Early Life Exposure to Food Contaminants and Social Stress as Risk Factor for Metabolic Disorders Occurrence?—An Overview

Abstract

The global prevalence of obesity has been increasing in recent years and is now the major public health challenge worldwide. While the risks of developing metabolic disorders (MD) including obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) have been historically thought to be essentially driven by increased caloric intake and lack of exercise, this is insufficient to account for the observed changes in disease trends. Based on human epidemiological and pre-clinical experimental studies, this overview questioned the role of non-nutritional components as contributors to the epidemic of MD with a special emphasis on food contaminants and social stress. This overview examines the impact of early life adverse events (ELAE) focusing on exposures to food contaminants or social stress on weight gain and T2D occurrence in the offspring and explores potential mechanisms leading to MD in adulthood. Indeed, summing up data on both ELAE models in parallel allowed us to identify common patterns that appear worthwhile to study in MD etiology. This overview provides some evidence of a link between ELAE-induced intestinal barrier disruption, inflammation, epigenetic modifications, and the occurrence of MD. This overview sums up evidence that MD could have developmental origins and that ELAE are risk factors for MD at adulthood independently of nutritional status.

An analytical overview of the composition and characteristics of China's food safety standards

“…The residual chemical substances are hard to degrade and will circulate through the food chain in the environment and linger in the human body for a long time, thus affecting human health through long-term accumulation. 16 According to statistics from the Food Safety Supervision and Sampling Inspection of the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration of China for the first half of 2023, 70 174 batches of food products failed to meet the relevant national safety standards among the 292 1763 samples inspected. The data obtained from the sampling indicated that the majority of instances were as follows: pesticide residue levels exceeding the established standard constituted 42.98%, microbial contamination made up 14.67%, the use of food additives beyond the prescribed limits represented 13.06%, organic contamination issues accounted for 9.21%, and veterinary drugs exceeding the standard constituted 7%.…”

“…The source of food greatly influences food safety, especially the possible illegal and excessive addition of pesticides, fertilizers and feed additives, heavy metals and industrial pollution in the arable soil, water sources, feeding and breeding processes. The residual chemical substances are hard to degrade and will circulate through the food chain in the environment and linger in the human body for a long time, thus affecting human health through long‐term accumulation 16 . According to statistics from the Food Safety Supervision and Sampling Inspection of the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration of China for the first half of 2023, 70 174 batches of food products failed to meet the relevant national safety standards among the 292 1763 samples inspected.…”