Harmful Additives in American Foods: A Closer Look

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The United States Food Drug Administration (FDA) has used the Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) provision, passed under the Food Additives Amendment in 1958. This provision allows many harmful additives to bypass FDA inspection because they are GRAS.

Processed foods became popularized with increased industrialization and a greater demand for food with a long shelf life. However, as the US took a turn towards making popular and accessible meals, it also began adding things such as preservatives and artificial flavoring without realizing the lack of nutrients in highly processed foods.

"Recent research from Northeastern University's Network Science Institute indicates that 73 percent of the United States food supply is ultra-processed," according to foodtank.com. This means that a majority of our food not only goes beyond regular salt, sugar, and fat intake, but also includes chemical ingredients such as MSG (flavor enhancer), and artificial coloring (Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, which have caused many people to have allergic reactions).

More specifically, artificial food dyes are completely unnecessary and have been shown to cause long-term health problems. They are a prime example of how big corporations that produce highly processed foods with many chemical additives are more concerned with selling their product than giving American people good, healthy food.

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"In fact, artificial food dye consumption has increased by 500% in the last 50 years, and children are the biggest consumers…artificial dyes cause serious side effects, such as hyperactivity in children, as well as cancer and allergies," according to healthline.com. There is a clear reason why most of these additives have been banned in Europe.

It doesn't help that unhealthy foods are usually the cheapest because they are the easiest and quickest to produce. “Ultra-processed foods are 52 percent cheaper than less processed alternatives, on average," according to foodtank.com.

The California Food Safety Act was recently passed, banning four harmful additives from food. Hopefully, with more advocation for eliminating food additives and the availability of less processed foods, more people will be able to consume healthy foods.

"The FDA is fundamentally broken when it comes to reviewing the chemicals in the foods we eat every day," Melanie Benesh said in an article for consumerreports.org.