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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

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.

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It's crazy that we're doing "innocent until proven guilty" with food additives. Should be the other way around.

What's the risk/benefit?

You can see how crazy it is when you compare it with drugs that we eat in doses smaller by orders of magnitude.

It's not crazy. It's economics and politics.

Food manufacturers are a powerful lobbying group and additives make a significant difference to profitability.

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)

they are both right and wrong at the same time and also in the same camp on untested food adjectives

People and language are not math.

> What's the risk/benefit?

Freedom, baby!

Within a few years we'll have that same freedom to consume whatever toxins we desire in post-Brexit Britain too.

I look forward to _not_ having that freedom unsuspectingly foisted on me.

How many more years? Taking their time given all they'd have to do is remove legislation; not develop new ones.

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.

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.

Who cares what the line is? That's just semantics. Every food ingredient should be baseline safe for normal consumption "additive" or not.

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?

And to pile on, many of those thousands of compounds are already known to be toxic and/or carcinogenic at high levels.

This Starbucks is known to the state of California to cause cancer.

To be fair, that specific warning is (probably) due to a different carcinogenic food additive: heat

Unless you are making your coffee out of an chemical soup instead of coffee beans it would be sufficient to run trials on the beans.

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)

So have a carve out in the law for additives in customary continuous use

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.

There was no hurdle other than not killing people in an overt way. It was grandfathered in.

> It's crazy that we're doing "innocent until proven guilty" with food additives. Should be the other way around.

Absolutely NOT. Chemicals don't have human rights, obviously. Treating something as untrusted/dangerous unless proven otherwise is safety 101.

I think you read the opposite meaning of what they wrote.

Sorry, my bad!

>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.

My impression is that "innocent until proven guilty" is what Europe does, and that's what many want the US to switch to.

edit: Oops, I typed that backwards, I meant to say "guilty until proven innocent".

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.

I think you mean "guilty until proven innocent" which the EU calls "principle of precaution"

Europeans don't really trust the FDA to make their best interest. We have our own regulations and we want those to be respected.

How was I implying that the FDA should apply to Europe?

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%.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...

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.

OK, but why should harmful additives be allowed whether the market is monopolized or has competition?

> Without additives, your bread is hard and stale 24 hours from now.

Doesn't that mostly happen when bread is exposed to air?

For example supermarkets here in Australia used to perforate the plastic bags they sold bread in, to make sure people kept buying more bread each day.

That seems to have stopped (a few years ago?), and now bread can last several days without becoming bad.

If you're in a warm + humid climate though, mould can make quick work of bread anyway so "several days" can be just 2-3 in that case.

> Without additives, your bread is hard and stale 24 hours from now. Are you willing and able to go buy bread every single day?

I have a bakery and 3 stores within 5 min walking distance. But I'm in Europe so I don't need to worry about those additives anyway.

Tbh the rule of thumb for bread is you should be suspicious if it doesn't go bad in a few days :)

Two day old (proper) bread isn't bad, it's just become "toasting bread"

Yeah, I love sentences like this:

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?

It's passive voice, not particularly weird.

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 sounds like it's an open question whether or not it is in fact carcinogenic when consumed in the quantities allowed by the FDA.

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

This is tricky, though. Where does it stop? If I really thought about what's natural, I wouldn't expect to find food at all.

Not even fruit?

Humans have modified most fruits to be nearly unrecognizable compared to their original forms!

There's a difference between phenotypic and genotypic modifications.

Neither is "natural"

And a whole lot of fruit is genotypically modified as well through various means!!

Well, phenotypic selection is natural in the inevitable, Darwinian sense. Genotypic selection is not because "nature" can't observe genes directly, only their expressions.

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".

That's my point.

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

In general, would you consider spices to be food additives, too?

(Not being snarky, just genuinely curious as to where to draw the line.)

If it comes from an edible plant or animal source with minimal (eg, mechanical) processing, likely not an additive.

There are exceptions to everything, of course. Celery can be used as a source of nitrates.

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.

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-additi...

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.

Would you trade longer life expectancy for longer shelf life?

I suspect anything that would prompt a "yes" from a food company is an additive the parent would ban.

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

Very true, but with food you want to be overly cautious with these substances, instead of experimenting on real people.

How would you ever demonstrate safety without experimenting on real people?

In a controlled environment

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