California Becomes First US State to Ban Four 'Toxic' Food Additives (msn.com) 200
Nearly 12% of America's population is in California. And the Los Angeles Times is predicting changes to what they eat:
California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday. The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 — potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group.
The legislation was popularly known as the "Skittles ban" because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance...
Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), who authored AB 418, hailed the move as a "huge step in our effort to protect children and families in California from dangerous and toxic chemicals in our food supply." Gabriel said the bill won't ban any foods or products but will require food companies to make "minor modifications" to their recipes and switch to safer alternative ingredients. The use of the chemicals has already been banned in the European Union's 27 nations as well as many other countries due to scientific research linking them to cancer, reproductive issues, and behavioral and developmental problems in children, Gabriel said. Many major brands and manufacturers — including Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade and Panera — have voluntarily stopped using the additives because of concerns about their affect on human health. Brominated vegetable oil was previously used in Mountain Dew, but Pepsi Co. has since stopped using it in the beverage. It is still used, however, in generic soda brands such as Walmart's Great Value-branded Mountain Lightning. Propylparaben and potassium bromate are commonly found in baked goods. Red dye no. 3 is used by Just Born Quality Confections to color pink and purple marshmallow Peeps candy, according to Consumer Reports. "What we're really trying to get them to do is to change their recipes," Gabriel told The Times in March. "All of these are nonessential ingredients...."
"This is a milestone in food safety, and California is once again leading the nation," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which co-sponsored the bill along with Consumer Reports. The law could affect food across the country, Cook said, because the size of California's economy might prompt manufacturers to produce just one version of their product rather than separate ones for the state and the rest of the nation.
A study by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (cited in the bill) found that "consumption of synthetic food dyes can result in hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, and that children vary in their sensitivity to synthetic food dyes. The report also found that current federal levels for safe intake of synthetic food dyes may not sufficiently protect children's behavioral health." The reports adds that America's Food and Drug Administration had set levels for the additives" "decades ago," and that those levels "do not reflect newer research."
The Los Angeles Times notes that the law won't take effect until January of 2027 — and that it imposes fines of "up to $10,000 for violations."
The Times also points out that former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had endorsed the bill as "common sense".
The legislation was popularly known as the "Skittles ban" because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance...
Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), who authored AB 418, hailed the move as a "huge step in our effort to protect children and families in California from dangerous and toxic chemicals in our food supply." Gabriel said the bill won't ban any foods or products but will require food companies to make "minor modifications" to their recipes and switch to safer alternative ingredients. The use of the chemicals has already been banned in the European Union's 27 nations as well as many other countries due to scientific research linking them to cancer, reproductive issues, and behavioral and developmental problems in children, Gabriel said. Many major brands and manufacturers — including Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade and Panera — have voluntarily stopped using the additives because of concerns about their affect on human health. Brominated vegetable oil was previously used in Mountain Dew, but Pepsi Co. has since stopped using it in the beverage. It is still used, however, in generic soda brands such as Walmart's Great Value-branded Mountain Lightning. Propylparaben and potassium bromate are commonly found in baked goods. Red dye no. 3 is used by Just Born Quality Confections to color pink and purple marshmallow Peeps candy, according to Consumer Reports. "What we're really trying to get them to do is to change their recipes," Gabriel told The Times in March. "All of these are nonessential ingredients...."
"This is a milestone in food safety, and California is once again leading the nation," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which co-sponsored the bill along with Consumer Reports. The law could affect food across the country, Cook said, because the size of California's economy might prompt manufacturers to produce just one version of their product rather than separate ones for the state and the rest of the nation.
A study by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (cited in the bill) found that "consumption of synthetic food dyes can result in hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, and that children vary in their sensitivity to synthetic food dyes. The report also found that current federal levels for safe intake of synthetic food dyes may not sufficiently protect children's behavioral health." The reports adds that America's Food and Drug Administration had set levels for the additives" "decades ago," and that those levels "do not reflect newer research."
The Los Angeles Times notes that the law won't take effect until January of 2027 — and that it imposes fines of "up to $10,000 for violations."
The Times also points out that former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had endorsed the bill as "common sense".
food colouring WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand putting a risky chemical that would prolong the shelf life or stop turning it into mush. But here we have colors for fluffy's sake! So the candy having an exact shade your marketing team picked is worth it poisoning people.
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A few years ago I bought the EU version of Fruit Loops. I noticed right away that it looked very different. I also noticed that it tasted like crap. If I remember correctly it was so bad that I looked at the ingredients and wasn't surprised when I saw a vegetable listed there. That was just wrong.
I don't eat a lot of Fruit Loops. I probably have 4 bowls a years. Plus, I think that it has always been a poor idea to market heavily sugared cereals to children as healthy. However, I will admit that if w
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Pours cereal into bowl... "what the... is that a rutabaga?"
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Pours cereal into bowl... "what the... is that a rutabaga?"
Breakfast cereal should be grain free! Never mind the name, or the fact grain farming was one of the transformative steps in human society. There are whole groups out there to villainize wheat, or corn, or rice. Be happy you have grown up in mostly sane times.
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A few years ago I bought the EU version of Fruit Loops.
If you bought something actually called Fruit Loops then they weren't supposed to be real Froot Loops to begin with.
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I also noticed that it tasted like crap.
The EU version of fruitloops contains less than half the sugar of the American one, and about double the salt (because you still need something to trigger people's addictive senses, and the European palate in general is far saltier than the American one). That is the difference you taste.
If I remember correctly it was so bad that I looked at the ingredients and wasn't surprised when I saw a vegetable listed there. That was just wrong.
There are no vegetables in the EU fruit loops. There are "vegetable extracts", a common term for natural colouring. They are entirely flavourless, and have the benefit of not causing cancer. Bonus points the food you eat do
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I like my European Fruit Loops just fine. They are a delicious treat I almost never indulge in, because despite probably having much less sugar than the US counterpart, it's still a lot of sugar and calories.
You just need to reset your over strained taste sensors, perhaps by avoiding sweet taste entirely, for a few weeks.
Re:food colouring WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when they finally banned Red Dye #2 because it was both shown to be carcinogenic. That was almost 50 years ago, long enough for people to completely forget about the "food" companies' single motivation: Profits Profits Profits. They don't give a damn about what their product does to kids, as long as Mom and Dad keep buying it. Bright colors can give a "food" product the extra edge ("Mommy Mommy I want Skittles!") over your competitors that can turn into millions more bucks for the 'zecks and shareholders.
The visual image of a food has a very powerful influence on that food's taste. I am sure there has been extensive research on how kids (and adults!) go for brightly colored food more than otherwise and will say that the bright red food tastes "better" than the same food in a dull brown or green. "I do not like them, Sam I Am" is a meme for a good reason.
It sucks, but it always boils down to Profits here in Capitalistan. Screw the kids, we're talking about whether a CEO's daughter gets her new Mercedes this year or not! Heavens...
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We used to eets zee boogs to get red candy but then people got "weirded out" so they started using coal tar distillates instead and then people were sick and happy.
how many years ago did EU opt out? (Score:2)
I tried to look up how many years ago the EU banned the food colorings that use petrochemicals. They told M&Ms that they'd have to put "We color our candy with gasoline-like chemicals" if they wanted to sell it like that in the EU. M&M decided to just not sell them the toxic colors instead, so no red or blue or green candies in the EU.
It looks like it was about 10 years ago that this happened?
Did you see the article about how half the government board that makes food recommendations is on big pharma
Re:how many years ago did EU opt out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does fake color make things so much cheaper? Do they get paid to dispose of it in their food?
It's because they're cheaper than most natural coloring methods in food. Meanwhile coloring methods are used in food like balsamic vinegar so they can use cheaper ingredients. It covers things up in other words. Those same balsamics likely also have thickeners and / or non authentic flavoring that's making them cheaper as well.
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Yeah, the idea that industrial food science is bad because it's poisoning you is probably missing a bigger point. Industrial food science takes cheap food, often consisting of empty calories, and makes it super-palable.
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It's a bit frustrating because chemically the main components of gasoline aren't anything like these artificial colors. Red Dye No. 3 looks more like Benzene than gasoline for example, or really it looks just like Xanthene. I think any organization that wants to promote consumer safety needs to be very honest when educating the public, or they risk losing their trust. Telling people easily dismissed lies will make them question everything else they say.
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Red Dye No. 3 looks more like Benzene than gasoline for example, or really it looks just like Xanthene.
I would think "benzene-like chemicals" could have been effectively used in place of "gasoline-like chemicals" in their threat.
Of course, part of the problem is it often seems our bodies simply have problems with substances that aren't naturally occurring, even if they are similar to natural substances. But just saying that doesn't sufficently scare people, apparently.
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Of course, part of the problem is it often seems our bodies simply have problems with substances that aren't naturally occurring, even if they are similar to natural substances. But just saying that doesn't sufficently scare people, apparently.
To be fair your body won't deal well with everything naturally occurring either. Not at all.
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Good old amygdalin in stone fruits makes lovely cyanide in our bodies. All natural.
Carbon monoxide occurs naturally in quite regularly. But our body is terrible at dealing with it except in the smallest amounts.
Re:how many years ago did EU opt out? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with using petrochemicals in food. A molecule is a molecule, and oil is made of organic matter, like plants. Many things natural are toxic, and many man-made chemicals are perfectly fine, even beneficial. And I mean, if big corporations have been poisoning us for years, how comes life expectancy have been going up for so long? (if you are looking at a chart, the drop after 2019 is mostly due to covid). Of course, not everything big corporations do is healthy, that's why they have to be kept in check, and that's exactly what is happening right now, with some substances being banned.
And as for representatives of "big pharma" and "big food" being part of the board that makes food recommendation, of course they are here, I mean, you need to have people on board who know what they are talking about. Decisions do not happen in a vacuum, before banning or authorizing a substance, one has to know how it is used, what are the alternatives if it is banned, what it will replace if it is authorized, the economic and sanitary impact, and for that, you need input from people working in the field. People need to eat, and it has to be affordable, because otherwise, the poor will die. Food is a complex topic, maybe the most complex, simple argument are almost always wrong.
Public opinion, corruption, personal freedom and monkey brains are also part of the equation. Take alcohol for instance, it is a known poison, there is absolutely no doubt about that, it kills thousands a year directly, and many more indirectly. The latest, highly reliable study in Canada says there is no safe dose and there are even genetic arguments. From a health perspective, it should be completely banned, and in some countries, it is, and yet, in most of of the world, it is not, and I am happy that it is not. Regulation regarding alcohol are a balance between personal freedoms, health, the interests of "big alcohol", traditions, etc... And the same can be said of every other substance.
And real balsamic vinegar is very different from the one with the coloring in it, in fact, the one with the "fake coloring" shouldn't be called balsamic vinegar at all. Real balsamic vinegar is made of aged grape musk, a process that takes several years and involves reduction in different barrels, the color is a result of this process. The fake kind you find for cheap in supermarkets is flavored wine vinegar, and the coloring is just so that it look like the real deal, and a simple taste test will tell you that it is absolutely not.
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Because we have better medicine, better healthcare, better hygiene, cleaner air and water, better working conditions and so on. And if big corporations hadn't been poisoning us all this time, our life expectancy would be even higher.
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A molecule is a molecule, and oil is made of organic matter, like plants.
So you're saying eating a nice fresh banana is the same as eating one that has been laying in the cupboard for a year? I mean it's still a plant, still a banana right, so by your logic it's good to go.
And I mean, if big corporations have been poisoning us for years, how comes life expectancy have been going up for so long?
Medical advancements. Our life expectancy has gone up *despite* big corporations feeding us literal known carcinogens. Oh and because we ban things. Don't assume that this is only a 90s/new millennium problem or even a big corporation problem. We've been eating various poisons since there have been commercial
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A year-old banana has significantly different molecules than a fresh one.
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I tried to look up how many years ago the EU banned the food colorings that use petrochemicals. They told M&Ms that they'd have to put "We color our candy with gasoline-like chemicals" if they wanted to sell it like that in the EU. M&M decided to just not sell them the toxic colors instead, so no red or blue or green candies in the EU.
Not only are there plenty of red, blue and green candies in the EU, I've eaten red, blue and green M&Ms in the EU. We just get the non-poisonous versions.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandno... [wbur.org]
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I tried to look up how many years ago the EU banned the food colorings that use petrochemicals. They told M&Ms that they'd have to put "We color our candy with gasoline-like chemicals" if they wanted to sell it like that in the EU. M&M decided to just not sell them the toxic colors instead, so no red or blue or green candies in the EU.
Actually not true at all. For all of history the EU M&Ms have come in the same colour variants as in the USA. There was however a period in the 70s where there were no red M&Ms, ... anywhere. And the reason behind it is that red dye No 2 got banned ... by the USA FDA. Back before the EU existed the USA seemingly cared about people's health. Interestingly M&Ms used red dye No 3, but they removed the red M&Ms anyway because the public was on an "anti artificial colour" bandwagon after the FDA'
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Because real balsamic vinegar can only be made in a small region of Italy
No that's not the reason. The reason is because balsamic vinegar's colour comes from an aging process. Real vinegar costs as much as whiskey not because of where it comes from, but because it takes as long as a good whiskey to produce.
is titanium dioxide toxic ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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A titanium hip joint replacement is literally coated with titanium dioxide.
This may be a misdirect. People who get hip joint replacements are not likely to live long enough to develop negative effects of something that only has a small impact. Quite different from shoving skittles down your foodhole for 50 years.
Titanium dioxide accumulates in the body when ingested. That is the primary concern.
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Bad the additives or products containing? (Score:2)
CA might be able to ban mfg/sales of the pure additives, but can they ban products containing those things? All they might be doing is forcing the manufacture out-of-state where they get diluted then imported. At increased cost, natch.
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The ban may violate the interstate commerce clause. That is, when it comes to the trade of a common substance (in this case, basic foodstuffs), it may be up to Congress to do that, not an individual state government, unless that particular food is manufactured and sold only in-state. It's certainly grounds for legal action.
And before anyone brings up the whole gas-powered car thing, that's probably permitted under the exceptions carved out for the State of California by Congress when they authorized the c
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The ban may violate the interstate commerce clause. That is, when it comes to the trade of a common substance (in this case, basic foodstuffs), it may be up to Congress to do that, not an individual state government, unless that particular food is manufactured and sold only in-state. It's certainly grounds for legal action.
And before anyone brings up the whole gas-powered car thing, that's probably permitted under the exceptions carved out for the State of California by Congress when they authorized the creation of CARB. Or so I would imagine. Not that it's any better but at least the issue has been addressed at a national level.
It's being tested thanks to republicans. https://apnews.com/article/wyo... [apnews.com]
Wyoming is trying to ban medication that is federally legal.
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Nice try, but you know that isn't the same thing. I could just as easily bring up California's ban on "large magazines" for pistols.
We're discussing food additives. They're generally benign in that they won't instantly kill you through trauma or acute toxicity. They aren't sold or marketed as a surefire way to kill someone or something. They're just basic trade goods.
There are plenty of products where states have (perhaps inappropriately) taken on the role of regulating interstate commerce and gotten awa
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The ban may violate the interstate commerce clause.
If California can ban the sale of animal products from animals raised in extreme confinement in other states, this is highly unlikely to be considered in violation of the commerce clause.
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It filters down. California mandated stricter emissions standards for vehicles because they had a terrible smog problem for decades. The auto companies bitched and moaned and then as if by magic found a way to make it work. Since the economy in California is so large it made sense for the companies to implement the changes nationwide. Thanks for California the nations air quality is better.
Ah, the children (Score:2)
Because they are busy being our cultural war implements. Sigh.
Easy Solutions (Score:2)
You say "Fuck California" and leave the market.
Sure (Score:2)
Why not?
If you walk into a CA hotel you see a big poster warning you that hazardous materials are stored here (!) because....in some of the cleaning closets, there are cleaning chemicals.
Tell me, how USEFUL is this information?
Do you think people generally don't know hotels clean their facilities? Or do you think the people who made reservations and finally arrived look at the sign and decide to sleep in their car because of the "scary chemicals!" inside?
Or...does everyone look at it, shrug at how dumb tha
California: If it exists, we ban it! (Score:2)
Can the entire fucking West Coast just drop off into the Pacific?
At this point, nothing of any real, lasting value will be lost.
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Obviously you know nothing of the vital link that desert bats play in the global Tequila market.
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Ban HFCS! (Score:3, Interesting)
You, americans, have it in everything - including bread, sausages, even mustard...
Fructose is metabolized only in the liver and it is straining it similar to how alcohol does. Also it doesn't register properly with the mechanism that controls how hungry you are.
If you want sweet - use normal sugar (sucrose) or glucose. Those can be consumed by every cell in the body.
Re:Ban HFCS! (Score:4, Informative)
If we have to select a single ingredient that ought to be banned that would be the High Fructose Corn Syrup.
You, americans, have it in everything - including bread, sausages, even mustard...
Fructose is metabolized only in the liver and it is straining it similar to how alcohol does. Also it doesn't register properly with the mechanism that controls how hungry you are.
If you want sweet - use normal sugar (sucrose) or glucose. Those can be consumed by every cell in the body.
HFCS was used because it was cheap, corn is (or at least was) largely subsidised in the US. Sugar cane tends to require a warmer climate than corn and takes longer to grow, 9-16 months for sugar cane and up to 24 moths for colder climates, Corn grows in about 3 months.
Europe gets the majority of it's sugar from beets, you can get corn syrup from corn without the fructose but it doesn't taste the same, unlike beet sugar.
As for adding sweeteners to everything, yeah, that is a huge problem in the US and one they need to train their society out of. At the very least, to start using more natural sweeteners like honey and syrups. They'll taste different, but people will get over that in time.
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Re: "Nonessential"? (Score:2)
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True, no real need to ban it, and it will probably still be present in the sketchy off-brand candy made in China anyways.
Mountain Dew has never been the same since they removed the brominated vegetable oil.
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My favorite brand of laudanum is no longer available after the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. I consider it an essential ingredient for many patent medicines. Without it they just don't hit the same.
Re:"Nonessential"? (Score:4, Funny)
I'd complain more about the lack of Radithor if I still had a jaw.
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Re:"Nonessential"? (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing with a lot of these is that hatred for them comes from weirdo activists who target the strangest things just because it's "the current thing" that blows up their social circle. For example here in Finland, there was a big brouhaha with monosodium glutamate (additive for meat to make it more flavorful).
It's completely safe as far as we know and it's one of the most studied food additives that exists. The activist burst ended in utter hilarity where activists managed to get the marking for it (every additive has and E-code here by law that needs to be marked on the packaging either as E-code or by its own name) to be a significantly negative thing. There were some products that used to have it that tried to rework the recipe to be without it, and they generally got a small burst of sales because of visibility, then rapidly falling off as most people who didn't care about activism but noticed worsened taste switching off the product.
In almost all cases for such products, they ended up switching MSG made with old processes for a yeast generated MSG. Same thing, different manufacturing technique, so it had a different marking/E-code on package and activists were protesting "the current thing" so they moved on to something else.
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Monosodium glutamate is not "completely safe as far as we know". What it is known to be be is safe in small amounts. The problem is, when it's added to a lot of foods, it raises the sodium content to levels that we know are unsafe. The same thing is true of plain old salt. Perfectly safe within certain limits. Beyond those limits, if you're just consuming and consuming and consuming it every day in just about everything you eat, then it's terrible for your long-term health.
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Monosodium glutamate is not "completely safe as far as we know". What it is known to be be is safe in small amounts.
You realize that this is true for almost every single compound that we know of.
Re: "Nonessential"? (Score:2)
You realize the implication of the poster is that adding a flavor enhancer that discretely but greatly increases sodium content is a bad thing.
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It doesn't, though. They're not using MSG for fun. They're using it because it's cheaper. They can decrease the salt content quite a bit if they add a small amount of MSG. The MSG has weird (sort of oily) mouth feel, but enhances the effect of salt. The nutrition label shows the sodium content and not just the salt content, so nothing is really hiding (however you feel about MSG.) If food products are still being marketed as "low salt" as opposed to "low sodium" then that's misleading.
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It's not about it hiding the sodium content. It's about the inclusion of excessive amounts of sodium in just about everything. All the food producers are happy to point out that, if you want to have healthy sodium levels, just eat their product in moderation. What do you do when it's in virtually every food product in the supermarket. I read nutrition labels and I eat healthy. As a consequence, the majority of things at the supermarket are things I won't buy for myself. People are obviously buying them thou
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The average person is just not that selective about their food and just buys it on the hope that they won't be slowly poisoned by it.
Life expectancies in both the developed and developing world mostly continue to increase apace, with blips due to overdoses and Covid here, and starvation and war there. Yeah most of us could use better diets, how much of that is a first world problem will be left as an exercise to the reader.
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Well, of course, COVID-19 is mostly responsible for the recent dramatic decline in life-expectancy in the US. Still the people hit hardest by COVID-19 are people with, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, etc. Things that, if not always caused by, are certainly exacerbated by diet issues. I am quite fond of point out that diet and exercise can do only so much to avoid health problems. It is still true though that food that is effectively poisoned does poison people. We have an absolute glut of unhealthy
Toxin is in the dose (Score:2)
Very true. Even too much water can kill you, in the drinking sense not drowning. It is one of the things drill instructors are trained to watch out for because recruits will occasionally kill themselves via it otherwise.
Not all MSG comes with extra salt, and in even slightly normal amounts causes no harm as far as we can tell.
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It's true that you shouldn't drink too much water. Every now and then, you read a news story about children who have been forced to drink excessive amounts of drink by their parents as a punishment and consequently die. I remember one about a little girl who was sneaking soda from the fridge, so her parents forced her to drink a whole bottle. One of those old fashioned punishments meant to act as a form of aversion therapy. She died of edema.
I'm still not sure how that's somehow evidence that it's fine to o
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*raises eyebrow*
Didn't I endorse moderation in my post?
A lot of msg stuff also comes loaded with sodium chloride. MSG can actually be used to lower the sodium content of dishes by substituting for NaCl.
Some might need to do more, but those are specific medical conditions. Like allergies, food sensitivity, etc...
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*raises eyebrow*
Didn't I endorse moderation in my post?
Not in so many words. Perhaps by inference. My point is that, for the typical person, moderation is extremely difficult to achieve. They go to the supermarket and buy a bunch of food items where every one of them has an acceptable amount of sodium (and other substances that should only be taken in moderation) as long as you consider it only by itself, but then they eat five items with "acceptable" levels and that pushes the daily level through the roof. Then they do it again the next day and the next and th
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You realize that this is true for almost every single compound that we know of.
Yes, and? Safe in moderation does not help when the overuse of something that's safe in moderation makes moderation practically impossible for the average person.
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Monosodium glutamate is not "completely safe as far as we know". What it is known to be be is safe in small amounts. The problem is, when it's added to a lot of foods, it raises the sodium content to levels that we know are unsafe.
This is false, in practical terms. When MSG is used, you need less sodium chloride. So the net effect is to lower sodium.
Of course a lot of junk food still has high levels of sodium, but if they couldn't use MSG it would probably be worse.
excitotoxin (Score:2)
Junk food with high levels of MSG is still both junk and dangerous.
So are excessive amounts of MSG - Glutamate is a food excitotoxin...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
My wife once passed out after eating a fish-based dish in a Thai restaurant that had a *lot* of MSG added.
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It's not false in practical terms because, in practice, most prepared foods have way too much sodium proportional to the number of calories they provide. So if you eat your full daily allotment of calories using prepared foods, then you're guaranteed to get too much sodium. Now, this may not be too much sodium for everyone. Some people can handle it better than others. Some people will end up with hypertension, chronic kidney disease, vascular disease, heart disease, etc. though just from eating a diet of a
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The thing with a lot of these is that hatred for them comes from weirdo activists who target the strangest things just because it's "the current thing" that blows up their social circle. For example here in Finland, there was a big brouhaha with monosodium glutamate (additive for meat to make it more flavorful).
It's completely safe as far as we know and it's one of the most studied food additives that exists. The activist burst ended in utter hilarity where activists managed to get the marking for it (every additive has and E-code here by law that needs to be marked on the packaging either as E-code or by its own name) to be a significantly negative thing. There were some products that used to have it that tried to rework the recipe to be without it, and they generally got a small burst of sales because of visibility, then rapidly falling off as most people who didn't care about activism but noticed worsened taste switching off the product.
In almost all cases for such products, they ended up switching MSG made with old processes for a yeast generated MSG. Same thing, different manufacturing technique, so it had a different marking/E-code on package and activists were protesting "the current thing" so they moved on to something else.
Monosodium Glutamate has long been a target of people who find any sort of chemical names scary. I use Maggi sauce (basically MSG in a bottle) in much of my cooking. They will take my umami when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
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For example here in Finland, there was a big brouhaha with monosodium glutamate (additive for meat to make it more flavorful).
When was this, 1985? I can't find a single news story about Finland having a problem with MSG.
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Is your wall done, yet?
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Automobile antifreeze supposedly tastes sweet but unfortunately is very toxic.
Sorry, you can't have your sweet antifreeze.
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Automobile antifreeze supposedly tastes sweet but unfortunately is very toxic.
And for years, wine producers in some countries added it to their wines for sweetness.
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Modern HOAT antifreeze has bittering agents added to it so it won't be tasty.
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foods that have tasted the same way for decades or centuries are now reformulated
Food that exists for centuries are those home-made, and whether toxic or not, you still can cook them (they have not been criminalized, only banned for sale). The food that are gone are those which result from the chemical industry (we can't produce at home). Should we regret Coca Cola does not taste the same without cocaine, or absinthe without tujone? (the excitant, hallucinogenic, convulsant, abortive, addictive alkaloid from the plant.) Lathyrus sativus (a sort of grass pea) is traditionally consumed th
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Should we regret Coca Cola does not taste the same without cocaine, or absinthe without tujone?
Absinthe still contains thujone, the levels are just regulated. And in answer to your first question - YES. Do you not wonder what a bar of chocolate tasted like 100 years ago? Your tobacco example is very apt: Nobody believes tobacco is a health food. But it is improper to ban it. It is _illogical_ to ban tobacco while there are vigorous efforts to legalize smokable marijuana, and psilocybin, etc.
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Tobacco comes from the evil tobacco industry and has a history of slavery.
Pot is an all natural goodness gift from mother nature's bosom to make us feel better and improve our health.
There is no comparison. Pass the bong, brooooo!
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It is _illogical_ to ban tobacco while there are vigorous efforts to legalize smokable marijuana, and psilocybin, etc.
From my understanding, the rationale is that marijuana creates no addiction (or it is debated whether it does), and therefore does not present the issue that tobacco smokers have to take multiple cigarettes daily and get cancer after a time. But I would prefer legalizing non-dangerous ways. Both are unhealthy to smoke; according to literature https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org] smoking marijuana produces 5 times more carbon monoxide and tar than smoking tobacco.
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Brominated vegetable oil isn't really going to affect the flavor of anything much, nor will red #3. They don't put those substances in products to make them taste good .
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Re: "Nonessential"? (Score:2)
Having eaten about 10 Battenbergs since that article, I think we can safely describe it as absolute bollocks.
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and the original flavor is gone forever
But is this a problem?
This is an assault on pleasure in the name of publicity.
Is your pleasure solely derived from the consuming of banned substances? Do you drink Mountain Dew instead of Coca Cola because the former still use the substance that gives you that one unique flavour that you find pleasurable?
Yeah many things have changed in life. The idea that we no longer get pleasure out of eating certain foods is to put it in the mildest words I could think of: fucking absurd.
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Is your pleasure solely derived from the consuming of banned substances?
I can't say - because I don't know what pleasurable things I consume today that the regulators will be coming for tomorrow. These ingredients aren't used in health foods. _BANNING_ them is tantamount to restricting the gamut of available cuisine. Forcing manufacturers to put warning labels on products? Fine. Taxing the additives? Maybe okayish. Let people choose what they consume. A Twinkie is not a life-prolonging snack, it is a factory-made item that has tasted the same ever since the first petroleum dist
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And that same Twinkie will still taste the same thousands of years from now!
You are what you eat so I eat lots of Twinkies for their life extension properties.
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The synthetic coloring's will have massive reductions in impurities compared to 100+ years ago, so they will already taste different to begin with even if by some miracle the recipe didn't change.
Re:California banning Food Coloring chemicals (Score:5, Informative)
By "they" do you mean San Jose Police Officers Association Executive Director Joanne Marian Segovia? Who has been charged with massive quantities of fentanyl. Using her office at the San Jose Police Officers’ Association to distribute controlled substances.
Yeah, she's cool with fentanyl. But she's sitting in jail now because the state of California is not OK with fentanyl flowing in.
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Sitting in jail at a little league game?
https://nypost.com/2023/07/31/... [nypost.com]
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Yeah, we're not happy with the court letting an organized crime lord and corrupt public servant out. She was released from jail on Friday without bail and doesn’t even have to wear an ankle monitor. The courts are giving her every possible benefit, something that I've never seen extended to ordinary people I know that have gone through the same courts. This city is an absolute disgrace.
Re:California banning Food Coloring chemicals (Score:5, Insightful)
What leftist is for distributing drugs? Most leftists are against jailing drug users because it does nothing to stop their addiction and only adds to already crowded prisons.
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they really *really* want to force other people to pay for all sorts of socialized healthcare, rehab, housing, clean needle projects, and other stupid shit.
Not paying for clean needles seems like a false economy. The people in power in 19th century Britain made Ayn Rand look like a bleeding heart liberal, but they appreciated the value of investment in public health to limit infectious disease. They invested heavily in better sanitation (see Joseph Bazalgette for example). We can afford a few needles.
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Cool, I guess you only drive on privately owned roads then?
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but they are OK with the fentanyl flowing in.
Are they? I did a quick google and all I could come up with was stories of people being arrested and charged for distributing the substance in California. If they were so "OK" with it, why are people being arrested? Could it be you are talking out of your anus?
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Re:California banning Food Coloring chemicals (Score:5, Funny)
I do fid the frothing blindly partisan posts pretty entertaining. Keeps me coming back.
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Substitutes exist and already are used in Europe. No real cost when mandate is years out.
"May have" you say? FDA already says two of the things are known carcinogens.
Re: Cost benefit analysis? (Score:2)
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Red dye 3 and potassium bromate. Both are confirmed carcinogens in animal tests. Maybe humans are more resilient than animals, but why fuck around and find out when you can simply substitute these with something else.
Red dye 3 has been banned in the EU for 30 years now and our M&Ms are still red. Incidentally Red dye 3 has been banned in the USA as well for use in pretty much every application which doesn't have the food lobby behind it. Yep, don't brush it on your face (banned in cosmetic applications)
Re: Dihydrogen Monoxide causes cancer (Score:2)
You forgot that when you say something stupid you're supposed to go AC.
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I rather agree with you, but I also feel that people should be able to poison themselves if they want to, as long as they know what they are doing. These dye things sort of slip under the perceptual window. It should be legal to sell them as coloring agents (with accompanying warning label), but perhaps not as minor ingredients.
OTOH, that's the way the dairy industry treated margarine. And that eventually got overruled (but I forget the details).