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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea TiO2 was banned in food in the EU. It’s an incredibly common (and very white) additive in a lot of products in the US and is categorized GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the US FDA. (The EU ban happened last summer.)

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TiO2 is also allowed in the UK and Canada. Canada just completed a food safety review of TiO2 in 2022. The Court of Justice of the European Union overturned the EU ban in November 2022 based upon flaws in the study the ban was based upon. France has appealed the ruling and until the appeal is settled the ban and labeling requirements will remain in place.

Here's the EU's justification for the ban: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.2903/j...

I have no idea how these things work, but what struck me is the "restrictive" tone in the EU ("We couldn't find an adequate study proving or disproving, therefore we assume it's dangerous until proven otherwise") vs. what I view as a "permissive" view in the US ("We couldn't find an adequate study proving or disproving, therefore we assume it's safe until proven otherwise").

When it comes to things I put in my body, I would personally prefer the EU approach.

I think it's interesting to contemplate "Where is the study showing that beer, wine, or spirits is safe?"

Realistically if alcohol had been discovered today instead of millennia ago it never would be sold without some kind of research or industrial license, at least not the type that humans can consume. A brand new chemical that's lethally toxic, causes acute brain impairment, is highly addictive, and ALSO ignites extremely easily and can be used to start or accelerate fires.

It’s also really interesting to compare the discourse surrounding alcohol, a socially acceptable drug, to the one used to describe other milder but illegal stimulants.

That depends on your standard which is necessarily subjective. By some reasonable standards, a lot of things you consume has not had a formal study proving safety. For example, I'm not aware of studies proving the safety of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. No, history/"common sense" is not a replacement for a controlled/experimental double-blind study.

I'm worried less about the lettuce (which we have little control over) and more about what's sprayed on the lettuce (which we do have control over). It seems like man-made chemicals added to food have a significantly higher probability of harming humans than digging something straight out of the ground and eating it, even if it's GMO.

The ground is actually pretty dirty -- by definition. And since you don't cook lettuce, you risk eating whatever was on the ground (and the hands of the picker, and everybody else along the line).

You usually don't drink water the way we pull it out of the ground, either.

That doesn't automatically make the chemicals safe. But it highlights that there is a tradeoff. The environment is full of things that make you sick.

Remember that GRAS means that the substance has never been tested for safety. It's a grandfather clause -- it's just saying that it's already been used for a long time and nobody noticed any large public health consequences from doing so.

It is not actually saying the substance is safe.

GRAS is about burden of proof. If you want to introduce a novel food ingredient in the US, you need to demonstrate it's safe. GRAS grandfathers in everything, but there is still room for evidence to demonstrate that it is unsafe. This is how Sassafras root was banned in the '60s.

What I don't know is if the evidence for TiO2 chromosomal damage meets the bar for banning it.

Yes, I'm not commenting on the ban itself because I'm neither qualified nor am in possession of the data I'd need to have an informed opinion.

However, in general, I trust the EU's food safety rules a whole lot more than the US's rules.

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