While it's very possible potassium bromate is dangerous, I really hate this type of news story.
There's some evidence that something is unsafe, so CBS found a professor to interview then asked them leading questions to get an explosive headline. Next they asked a random person if they're scared about this. Finally they asked the FDA and seemingly only published part of their reply.
Like I said, potassium bromate may be bad for you. But I don't feel like I've learned anything from this story about it. It only seems like fear mongering.
>It's crazy that we're doing "innocent until proven guilty" with food additives. Should be the other way around
Even this story doesn't say that were doing that.
>(FDA) said all food additives require "pre-market evaluation" and "regulations require evidence that each substance is safe at its intended level of use before it may be added to foods."
You can argue the evaluations aren't strict enough, but saying we're doing "innocent until proven guilty" isn't true.
How do you reach that impression? "Innocent until proven guilty" would mean the additive should be presumed safe, or innocent, until proven unsafe, or guilty.
They also say it's crazy to do innocent until proven guilty.
> the FDA is perfect and changing them in any way, shape or form would destroy THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
Absolutely nobody said anything of the sort, and I'm not sure what your goal is in caricaturing the position of people with somewhat different opinions than you.
that is a quote from wikipedia. i wanted to display what a papertiger the FDA really is. _begging_ an industry to stop using potentially harmful substances? -.- come on...
thats also to show how this is not a case of "not guilty until proven otherwise" the fda wants this to stop but doesnt seem to have any foothold in that attempt...
I believe part of the problem is that it's difficult to draw the line defining what an "additive" is.
Any sort of spices, ferment, baking powder, food coloring (even traditional coloring like beet juice or squid ink) could be considered additive. A lot of these things have been traditionally used for centuries. And otoh just because something has been used traditionally does guarantee its safety.
But guilty until proven innocent is what being suggested here, so you would need to check thousands of different compounds in say coffee and run trials on them all
individually?
The burden of proof would be in the company that wants to sell it. So “you” wouldn’t have to (nor your tax dollars). The company who’s investing resources to bring the product to market would have to. (And it should go without saying that they should also have to fund an impartial third party in order to do that)
If, in this context, we're defining crazy as disturbing and unpalatable, then I struggle to see how "Food manufacturers are a powerful lobbying group and additives make a significant difference to profitability" _isn't_ crazy. The statement is factually accurate, but wow-oh-how messed up is it that by means of lobbying, they have the power to harm consumers to increase profits. (And no, I know this phenomenon is not limited to the food lobby)
But it’s not as if the US just allows everything, I guess there are still some hurdles to clear?
Anyway, for benefits, in the EU Allulose and Monk Fruit (non-nutritive sweeteners) are still not permitted after several years (for monk fruit, not sure about the state of allulose), afaik there is no sign of danger, but they are also not proven safe enough.
Is beet juice magically safer in cured meat just because the nitrate comes from beets instead of from chemistry?
Without additives, your bread is hard and stale 24 hours from now. Are you willing and able to go buy bread every single day?
The base problem is, as with so many bad modern things, monopoly. There is no alternative I can choose. Without external forces, the system will converge to a single, optimized, industrial scale supplier who will converge to lots of additives.
If you don't want that, you have to break monopolies. And you probably have to be very aggressive doing so.
I don't see how a monopoly or not changes this much if the additive makes the product more profitable and people aren't generally aware of its existence or potential harm. Why is manipulating a rube goldberg machine of market economics - that will, by definition, still lead to a significant number of people consuming a harmful substance if it even 'works' at all - better than simply banning additives outright?
> I don't see how a monopoly or not changes this much if the additive makes the product more profitable
If there is robust competition, I can vote with my wallet. At that point, compromising quality for a fraction of a penny isn't worthwhile to a smaller manufacturer.
I would very much like to buy France-level bread every day in the US. I, however, cannot because that tiny producer cannot compete with the monopolies--they can't get volume discounts; they can't automate with industrial processes to the same degree; they have to have retail space; they can't get into supermarkets (which are also monopolies), etc.
The US used to have very nice, local bakeries. They have been all wiped out by consolidation.
The relevant Bill is in The Lords, nobody ever said government is nimble.
Also, we don't have the much-anticipated US trade deal yet and the public appears to slightly prefer safe food to Freedom so the political pressure to rush anything through isn't there.
It's just not that simple. While I don't want to eat bad food, and I'm thankfully rich enough to be able to choose, food additives and technologies have had an insane impact on the cost of food, and have probably bought quality foods to many many more people.
The last 50 years have bought really fast change in the food industry, but it's also reduced the number of starving people by billions in the world. You are definitely going to have collateral damage in that, and some technologies will be harmful over the long run, but you still might save many more years of people's lives by just making the food available.
People seriously underestimate just how much disinflation there's been in food prices when compared to the rest of the market. And that actually means there's more food. For everyone.
> People seriously underestimate just how much disinflation there's been in food prices when compared to the rest of the market. And that actually means there's more food. For everyone.
Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%.
> US supermarket shelves are probably the worst in the world.
By what definition? I went to cuba 3 years ago and supermarket shelves were empty. Is that better?
On a more serious note, I've travelled a lot and $1 menus and such are extremely rare, especially ones with actual vegetables and meat, and this was a big feature of the US only a few years ago (not sure about now with the inflation). $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people.
I don't think "feeding poor people food that gives them diseases and harms their quality of life" is success.
The US could feed people cheaply without using harmful additives. Instead of a $1 McBurger made possible through subsidies, environmental destruction and cancer-causing chemicals we could be eating $1 McChanaMasala or McDal or McLocalSeasonalVegetables.
Billions of people around the world eat rice, beans, legumes, root vegetables with small amounts of locally sourced cheese, meats, fruit, vegetables etc. America's poor eat high fructose corn syrup, highly processed wheat, vegetable oil and the meat from cows and chickens raised on unnatural diets in horribly unhealthy conditions. That's not an improvement.
You don’t get it. If you didn’t have these processed foods burgers would cost $10 and millions even in the us wouldn’t eat them.
You might think that’s a good thing, but most people don’t actually want to subsist on rice and beans, otherwise that’s what McDonald’s would sell.
And I’m not just talking Ajtony the US. The same preservation technologies that allow $1 menus in the us also pulled almost a billion people out of starvation in the last 30 years.
Again, read my original post, I’m not saying this is ideal, and I’m rich enough to choose what to eat. But for many it’s a choice of eating things with bad chemicals or eating nothing. And that’s not because it’s a choice that evil capitalists make. If you can’t mass produce food it doesn’t just become more expensive, there’s less of it, and people starve. You’re basically saying it’s better if people starve than if they get cancer in 50 years.
Edit: see the sister comment: Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%
I completely understand the point you're arguing, I'm trying to articulate the problems inherent in the system and a way forward. Nobody would starve, they'd just switch to healthier foods. This would be a good thing.
America has a crisis of obesity. Our life expectancy is actually going down despite amazing medical advancements. Our food system today incentivizes horrible health outcomes, we should be looking at cheap soda, fries and burgers as akin to cheap cigarettes, cheap vodka and cheap opium have done to populations in the past.
> $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people.
Right, and then you’re effectively pushing the worst quality, most processed, possibly carcinogenic and likely causing obesity/diabetes food on a group of already vulnerable people.
High quality and healthy food should be the least concern to people already struggling to make ends meet. How else do you want to lift them out of poverty otherwise?
Asked if it can be said with certainty that differences in regulations mean people in the U.S. have developed cancers that they would not have developed if they'd been eating exclusively in Europe, Millstone said that was "almost certainly the conclusion that we could reach."
...almost certainly the conclusion that we could reach.
What is being said, actually? It’s really just “No.”, right?
Of course, when given a choice, I'd rather not eat Potassium bromate.
Only a complete mangling of the English language would translate that into No.
What he said was yes, it’s extremely likely that’s the case, but he’s not gonna give an unqualified yes because it’s still a very high percentage. They can’t point to any individual case and say that this person wouldn’t have cancer if he has been eating in Europe.
I agree with the gist of your remark but the question was "can be said with certainty...", which is, indeed very difficult for a scientist to ever do. The "could reach" is also weird right?
The scientist is specifically trying to avoid the trap of a "gotcha question" while answering accurately that the most likely outcome of lots of people consuming a carcinogen is that someone got cancer from it.
it may well be fear mongering, but food additives in general are just not a good thing. it barely matters what they are. barring a few well-studied exceptions, in the first place, we shouldn’t be synthesising chemicals and adding them en masse to food which you otherwise wouldn’t expect to contain them
obviously this is a rule of thumb and quite a generalisation. I’m sure a fair few counter-examples can be given, but is it better to generally follow this rule, or not? I say better
It sounds like you are defining "food additives" as the ones that you consider bad, and then saying they are bad in general.
According to the WHO [1], food additives are
> Substances that are added to food to maintain or improve the safety, freshness, taste, texture, or appearance of food are known as food additives. Some food additives have been in use for centuries for preservation – such as salt (in meats such as bacon or dried fish), sugar (in marmalade), or sulfur dioxide (in wine).
I guess you could limit it to "food additives that are added only to maintain or improve the safety, freshness, taste, texture, or appearance of food are bad", but even then I'd argue that's not true in any real sense. The ability to keep food in a good state for longer is a boon to society as a whole. We just need to be careful about the side effects.
it sounds like you’re reading more into my words than there is to read. additives are ingredients in mass-produced food that wouldn’t be there if you made the same thing at home. it’s as simple as that
But... that's _not_ what they are according to the definitions found in obvious places. Which is fine; it's a vague enough term that having your own definition is reasonable.
That being said, I do disagree with your opinion that "they're all bad" even limited to the definition you gave. Being able to make food last longer is good. And recognizing that, it's a matter of tradeoffs for the additive in question.
I completely agree that there's a place for preservatives in the world. it would be silly to suggest otherwise
my position is a hedged rule of thumb. of course additives are not all bad, but taking this attitude is a simple policy that I trust for my general health, and a low-noise signal to send to food producers and other consumers.
>it's a matter of tradeoffs for the additive in question
this is true. and when the tradeoffs are health vs hunger that's fine, but when they're health vs profit/share price, it becomes an issue. obviously there's a situation where lack of profit motive can lead to hunger, but that's not a situation currently likely to arise in the developed world
Do you one better: what is "natural"? Are beaver dams natural? If so, are human buildings similarly natural? If so, are chemicals made by humans natural? Wasps and bees make a sort of paper, is that natural? How about human paper?
Humans ARE nature. What we build IS nature. Or do you think beavers look at their dams and buildings and go "that shit is unnatural".
sorry for the late reply, but I didn't mention naturality. that would be far too vague. deadly nightshade is natural. bull sharks are natural. ebola is natural. et cetera.
additives is still a bit vague, but at least that generally fits what I'm aiming for. if it wouldn't be in the food if you made it at home, then that's an additive. no need for "natural" to come into it
Well, phenotypic selection is natural in the inevitable, Darwinian sense. Genotypic selection is not because "nature" can't observe genes directly, only their expressions.
There's some evidence that something is unsafe, so CBS found a professor to interview then asked them leading questions to get an explosive headline. Next they asked a random person if they're scared about this. Finally they asked the FDA and seemingly only published part of their reply.
Like I said, potassium bromate may be bad for you. But I don't feel like I've learned anything from this story about it. It only seems like fear mongering.