Folks – especially the younger generations – are becoming more and more concerned with certain in-gredients in Ultra-Processed Foods. (UPFs). The US FDA has unveiled its plan to tighten up regulations on substances which are now ‘Generally Recognised As Safe’…
Many of us have only recfently been made aware of the longstanding principle in the food safety world, that some packaged-food ingredients are not approved by the FDA or Canadian authorities. But they’re not prohibited, either. They are, as the industry says, ‘Generally Recognised As Safe’.
Hence, the acronym GRAS.
Many health and wellness advocates and others are now questioning just how safe those ingredients are, given the bad and worsening complexion being worn by UPFs lately.
What it is
According to a recent Food Dive story: “The GRAS framework has existed since 1958, but the FDA intro-duced the self-affirmation pathway in 1997 after the agency said ‘it could no longer devote substant-ial resources’ to determining whether an ingredient is safe.”
“The agency is supposed to respond to companies who provide safety data within 180 days under current rules, though that commonly took more than 72 months before the industry-self-affirmation process was introduced,” Food Dive Editor Sarah Zimmerman adds.
A crusade
US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. (pictured, top of page), is on a crusade – to Make America Healthy Again. He’d like the crusade to be more a popular movement. But it hasn’t caught on widely, yet. One of the issues Americans are divided over is RFK’s recent edict to ease childhood vaccination recommendations. Critics say that move will trigger a dis-ease disaster. Latest figures released by Health officials say formerly ‘beaten’ childhood diseases such as measles are already on the rise.
But one thing everybody seems able to agree on is that certain ‘industrial’ food ingredients – includ-ing texturizers, preservatives and emulsifiers – are at or near the root of the reason that UPFs are so unhealthy.
The new rule
Under the new rules, manufacturers introducing a new ingredient to the food supply will need to notify the FDA, detailing why the company believes the product is safe. UPF makers will also need to submit such information on ingredients already on the market
Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas says the changes will close, “a decades-old information gap.” “Because manufacturers can [currently] self-affirm GRAS status without informing the agency, the FDA continues to lack a complete inventory of substances in the domestic food supply.”
Critics respond…
Allison Cooke, Director of Government Affairs for the International Food Additives Council, said, in a statement, that, “a public notification requirement largely formalizes what responsible ingredient makers already do.”
″[T]rue GRAS reform requires more than mandatory notification,” Melanie Benesh, Vice President for Government Affairs at The Environmental Working Group (EWG), said, in a statement. “It must also include strong, science-based safety standards and thorough, independent FDA review before chemi-cals are allowed in our food.”
My take
I agree with he critics who point out that the new rules for GRAS ingredients are essentially redund-ant, or insufficient.
My own opinion – as fringe a commenter as I may be – is that the RFK DHHS is making much ado about nothing. It’s simply blathering out a load of words and about minimal changes in regulations that will not improve anything at the functional level. Much less increase transparency from the UPF makers on what they’re putting into their products.
As I see it, the FDA is just making it faster for potentially dangerous ingredients to get into the food stream.
~ Maggie J.