The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with overseeing the safety of the U.S. food supply, setting requirements for nutrition labeling, working with companies on food recalls, and responding to outbreaks of foodborne illness. But when it comes to additives already in our food and the safety of certain ingredients, FDA has taken a hands-off approach, according to a new article in the American Journal of Public Health.
The current FDA process allows the food industry to regulate itself when it comes to thousands of added ingredients—by determining for itself which ingredients should be considered “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS—and deciding on their own whether or not to disclose the ingredients’ use and the underlying safety data to the FDA. As a result, many new substances have been added to our food supply without any government oversight.
“Both the FDA and the public are unaware of how many of these ingredients—which are most commonly found in ultra-processed foods—are in our food supply,” said Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at NYU School of Global Public Health and study’s first author.