RFK Is Right—Food Additive Transparency Can Make America Healthy Again

Originally published by Newsweek

In a decisive move to protect public health, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is phasing out several petroleum-based food dyes from American foods. Kennedy should build on this measure by also closing a longstanding loophole that allows food companies to quietly flood grocery stores with hundreds of unregulated additives.

In 1958, a new provision to the nation's food safety laws required food manufacturers to request approval from the FDA before they include a newly developed additive in their products. However, the same provision created an alternative pathway, allowing manufacturers to insert new additives without FDA oversight if the ingredient is "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) by food scientists. Companies that label an additive as GRAS may inform the FDA of its use in their products, but they have no legal responsibility to do so.

Congress originally intended the GRAS pathway for widely known ingredients such as nutmeg and paprika. But large food manufacturers have exploited this loophole, flooding the market with new industrial additives—without proof they're safe for consumers. A 2011 study estimated that, since 1997, 1,000 additives were inserted into the American diet without FDA review.

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