Mac and Cheese Powder Tests Positive for Toxic Phthalates

Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund

Happy U.S. National Mac and Cheese Day, July 14th! No, really, you can’t make this stuff up, and no, I’d never heard of it either.

Joshua A.

A family of toxic chemical additives in plastics called phthalates (the ‘ph’ at the beginning is silent) are synthetic high production industrial chemicals used to make plastics soft and flexible, and are a common component of artificial fragrances, inks, coatings, adhesives, and other consumer and industrial products.  

Phthalates often unintentionally and even unknowingly wind up in high fat and highly processed foods, presumably as a result of FDA-approved uses in equipment and materials used for food handling, processing, and packaging (CHAP report 2014; Zota et al 2016). Unfortunately, this means that all of us end up ingesting phthalate-contaminated foods (see CDC NHANES biomonitoring report, Updated Tables, January 2017, Volume One).

So, the Coalition for Safer Food Processing and Packaging (which includes NRDC) sent a small sample of America’s favorite foods off for laboratory testing, and the results raise some flags:

  • All ten of the powdered cheese samples had phthalates, including DEHP.
  • Cheese powder generally had higher levels of phthalates than cheese slices.
  • Natural cheese (block, shredded string, and cottage) generally had the lowest levels of phthalates among the products tested.

While the study was of a very small sample size of products tested, it’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack – if you manage to find a few, then there are sure to be others. 

Once eaten, phthalates can travel through the bloodstream to critical organs. During pregnancy, the chemicals can easily move from the mother’s circulation across the placenta to expose her developing fetus directly, and wind up in mother’s breast milk.

While we don’t know everything  about the toxicity of many phthalates because they have not been fully tested, what we do know is enough to raise alarm among health scientists, physicians including pediatricians, nurses and others (see Project TENDR Consensus Statement 2017)
Scientists are especially concerned about prenatal exposures to phthalates, which have been linked in human population studies to impaired neurodevelopment in children, increased risk of IQ deficits, learning and memory impairment, and anti-social behavior.  Boys exposed prenatally to phthalates are at risk of genital defects (Lioy et al 2015).

In response to a 2016 legal petition by NRDC and others, along with public pressure from consumer, advocacy, and health groups, in April 2016 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would consider withdrawing its approval of thirty phthalates from food packaging and food handling equipment. Safer replacement chemicals or processes are already available.

Similarly, in 2008 (Congress prohibited the use of DEHP and some other phthalates in toys and child care products. In the European Union DEHP is prohibited from child care products and cosmetics. In 2015 the CPSC proposed prohibitions for some additional phthalates used in toys and other children’s products but has yet to finalize its proposal.

While levels of DEHP and some other phthalates in the bodies of Americans generally have declined, the levels in non-white groups are still much higher than whites, and levels in young children and reproductive-aged teen-agers are almost 2-fold higher than adults (Zota et al 2014). Moreover, levels of some phthalates like DINP are going up (Zota et al 2014). A recent CPSC 2017 staff report raises concern that two phthalates – DEHP and DINP – together at levels currently detected in the bodies of Americans may be high enough to pose a risk of developmental problems from prenatal exposure (see NRDC and Scientist letter).

Unfortunately, neither the FDA action nor CPSC proposal have been finalized, leaving the public at continued risk of unsafe exposures.

What Can You Do?

Go to www.KleanUpKraft.org and sign the petition to the Kraft Heinz Company asking them to identify and eliminate phthalates in all their cheese products.

Tell @KraftRecipes for #NationalMacAndCheeseDay please get toxic chemicals like phthalates out of our foods. @KleanUpKraft.org

Call or email your favorite brands of food products to let them know that you care about your family’s health and you don’t want toxic chemicals in your consumer products.

Help support NRDC’s work to eliminate toxic chemicals and strengthen health-protective regulations, and particularly our 2016 petition to FDA regarding food additive phthalates.

Learn more about how to protect families from toxic chemicals at Safer Chemicals Health Families.

Take Action at Mind the Store

See the NY Times story on this project.

About the Authors

Senior Scientist, Health program

Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-sass/mac-and-cheese-powder-tests-positive-toxic-phthalates

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