*SAMPLE TEXT TO ROBERT KENNEDY JR., SECRETARY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN AND HEALTH SERVICES*
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Dear Secretary Kennedy,
The Food & Drug Administration never required the fake meat brand Quorn to be safety-tested. It was exempted as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) even though no one had ever eaten the mold it's made from.
On the market in the U.S. since 2001, Quorn is responsible for thousands of reports of nausea, violent vomiting, diarrhea, and life-threatening anaphylactic reactions. At least one death has been linked to the product in the United States.
A study linking depression to fake meat, that was conducted from 2009 and 2012 in the United Kingdom where Quorn has been the top vegetarian meat alternative since 1985, suggests that Quorn is also causing non-acute chronic health conditions, including inflammation and immune activation.
Sec. Kennedy, you have vowed to close the GRAS loophole. Please require that Quorn be pulled from the market unless or until it passes the stringent requirements of the 1958 food additives law.
Quorn & Depression
A recent study examining the health data of 3,342 British vegetarians found that those who ate fake meat had a 42 percent increased risk of depression compared with those who didn’t. The fake-meat cohort also had higher markers for inflammation and immune activation.
Why?
Study author Nophar Geifman couldn’t quite put her finger on it. The biggest difference in the diets of the two groups was that those who ate fake meat also ate more ultra-processed foods overall. That made sense, because a diet high in ultra-processed foods is also linked to depression.
But, she was confounded by the fact that vegetarians who ate fake meat and vegetarians who didn’t ate roughly the same amount of sodium, sugar, and saturated fats, so it wasn’t the high levels of these ingredients in the ultra-processed foods that made the difference.
So, what is it about ultra-processed foods, and fake meat, in particular, that could cause depression?
To answer that question, we have to look at the specific fake meats the people Geifman studied were eating.
The data was collected between 2009 and 2012 in the United Kingdom. The plant-based meat alternatives available at the time included soy- and wheat-gluten-based vegetarian sausages and burgers, but the U.K.’s top-selling fake meat was Quorn, launched by Britain’s Marlow Foods in 1985.
Quorn is a so-called “mycoprotein” excreted by the mold Fusarium venenatum. Venenatum, inauspiciously, is Latin for “filled with venom.”
Unsurprisingly, since it’s made from mold, Quorn triggers mold allergies.
This proved fatal for eleven-year-old Miles Bengco, who had a severe mold allergy. He died of a mold-induced asthma attack that started immediately after eating Quorn for dinner. Quorn also triggered a fatal asthma attack in Elin Wahlgren, 16, who was known to be allergic to nuts. Some people react the first time they eat Quorn, while some react only after building up a sensitivity.
Thousands of adverse reactions to Quorn have been reported. Some people had allergic reactions, like hives and anaphylaxis, while others had gastrointestinal symptoms, including vomiting and diarrhea.
All of the Quorn reactions documented in the scientific literature were acute, coming on within four hours for allergic reactions or eight for gastrointestinal distress.
What about sub-acute reactions? It has yet to be studied, but it is possible that a less severe reaction to mold toxicity could explain both the depression and the inflammation and immune activation that Geifman observed in the vegetarians who ate fake meat.
One out of four people are vulnerable to mold toxicity, and it is known to cause depression.
A 2007 study found that the risk of depression was up to 44 percent higher in people who lived in visibly damp, moldy households than residents of mold-free dwellings.
A later experiment on mice demonstrated how symptoms like pain, fatigue, increased anxiety, depression, and cognitive deficits, could stem from mold exposure. The researchers learned that it was innate-immune activation:
“The innate immune response to mold in the periphery leads to immune activation in the brain, triggering neural cytokine release and loss of newly-formed hippocampal neurons with resulting impairment of hippocampal-dependent learning and memory as well as emotional dysfunction.”
The above data and research applies to the inhalation of mold spores, but there is another route of exposure to mold that produced similar symptoms: A woman whose breast implants were contaminated with mold experienced severe joint pain, depression, and inflammation until she had them removed.
Less information is available on what happens when mold is ingested, but the available research suggests that, whether inhaled or ingested, mold-exposure can cause intestinal infections that can manifest as depression and inflammation as well as abdominal pain and diarrhea.
Quorn claims that its fake meat doesn’t contain mycotoxins that would cause such reactions, but the Quorn mold does produce mycotoxins in the lab and mycotoxins have been found in Quorn products by independent researchers.
One study determined that soy-based meat alternatives are the highest risk food products, when it comes to mycotoxins in plant-based meat alternatives, but another study that actually looked at mycotoxins in the urine and serum of vegans found more evidence of Ochratoxin A (OTA), a mycotoxin specific to Quorn. OTA is carcinogenic, teratogenic, neurotoxic, and nephrotoxic.
There still isn’t enough information to conclusively answer the question of why eating more fake meat can increase the risk of depression, but Quorn’s mold allergies, mold toxicity, and mold toxins should be investigated.
At the very least, Quorn should be pulled from the market unless or until it passes the stringent requirements of the 1958 food additives law.
Thank you.
[Your Name]