Are food additives fueling ADHD symptoms? (Photo by Abramov Michael on Shutterstock)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not tightly regulate food additives, and there is concern that this procedure, or rather lack of procedure, is allowing unsafe ingredients to enter the nation’s food supply. In addition, our food supply is increasingly associated with diet-related diseases, such as toxicities and cancers.
In a recent editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, lawmakers and public health groups alleged that the FDA is too slow to take action that could protect the public from harmful additives. These include brominated vegetable oil and red dye No. 3.
In July, the FDA banned brominated vegetable oil, noting that it could be harmful to the liver and heart and may be linked to neurologic problems. Some time ago, it was banned in the U.K., the European Union, Japan, and India.
The lead author of the editorial, Jennifer Pomeranz, from the New York University School of Public Health, says the nation’s food supply is not safe.
The FDA often uses the designation of “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) to label ingredients that outside experts consider safe. Substances labeled GRAS do not require FDA approval to be used. The designation was intended to simplify the use of common ingredients (e.g., salt, vinegar) and avoid a time and resource-consuming process.
According to Pomeranz, the designation became a way to easily add new substances to food. Examples are natural sweeteners, preservatives, and texture enhancers not analyzed by the FDA. Although food manufacturers can request that the agency review new ingredients, the process is not required. From 1990 to 2010, about a thousand substances were labeled GRAS by their manufacturers and used without notifying the FDA.
The FDA is active in preventing food contamination and issuing recalls, but monitoring food additives and nutritional labeling are small parts of its workload. Increasingly, its staff and budget go toward evaluating drugs for approval.
Pomeranz said she would like to see the FDA get more resources to review ingredients before they are allowed to enter the market. She thinks that is partly an area for Congress, adding that at the “very minimum” the FDA should be able to do some premarket review to determine if an ingredient should be labeled GRAS.
Richard Mattes, a distinguished professor of nutrition science at Purdue University in Indiana, who also consults for the food industry, defends the FDA, saying that the agency does “a thorough job of reviewing food ingredients.” He added that the safety of a food depends on how people choose to consume processed foods with added ingredients designated as GRAS. He claims that with moderating consumption to stay within energy needs, and a diet which does not contain too much of any individual ingredient, that most of the problems associated with food additives would not exist.
A Doctor’s Perspective
Mattes’ position does not seem reasonable to me. It suggests that Americans know the risks of individual ingredients, the amount of each ingredient in each food, or how much of an ingredient is tolerable until adverse effects occur. The food industry does not volunteer that information or make it readily accessible to consumers, and some of that information may not be known.
