: “natural,” “green,” “regenerative.” The reality is anything but.

The global microbial products market is already worth $15 billion a year. Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, BASF, and Ginkgo Bioworks are all racing for position.

Unlike a chemical, a microbe is alive. It reproduces, mutates, and can swap genetic material with other microbes through horizontal gene transfer — the same mechanism that drives antibiotic resistance. Once released into open soil, it cannot be recalled. A recent Friends of the Earth report called it “an unprecedented open-air experiment that may have irreversible consequences.”

And the experiment is being run on territory we barely understand. Of the billions of microbial species in soil, scientists have characterized less than 1%. The rhizosphere — the web of life around plant roots — is what makes nutrients available to crops, regulates the planet’s nitrogen and carbon cycles, and lets plants signal each other through fungal networks. It is, by many measures, the most valuable ecosystem on Earth, and we are now poised to introduce completely novel, genetically engineered microbes into this delicate environment.

The precedents should give anyone pause. GE mosquitoes released in Brazil to crash local populations may have produced hardier mosquitoes instead. CRISPR editing of human embryos to repair a single mutation appeared to “wreak genetic havoc” in about half the specimens examined. And here’s another inconvenient fact: extensive field testing across multiple states found GE soil microbes failed in most cases to even increase crop yields.

What Real Soil Health Looks Like

We are not actually stuck between a depleted chemical regime and an unregulated biotech one. A third path is well-developed and increasingly hard to ignore: regenerative agriculture.

A teaspoon of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are human beings on the planet. Agronomist John Kempf distills the work of restoring that life into six principles: create the right physical environment for soil biology; restore the biology that has been lost through compost and microbial inoculants; feed it daily with mulch and cover crops; provide balanced mineral nutrition; use foliar sprays to maximize photosynthesis; and avoid the nutrient excesses that drive most pest and disease pressure. Plants raised this way climb what Kempf calls the Plant Health Pyramid — becoming both more nutritious for humans and increasingly resistant to pests on their own. The plant doesn’t need a chemical crutch because it has been allowed to develop functioning biology.

Do you sense a pattern? Healthy plants are better able to resist pests on their own, reducing the need for pesticides and other chemical inputs. Healthy people are no different. When we nourish the body with good food, regular exercise, and adequate sleep, we strengthen its natural capacity to maintain health and lessen our dependence on pharmaceutical interventions.

The award-winning documentary Planet Soil, championed internationally by ANH (and directed by the elder brother of ANH founder, Rob Verkerk), captures both the wonder of what is alive beneath our feet and the catastrophe of what is being lost. Healthy living soils hold vast reserves of water, reduce flooding, sequester carbon, and — together with sunlight and water — form the essential matrix for producing nutrient-dense food. Dead soils do none of these things.

The Pattern We Keep Falling For

Step back, and a pattern comes into focus. We don’t address upstream causes; we medicate downstream effects. We deplete the soil with chemicals, end up with food that doesn’t nourish, develop chronic diseases at epidemic rates, and then turn to the pharmaceutical industry. When the chemical model starts to falter, the same corporate constellation pivots to biotechnology.

The losers, every time, are ordinary Americans: sicker, more reliant on expensive prescriptions, and increasingly cut off from the farms that once knew how to produce truly nourishing food.

The winners are the same handful of agrichemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical giants.

What Needs to Happen

The chronic disease epidemic will not be solved at the pharmacy counter. It will be solved, if it is solved at all, by reckoning with the upstream conditions that created it — beginning with the few inches of living, breathing earth that everything else depends on.

We have spent eighty years finding out what happens when we treat soil as something to be exploited and food as a product to be optimized for shelf life. The data are in. The bill is coming due. And the next big technological “fix” being marketed to us is not a fix at all — it is the same story in a green wrapper.

It’s time to stop managing the symptoms and start healing the terrain.

If you care about real food, soil health and your own natural health, please share this article with your network.

The post The Dirty Secret Beneath Your Plate first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new scientific paper and expert panel has challenged the simplistic “ultra-processed food” narrative and has been instrumental in redefining US policy in this area. But does it go far enough? How does it deal with the growing amount of ‘synbio’ or bioengineered food hitting US supermarket shelves?  

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THE TOPLINE

• A new expert panel report recommends using the NOVA Category 4 system as the scientific foundation for ultra-processed food (UPF) policy—potentially reshaping food labeling, school meals, and regulation nationwide.
• While the focus on UPFs is an important step forward, the NOVA framework overlooks critical factors like cooking methods, storage, mechanical processing, and the emergence of novel compounds in engineered foods such as lab-grown meat.
• A broader “farm-to-fork” understanding of food health—emphasizing home cooking from scratch, minimally processed whole foods, gentle cooking methods, and food education—is essential to protecting the long-term health of Americans.

As grocery shelves fill with increasingly engineered and ultra-processed products, including lab-grown foods marketed as “healthy” and “sustainable,” distinguishing between foods that are genuinely healthy and those that are not is getting increasingly difficult.

With mounting evidence of the negative health effects of consuming ultra-processed foods (UPFs), the push to define and regulate them is gaining real momentum. A May 2026 expert panel report from Healthy Eating Research (HER) has recommended that the NOVA Category 4 classification — which identifies foods as industrial formulations containing few or no whole-food ingredients — become the official scientific basis for UPF policy in the US. With modeling showing that roughly 72% of US packaged foods meet this definition, the implications for food policy, school nutrition, taxation, and labeling are enormous.

At ANH, we welcome this growing recognition that industrial food processing is harming the public’s health. But we also believe the conversation needs to go much further in order to arm people with the information necessary to differentiate harmful from healthy foods.

NOVA Category 4: A Useful but Incomplete Lens

The NOVA system has some strengths. It draws attention away from single nutrients and toward the degree of processing as a meaningful health variable. Note that the NOVA system is primarily concerned with the nature and purpose of processing, not simply whether a food has been physically altered.

But the policy focus on NOVA Category 4 as the primary framework has real limitations that must be considered.

NOVA classifications fail to take into account the effect of mechanical processing, even though mechanical processing can dramatically affect how foods behave metabolically and nutritionally. For example, both the intensive milling of grains for use in children’s breakfast cereals or their extrusion at high heat for some cereals and many savory snacks, dramatically shortens starch chain lengths, creating products with a substantially higher glycemic load than their minimally processed equivalents. This means that a kid’s breakfast cereal labeled as ‘Wholegrain’ can share a similar ingredient panel to a box of unsweetened, minimally-processed muesli, while having profoundly different effects on blood sugar and metabolic health.

The HER panel also discussed a growing debate around the “healthy UPF” distinction — recommending that products meeting a modified version of FDA’s “Healthy” criteria be exempted from UPF-targeted policies. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has similarly argued that plant-based UPFs like wholegrain breads and some meat alternatives should be treated differently from processed meats and sugary drinks.

Sounds good, yes? But this framing still completely ignores some of the emerging safety concerns with lab-grown meat that we’ve discussed elsewhere. In some key nutrient categories such as protein and fat, lab-grown meat may appear very similar to processed or even unprocessed meats. But the point is, to determine the health impact of a food, we have to look at the overall nutrient profile and within which these nutrients are found, not just the presence of a few isolated nutrients.

What about the dozens of previously unknown compounds that are showing up in lab-grown, ‘synbio’ or so-called ‘precision fermentation’ food products that are being marketed as eco-friendly, alternatives to natural foods?

Beyond UPFs

If the goal is to maximize healthy foods and minimize unhealthy foods, we need to go far beyond NOVA classifications. Our collogues at ANH International have gone into these issues in some detail. Here are some points to keep in mind:

• High-temperature cooking creates harmful compounds. Grilling meat and other foods at high heat generates heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds formed when muscle proteins react with flame and smoke. These are recognized carcinogens. Charred or heavily browned foods — regardless of how “natural” their ingredients — carry real cancer risk, particularly for colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Air frying, while marketed as healthier than deep frying, can produce similar concerning compounds depending on temperature and food type.

• Acrylamide forms in starchy foods cooked at high heat. Chips, crackers, roasted coffee, and even some baked goods produce acrylamide — another probable carcinogen — through the Maillard reaction at temperatures above 120°C. Again, this is a processing effect invisible to any ingredient-based classification.

• Storage degrades nutritional value. A fresh vegetable and the same vegetable after weeks in the refrigerator are nutritionally different foods. Oxidation degrades vitamins, especially vitamin C and folate. The glycemic index of some starches increases with storage and reheating. How long food sits before it’s eaten is part of its nutritional story.

• How you cook at home matters too. Boiling vegetables leaches water-soluble vitamins. Overcooking destroys heat-sensitive nutrients and enzymes. Conversely, some processing genuinely enhances nutrition: cooking tomatoes increases lycopene bioavailability; fermenting grains reduces antinutrients; lightly steaming broccoli can preserve more glucosinolates than long boiling. Food is not static — its nutritional value is shaped at every step from field to fork.

This is why ANH has long advocated that we understand food as information — a complex system of compounds that speak uniquely to multiple physiological pathways in the human body simultaneously. Yes, food is really a form of language, and when we deviate significantly from the foods with which humans have evolved over millennia, communication often breaks down, and disease is more likely to manifest.

What ANH Recommends

Policy frameworks focused on reducing UPF consumption are a step in the right direction. But reducing harm means more than swapping a food with emulsifiers for one without them. It means rebuilding our relationship with food itself.

1. Cook from scratch, as much as possible. Home cooking from whole, minimally processed ingredients remains the single most powerful dietary intervention available to individuals and families. It keeps you in control of heat, time, and ingredients. It reconnects you with food as something living and varied, not a manufactured product.
   
   
2. Minimize packaged foods as a category, not just the worst-offending ones. Even when a packaged food passes the “healthy UPF” test, it is still a product of industrial food manufacturing — optimized for shelf life, profit margin, and palatability, not your long-term health.
   
   
3. Be mindful of cooking methods. Favor gentle heat: steaming, poaching, slow cooking, light sautéing. Reserve high-heat grilling or roasting for occasional use and avoid charring.
   
   
4. Priorities diversity and whole-food density. ANH’s Food4Health guidelines emphasize eating a wide variety of vegetables (in greater proportion than fruit), quality proteins, healthy fats, and minimally processed complex carbohydrates. Nutrient density — not calorie counting — is the goal.
   
   
5. Teach children to cook. Culinary skills are a public health intervention. Young people who know how to prepare food from whole ingredients are more likely to eat well throughout life, more resilient to food industry marketing, and better equipped to make genuinely informed choices. Schools, families, and communities all have a role here.
   
   
6. For those managing or recovering from cancer, the evidence is particularly compelling: avoiding industrial processing, high-heat cooking compounds, and highly refined carbohydrates should be a priority — over and above whatever an ingredient label says.

The Bigger Picture

The UPF policy conversation is important and long overdue. But if it results only in reformulated products that pass new ingredient-marker tests while remaining industrially manufactured, nutritionally impoverished, chemically altered compared with natural foods, laced with known or unknown non-nutritive chemical ingredients or novel compounds, and cooked in ways and at temperatures that damage nutritional molecules or generate carcinogens — we will have achieved very little.

Real food reform means understanding the entire journey from farm to table, recognizing the role of foods as information for the body, and taking responsibility for what happens in our own kitchens and homes. No regulatory definition will do that for us.

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The post The Ultra-Processed Food Debate Needs a Reality Check first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The chemical industry promised that newer “short-chain” PFAS would be safer—but emerging science suggests these replacement “forever chemicals” may be just as dangerous, and even harder to track. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• While older PFAS chemicals are declining in wildlife following phase-outs, newer short-chain PFAS now dominate environmental contamination—and scientists still don’t fully understand where they accumulate or how they impact human health.
• Research shows short-chain PFAS can cross the placenta more easily, penetrate the skin efficiently, and break down into persistent metabolites that may linger in the body far longer than industry claims suggest.
• Regulating PFAS one chemical at a time has failed. As companies continue introducing new formulations faster than science can evaluate them, we need a comprehensive ban on PFAS as a class.

For years, chemical manufacturers defended a massive transition away from older “legacy” PFAS chemicals like PFOA and PFOS by arguing that newer “short-chain” PFAS were safer. These replacement chemicals, industry claimed, would accumulate less in the body and break down more easily in the environment.

But a growing body of research suggests this new generation of PFAS chemicals are still a public health threat.

A recent study examining PFAS contamination in pilot whales near the Faroe Islands highlights this reality: while older PFAS are declining in marine wildlife—as expected after these chemicals have been phased out—the newer short-chain PFAS are largely absent. Scientists now find themselves asking an unsettling question: If these chemicals aren’t showing up in whales and the open ocean, where are they—or their metabolites or breakdown products—going?

The “Regrettable Substitution” Problem

For decades, two long-chain PFAS chemicals — PFOA (used in Teflon®) and PFOS (used in Scotchgard®) — were the flagship “forever chemicals.” When mounting evidence linked them to cancer, thyroid disruption, immune damage, and reproductive harm, public pressure and litigation finally forced manufacturers to phase them out in the early 2000s.

The replacements were shorter-chain PFAS compounds — molecules with fewer fluorinated carbons. Industry told us that these newer chemicals would behave similarly in industrial applications but break down faster in the environment and accumulate less in living tissue.

Today, short-chain PFAS now account for 88.8% of total PFAS detected in the water column. They are everywhere. And the science catching up to them is telling a troubling story.

What the Whale Study Found — and Didn’t Find

The whale study referenced above analyzed tissue samples from Faroese pilot whales collected between 2001 and 2023 and found concentrations of legacy PFAS have declined in the whale tissue, confirming that bans on the old compounds are working.

The disturbing news: newer PFAS are essentially absent from the whales — but not because they’re absent from the environment. Production of novel PFAS is higher than ever. These chemicals are going somewhere. But where?

Two possibilities have emerged, and both are alarming in different ways.

One theory is that novel PFAS may be accumulating closer to their sources — near manufacturing facilities, in coastal waters, and in communities near industrial sites. A parallel study of beluga whales in Canada’s St. Lawrence Estuary found increasing concentrations of newer, unregulated PFAS from 2000 to 2017, while legacy PFAS declined. The estuary sits near human communities and PFAS manufacturing sources. What’s in those whales could reflect what’s in nearby people.

Another theory is that short-chain PFAS may actually travel farther and more easily than their predecessors — transported through the atmosphere in rain and snowfall, spreading globally before anyone can track them. For example, short-chain PFAS from the GenX platform, used as replacements for PFOA produced by Chemours (the US spin-off from DuPont, the original inventor of—and current manufacturer—Teflon®), was detected in the Arctic Ocean in 2020. These short-chain PFAS had already spread to the most remote corners of the planet.

Either way, we’re being exposed. Studies of human tissue increasingly show a high proportion of unidentifiable organofluorine chemicals — compounds so new that scientists don’t yet have the tools to name them.

Breaking Down the Science: What Short-Chain PFAS Actually Do in Your Body

The chemical industry’s case for short-chain PFAS rests on data derived from what are called ADME studies — that reveal how a substance is Absorbed, Distributed, Metabolized, and Excreted. On paper, short-chain compounds look less dangerous: they clear the body faster than long-chain PFAS. But when you look closer, the picture becomes far more complicated toxicologically.

They Get In More Easily Than You’d Think

Short-chain PFAS don’t just enter your body through drinking water or food. They’re absorbed through skin contact at surprisingly high rates. With some short-chain PFAS compounds, around half of what touches your skin can enter your bloodstream.

By contrast, older long-chain PFAS are actually less likely to pass through the skin — they tend to sit in skin tissue instead. Shorter chains slide through more readily. If you’re touching PFAS-treated fabrics, non-stick cookware, stain-resistant carpets, or cosmetics (and you almost certainly are), short-chain PFAS have an easier path into your body than their predecessors did.

They Reach Where It Matters Most: Your Blood, Liver, and Unborn Children

Once absorbed, short-chain PFAS distribute rapidly through the body, concentrating in the blood, liver, skin, and kidneys. One key compound, perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), shows a strong preference for whole blood — meaning it travels efficiently throughout the circulatory system. PFHxA has also been shown to cross the placenta at a rate that is six times higher than that of the long-chain PFDA. This means a pregnant person’s exposure to short-chain PFAS translates into significant fetal exposure — at the most vulnerable stage of human development.

“Fast Clearance” Hides a Dangerous Secret

The industry has long pointed to shorter half-lives as evidence of safety. PFHxA, for example, clears from rodents in about 2–3 hours. In humans, estimates range from 14 to 49 days — far shorter than PFOA’s average of 3.5 years or PFHxS’s 5 to 9 years.

But here’s what that talking point leaves out: it’s not just about the parent compound.

Many short-chain PFAS — particularly fluorotelomers like 6:2 FTOH, used extensively in food packaging — are precursors. Your body metabolizes them into breakdown products, and those breakdown products may behave very differently than the parent compound. One metabolite, called the 5:3 acid, is highly biopersistent. In animal studies, it takes approximately one year to reach a steady state in plasma and liver tissue: hardly “fast clearance.”

Studies published in peer-reviewed journals found that 6:2 FTOH — one of the most widely used short-chain PFAS, found in most plastic coatings on food wrappers — accumulates in the fat, liver, and plasma of rats and persists for over a year. This research also found that chemical industry safety assessments were based on just one metabolite (PFHxA) while ignoring other, more toxic breakdown products.

The result: human health risk from 6:2 FTOH—and shorter chain PFAS more generally—has been significantly underestimated.

Researchers studying PFAS face a “chemical Whac-A-Mole”: by the time scientists understand one compound well enough to regulate it, companies have already moved on to the next formulation. Patent applications are already being filed for PFAS chemistries that scientists say are “nothing like we have seen before” — compounds that could begin entering our environment in the next five to ten years.

There could be millions of possible PFAS formulations. Regulating them one chemical at a time is not a safety strategy. It is a gamble with our health and our lives.

Ban PFAS as a Class

ANH-USA has long called for a comprehensive ban on PFAS chemicals and the development of genuinely safer alternatives. The short-chain PFAS story illustrates exactly why a chemical-by-chemical regulatory approach fails the public.

We’ve documented the backsliding under the current Administration on what few PFAS safety standards have been set. But we must start moving beyond drinking water limits on a handful of named compounds.

It’s time to stop playing chemical Whac-A-Mole. Ban PFAS as a class, and build something genuinely better.

Action Alert!

The post The “Safer” Forever Chemicals That Aren’t: What the Science on Short-Chain PFAS Really Tells Us first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Strong evidence of the impact of fluoridated drinking water on cognitive development was a major reason for HHS’s altered stance on fluoride. A widely cited new fluoridation study—relying on old data—claims there are no risks to brain development; but its flawed design and failure to address available evidence make its value limited.

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THE TOPLINE

• The study concludes fluoridated water doesn’t affect IQ, but relies on indirect, county-level estimates of exposure rather than measuring actual fluoride levels in individuals.
• Key methodological issues—including grouping different types of fluoride exposure, poorly timed variables, and use of a decades-old cohort—undermine its relevance and reliability.
• The findings conflict with more recent and comprehensive research using stronger data, raising concerns that the study may reflect policy advocacy more than rigorous science.

A newly published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is already being touted as definitive proof that water fluoridation poses no risk to brain development. The paper represents an effort to counter a ‘gold standard’ systematic review and meta-analysis published last year in one of the most influential journals, JAMA Pediatrics, which evaluated 74 cross-sectional and prospective cohort studies and found significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores. This study, along with others showing how fluoride in drinking water disturbs the gut microbiota impacting children’s immunity, were key to the change in stance on fluoride of HHS under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership. 

In his Substack article, James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, reveals a catalogue of problems with the supposed debunking of the JAMA Pediatrics study that is being used for all it’s worth by the pro-fluoride, anti-Kennedy brigade. Beneath the headline-grabbing conclusion lies a study design that raises more questions than it answers and may ultimately obscure, rather than clarify, the real science on fluoride and cognition.

What the Study Claims

The study, drawing on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, concludes that exposure to community water fluoridation (CWF) is not associated with lower IQ in adolescence or reduced cognitive function later in life.

At first glance, that sounds reassuring. But the reliability of any scientific conclusion depends entirely on how the study was conducted. And that’s where the problems begin.

The authors present their work as a replication of earlier findings. But it’s not independent replication—the gold standard for building scientific consensus. Instead, it’s the same lead researcher, working with essentially the same dataset, confirming a prior result.

The Core Problem: Exposure Was Never Measured

Perhaps the most significant issue is this: the study never directly measures fluoride exposure in any individual.

There are no urine or blood fluoride levels, no measurements from participants’ drinking water, no clinical indicators like dental fluorosis. Instead, exposure is inferred from county-level records—essentially guessing who was exposed based on where they lived and when fluoridation began.

This kind of shortcut introduces what researchers call the ecological fallacy: assuming that group-level data accurately reflects individual experience.

A Critical Category Error

The study also treats all fluoride exposure as equivalent—but it isn’t.

Participants categorized as “exposed from birth” often lived in areas with naturally occurring fluoride in well water, not water treated with fluoridation chemicals used in modern systems.

These are chemically distinct substances with potentially different biological effects. Combining them into a single “exposure” category undermines the validity of the comparison from the start.

Timing Matters—and It’s Off

Another major flaw: the study measures “confounding variables” after years of supposed fluoride exposure have already occurred.

But if you’re trying to isolate cause and effect, your baseline measurements need to come before the exposure—not in the middle of it. Otherwise, you risk adjusting away the very effects you’re trying to detect.

A Study from a Different Era

There’s also a fundamental mismatch between the study population (high school graduates from 1957) and today’s reality.

Participants were born in the early 1940s—before widespread fluoridation standards, fluoride toothpaste, and modern dietary fluoride exposure.

Today’s children are exposed to fluoride from multiple sources simultaneously, creating a total exposure profile that simply didn’t exist in mid-20th century Wisconsin.

Using this cohort to answer today’s policy questions is like using 1950s air pollution data to evaluate modern emissions standards. It doesn’t work.

What About the Broader Evidence?

This study stands in contrast to more recent analyses, including:

• A 2024 review by the National Toxicology Program, which found moderate evidence linking fluoride exposure to lower IQ in children
• A 2025 meta-analysis in JAMA Pediatrics reporting similar concerns

These analyses rely more heavily on individual-level exposure data—the kind missing from the PNAS paper.

Policy Framing Raises Concerns

The study explicitly positions itself as a response to recent policy decisions to roll back fluoridation in some states.

That doesn’t automatically invalidate the research—but it does raise an important question: Was the study designed to investigate a question—or to defend a position?

The rapid publication timeline and methodological problems—each tending toward a null result—suggest the latter.

Why This Matters

Public health decisions affect millions of people—especially children. They should be grounded in the best possible science, not studies with built-in blind spots.

Let’s not forget: in a 2024 ruling, a federal court determined that fluoride levels in U.S. drinking water present an unreasonable risk to public health. The court found compelling evidence from human studies, including a review of over 70 epidemiological studies, which confirm that even lower levels of fluoride can have detrimental effects on children’s cognitive development.

One flawed study to the contrary doesn’t change this.

Science isn’t a fixed set of conclusions—it’s a process. The strength of the scientific method lies in its willingness to be challenged: to revisit assumptions, refine methods, and update conclusions when new data emerge. That means questioning isn’t a threat to science—it’s the engine that drives it forward.

On complex public health questions like fluoride exposure, where evidence is developing and stakes are high, that principle matters even more. Conflicting findings shouldn’t be dismissed or spun into certainty; they should prompt better research, more precise measurement, and a deeper look at what we may be missing.

If science is doing its job, the conversation doesn’t end with a single study—or even a consensus moment. It continues, evolves, and corrects itself over time. And public policy should remain open to that same process: grounded in evidence, but always ready to adapt as our understanding grows.

Please share this article widely in your networks.

The post Flawed Fluoridation Study Fails to Debunk Kennedy IQ Reduction Claim first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Big Food has been trying to weather increasing evidence that UPFs cause harm. We think we’re beyond the tipping point – UPFs are slowly killing those who depend on them for sustenance – it’s a Big Tobacco moment for Big Food.

By Rob Verkerk PhD, founder, executive & scientific director

If you’re reading this, chances are you already try to avoid ultra-processed foods (UPFs), recognizing UPFs contain ingredients you wouldn’t want in your own kitchen.

But many of your friends, family, and wider networks may not be in the same place—and crucially, may still believe that the science is “uncertain.” That’s because Big Food has spent many years trying to defend its position to use these ingredients and has ploughed vast sums into research and marketing, a chunk of which has been used to justify its position.

But that position is increasingly hard to defend—as we aim to show in this article, using some of the most prominent systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in mainstream, high-impact scientific journals.

Where we are today—something I hope to justify below—is that we’ve arrived at a Big Tobacco moment for Big Food—the same playbook, different story and era. 

When you can no longer hide from the science

A pivotal shift came in 2025 when the highly influential peer-reviewed journal, The Lancet, published an article by Monteiro et al. along with 12 linked articles. In their opener for the series, Professor Carlos A Monteiro, MD and colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, set out three biologically plausible mechanisms by which UPFs may drive harm:

• Disruption of appetite regulation, leading to overconsumption
• Direct biological effects of additives, altered food structures, and production of harmful byproducts
• Systematic displacement of health-promoting, minimally processed, protective foods

What we’re beginning to see now is a converging causal framework for how UPFs represent a classic slow-kill mechanism that underpins most of the chronic disease we see in industrialized societies that steals years and quality from lives, and threatens to overrun health systems.

Engineered to override satiety

Among the most compelling experimental evidence comes from a tightly controlled inpatient trial led by NIH researcher Kevin Hall. Participants consuming an ultra-processed diet ate ~500 kcal/day more and gained weight compared with those on a minimally processed diet—despite meals being matched for calories, sugar, fat, and fiber (Hall et al 2019).

This isn’t about someone’s willpower. It’s about design—foods designed to be addictive that create dependence. Texture, energy density, and hyper-palatability appear to bypass normal satiety signaling—directly supporting Monteiro’s first hypothesis.

The epidemiology is now overwhelming

Among the strongest syntheses of evidence to date comes from a systematic review and meta-analysis of 43 observational studies (including nearly 900,000 subjects) examining UPFs and chronic disease outcomes published by Lane et al 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal, Obesity Reviews.

The findings were striking:

• Higher UPF intake was associated with increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and all-cause mortality
• Associations persisted across populations and study designs

Even allowing for residual confounding, the scale and reproducibility of these findings make dismissal increasingly untenable.

In case anyone is still in any doubt, a very recent meta-analysis and systematic review by Liang et al (2025) published in Systematic Reviews including 18 studies involving over 1 million subjects (and over 173,000 deaths), showed unequivocally that those who consumed the most UPFs had a 15% increase in risk of death from all causes. 

Sorry, Big Food, you can no longer hide from the evidence that it’s UPFs that make-up over half the total energy consumed by populations in the US and UK (here and here), are killing consumers of its products slowly, but surely. More to the point, the risks are dose dependent—so any effort to eat less of it moves your risk profile in the right direction.   

From pre-cradle to old age

The problem is akin to a ticking time bomb. We have yet to see the full age spectrum of industrialized societies exposed to UPFs from pre-conception to death.

What we know for sure is that young people are eating more of the stuff than older folk, and that should be a big wake-up call for individuals, families, and health authorities. The data also show that it’s the middle income groups that consume the most, not the poorest, this likely reflecting the relatively high cost of many UPFs.  

The science is increasingly revealing that harms are not confined to any one life stage—they impact people across the lifespan:

• Children and adolescents: High UPF consumption is linked to increased adiposity, poorer metabolic health, and emerging links to mental health outcomes. Early exposure may also shape lifelong food preferences (Lane et al 2021)
• Older adults: Recent evidence links higher UPF intake with frailty, cognitive decline, and increased mortality risk, suggesting acceleration of biological ageing (Shahatah et al 2025)
  
  But, that’s not all. UPFs have also been tied to reducing fertility, elevated risks during pregnancy and development of fetuses and infants.

Emerging research suggests UPFs may impair hormonal regulation, metabolic signaling, and fertility outcomes, including in males (Paula et al, 2022; Evans et al 2025; Preston et al 2025). While still developing, this aligns with known effects of metabolic dysfunction and inflammation on reproductive biology.

During pregnancy, the risks extend further. Maternal UPF intake has been linked to excess gestational weight gain and altered fetal development trajectories, raising concerns about long-term metabolic programming in offspring (Paula et al, 2022; Morales-Suarez-Varela & Rocha-Velasco 2025). 

As shown in a comprehensive review by Rondinella et al 2025, common UPF components—particularly emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners, and other additives in UPFs—can:

• Disrupt microbiome diversity
• Damage the intestinal barrier
• Promote systemic inflammation

This provides a biologically coherent explanation linking UPFs to chronic disease pathways—from metabolic disorders to neurodegeneration.

This is not just about individual health or the choices, informed or otherwise, of the individual—what parents and young people are eating will likely also influence the health of the next generation.

Coming back to the story of Big Tobacco, we learned that the industry “got away with it” up until it was no longer feasible for its leaders to deny causation. Now, with Big Food and its addictive UPFs, we see a similar progression: the increasing evidence of consistency of effects across the entire life course is really beginning to bolster the case for causality.

UPF manufacture generates killer chemicals

Critics are right: not all processing is harmful. Fermentation, freezing, and cooking can enhance nutrition and safety.

But ultra-processing is different. It involves fractionation and recombination of food components, technological additives designed to mimic real food, and structural changes that alter digestion and absorption.

As Prof. Monteiro and colleagues propose in their second hypothesis, UPF manufacture may often also involve application of extreme heat or other technological processes that induce reactions that in turn yield new by-products. This generates chemicals that were not in the original foodthat are associated with increased inflammation, neurotoxicity, and cancer risk.  

Even when adjusting for overall diet quality, studies continue to find independent associations between UPF intake and adverse health outcomes.

This suggests that UPFs are not merely markers of unhealthy diets—they are likely contributors to harm in their own right.

Time for honesty and accountability—not ‘healthwashing’

The food industry has long argued that “there are no bad foods, only bad diets.” That argument is becoming increasingly hard to sustain. Big Food’s response? “Healthwashing.”

Despite the growing body of negative scientific findings, food manufacturers, like their tobacco counterparts of yesteryear, are becoming increasingly adept at marketing ultra-processed products as part of a healthy lifestyle. Labels such as “high protein”, “low fat”, “gut friendly” or “plant-based” can create a powerful halo effect, even when the product remains highly processed.

Social media has amplified this phenomenon. Influencers, including celebrities and sports personalities, are frequently paid to promote food and drink products, blurring the line between genuine advice and advertising. The result is a digital landscape in which ultra-processed foods are not only normalized but actively positioned as desirable wellness choices.

At a systems level, there is a need to rebuild shorter, more transparent food chains that reconnect producers and consumers. Supporting regenerative agriculture, local food networks, and independent producers can play an important role in shifting the balance away from industrialized food systems. This is where we, as consumers, can play a powerful role in creating change in our food landscape by changing what we buy and where we buy from.

Policy change is equally critical. This includes developing more robust and meaningful ways to classify food, strengthening oversight of health claims—particularly in digital spaces—and investing in independent research that is free from commercial influence.

Time to reclaim real food

The debate around ultra-processed foods is both necessary and timely. But if it is to lead to meaningful change, it must move beyond simplistic narratives and address the deeper forces shaping our food system.

It’s time for people to engage, question and advocate for a more holistic approach—one that values real food, informed choice, and transparency at every level. Because ultimately, improving public health is not just about avoiding certain categories of food, but about rebuilding a system that truly nourishes both people and planet.

We cannot win this one without education. People have to know what they’re putting into their bodies and be cognizant of the ‘healthwashing’ that Big Food uses in its marketing, advertising and labelling.

Next we need to vote with our pockets – the message is a simple one: avoid UPFs most of the time. 

Those wanting to go minimal-UPF or UPF-free need to focus on eating whole foods and ingredients that can be recognized as foods. If you want some help, a great starting point is our book Reset Eating: Reset your health and resilience by turning what and how you eat into powerful medicine and our Food4Health Guide within. Find out more below.

>>> Discover Reset Eating from the ANH team, your science-based guide to healthy, UPF-free eating that supports balanced nutrition—whatever your dietary preferences.

>>> For more information on using unprocessed ingredients for healthy UPF-free eating check out our Food4Health guide. For kids under 6, see our Food4Kids guide.

The post Ultra-Processed Foods Are Killing Us Slowly: Why Big Food Can No Longer Ignore the Science first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.