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.
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.
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.
edit: Oops, I typed that backwards, I meant to say "guilty until proven innocent".
They also say it's crazy to do innocent until proven guilty.
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.
Food manufacturers are a powerful lobbying group and additives make a significant difference to profitability.
People and language are not math.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
Freedom, baby!
Within a few years we'll have that same freedom to consume whatever toxins we desire in post-Brexit Britain too.
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.
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.
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...
Absolutely NOT. Chemicals don't have human rights, obviously. Treating something as untrusted/dangerous unless proven otherwise is safety 101.