Health Wanted: Peptides

The Episode

It’s no longer just for bodybuilders and diabetics—it feels like everyone in America is self-injecting for aesthetics or health. 

This week on Health Wanted, the (pep)tide is high, but we’re holding on. We’re gonna be your number one…source for getting up to speed on the science behind the newest injectables craze.

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The Listener Questions

Why are COVID levels so much lower this summer than in previous years?

It might be too soon to say that summer COVID levels are lower. We’ve not yet hit the part of summer where we tend to see the COVID spike, and wastewater counts are increasing. 

However, it is true that this spring and summer have had the lowest COVID activity in five years. It’s probably, in part, because we have a bunch of mixed immunity now from people having infections or reinfections or multiple annual vaccines. It’s also been a while since we’ve had a variant of the virus that has been drastically different from previous strains. So, all our immunity is still working to keep it at bay.

The amount of COVID in wastewater is increasing, so we’ll see how far it goes up as school starts and the hottest part of summer forces more people indoors, but we are starting from a low point, so hopefully the peak won’t be as high as previous seasons. We just have to wait and see.

Are aluminum cans lined with plastic? Should I be worries about microplastics in my sparkling water or soda?

Beneath the recyclable metal shell of canned items, there is a plastic liner that’s designed to keep whatever is inside the can from reacting with the aluminum. Corroding metal is not good or food safe, so liners are definitely needed to maintain the shelf life of canned goods. But the liners themselves have created new food safety issues. 

Originally, a lot of these linings were made from BPA, which is a known endocrine disruptor. So, several years ago there was a big push to remove BPA from can linings. By 2019 95% of the cans produced in the U.S. had transitioned to non-BPA liners. 

But now, we have a new problem to worry about, which is microplastics.

Microplastics are a relatively new area of research, so there is still a lot we don’t know. The lining of canned goods is a potential route of exposure to microplastics, but right now there are only a few studies that have evaluated how much microplastics they expose you to. 

One study looked at microplastic levels in soda. They looked to see if the container a soda is packaged in affected the level of microplastics, as well as what city the soda was produced in. They found that plastic bottles tended to have the same or lower microplastic levels compared to aluminum cans or glass bottles, which seems counterintuitive.

But some potential explanations include the fact that glass and aluminum are more frequently recycled, so they might have a higher exposure risk due to wear and tear. It also might be a factor of the soda production and packaging process that introduces microplastics, and cans and bottles have different packaging and sealing requirements that put them into contact with more plastic parts.

Interestingly enough, this study actually showed that the level of microplastics in canned drinks is linked more closely to where it originated from than the container type. That just goes to show how much we still have to learn about microplastics and their sources. 

Ultimately, plastic is everywhere, which means microplastics are too, so don’t drive yourself crazy trying to avoid them completely. What you can do is limit your exposure. For example, we know that the age of packing materials and the temperature an item is stored at influence the release of microplastics. So, using canned goods within their shelf life and avoiding storing them in high temperatures is one way to limit the presence of microplastics. 

Why are there so many types of food labels in the U.S., and what do they all mean?

With the exception of infant formula, in the U.S. product dating is not required by federal regulations. While manufacturers can add dates to food items, dates on food items aren't an indicator of if something is actually safe to eat or not. And, because there are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions for food date labeling in the U.S., there’s a pretty wide variety of phrases used.

Here are some commonly used phrases and what they mean:

• “Best if used by” indicates the peak freshness of a food item, like when it’s expected to maintain its best flavor or texture.
• “Use by” is the last date for recommended use of the product while at peak quality, but remember this is not a safety date, except for when it’s used on infant formula.
• “Freeze by” indicates when a product should be frozen to maintain peak quality.
• “Sell-by” dates tell retailers how long to display the product for sale for inventory management and stock rotation. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are actually over 50 different types of date labels used in the U.S.

From a food safety standpoint, all of these dates are essentially meaningless, as none of them have a scientific basis to indicate if your food is actually safe to eat or not. 

And, if this all sounds confusing, it is. 

In 2024, the U.S. wasted over 3.5 million tons of food, costing approximately $20 billion, due to date label confusion alone. In one survey, 88% of people said they discard food that is near or past the label date, and in another survey 87% of respondents were not aware that food date labels lack standardization. 

In an attempt to curb the confusion, California just passed a bill that requires food manufactures to use uniform terminology when labeling products with “quality” or "safety" dates and bans the use of consumer-facing “sell-by” dates. Now, manufacturers must use the phrases “best if used by” or “best if used or frozen by” for quality date labels and “use by” or “use by or freeze by” for safety date labels. 

On thing to note is that this bill describes safety dates as an indication of when a food item is no longer safe to eat, but doesn't put in place any requirements or regulations for how that safety date is established. 

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
• Subscribing on Apple or Spotify
• Watching on WABE's YouTube channel