FDA: Controlling what goes in food products
By Stacy Gittleman
Prompted in part by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle and its examination of the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meat packing industry, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce and laid a foundation a century ago for the nation’s first consumer protection agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The first food recalls of things like canned mushrooms in the 1970s evolved into policies decades later such as the 2011 Food Modernization Act. The act’s Final Traceability Rule, with which all industries involved in the food supply chain must comply by January 2026, mandates that food suppliers and distributors maintain records that are critical to tracking events that lead to the risk of microbial contamination. The FSMA harnessed the power of technology and microbe traceability to streamline notification practices to minimize foodborne illnesses and diseases.
As scary as they seem, most food recalls, from cucumbers to romaine lettuce, come and go like the latest fad diet. A more long-lasting concern of the American public across the political spectrum is the perception that the FDA is loose and permissive with industry regarding what chemical additives are allowed in our food. Many Americans are wondering why various chemicals are allowed to stay in our food while they are banned overseas by the European Union.
Leon Gorris is a microbiologist from the Netherlands who has spent most of his career in Europe working for the food industry and specializes in microbe contamination. When comparing U.S. and European food safety standards, Gorris said it’s best to start with an understanding of the agencies at play.
Gorris said the European Union’s system begins with the policies set by the European Commission and the Directorate General for Public Health and Food Safety. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the scientific or risk assessment body. This differs from the structure in the United States, as the FDA contains both internal policy-making and research and risk assessment arms.
Gorris said European food safety standards have been molded by the Precautionary Principle. This approach to risk management, set by the European Commission in 2000, takes into account the slightest possibility of harm to public health, and if there is still no scientific agreement on the issue, the policy or action in question should not be carried out. Examples of where the EU has applied the precautionary principle include its chemical regulatory framework and the general regulation of food law.
“In Europe, our understanding of risk is brought about by two different organizations with different responsibilities,” Gorris explained. “Decisions about making science-informed standards and managing risk are conducted by two different organizations with very different responsibilities. But sometimes, it is the scientists in the EFSA who would like to be the policymakers. The same goes with the FDA food scientists who would also like to set policy and be the decision-makers. Because the decision-makers think not only about consumer safety and protection but also weigh factors such as the economy. So, while we do see some differences between Europe and the United States in how additives or microorganism contaminations are managed, both bodies have the same purpose. I am not sure that one system is better than the other, they are just different.”
Since 2001, according to nutritionists at Wayne State University, Americans increased their intake of highly processed foods that contain preservatives and additives at a rate that is 10 percent higher than Europeans. About 15,000 new ultra-processed food products are introduced into the US market each year. WSU nutritionists pointed to a new study in the March 2023 Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics which has determined that 60 percent of foods purchased by Americans contain technical food additives including coloring or flavoring agents, preservatives and sweeteners.
The marketing of these foods to children has drawn the ire of mom watchdog groups and spurned the movement of mothers looking to feed their children only the most natural, chemical-free offerings. They look to Europe, which has seemingly banned more food additives and chemicals than in the United States. Some additives that have not been listed on products have in rare instances caused severe allergic reactions and even death.
In October 2024, the FDA unveiled its Human Foods Program. It is expected to create a streamlined method for processing consumer and whistleblower complaints about foods and dietary supplements.
Within the Human Foods Program, the FDA published a list of three main priorities for fiscal 2025 which include microbiological food safety, food chemical safety and nutrition.
The fiscal year 2025 budget provides a $7.2 billion total program funding level for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This includes an overall increase of 7.4 percent or $495 million over the fiscal year 2023 funding level.
The FDA budget in fiscal year 2025 includes a $15 million increase to strengthen and modernize its capacity within the Human Foods Program. to protect and promote a safe, nutritious U.S. food supply. Yet in statements released to Downtown, the FDA admits the budget allocations fall flat in terms of what it needs to modernize and boost its food chemical safety program.
“FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods prioritized food chemical safety for his program in fiscal year 2024 and put forward a budget increase proposal that included $19 million and 40 new full-time (employee positions) for chemical reassessments,” said an FDA spokesperson. “That did not materialize. The reality is that the new Human Foods Program did not come with an increased budget. We are making progress in standing up our new systematic chemical reassessment process. However, with flat funding, our current resources and staffing will fund only two comprehensive assessments per year, far less than what needs to be done for the FDA to lead the way in food chemical safety. The fiscal year 2025 president’s budget proposes an additional $4.5 million to ensure chemicals in food are safe; it is unknown whether the program will receive these funds.”
The Food Chemical Safety prong of the FDA restructure focuses on the Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) review of chemical additives. Rooted in the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1958, GRAS allowed the food industry to employ commonly used ingredients like salt and vinegar that are common in processing.
Not much has been done to update this process since then.
In 1982, Congress authorized the creation of a commission to make recommendations to the FDA approval petition process of chemical additives to food. Among its recommendations, the commission called for greater use of outside experts from academia and medical research.
According to an article published in the December 2006 issue of Food Safety Magazine, by 1997 the FDA had tentatively concluded that it could no longer devote substantial resources to the GRAS petition process. The agency published a proposed rule outlining a GRAS notification process to replace the resource-intensive GRAS affirmation petition process.
Currently, the food industry uses GRAS as a loophole to get around the FDA’s rigorous approval process for many additives. The FDA has established a voluntary GRAS notification program to help ensure that ingredients added by industry are safe under their intended use and to help the food industry industry meet its responsibility for ensuring the GRAS status of added substances. For the use of a substance to be considered GRAS, all data necessary to establish safety must be publicly available and its safe use must be generally recognized by qualified experts.
Manufacturers who choose not to go through the GRAS voluntary notification program are still responsible for producing safe products that comply with the law.
“We conduct safety evaluations for approximately 150 additive submissions per year,” said the FDA spokesperson “This includes new substances and new uses of existing substances in the food supply. For post-market oversight, the FDA’s goal within our authorities is to focus our post-market resources on chemicals where there’s evidence of risks at real-world exposure levels. This is why it is so important that the FDA has access to more data on real-world exposure levels as well as any new safety information and the authority to more routinely obtain this from manufacturers after products are on the market.”
As part of the modernization of food safety and standards, the FDA in its Human Foods program will focus efforts on updating GRAS.
“We are working to help ensure food chemical safety, which is essential to achieving our goal of access to safe and nutritious foods for all,” said the FDA spokesperson. “The FDA’s new Human Foods Program is now structured to improve our oversight of chemicals in food. We are committed to doing as much as we can with available resources and authorities to fully support our pre-market and post-market public health mandate.”
Lee-Ann Jaykus, a professor of microbiology at North Carolina State University with a special concentration in food microbiology, was a stakeholder in the FDA’s development of the Human Foods Program. The infant formula contamination and shortage crisis of 2022, in part, was the catalyst for this restructure, Jaykus said.
“As a result of the infant formula contamination and ensuing shortage, the FDA met with many stakeholders, including myself,” Jaykus noted. “The mandate was that the foods program at FDA needed to reorganize and separate the foods program from the drugs and devices program, with new divisions and leadership positions created.”
Jaykus said when it comes to food safety, the FDA had centered much of its effort on the microbiology side of things to better monitor outbreaks of salmonella or e.coli. Now, the agency is trying to play catch-up in paying more attention to the chemical additives in our foods. She criticized the GRAS loophole, which she said allowed many food additives to be used without going through a pre-market approval process.
“Some of these (GRAS) substances had been used in food processing for the longest time, and no one got sick from them,” Jaykus said. “Eventually, newer products, additives, and preservatives were developed and added to GRAS. Over the years, the FDA for food additives loosened the regulations of something that looked like pre-market approval. They allowed companies to conduct their own GRAS approval process. What we then saw in food industries is that there were higher concentrations of GRAS ingredients in certain formulations or the introduction of new preservatives or dyes that never went through a pre-approval market process.”
Jaykus said that the FDA has reached a point where it does not completely know what is in some of these foods, what concentrations, and what formulations.
“If these substances were a drug, they would certainly have had to go through the FDA’s rigorous pre-market approval process,” she said. “Unlike the large drug arm of the FDA which all products must go through a pre-market approval process, the food arm of the FDA is a tiny department. There are just not enough employees.”
Jaykus cautioned that it will be a while before the American consumer sees any noticeable changes to the products they buy in the supermarket. It is going to take time for the FDA employees to wrap their arms around the new organizational chart. They are also waiting to see what the new Trump administration will mean in terms of vacancies or hiring freezes. She knows off hand of several key FDA workers who had planned to retire this winter.
Despite the challenges, Jaykus believes the reorganization of the FDA’s Human Foods Program is a positive step. “I think this reorganization of the FDA will improve communications across the different departments that handle food safety. But will the American public see measurable changes due to the reorganization? That is very debatable.”
The European Union’s contrasting approach to food safety policy and chemical additives was born from a gradually unfolding crisis. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of cattle were sickened by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, commonly known as Mad Cow Disease. Though European authorities first assured citizens that the disease could not be contracted by eating tainted meat, the symptoms had a long incubation period. The disease took as long as five years to show up in humans. By the late 90s, people began falling ill, and over 150 individuals died rapidly after contracting the human form of the disease.
In response, Europe implemented a series of sweeping policy reforms, including the General Food Law based on the precautionary principle, allowing regulators to act even when scientific evidence isn’t conclusive – essentially, a better safe than sorry approach. They also established the EFSA in 2002 to rebuild trust through rigorous, science-based food safety assessments. Based in Parma, Italy, the EFSA has a staff of about 600.
These different approaches between the US and EU have significant implications. Americans might be exposed to additives that Europeans are protected from, while Europeans might miss out on safe and helpful food innovations due to stricter rules.
The FDA said there are several differences in approach to food safety between the United States and the EU, although both the FDA and EFSA regulate to ensure the safety of chemicals added to foods, using approaches within each jurisdiction’s legal authorities.
The FDA admits that the EU has a narrower definition of food additives than the US.
“The EU does not include other chemicals regulated in the U.S. as food additives, such as food contact substances that can migrate into the food (for example, from food packaging and processing) as indirect food additives and substances used to make food contact substances,” explained an FDA spokesperson. “These types of chemicals are used in food in the EU but are regulated differently.”
Julie Chapon, co-founder of Yuka, a French mobile app that enables users to instantly access detailed health ratings and ingredient analyses by scanning the barcodes of food and cosmetics products, said that when it comes to additive reviews, EFSA adopts a more meticulous approach than the FDA.
“The agency conducts a comprehensive risk assessment for all food additives on the European market and even schedules re-evaluations to incorporate the latest scientific data,” Chapon said. “In contrast, the FDA does not systematically assess additives before they enter the market and lacks a structured post-market re-evaluation process. Also, EFSA has implemented a detailed and transparent methodology. The agency has developed numerous protocols that are available online to ensure consistency in the evaluation of each additive.”
Chapon said, “EFSA’s methodology is more comprehensive as it doesn’t only consider exposure to additives themselves but also evaluates the risks posed by contaminants that may be present in these additives. And then the EFSA runs multiple exposure scenarios to assess risks for vulnerable populations, particularly young children, and to account for different consumption patterns.”
Wayne State University Associate Professor of Nutrition Diane Cress said deep concern about what chemicals and additives are processed into our food drives conversation and policy on both sides of the Atlantic. However, Europe takes a different approach to risk by deploying the hazard-based Precautionary Principle.
This means that Europe restricts substances based on any potential for harm regardless of real-world exposure, ruling that is better to be safe than sorry. Conversely, the FDA evaluates the actual likelihood of harm under typical exposure levels.
To compare the attitudes towards food safety policy between the United States and Europe, Cress uses the analogy of swimming in the ocean and the potential for the presence of sharks.
“Let’s say there is a shark in the water,” Cress explained. “Swimming in the water is a risk, but the level of that risk is determined by factors that impact whether that shark will attack you or not. Would you choose to never swim in the water because of the potential shark—even if you swim far away from where that shark swims? If the answer is yes, you prefer the EU system of regulation. If the answer is no, you’ll swim but be smart about it, you prefer the US regulation system.”
Neal Fortin is the director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Food Laws and Regulations and an expert on domestic and international food safety law. He said many people blur the meanings of risk assessment versus risk management.
“People often confuse risk management decisions with the science of risk assessment,” explained Fortin. “In the European Union, the EFSA only performs risk assessment. They don’t do any risk management whatsoever. The FDA does both. Congress serves as the ultimate risk management organization for the American people because it sets the laws and regulations that FDA must follow.”
Fortin said at the international level, there is also the World Health Organization which brings in international scientific bodies such as the Joint Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants. When comparing safety standards between the United States and Europe, Fortin said there is a significant amount of similarities and agreement on risk assessment rooted in science.
As an example, Fortin pointed to the Southampton Colors of food additives, named for the 2007 study from Southampton University in the United Kingdom. It called for the ban of the following artificial food coloring additives as well as benzoate (a category of preservatives used in jelly, mayonnaise, carbonated drinks and sauces to prevent molding and extend shelf life) due to their potential link to hyperactivity and attention defecit disorder in children: tartrazine (E102); quinoline yellow (E104); sunset yellow (E110); carmoisine (E122); ponceau 4R (E124); and allura red (E129). These dyes are commonly found in sugary beverages, baked goods, and candies.
The EFSA concluded from the findings that these synthetic colors should be removed from all food product types voluntarily by the UK food industry by 2009. The study prompted the EFSA to adopt new labeling regulations for foods containing any of the food colors. The labels not only contain the name of the dye contained in the food but the words: “May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”
Three of these colors are banned in the US: azorubine/carmosine (E122), quinoline yellow (E104), and ponceau 4R (E124).
Fortin regards the Southampton Colors case as a touchstone for how the EFSA and the FDA differ and diverge in terms of risk assessment and management. From a scientific risk assessment standpoint, the FDA and the EFSA operate identically. Where they diverge is in risk management, and that often gets political and manifested in the presence of over-labeling foods with certain additives.
“I’m always a little bit confounded because I will look at what EFSA said on titanium dioxide or the Southhampton Colors, and then I will look at what FDA said on these same additives. And surprisingly, it is hard to find any differences in these agencies’ points of view. It’s more in the terminology. And this confusion for risk management and risk assessment is a big part of it.”
He continued: “The European Commission came in (in 2010) and decided to put warning labels on foods that contain these colors. That was not the decision of the EFSA but the political body of the EFSA, which did not have any decisions that differed from the FDA. It’s a difference of politicians deciding what risk we’re going to tolerate, and that ebbs and flows.”
Fortin explained that the FDA went through a strong regulatory phase between 1940 and 1980 that was more robust than that of Europe. As the European Union formed in the late 1980s, it increased its regulatory measures surrounding food safety.
“So right now, it may seem that Europe is taking a more precautionary stance when it comes to food dyes because of all the labeling,” Fortin said. “But in reality, the United States is far more precautionary in our laws compared to Europe when it comes to food safety. We have banned three of the Southampton Colors and they allow for all of them through the widespread use of labeling. So, you must ask the question, which entity is truly more precautionary?”
Outside of labeling and banning certain dyes and chemicals, the global supply chain is making it all trickier to safeguard commonly consumed foods.
Take the humble children’s food staple of applesauce.
In 2023, dozens of children in the United States were sickened by cinnamon applesauce sold in convenient squeeze pouches contaminated with lead. The culprit: the red additive lead chromate, which was imported to Ecuador where the applesauce was produced and then sold in the United States to make the applesauce appear redder from cinnamon. Fortin said this was an example of poor oversight on the global food supply chain and a lack of oversight from a sparsely staffed FDA that cannot be present at every global port to assure the safety of food produced overseas for the U.S. market.
He explained that while all importers must register products and facilities with the FDA, what falls through the cracks are the third parties in the global supply chain that provide them with the ingredients. While the foreign food manufacturer is supposed to register all ingredients through the FDA’s Foreign Supplier Verification Program, it is not foolproof.
“Lead chromate has become a historical problem which the FDA needs more testing, especially in our cinnamon supply,” Fortin said. “There’s no other reason for lead chromate to be in there except it was a case of food fraud. There was no smoking gun. It’s very difficult for some agency like FDA to not only go back to Ecuador but then trace the lead-laced cinnamon back to Asia. You’ve got thousands of small food suppliers in China or Southeast Asia working out of some small garage and they may not even have a street address.”
Fortin studied the notion of the need for more whistleblowers in the food supply chain in his August 2024 paper published in Cambridge University Press, Democratizing Food Safety: Why We Need to Look Beyond Government Regulation and Provide a Citizen Right of Action. Fortin said a citizen’s response system – just like it exists in the environmental movement – needs to be created as a mechanism to be a watchdog for food contamination.
“Just as we have citizen watchdog organizations that look out for our rivers, lakes, and other natural resources and bring lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency, we need such a legal mechanism for our food supply. That means providing a way for workers who work in the food industry to be the eyes and ears of the FDA. There are a lot of cases where the FDA has not brought an action against an importer for failing to complete their foreign supplier verification. That’s because the FDA is starved for resources,” he said.
How starved? In a startling factoid, Fortin said the average U.S. taxpayer pays out a mere 83 cents per year to the federal budget for the FDA’s Food Safety Program. And though the FDA is a large institution that oversees the approval of drugs, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment, its food division is small – about 100 people – and has not grown since Fortin began his food safety career in the 1970s.
But with the Human Food Program reshuffle that kicked off in October 2024, Fortin is hopeful.
“Normally, I am not enthused about the reshuffling of government agencies,” quipped Fortin. “But this is a long-thought-out approach. One of the things it will do is it’s bringing more attention to things like these food colors and food additives that haven’t been reviewed for maybe 50 years (through GRAS). In the last 50 years, science and our diet has changed. Things like red dye, the studies have not been looked at for 20 years.”
Two of the most hotly contested chemicals in US foods include Red Dye 3 and Red Dye 40 – found in candies, baked goods and potassium bromate used in the United States as a flour treatment agent.
In December 2024, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones testified about Red Dye 3 and Red Dye 40 to the Senate Health Committee in Congress.
“We have not evaluated Red Dye 40 in over a decade,” said Jones. “At that time, the FDA came to the conclusion it was safe. We have a petition in front of us to revoke the authorization for (Red Dye 3), and we are hopeful that within the next few weeks, we will be acting on that petition. Red Dye 3 presents an interesting example for us. It is known to be cancerous for laboratory rats, but the scientific consensus is that the mechanism of carcinogenicity in rats is not applicable in humans.”
Jones added that due to stipulations under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, any chemical that is shown to be carcinogenic in animals or humans cannot be authorized by the FDA.
“So even though we do not believe there is a risk to humans, because there is a known risk to laboratory animals, it should not be authorized for use,” he said.
The EU and the United States regulate the dyes differently.
Yuka’s Chapon said Red Dye 3 in the EU is only allowed in candied and cocktail cherries.
“The United States since 1990 has banned Red Dye 3 in cosmetics and topical medications because of its link to thyroid cancer,” Chapon said. “But it still is used in candies, ice cream, cakes and biscuits. You cannot put it in your skin but you can eat it, which is totally illogical. This dye is also suspected of disrupting the thyroid and contributing to hyperactivity and behavioral disorders in children. It could also impair testicular function and fertility. In certain forms, it may contain aluminum, which could increase the risk of several diseases due to its accumulation in the body.”
Chapon said that potassium bromate has been classified as a “possible human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer since 1998.
Studies in animals have shown that this compound may cause tumors in various organs, including the kidneys, thyroid, and the peritoneal lining in the abdomen. Additionally, potassium bromate is considered genotoxic, meaning it can damage DNA. Potassium bromate has been banned in food products in the European Union since 1990, Chapon said.
Coincidentally, just a few weeks after Downtown spoke with Jones and Chapon, the FDA in mid-January announced that Red Dye 3 would be banned due to a possible link to cancer in animals. Food manufacturers have until January 15, 2027 to remove it from food products.
California, with its own set of food safety regulations, did not wait for the FDA to ban Red Dye 3 and other additives.
In 1986 the state passed The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Also known as Proposition 65, the law requires businesses to inform consumers if a product contains a substance listed as hazardous (“chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm”) above a certain threshold.
The 2023 California Food Safety Act seeks to ban the use of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, and Red 3 in food products sold in California by 2027.
Setting a precedent, other states such as Illinois, New York, and Washington have crafted similar bills. However, the FDA said laws that ban food additives at the state level are ineffective.
But Yuka’s Chapon said such ripple effects of other states looking to pursue their food additive regulations prompt the food industry to rethink the formulas of their processed foods. State-level regulations can also catalyze broader legislative change, she said.
“Regulations like the ones California has put in place compel companies to stay informed about the health impacts of certain substances and adapt their product formulas in the regions where the rules apply,” Chapon said. “I have observed that the influence of such regulations often extends well beyond the targeted regions. This is because companies typically choose to reformulate their products on a national scale rather than creating state-specific versions.”
Veteran California toxicologist James Coughlin , however, scoffed at the tightening regulation on chemicals such as Red Dye 3. A consultant in food, nutritional, chemical toxicology, safety, and regulatory affairs affiliated with the University of California – Davis, Coughlin said the state’s policies are based more on politics and feared conceptions and not true scientific findings.
Coughlin also discussed why the EFSA in 2021 banned titanium dioxide, a white coloring additive used in confections, gum, baked goods, and dairy products such as yogurt and ice cream to make food appear more white. The chemical is still permitted by the FDA.
Looking through the EU’s lens of its Precautionary Principle, titanium dioxide has the potential to be genotoxic. That means that the chemical could alter a cell’s DNA, which has the potential to cause cancer. However, Coughlin noted that the FDA and the rest of the world have not found evidence to support a cancer risk from titanium dioxide.
“The EU’s Precautionary Principle has taken a better safe than sorry approach. It’s based on hazard, not on risk,” Coughlin explained. “California decided not to ban it back in 2023 when they banned other additives, because the science was just not there. It does not cause cancer in animals or humans. It’s never been shown to do so, so why would you ban it as a carcinogen?”
According to Coughlin, California in 2017 began independent examinations on food additives and dyes hat were used in public school lunches.
Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2024 banned six dyes (Red Dye 40, Yellow Dye 5, Yellow Dye 6, Blue Dye 1, Blue Dye 2, and Green Dye 3).
But Coughlin regards these as over-the-top restrictions based more on fear than science.
“I testified last summer to the California legislature as the bill was going through, a bill with which I disagreed,” Coughlin said. “The science says there has never been any causation showing a link between these dyes and neurotoxicity. But California went ahead with this on an abundance of caution, just like Europe.”
The irony, according to Coughlin, is that on the same day that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the ban, the California Department of Public Health’s food regulators determined that there was no basis to ban these dyes for the general population.
Regarding the specific example of Red Dye 3, Coughlin said that studies showed that it produced only benign tumors only in male rats and only at the highest dose.
“There is no similar mechanism in humans, (these tumors) according to the science cannot happen in humans,” he said.
Still, Coughlin is encouraged by the FDA restructure and projected expedition of the GRAS process, which he considers as well-established and transparent. Involved with GRAS committees and the FDA for decades, he refuted the criticism that GRAS allows companies to add chemicals to food without disclosure.
“The FDA has a website and a database available for the public to view to see the chemicals which are under review,” Coughlin said. “Bottom line, the FDA has not been asleep like California and other states are claiming. Great scientists are doing great work there. We need a strong FDA to reassure the public that our foods are safe. We are encouraged by the start of the Human Foods Program. It makes everything more official, but the work has been going on there for decades.”
The call for reducing chemicals and additives in our food, especially those fed to schoolchildren, is an issue that many feel should be important to policymakers on both sides of the aisle.
In Congress, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in September 2024 introduced the Safe School Meals Act (SSMA).
The bill aims to limit heavy metals, ban certain pesticide residues, and trigger the safety reassessment of food additives, including artificial food dyes. It also looks to ban the use of forever chemicals, phthalates, and bisphenols in school meal food packaging. The bill would increase the funding available for schools to purchase safe school meals.
“Foods sold for school meals contain artificial food dyes that have shown evidence of disrupting the body and being linked to hyperactivity and worse, not to mention the presence of heavy metals and other environmental toxins in our foods, which we know have impacts on children’s very brain development,” Booker said.
Calling it a crisis, Booker, when introducing the bill to the Senate, said that school meals are a key way to fight back and ensure that children are receiving the “safest, most nutritious meals possible.” Senator John Futterman (D-Pa.) is co-sponsoring the bill.
The ambitions of the FDA to ramp up food safety initiatives and regulations may soon come to naught depending on the whims of the new Trump administration. Experts weighed in on the paradox of appointing RFK Jr. to the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touts the merits of healthy eating to prevent and combat chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease, the food scientists interviewed bluntly called out that he is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
“Encouraging the population to adopt healthier eating habits is an excellent initiative to reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases,” Yuka’s Chapon said. “Nutritional labels on the back of processed food products, while informative, often lack clarity and are understandable only to those already educated about nutrition. Providing better nutritional information is not enough. What the United States needs is a comprehensive review and strengthening of its regulations on food safety.”
Yuka recommends that the FDA integrate a systematic procedure for reassessing food additives and GRAS substances into its regulatory framework.
“While there are some specific maximum concentration limits for certain additives in specific product categories in the U.S. such as BHA, BHT and sodium nitrate, these cases are relatively rare. In contrast, the EU assigns a positive list of approved additives for each food category and establishes specific maximum concentrations. For additives considered to pose minimal health risks, some products may have no usage limits,” Chapon said.
Back at Wayne State University, nutritionist professor Cress said she will implore her students to follow the science and not fads. She is more than slightly concerned about the potential of placing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the Health and Human Services Administration, which oversees the FDA. She will teach her students that the FDA is not trying to mislead the public or hide anything from them regarding what is in their food. Additionally, Cress said instead of obsessing about additives or chemicals, the public should be more concerned about getting a balanced diet and using proper hygiene in their kitchens and cooking and refrigeration to avoid getting sick.
“There is no scientific reason to expect adverse health outcomes as a function of the hazard versus risk method assessment of food additives,” Cress said. “Sometimes an additive gets added to the food supply that initially passes muster, and then gets removed. It has happened in the US, it has happened in the EU.”
Cress cautioned that a more hazard-based, European approach may initially seem safer when it comes to chemicals, but one must consider the tradeoffs such as what chemicals will replace removed chemicals. Cress finds it striking that the public becomes upset when the FDA is slow to move drugs to market but at the same time criticizes the agency for what they consider too lax about bringing certain foods to market.
“Drugs have far more potential to harm human health than food additives, which are in our foods in incremental amounts,” Cress said. “There is no perfect answer, but most of the conversation is noise with little to no basis in scientific evidence. There are people who believe the FDA is deliberately trying to mislead the public and do not care about their safety. The guiding principle is that we trust the FDA and other government agencies. They will make mistakes or learn through research that a substance is not as safe as they perceived, they will own it because they have to. My estimation is that it is nearly impossible for the FDA to do the job they have been assigned to simply because they lack the manpower. And that is one reason why they restructured. They are trying to do more with less.”
