‘Not everything you find with measurements in food is a risk’

Hey, a familiar face! Upon arrival we immediately recognize Tara Eikenaar from her tap videos. Do you get pimples from chocolate? Is Cola Light worse for you than regular coke? Those videos help the Nutrition Center to reach young people who mainly receive their information from influencers. That works pretty well: the coal video has been viewed more than 739,000 times.

But we come for something else. How consumers estimate food risks. And how other experts do that. The Nutrition Center surveyed that with a representative panel of more than a thousand Dutch people and with 69 food experts. The results appear today.

It turns out: ‘normal’ people estimate a lot of risks than experts. In short: consumers see more danger in the effects of environmental pollution, microplastics, pesticides and PFAS on and in their diet than experts. And although the broad public also gets more attention to unhealthy food, nutrition experts (80 percent) see a « very) very large » risk for health than consumers (41 percent).

Petra Verhoef, director of the Nutrition Center for almost two years, has the investigation. Wieke van der Vossen, food safety expert, has also been joined in the office of the information office. It is light and colorful and fruit is everywhere. It even smells like fruit.

Verhoef starts with something positive that she noticed in the report. Consumers now see an unhealthy eating pattern as by far the largest food risk for their health. In the eyes of experts it was already. « But with consumers you see that consciousness is getting bigger, stronger than in 2018 and 2009, when we did similar research. »

It makes the problem of overweight and chronic diseases related to unhealthy food not yet smaller, but consciousness is the start of healthier behavior, the Nutrition Center knows that a healthier, more sustainable and safer diet for all Dutch people as a mission.

For the first time you asked for microplastics and PFAS, microscopically small plastic particles and chemical compounds that can also end up in food.

WVDV: “Last year there was something about it almost every week, and still. We still get a lot of questions about it. That is why we actively went out with it ourselves. We did that after the pfas in hobby chickens eggs after the Risk Assessment (Buro) of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority with research had come. There were high outliers, and that’s why we informed people about this. « 

There have been worries about PFAS for some time. In 2023 had NRC examined eggs on PFAS. It showed that chicken eggs from private individuals in and around Dordrecht often contain Pfas too high. « Eating these eggs is harmful to public health, » said toxicologist Martin van den Berg in the play. The news was the reason for the Buro investigation.

Why did you wait for those reports before you said something about it yourself?

WvdV: « There must be reliable data, on the basis of which we can advise consumers. We follow the scientific literature, we have contacts with researchers. But sometimes science does not know everything and we say that. The same applies to microplastics. We know that they are coming in our body, that they are even found in the brain.

At the same time there were disturbing signals about PFAS eggs. Do you not think: do we have to report something about this?

Wvdv: “If we don’t know how the analysis is done exactly, or the results are varying, then it is difficult to give general advice for the whole of the Netherlands. Then we still want to wait until there is unambiguous evidence. But if there is a dinner question, as we call it, then we often try to put something on the website, so that people are not forced to say in the croats, and then and then and then and then we do not say and then we say and then we say and then we say and then we say and then we say and then we do not say and then we say and then we do not say and then we say and then we say and then we do not say and then we say and then we are not going to say the internet. is known. « 

No more than 3 percent of the experts see pesticides, environmental pollution or microplastics as a « very) very high risk. » While a quarter of consumers make that estimate.

Wvdv: “We have seen that difference in risk perception for years. Those substances have been elusive: you do not see them, they come from outside, you have little influence on it. Consumers often also miss the overview and the knowledge that experts have. They are concerned about their health and that of their child. The chance that you will get sick, but it will not be sick in their eyes. Washing down an onion is much larger.

« There is an important difference between danger and risk. A substance can be dangerous. But it is always about how much you get and how long you are exposed before it is a risk to your health. The entire laws and regulations are based on that. Not everything you find with measurements is a risk. »

And if the substances content is higher than the legal standard …

« Then that does not automatically mean that you will get sick in the long term. If animal testing is derived from which level is a risk, the legal safety standard becomes a hundred times stricter as a precaution. Experts know that system, but consumers hear: PFAS is found, PFAS is a dangerous substance. And then see that as a risk. »

But you don’t know how much poison there is in your eggs or lettuce, and how much you get in together.

Wvdv: “So we don’t get rid of those worries either. The worries are real. What we say is: if you eat varied, many different fruit and vegetables, hygienic acts in the kitchen, you keep food cool – that whole list – then you can eat very safe. It is worrying if people start to avoid whole groups of foods systematically. The health benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids. « 

Is a risk for an individual the same as a risk to public health?

PV: “The risk in a population also applies to every individual on average, but the chance that you Getting sick depends on much more, like your overall health. In addition, the prevention paradox plays, I say as an epidemiologist. If your chance of colon cancer goes from 5 to 4 percent because you eat slightly less processed meat, for example, that is not such a big difference. But at population level, a little less processed meat can prevent many cases of colon cancer. ”

Our food is safer than ever, but people don’t seem less afraid of it. Are we looking at the wrong things?

WVDV: “Some risks have really decreased, such as SalmonellabesFaletting. That was a major problem in the nineties. But because of all the attention – from the vaccination of chickens to explaining that you have to bake your eggs well – the infections have decreased by 80 percent. There have been new risks, such as those pfas and microplastics.”

You did not ask if people see a risk in certain products, such as seed oils or oat milk.

PV: “We asked an open question: are there products that you eat less often? Ultra-processed food was high on the list. A lot of mis- and disinformation is about the products that you call, often completely outside the scientific consensus. Sometimes with good intentions, but also spread by troublemakers with a commercial interest. If there are not a mess, we are not going to make a message. We tell: this is what we know, and you can do this.  »

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