Jensen Jose, a regulatory consultant at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Oversight Sciences, explained that the GRA exemption passed in 1958 was intended to cover the use of common ingredients. “It’s true, and every time you add salt to your sandwich, you don’t need a new legislation.”
But as the food industry’s appetite for additives grew over the next few decades, the GRAS rules covered the expansion of various ingredients – manufacturers of these additives effectively controlled themselves. “I hope they do their own scientific research,” said Jennifer Pomeranz, a public health attorney and associate professor at the New York University School of Global Public Health. “But legally, no one checked it.” In theory, Pomeranz said: “Companies can add a new ingredient and don’t even list their compounds on the package.”
As a result, other governments have banned many additives considered safe in FDA regulations, according to safety fears. “Compounds are added to food in terms of shelf life, aesthetics and convenience,” said Lindsay Malone, a registered nutritionist and coach at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “Even foods that go into plastic containers are prone to occur.”
Compounds that take health risks are on the shelves of American grocery stores that Americans consume every day. Take butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), a preservative associated with hormone destruction. It is often found in cereals, dry snacks and packaged cake mixes. Meanwhile, a pack of chewing gum, potato chips or processed meat may include butylated hydroxysilicone salts (BHA), a possible carcinogen. Both can be exempted from FDA regulations through GRAS vulnerabilities.
In isolation, compounds such as BHT, BHA and MOAH are not necessarily dangerous. Public health advocates are more concerned about its cumulative effects – diets are common, addictive, harmful compounds throughout their lives. Malone said diets are made up of superprocessed foods (most likely to contain additives) that can affect gut health. Assuming that an interfering microbiome leads to increased intestinal permeability (also known as the “gut gut”), a though unproven disease in which pathogens and toxins are thought to penetrate the bloodstream.
There is some regulatory momentum in the United States against harmful additives. In January, the FDA announced a nationwide ban on Red 3, a petroleum-derived food dye that turned into candy scarlet — a study that studied the 1980s and 1990s showed that it could cause cancer in laboratory rats. In 2024, it also banned brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a stabilizer for artificial flavors that may cause bromotoxicity and was banned in the UK in 1970.
The FDA did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment.
However, the two additives were first announced by California as 2023 – Jose said that the state legislature is more effective in banning compounds than the FDA. “We have California come to propose a bill that passes the bill, signs the law and is banned from using Red 3 until the FDA responds to our 2022 petition. If companies can’t sell something in California or New York, they can also re-engineer their products for the entire country.”
