Saving Recipe Needed to Solve America's Food Safety Issues

Chuck Norris
Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

At this point, it should surprise no one that many of the foods Americans eat nowadays are ultra-processed and spiked with chemical ingredients designed to enhance their flavor, texture, color, shelf life and addictive appeal. They make up what Amy Bentley, a food historian and professor at New York University, calls "the industrial palate." As she recently explained in a New York Times report by Tomas Weber, this is based upon "the set of preferences created by our acclimatization, often starting with baby food, to the tastes and textures of artificial flavors and preservatives."

Continuing to appeal to this palate can lead to the introduction of some "very weird substances," writes Weber. "In 1996, PepsiCo released potato chips fried in an indigestible fat substitute called Olestra that, miraculously, had zero calories. One problem: Olestra impeded the absorption of essential vitamins. Another: It caused fecal incontinence. The substance is now used to paint decks and lubricate power tools."

The fact that the consumption of ultra-processed food products "has increased over the last 25 years," as Weber writes, is enough to cause concern. What is now starting to be addressed is an even larger question — who determines whether these additives are safe?
Updated: Fri Nov 29, 2024

At this point, it should surprise no one that many of the foods Americans eat nowadays are ultra-processed and spiked with chemical ingredients designed to enhance their flavor, texture, color, shelf life and addictive appeal. They make up what Amy Bentley, a food historian and professor at New York University, calls "the industrial palate." As she recently explained in a New York Times report by Tomas Weber, this is based upon "the set of preferences created by our acclimatization, often starting with baby food, to the tastes and textures of artificial flavors and preservatives."

Continuing to appeal to this palate can lead to the introduction of some "very weird substances," writes Weber. "In 1996, PepsiCo released potato chips fried in an indigestible fat substitute called Olestra that, miraculously, had zero calories. One problem: Olestra impeded the absorption of essential vitamins. Another: It caused fecal incontinence. The substance is now used to paint decks and lubricate power tools."

The fact that the consumption of ultra-processed food products "has increased over the last 25 years," as Weber writes, is enough to cause concern. What is now starting to be addressed is an even larger question — who determines whether these additives are safe?

As recently reported by The Washington Post's Anahad O'Connor, "in many cases, it's not the Food and Drug Administration that decides if chemical additives are safe to use in food. Instead, it's the companies that make and sell the products that contain them. Research shows that a regulatory loophole has allowed for America's food to be saturated in largely unapproved additives."

"The average consumer would absolutely assume that new preservatives, ingredients and flavors in food are all checked out by the FDA before they arrive on our supermarket shelves," adds Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and coauthor of a New England Journal of Medicine report on the loophole. "That's what's commonly believed. But it's a false narrative."

The health results of a lack of oversight can sometimes have dire consequences. The Post report points to one incident two years ago "when nearly 400 people got sick after eating a ground beef substitute — called French Leek and Lentil Crumbles — sold by Daily Harvest, the popular food subscription service. More than 130 of the people who got sick were hospitalized with gastrointestinal distress, liver injuries and other symptoms, and at least 39 people had their gallbladders removed." It was determined that the most likely cause of the sickness "was a new ingredient in the crumbles called tara flour — a high-protein flour made from the seeds of a tree grown in South America." According to the Post, "there were no published toxicological studies of tara flour and the FDA had not evaluated its safety."

An FDA spokesperson acknowledged to the Post that, under federal law, food companies do not have to get premarket approval from the agency to use ingredients in their products that meet the criteria of "'generally recognized as safe,' or 'GRAS' for short. ... The spokesperson said that federal law governing food additives doesn't give the FDA the authority to mandate that companies provide the agency with any information about the ingredients they use in their foods that are considered GRAS."

The big problem with this statement is that "the food industry is deciding by itself without any input from the FDA what is safe for us to eat," says Thomas Galligan, the principal scientist for food additives and supplements for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Most consumers would be shocked to know that the FDA has essentially handed the reins over to the food industry."

An analysis published in 2022 by the Environmental Working Group "found that 98.7 percent of the roughly 766 new food chemicals introduced to the food supply since 2000 were not approved by the FDA," the Post reports.

"I went into this thinking that the vetting process for new food ingredients was weak," Cohen says of his New England Journal of Medicine report. "And instead what I've learned is that the vetting is nonexistent."

At the same time, we are now reading about food recalls by major brands such as Boar's Head and McDonald's, as well as several recent high-profile recalls involving organic carrots, slivered onions and liverwurst leading to heightened concerns about U.S. food safety. Reports USA Today's Eduardo Cuevas, "data from the Food and Drug Administration shows no major uptick in food recalls, most of which are voluntarily issued by companies.

"To keep food safe, the U.S. relies on a patchwork system to regulate food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Services handles meat and poultry, while the FDA is responsible for nearly everything else, including recalls. In the event of outbreaks, the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) works with local health departments to investigate outbreaks." Under the current system, "food producers themselves are expected to self-police."

This leaves us to wonder: What is it going to take to get federal public health officials to wake up and give food security and safety the attention it deserves?