Health Claims

There's a simple test using a gel strip that can spot tiny amounts of two banned animal drugs—salbutamol and ractopamine—in pork, right at the farm or market, and you can see the result with your eyes alone.

Quantitative

Even after Peru put warning labels on unhealthy foods, the amount of salt in the most popular snacks and drinks didn’t really change—and most of them weren’t even super salty to begin with.

Descriptive

By the time warning labels were introduced, almost no processed foods or drinks in Peru had harmful trans fats, because the government had already banned them.

Quantitative

After Peru started putting warning labels on unhealthy foods, fewer of the most popular foods ended up with those labels—especially ones saying they’re high in sugar or have bad fats, because companies changed their recipes to avoid the warnings.

Descriptive

After Peru started putting warning labels on super-sweet drinks, companies changed their recipes to use less sugar and more artificial sweeteners, so fewer drinks now need the warning label.

Descriptive

After Peru started putting warning labels on unhealthy foods, the amount of bad fat in popular foods went down a bit, but the sugar content stayed about the same.

Descriptive

After Peru started putting warning labels on sugary drinks, companies changed their recipes to put less sugar and more artificial sweeteners in their drinks, so fewer drinks now had enough sugar to need a warning label.

Descriptive

There’s a bacterial enzyme called microbial transglutaminase that might help gut bacteria grow faster by changing the inside environment of the bacteria and making them use their energy to multiply instead of doing other things.

Mechanistic

Some bacteria make an enzyme that might mess up the sticky, protective slime layer in your gut by confusing the body’s own repair tools, potentially leaving you more vulnerable to irritation or infection.

Mechanistic

In people with celiac disease, a bacterial enzyme and a wheat protein stick together, sneak through the gut lining, and end up where immune cells hang out—this might trick the immune system into attacking the gut.

Mechanistic

Even if you don’t add more gluten to wheat bread, using a special enzyme called microbial transglutaminase can still make people with celiac disease have an immune reaction—like their body thinks it’s under attack.

Mechanistic

A bacterial enzyme used in food processing might glue together the cells lining your gut, making it leakier — and for people with celiac disease, this could make their symptoms worse.

Mechanistic

A bacterial enzyme used in food processing can stick pieces of wheat protein together in a way that tricks the immune system of people with celiac disease into attacking their own intestines—and the more damage they have, the more of these weird antibodies their body makes.

Mechanistic

After Mexico started putting warning labels on unhealthy foods, many companies changed their recipes to make their products healthier—so they wouldn’t have to put the scary labels on them anymore.

Correlational

After Mexico started putting warning labels on unhealthy food packages, companies made bigger and more frequent changes to make their products healthier—much more than they did just after announcing the plan but before the labels were actually on shelves. This suggests the real push came from the rules being enforced, not just from talking about them.

Causal

After Mexico put warning labels on sugary drinks, companies changed their recipes to make the drinks just under the sugar and calorie limits—so they wouldn’t get the scary label—and this happened mostly to drinks that were barely over the limit before.

Causal

After Mexico started putting warning labels on unhealthy snacks and dairy products, people bought fewer of the ones with too much saturated fat—like cheese and chips—because the labels helped them make better choices.

Quantitative

Mexico put warning labels on dairy products that have artificial sweeteners, and as a result, companies started using way fewer of those sweeteners—down by almost a third. Meanwhile, Chile and Peru didn’t warn about sweeteners, and they actually started using more. So, it looks like warning people about artificial sweeteners might push companies to stop putting them in food.

Correlational

After Mexico put warning labels on unhealthy foods, companies started making bread, snacks, and instant meals with less salt—so much less that in some cases, over 60% fewer products were labeled as too salty.

Quantitative

When you wrap beef in a special gas (carbon monoxide), it stays red and fresh-looking for two weeks no matter how old the cow was when it was slaughtered—so the packaging matters more than the cow’s age for keeping the meat looking good.

Causal

When you package ground beef with nitric oxide gas, it leaves behind more nitrite and nitrate chemicals than other gases like carbon monoxide or plain oxygen—and when you cook the meat, even more of these chemicals show up, maybe because the gas breaks apart inside the meat.

Mechanistic

Putting ground beef in a special air-filled wrap with nitric oxide keeps it from going rancid about 30–40% better than regular air packaging, which means it stays fresher longer.

Quantitative

Using carbon monoxide in meat packaging helps keep beef looking red and fresh for two weeks by preserving its natural ability to hold oxygen and stay colorful—unlike regular plastic wrap or high-oxygen packaging, which make the meat turn brown faster, especially if the cow was older.

Causal

When you wrap beef from older cows in regular plastic or air-filled packaging, it turns brown and goes rancid faster than if you use carbon monoxide packaging — and the older the cow, the worse it gets.

Causal