Is Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) safe enough?

What did I eat? Unlike most people exposed to the Frontline investigation of supplements and vitamins, I really didn’t find it shocking that a lot of supplements are dangerous and that the bottles don’t contain what they say they do. I feel sorry for people who take these products and are not helped –and are even harmed– but frankly the customers should know better. The story got me thinking about a related topic: the safety (or lack thereof) of food additives. An NPR story from last year (Why the FDA has never looked at some of the additives in our food) sums it up well: Companies have added thousands of ingredients to foods with little to no government oversight. That’s thanks to a loophole in a decades-old law that allows them to deem an additive to be “generally recognized as safe” — or GRAS — without the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s blessing, or even its knowledge. The loophole was originally intended to allow manufacturers of common ingredients like vinegar and table salt — when added to processed foods — to bypass the FDA’s lengthy safety-review process. But over time, companies have found that it’s far more efficient to take advantage of the exemption to get their products on shelves quickly. Some of these products contain additives that the FDA has found to pose dangers. And even ingredients the agency has agreed are GRAS are now drawing scrutiny from scientists and consumer groups th...
Source: Health Business Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Policy and politics cardiac safety cargill FDA icardiac Source Type: blogs