When Additives are Negative

Why your meal should make you squeal.

Why do McDonald’s french fries in London have ten fewer ingredients than those sold in Mississippi? Why do foods with the same brand name and packaging contain completely different ingredients depending on where they’re sold? The answer is that the United States and the European Union have very different rules on what can and cannot exist in manufactured food. 

“In some cases, food-processing companies will reformulate a food product for sale in Europe but continue to sell the product with the additives in the United States,” says Lisa Y. Lefferts, a scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in an interview with the New York Times. Certain additives have been shown to negatively affect consumers. For example, while potassium bromate is an inexpensive additive that increases the quality of bread by making it rise faster and maintain a more appealing shape, it has also been shown to cause cancer. The US permits the use of the additive but, “other countries, including China, Brazil and members of the European Union, have weighed the potential risks and decided to outlaw potassium bromate in food,” says Troy Farah, a journalist for The Guardian. 

Why does the United States still allow the use of potassium bromate when other nations have decided that the risks that come with the substance are simply too high? I’ll tell you why: the FDA won’t take action because the safety of public health isn’t being prioritized–efficient manufacturing is. “The Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban potassium bromate two decades ago due to cancer concerns, but the FDA’s response was that it couldn’t examine the issue due to ‘limited availability of resources and other agency priorities’” says Farah. The issue isn’t just what’s in the food, it is what’s being disclosed. Yellow food dyes like No. 5 and No. 6 in addition to Red No. 40 “can be used in foods sold in Europe, but the products must carry a warning saying the coloring agents ‘may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.’ [However,] no such warning is required in the United States,” according to Roni Rabin in a New York Times article. 

It’s hard to expect consumers to take action against regulations and make informed decisions about what they choose to eat when there is no warning. Not only is this an issue of education, it is also an issue of corporate integrity. A loophole in a decade-old law regarding food additives allows companies to add anything to food that they deem “generally recognized as safe,” according to a 2015 NPR study. "The loophole was originally intended to allow manufacturers of common ingredients like vinegar and table salt — when added to processed foods — to bypass the FDA's lengthy safety-review process. But over time, companies have found that it's far more efficient to take advantage of the exemption to get their products on shelves quickly. Some of these products contain additives that the FDA has found to pose dangers,” says NPR. 

It is no wonder that US food regulation is not up to the standards of other comparable nations when companies can easily work around disclosing possibly dangerous additions to their food. Companies are adding ingredients to their products in order to increase shelf life, taste, and cosmetic factors when the additives themselves are not properly vetted. In order to reach a safer standard for food in the US, we need to tighten our regulations and, at the very least, educate consumers so that they can make informed decisions. 

Diana Davidson