Apeel, and The War on Food

We’ve already established that there is an ongoing war on food. We’ve also established that this war manifests in different respects, relative to certain contexts. For instance, in the US it manifests as governments paying farmers not to produce crops, while figures like Bill Gates are buying up farmlands while not using them for farming. In Europe climate policies and taxes on inherited lands are making it expensive for farmers to conduct business.

In South Africa, selected farmers are told there is an ongoing genocide against them (which is actually not the a racial hate crime it is said to be) but, these farmers begin to flee and reduce the number of farmers producing food. All of these contexts are different, but have one common denominator, which is that they result in a disturbance in food supply. But, of course, the war on food is not exclusive to disruptions in food supply, it is also about damaging ingredients and chemicals in what people eat, which is precisely what we’ll address today.

APEEL: A TOOL IN THE WAR ON FOOD

And now onto our main discussion on the use of Apeel in war on food. So, Apeel is a controversial “edible coating”; it is a film that goes on produce. It is also invisible, odorless, and you can’t wash it off. It is said that its purpose is to extend shelf life of produce, to make the produce look fresh even if it’s been in a warehouse for weeks. There are versions of Apeel that can be applied before or after harvest. It’s on foods in over 65 countries, including organics in the US, and it has been approved by the USDA Organics program. Now, many people doubt Apeel is really safe to consume, especially since the Bill & Melinda Gates partnered company, Apeel Sciences, claims it is. But, here’s more on this.

APEEL CONTAINS HARMFUL CHEMICALS AND METALS

Well, you would think that with USDA approval for the organics programme, that Apeel is a safe and natural product. However it is far from that, especially when you consider two important nuances. The first nuance is that Apeel is extracted from food waste, like seeds, peels, pulps, and stems from plants. Apeel also claims to source a lot of its ingredients from grape skins and seeds leftover from wine processing. And though it may come from natural sources, the end result is a far cry from leftover orange peels because the raw ingredients undergo a transformation using industrial petrochemical extraction. And well, it is not very so-called “green” (even by their standards) to use petrochemical solvents in the extraction process.

Now, Apeel also tested the amounts of these solvents and heavy metals in their submission statement to the FDA. The tests on their product reveals that Apeel contains lead, cadmium, arsenic, palladium, and mercury. The company says that these metals are in small enough amounts to not negatively impact the consumer, thus the USDA’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” classification.

In response to these findings on the presence of heavy metals in Apeel, the company says a consumer would need to ingest 30,000 apples to ingest 1 kg of Apeel. However, most reasonable people do NOT think you’d need to eat 1 kg of Apeel to get a substantial amount of heavy metals. We know heavy metals build up in the body over a lifetime. It’s not a fair comparison to say there are trace amounts of heavy metals in one piece of produce sprayed with Apeel. That may be true, but that person very well may eat thousands of apples in their lifetime, thus exposing them to heavy metals daily.

THERE ARE DANGEROUS “LEGAL LIMITS” ALLOWING QUANTITIES OF HARMFUL CHEMICALS AND METALS IN FOOD

However, this is not even the only problem in relation to this discussion on heavy metals. The crux of the problem is that the Apeel company feels entitled to make this arguments because they are actually working with what governments have set as legally permissible levels of heavy metals in food. Yes, governments have a careless legally accepted standard of the presence of harmful metals and chemicals in food and water. You’d recall that this issue was also highlighted in light of a discussion we had on heavy metals found in food made for babies.

In particular, over time, experts have discovered concerning amounts of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and arsenic in baby food products. A study conducted by the Healthy Babies, Bright Futures association found that 94% of baby foods and homemade purees made from raw ingredients contained detectable amounts of heavy metals. Lead was found in 90% of baby foods, arsenic in 68%, and cadmium in 65% of baby products. And EVEN MORE CONCERNINGLY, was that in most cases, these levels of heavy metals fall within the legal limits! Now, much like we just highlighted in the case of Apeel, the obvious problem with these limits is that if infants consume contaminated products frequently and in large quantities (which is often a high probability), they may face health issues. And so, what we are seeing is that these legal limits have become a dangerous measure that normalises the presence of harmful substances in food. And this is intentional because the law also serves as a socialisation agent, which is to say that it is used to modify certain behaviours in society, for both good and (at times) bad reasons.

Now, irrespective of legal limits that make certain amounts of heavy-metal contaminated baby foods acceptable to sell, this is a serious health concern for babies especially. For one, heavy metals are not healthy for adults, but they are particularly bad for babies. Infants and toddlers grow rapidly, developing key body systems and laying the foundation for lifelong cardiovascular, immune and brain health. Because they are far smaller than adults, a small dose of any toxin can be harmful. Secondly, babies may also be less efficient at metabolising toxins than adults. Small amounts of lead, for instance, have been found to affect behaviour, IQ and academic achievement.

So, all of this falls under the first nuance to consider in disproving the alleged safety of Apeel, which is the nuance that despite it being extracted from organic products, Appel also undergo a transformation using industrial petrochemical extraction that releases toxins into the product, and secondly, it is found to contain many heavy metals that cumulatively present harms to the health of people who consume Apeel.

APEEL IS ALSO MADE OF PURIFIED MONOGLYCERIDES AND DIGLYCERIDES

This brings us to the second nuance to consider in disproving the alleged safety of Apeel, which is that Apeel is made of purified monoglycerides and diglycerides, which are edible fatty acids commonly found in the often discarded parts of fruits and vegetables. These types of fatty acids may contain trans fats, which are known to cause obesity and metabolic syndrome.

APEEL EXPOSES THE CORRUPTION IN FOOD REGULATORS, ESPECIALLY THE FDA

Well, notable in this discussion on Apeel is the fact that Apeel already has approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (AKA the FDA), which is a regulatory body, and it received approval as “generally recognized as safe” (or GRAS). It will be marketed as a preserving agent (aimed at keeping the outward appearance of freshness of the fruit or vegetable), as a pesticide (aimed at creating a physical barrier for pests) or even as a fungicide (aimed at, for instance, preventing the anthracnose fungus from shriveling up avocados). But, considering what we know it is made of and the fact that companies submit safety studies towards the approval of their products to the FDA, and the concern of the detrimental legal limits on harmful substances, this FDA approval is a concern – in fact, it points to a long-existing problem with corruption in the FDA.

For instance, the US Food and Drug Administration knew about the shortfalls of Pfizer’s clinical trial as well as the harms caused by the company’s mRNA COVID vaccine product, thus highlighting the FDA’s abject failure to fulfil its mission to “[protect] the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices.” However, this failure on the part of the FDA was also not news. You’d recall that we have discussed a number of times here, on ‘The War Room’, that the FDA is objectively corrupt. In reference to the opioid crisis, for example, it became apparent that the opioid industry provided much of FDA’s income through the fees it paid for drug approvals; and this relationship between the opioid industry and the FDA was closer than many thought healthy – including some of the people working for the FDA itself, who stated that it was in the pocket of big pharma.

Interestingly, and in relation to food, the FDA is also culpable in former US president Barack Obama signing HR 933 into law, which protects companies like Monsanto from having to label their GMO food. How the FDA is implicated is that while Obama vowed to make companies disclose when their foods are genetically modified, while running for president in 2007, in 2013, Obama then placed former Monsanto vice president, Michael Taylor as head of the FDA, and then proceeded to sign HR 933 into law. Here’s a recapitulation of that law.

THIS DISCUSSION ON APEEL MATTERS IN LIGHT OF THE SURGE IN CANCER

This discussion on Apeel matters also in light of what we recently addressed relating to cancer. We discussed that not only is cancer man-made, but it is also big business, a multi-billion dollar industry. It involves making people ill with cancer, to be poisoned with chemotherapy, and large amounts of money spent on continuous research for a cure that apparently does not exist (which is a lie). We also addressed that the biggest proof of this intentional weaponisation and commercialisation of cancer is that, simply put, cancer did NOT really exist more than 50 years ago but started booming with the introduction of processed food loaded with massive amounts of sugar and chemicals.

Moreover, we also addressed that food is a big discussion point when it comes to cancer, especially when looking at the rise in gastro-intestinal (or GI) cancer. So, when we look at colorectal cancer, esophagus cancer, extrahepatic bile duct cancer, gallbladder cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, and even pancreatic cancer – what all of these cancers have in common is that they are all part the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, the impact of substances like Apeel is easy to measure. These are those toxic and harmful substances that contribute to (especially) gastrointestinal cancers.

APEEL IS FOLLOWING THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION’S MODEL ON DETROYING FOOD

Now, Apeel is not without context: rather, it is following a playbook that was written by the Rockefeller Foundation through the so-called Green Revolution, first in Mexico in the 1940s, then in the Philippines and India in the 1960s, as well as in the United States. More specifically, traditional farming practices such as the use of manure as fertiliser for heirloom native crops were then replaced with a model of mechanised chemical farming, using Rockefeller-funded new seed varieties which had been developed to require petrochemical fertilisers and pesticides to produce significantly increased crop yields compared to the traditional crops grown by peasant farmers in these countries.

Notably, the Rockefellers, as oil oligarchs, stood to profit from the petroleum-based fertilisers and pesticides that this new method demanded. The crops grown were almost all cereal crops like rice and unfortunately replaced more nutrient-dense, traditional crops like millet. And there were consequences for this. For example, India experienced an increase in food but a decrease in nutrition: with more empty calories but fewer fruits, vegetables, and animal proteins, micronutrients disappeared from the diet. In addition, illnesses such as anaemia, blindness, fertility problems, low birth weight, and immune impairment increased in the country. Therefore, while the Green Revolution was hailed as the solution to world hunger and poverty, it actually poisoned local water supplies, depleted the soil, and left farmers drowning in debt as they could no longer independently produce the fertiliser and seeds they needed. Therefore, Monsanto’s GMO Roundup-Ready seed model (and now Apeel) follow this playbook established by the Rockefellers.

However, in this dispensation, not only are more people demanding an end to GMOs, not only are more people becoming aware of the dangers and ills of GMOS on their health and the environment, but numerous individuals and heeding to the call to use formal legal recourse options to hold parties like Monsanto accountable. In fact, the state of Oregon in the US recently celebrated that just over a year ago, it reached a historic settlement with Monsanto. And with a new law, it will be investing a portion of the settlement in improving the air, land, and water that was polluted for decades.