JustCare

Tag: GRAS

  • Improving our food would improve our health

    Improving our food would improve our health

    Back in January, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule that would change food labeling in ways that could improve our health. More recently, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., proposed that the FDA reconsider its rule permitting substances Generally Recognized As Safe into our food. Will these changes happen and, if they do, will they improve our health?

    Both the HHS and the FDA say they are committed to helping Americans know exactly what’s in the food they are eating. Eliminating substances “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) from our food supply would be a huge step towards achieving this goal. GRAS tend to be chemicals in our food, about which we know very little, if anything. They might not be safe.

    Eliminating GRAS from our food would also make it easier for the FDA to oversee our food supply. “For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the U.S. food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” said Secretary Kennedy. “Eliminating this loophole will provide transparency to consumers, help get our nation’s food supply back on track by ensuring that ingredients being introduced into foods are safe, and ultimately Make America Healthy Again.”

    But, Kennedy is cutting 20 percent of the FDA’s workforce, reports Christina Jewett for the New York Times. Consequently, 3,500 fewer people are ensuring our food safety and medical device safety, approving new drugs, preventing outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, and much much more. Without strong FDA oversight, there’s much to fear about the safety of our food and health care.

    Moreover, the FDA will face strong pushback from the food industry. Today, the food industry can simply inject substances GRAS into foods without even letting the FDA know. Companies can self-affirm that new ingredients in foods are safe. If RFK Jr. prevails, food companies would have to notify the FDA of their plan to use GRAS substances in their foods and provide the FDA with whatever safety data they had before they could use these substances.

    Meanwhile, prior to President Trump taking office, the FDA issued a proposed rule that would require companies to put nutrition labels on the front of food packages to help Americans better understand the ingredients in their foods. The rule would change nutrition labels so that they reflected whether a product has low, medium or high levels of sodium, and saturated fat, reports Sarah Todd for Stat News.

    If finalized, the nutrition labeling rule might might lead food companies to produce healthier food. The FDA, under the Biden administration, claimed that the rule would help fight chronic disease, including cancer and diabetes. These diseases are associated with diets that are high in saturated fats, salt and added sugars. Four in ten Americans have two or more chronic conditions and six in ten have at least one chronic condition.

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  • Can RFK Jr. limit harmful chemical additives in our food supply?

    Can RFK Jr. limit harmful chemical additives in our food supply?

    Corporations add a multitude of chemicals into our food supply, about which you are likely not aware. What’s worse is that the FDA allows it. RFK Jr., our new Secretary of Health and Human Services, wants to limit these chemical additives in our food reports Sarah Todd and Lizzie Lawrence for StatNews.

    The chemical additives in our food are considered GRAS–generally recognized as safe–even though they have not been adequately tested. The FDA assumes they are save until they are proven otherwise.  So, corporations can include chemical additives in our food without FDA approval.

    The FDA has not looked at the toxicity of literally thousands of chemical additives in our food supply. Researchers are concerned about how they affect us. But, food manufactures continue to put more and more additives into our food. In the 18 years beginning 2001, packaged foods with chemical additives grew about 25 percent, from 49.6 percent to 59.5 percent.

    Kennedy’s conundrum is that the FDA needs money to investigate the harms of artificial food additives. But, President Trump is cutting FDA staff and funding. Already nearly a third of the staff responsible for food safety have been let go.

    Still, while many experts opposed Kennedy’s confirmation to head the US Department of Health and Human Services, they agree with him on the importance of studying chemical additives in food and ensuring food safety.

    Unfortunately, you cannot look at the ingredients on a food label to know whether the food contains harmful chemical additives. Any time you see “artificial flavor” or “natural flavor” on a label, thousands of possible chemical additives are in play in your food.

    It will be hard to regulate the GRAS chemicals in food. The food manufacturers are a powerful group. People have tried to change the rules about chemical additives in food since the Nixon administration. For change to happen, the FDA will need a lot more money and legal power, as well as time.

    Right now, the FDA does not even know which GRAS chemicals are in which foods. The manufacturers do not have to disclose this information, even to the FDA. They consider it a business trade secret. But, the FDA cannot protect us from dangerous chemicals in food without knowing which chemicals are in which foods.

    Not surprisingly, the FDA has not scrutinized virtually any GRAS chemical in our food supply. So, unsuspecting Americans can develop chronic conditions from them over the long-term or can get sick from them in the short term. For example, tara flour poisoned hundreds of Americans when it was introduced into our food supply in 2022; many were hospitalized. The FDA only then declared it to be unsafe.

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  • What does a Trump FDA look like?

    What does a Trump FDA look like?

    There are many reasons to be concerned about food and drug safety today. Even with an FDA committed to ensuring our food and drugs are safe and effective, the FDA allows chemicals in our foods that may not be safe and approves prescription drugs for use that have been pulled from the market because they are later found to be unsafe. So what does a Trump FDA look like?

    If you believe that the FDA provides a critical function in keeping drugs from going to market until they are shown to be safe and effective, you should be concerned about the FDA’s future. President-elect Trump is considering Jim O’Neill to head the agency, and StatNews reports that O’Neill has made clear that he thinks people should be free to test any drugs they’d like at their own risk. Specifically, O’Neill has proposed that the FDA should not have to establish that a drug works to treat a condition before it approves it, only that it is safe.

    While in theory, failing to focus on drug efficacy might sound like a great way to get more drugs to market faster, it risks undercutting our ability to understand the value of particular drugs for particular conditions. Instead of a Consumer Reports-type rating based on scientific evidence, we’ll have customer reviews. But, customer reviews can be manipulated by companies wanting to push a product. And, even when customer reviews are genuine, they may be extremely misleading when it comes to whether a drug works. People’s ability to rate the efficacy of a particular drug is far different from their ability to rate hotels and vacuum cleaners.

    O’Neill is a libertarian and billionaire Peter Thiel’s managing director at Mithril Capital Management. He has neither a medical background nor a science background, as you would expect an FDA chief would have. However, O’Neill did work in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2002, during the George W. Bush administration.

    Scott Gottlieb is another person under consideration for the FDA chief post. Scott Walker enlisted Gottlieb as a senior adviser to his presidential campaign.

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  • New FDA rules let companies decide what food is safe

    New FDA rules let companies decide what food is safe

    The FDA just issued a new rule on foods “generally recognized as safe” or GRAS. And, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the rule does not deliver on protecting people from unsafe chemicals.  It permits companies to decide which chemicals are safe in foods without being accountable for their decisions.

    The Center for Science in the Public Interest argues that decisions about what chemicals are safe in foods “should be transparent and unbiased.”  But, the new rule allows companies to market foods they deem safe without even letting the FDA know; the companies do not even need to list the chemical additives in processed foods as ingredients. The FDA also allows companies to hire their own scientists who are beholden to the companies to determine which foods are safe.

    So, the question remains, how safe is the processed food you eat? Read more from Just Care on food safety here.

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  • How safe is the food you eat?

    How safe is the food you eat?

    How safe is the food you eat? It’s hard to say. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is leaving it to industry to ensure the safety of the chemical additives in our food. So, processed foods and beverages may contain chemical additives that the FDA has not tested. It’s another reason to follow a Mediterranean diet, if you can and to stay away from processed foods to the extent possible.

    How is it that the FDA is not required to test the chemicals in our food? The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires the FDA to create a system of pre-market review of chemicals added to foods and to reassess their safety periodically as new evidence emerges. But, the FDA can and has allowed the food and beverage industries to conduct their own review of the safety of chemicals in food. And, the FDA lets the industries’ experts determine whether the chemicals are generally recognized as safe, “GRAS.”

    Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts is on a campaign to get the FDA to assess the safety of all chemicals in foods and beverages rather than delegate this role to the food and beverage industries. Right now, there are an estimated 1000 chemicals in our food supply that the FDA has not tested for safety, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The FDA does not even know which chemicals are being used, which foods contain them, and the amount of these chemicals in a particular product, because there are no disclosure requirements on industry.

    The food and beverage industry should not be able to self-determine their safety.  And, they should have to disclose these chemical ingredients in their products. Allowing industry to hire the “experts” who decide whether particular ingredients in their foods are safe poses a real conflict of interest.

    But, there appears to be a question about the scope of the FDA’s authority to assess the safety of these chemical ingredients, which is concerning. It’s not clear that the FDA has the authority to ensure the safety of GRAS ingredients, let alone the budget. It’s also not clear whether the FDA could require special labeling of foods with GRAS ingredients.

    Even when the FDA knows about ingredients with safety concerns, the industry can still include these ingredients in their foods. For example, the FDA found sweet lupin caused allergic reactions in people with peanut allergies. But, the company that notified the FDA about its use of sweet lupin pulled its notice to the FDA. An investigation into the use of sweet lupin found 20 foods containing it; their manufacturers were still allowed to deem the ingredient GRAS.

    At the very least, shouldn’t there be a label on all foods with GRAS ingredients letting the public know that the FDA has not approved these ingredients as safe?

    Here’s more from Just Care on good nutrition and food safety: