Introduction

Many things we create and then use are done with little understanding of the long-term effects and consequences it has. The food we eat is another area that fits this ignorant and foolish methodology humanity has persisted in.

Take something, that has some effect someone somewhere desire for some reason, and just put it into food. Just like someone creates something that someone wants to use, and so it gets used, like pesticides, nuclear power, bad chemicals that poison the environment, and on and on in the name of "progress". What are the effects of using this newly create unnatural thing that didn't exist in nature prior to humans creating it? Who knows... but let's just use it anyways because we get something we want out of it!

This is part of the blind "positivity mask" and focus on benefits we want, while ignoring the negative and harm that can or does arise, whether it's willfully ignored or simply unknown because of ignorance of the consequences of what we are doing.

Titanium oxide or dioxide (TiO2) is a food additive, meaning we added it to our food. It didn't exist in our food before we added it.

titanium(IV) oxide, 19 January 2005, public domain on wikipedia

What's the problem? Who cares, there's nothing wrong with just "adding" things to food when they aren't needed, right? Just add things as long as they don't present "obvious" indicators of ill-health in the short-term. Long-term... meh, we don't have the time or resources to wait, we want to use it now and make money from it, now! Be in the "now", focus on the "present", and don't look into the future consequences of present choices.

Well, there is a real problem with our way of life, as I have been covering in many posts, with titanium oxide being just one more thing we are not doing right while thinking it's just fine to do.

Titanium oxide production was over 9,000,000 metric tons in 2014. What is it used for that we need so much of it?! It's used as a food coloring to make things white. It's used a pigment for paint, sunscreen, toothpaste, candy, gum, pills, cosmetic, you name it... anything white probably has titanium oxide in it. Why do we need food colorings and pigments in our food? By the way, I put "food" in quotes in the title because I don't consider candy, gum or other products to be actual "food".

It's not enough that we ourselves are falsely attached to appearances, so we want some things to "look" a certain way, but the marketers, advertisers and sellers of products play into our infatuation with visual aesthetics and "whiteness". Make bread white, make other food white because that's what we "expect" or "want" it to look like.

As a consumer drawn to appearances, we won't buy things if they don't "look right". So manufacturers play into our affinity for visually pleasing products. This is the major reason why chemicals are used to make food look "perfect" and last longer for us to buy. This is also why much food is discarded or thrown out because it looks "imperfect". This happens to many fruits and veggies in supermarkets.

Titanium oxide is called "the perfect white", "the whitest white". See what I'm getting at? We are stuck in superficial appearances, and make decisions about what is substantively good and right for us, not based on the substance of something, but on it's outward appearance. This focus and attachment on appearances is a spectrum that spans many aspects of our lives. I have talked about appearances (inauthentic) vs. substance (authentic) as a dichotomy to understand in previous posts.

That was just my introduction. Now let's get onto the news of this new study.

Study and Results

New research on titanium oxide was conducted by Binghamton University and the State University of New York, and presented in the latest publication of the journal NanoImpact. This journal only prints 3-4 times each year, with the last one in January.

In this research, small intestine cell cultures were exposed to the equivalent of one meal worth of titanium oxide nanoparticles. There were two types of exposure: 1) acute exposure over four hours, and 2) chronic exposure over five days with the equivalent of three meals of titanium oxide.

Acute exposure in the short term did not have much effect, however chronic exposure affected microvilli which are absorptive projections on the surface of intestinal cells.

Drawing showing the relationship between villi and microvilli of the small intestine., BallenaBlanca, 25 October 2015

Microvilli are important for both our mineral absorption and as the intestinal barrier defense against pathogens. Chronic long-term exposure to titanium dioxide weakens our intestinal defenses, slows our metabolism, and makes it more difficult for some nutrients to be absorbed, specifically iron, zinc and fatty acids. Additionally, this promoted an increase in inflammatory signals and also negatively affected enzyme function.

Titanium (di)oxide certainly won't kill us in the short-term, but the fact that we use it as a common food additives and we have been eating it for a long time, is something to be concerned about. Small negative effects over a long period of time can add up to produce a big problem!

One of the authors of the paper, Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Gretchen Mahler, said:

"There has been previous work on how titanium oxide nanoparticles affects microvilli, but we are looking at much lower concentrations. We also extended previous work to show that these nanoparticles alter intestinal function."

When I was first reading how this substance (TiO2) reduced or diminished the microvilli projections, the first thing that came to my mind was that it's titanium, a metal. Metal, inside a human body, can potentially scrape things since it's metal. So it just made sense that this is caused by a form of titanium going through the digestive tract. Even though they are a small 30 nanometers across, it seems that having titanium of this size inside of us (no matter that it's this small) is not good for us.

Well, titanium dioxide is also used as a abrasive to create cleaning products. Imagine that! Something that is used as an abrasive, being abrasive to our intestines and "eating" away at our microvilli like a cleaning product would "eat away" at dirt, grime, etc. Who could have logically concluded that this would be a problem for us to eat... I guess no one? Are these people even thinking at all?

Not all titanium oxide additives are nanoparticles. In 2012, Arizona State University tested 89 common food products (like Twinkies and mayonnaise) to find that they all contained titanium dioxide, but only 5% of the products in this study had nanoparticle titanium dioxide.

Mahler gives some advice to reduce the risk of eating these nanoparticles:

"To avoid foods rich in titanium oxide nanoparticles you should avoid processed foods, and especially candy. That is where you see a lot of nanoparticles."

It's almost everywhere. In 2015, Dunkin' Donuts stopped using powdered sugar with titanium dioxide nanoparticles. But don't rely on manufacturers and products sellers to be concerned about your health all on their own. They are trying to sell you something, and they will use whatever means they can to make their products more appealing. It's even used in skimmed milk to make it brighter and more opaque in appearance.

Problems in our society are so pervasive that it can become depressing to uncover and become aware of it all. But that's the price to pay for caring about truth and educating ourselves through the knowledge of what is happening in our reality. The negative must be faced and uncovered. We must persevere in our dedication to understand the harm we are doing to ourselves, other species, and the planet as a whole. That's the only way were going to be able to turn things around and make things better.

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References:

• Food additive found in candy, gum could alter digestive cell structure and function
• Zhongyuan Guo et al, Titanium dioxide nanoparticle ingestion alters nutrient absorption in an in vitro model of the small intestine, NanoImpact (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.impact.2017.01.002

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2017-02-19, 12:05pm