Food Additives: No Checks And Balances For Their Safeness
Image by Happy Healthy Life
The food additives in the food you eat can easily be toxic to your system, and many are.
There are no checks and balances put in place to make sure food additives are safe for consumption.
I am like many people who trusted that any food provided to the public to buy would be safe, but I learned in just isn’t so. There are many unhealthy food additives in our food. Buyer beware applies to the food industry also.
Things are so bad that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration had to get involved and in November of 2013 announced their plans to eliminate trans-fats from processed foods. Trans-fats are dangerous food additives.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration cited a CDC statistic that the elimination of partially hydrogenated oils “dangerous food additives” could prevent 10,000 to 20,000 coronary events and 3,000 to 7,000 coronary death yearly. You know I think the numbers are higher.
How Unhealthy Food Additives Get Into Our Food
Trans fats and other harmful food additives in food enjoy the GRAS status which means they are generally recognized as being safe.
Guess who gives these additives the GRAS status? The manufacturer of the additive gets to determine if the additive is safe. Are you kidding me?
The approach is referred to as GRAS self-determination. The manufacturer doesn’t have to inform the public or the FDA. Are you kidding me?
A snapshot of the GRAS self-determination is as follows:
An estimated 1000 manufacturer decisions have not been reported to the FDA.
There are an estimated 6204 current additive decisions which allow for more than 10000 substances in the food we eat. More than half of the safety decisions were not made by the FDA or EPA.Manufacturers and a trade association made the remaining decisions without FDA review that the food additives were safe using GRAS.
Of the 451 GRAS notifications voluntarily submitted to the FDA:
- 22% were made by someone directly employed by the company
- 13% were made by a person employed by a firm hand picked by the company
- 64% were made by a panel hand picked by the corporation or the firm the corporation hired
Buyer beware of food additives. Eat more whole foods! A whole food plant based diet also supports your healthy living.
Tags: food additives
