Solutions - Introduction
Ultimately, the question is which food additives, processing aids and packaging contribute to sustainability, health and equity? Which ones facilitate consumption of a sustainable diet (see Goal 2, Demand - supply co-ordination, Substitution)? Applying a sustainable diet screen, in addition to existing food safety assessments, means challenging the dominant ethos that the market can determine social benefit (see Introduction to this action area). Because work on a sustainable diet in Canada is at early stages, we do not yet have a specific screen to apply, but some considerations can be elaborated.
An example from apple wax shows how the regulatory decision making process is dominated by current market logic and not able to identify need within a sustainable diet context. A key part of the challenge is separating out legitimate dimensions of safety, freshness, taste, texture, or appearance, often conflated to serve the convenience of industry, from questions of sustainable diet. Admittedly, as the wax story shows, this is not always simple, especially since we are at the early stages of understanding how to do it.
In the current approach, food additives and processing aids are often used because something is removed during cleaning, handling and processing. The removal of certain constituents makes handling and processing less complicated or expensive, or improves shelf life and these removals often must be compensated for later with additives or processing aids.
Waxes are seen to be important for improving freshness, preventing pests, and improving cosmetic appearance. When apples are washed, usually in heated chlorinated water (sometimes under pressure), some of the naturally occurring wax that retains moisture in the apple is lost, and consequently, wax is applied as a replacement to freshly harvested apples (whether for the fresh market or storage). The sheen post-waxing is typically greater than that provided by the natural waxes of the apple, and is now understood by consumers, based on industry propaganda and practice, as an indicator of freshness and quality. In this way, the market determines that waxes are necessary. Consumers, however, are still advised to wash apples post waxing because bacteria can collect on the surface, which calls into question the industry rationale of waxing for safety, at least in the immediate fresh market.
Whether a different washing approach, such as electrolyzed water which holds promise for sanitation without the environmental effects of chlorine, could reduce natural wax loss does not yet appear to be well examined in the literature, but there are indications that some treatments on some varieties can enhance visual characteristics (cf. Nyamende et al., 2021).
Most fruit and vegetable waxes, as natural or food grade products, are not subject to regulatory review, but in the case of some apple waxes, a chemical emulsifier called morpholine is often used to facilitate even application in water solution of wax to apples, and may permit a higher sheen than when absent. Morpholine is subject to safety assessment because a residue can remain on the waxed apple. Morpholine is a health risk when combined with nitrite because the new chemical that results is a genotoxic carcinogen in rodents, but Health Canada has determined that levels of consumption are below risk thresholds so it has been permitted for use in Canada for about 25 years. It was banned in the EU in 2010, for a combination of safety and cultural reasons (Europeans are not necessarily so preoccupied with cosmetic appearance of apples as are Canadians).
So, we are in a situation where a product that has been banned in Europe continues to be used in Canada for purposes that may not be necessary, at least for the immediate fresh market.
An additional element of this situation is the presumption of regulators and the industry that apples are important to consume as long as possible, certainly for reasons of profitability, but also argued for health; thus extending cold storage and the use of waxes to keep apples from drying out and to make apples look good is critical. Within that logic, because morpholine facilitates efficient waxing, then it is necessary. From a sustainability diet perspective, do we need to be eating fresh apples from January to April out of cold storage? Similarly, do we need to import fresh apples from the Southern Hemisphere in April / May, often from Chile and New Zealand? No. The original preservation strategy was to cook, bottle, can and dry apples for later use. We want to be eating processed apples - sauce, fruit leather, jam, etc. - but there is no biological need to eat fresh apples in the depths of winter, particularly because losses in storage may be as significant as nutritional losses from processing. Sadly many cold storage studies focus on cosmetic characteristics rather than nutritional ones, following the same logic that fresh is always superior to processed. This assumption, unfortunately, has been propagated by many nutritionists and most consumers now likely believe it to be true. A key nutritional component of apples are anti-oxidants, such as polyphenols. Their levels are significantly reduced after from 3 weeks to 3 months in cold storage, depending on the cold storage method and the apple variety (Tsao, 2007; Koricanac et al. 2019). Apple phenols appear to be quite stable with heat treatment, so it may well be that apple sauces and jams have higher levels than storage fresh apples within the same varieties ( et al., 2016). The regulatory system does not consider these questions a part of its mandate.
There are comparable kinds of stories for many food additives, processing aids and packaging materials. The solutions proposed here take these phenomena into account.
