Written By: Elizabeth Pham
The U.S. food system is vast and complicated, but there's not enough guidelines and regulations to keep the system in check. This leads to many problems that impact our health, one of them being the alarming number of foods containing harmful chemicals.
Have you ever seen one of those TikTok videos that talk about all the U.S. food products that are banned in other countries due to their harmful substances and proceed to wonder, “how bad can they really be?” Turns out they can be pretty harmful. Let’s talk about how they were able to access the market in the first place.
The U.S. Food System
The food system is the whole process that food goes through before and after consumption. It includes the input supply, production of crops, livestock, and other agricultural commodities to transportation, processing, retailing, preparation, and disposal. It also includes the health policies that factor in how nutritious, safe, productive and efficient, and environmentally sustainable a food product is. The food system life cycle follows:
Origin of Resource
Agricultural Production
Food Processing, Packaging, and Distribution
Preparation and Consumption
End of Life Disposal
How Does the FDA Approve Foods?
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for regulating food among many other things.
In order to market a new food or additive (which are chemicals), a manufacturer has to first petition to the FDA for its approval. The petitions must have evidence that the substance is safe for the ways in which it will be used. From the scientific evidence, the FDA determines if there is a reasonable certainty of no harm to consumers when an additive is used.
Things that the FDA considers when approving these include:
The composition and properties of the substance
The amount that would typically be consumed
Immediate and long-term health effects
Various safety factors
If an additive is approved, FDA issues regulations that may include the types of foods in which it can be used, the maximum amounts to be used, and how it should be identified on food labels. If new evidence suggests that a product already in use may be unsafe, or if consumption levels have changed enough to require another look, federal authorities may prohibit its use or conduct further studies to determine if the use can still be considered safe.
Foods That Are Banned In Other Countries
In case you haven’t seen the TikTok videos I was talking about earlier, here are a few of the U.S. foods that are banned in other countries:
Farmed Salmon. They’re raised completely on an unnatural diet of grains and are given a bunch of antibiotics, vitamins, drugs, and chemicals not safe for humans. They’re also more likely to get infected. Not only that, they contain 50% less healthful omega-3 fats and less protein than wild salmon.
Processed Foods With Artificial Food Colors and Dyes. Research has linked additives to cancer, birth defects, behavioral changes, and allergy-like hypersensitivity reactions in kids.
Ractopamine-tainted Meat. It’s a drug for livestock found to reduce the overall fat content of the meat. According to research, up to 20% of the drug remains in the meat when they’re bought from the market and since 1998, more than 1,700 people have been poisoned from eating pigs that were fed the drug. The drug is linked to reducing reproductive function and causing hyperactivity and chromosomal abnormalities.
Bread With Potassium Bromate. Commercial baking companies claim that the chemical makes the dough more elastic, making it easier to stand up to bread hooks. However, the chemical has been linked to kidney and nervous system damage, thyroid problems, and cancer.
Flame Retardant In Drinks. Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), which is originally patented as a flame retardant by chemical companies, is found in citrus-flavored sodas and sports drinks. It has been shown to bioaccumulate in human tissue and breast milk. The chemical has been linked to major organ damage, birth defects, growth problems, and hearing loss.
What Further Regulations Do We Need To Enforce?
There are more than 10,000 food additives today, yet their long-term, chronic effects have been severely understudied and their health risks have been inadequately assessed.
The FDA has yet to research into the effects of chemicals on behavioral changes and the endocrine system. It also lacks guidance on the best practice for evaluating chronic diseases caused by chemicals. As a result, there’s no testing requirements to show the effects of very low or cumulative exposures to chemicals. The FDA needs to stop assuming that chemicals below a certain concentration aren’t hazardous and ensure that susceptible populations aren’t harmed, especially because the health of children and vulnerable populations are at risk.
A major factor behind these issues is the limited funding the FDA has access to, which reduces available resources for updating scientific practices and guidance. Another hindering factor is the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole, which allows companies to make safety determinations for substances without notifying the FDA, making it difficult for the FDA to obtain information about a chemical’s safety and how much of it is being used. Unfortunately, the FDA has interpreted this to mean that food manufacturers can declare any new substance or new use of a substance to be GRAS without telling the agency about the identity of the substance, where it was used, how much of it was used, and if it was safe.
If the FDA plans to integrate new scientific understandings into its consideration of chemical safety, it needs access to adequate and up-to-date information; it needs to be able to incentivize the regulated entities to provide such information without statutory changes; and it needs to be able to conduct systematic safety reviews of priority chemicals that were approved decades ago and never since re-examined.
References:
3. https://www.holisticcenteratbristolsquare.com/wellness-articles/10-banned-foods-americans-should-stop-eating1/
4. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/overview-food-ingredients-additives-colors#how
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