"SAN FRANCISCO — When PepsiCo Inc. announced it would stop putting an obscure vegetable oil in its Gatorade right before the Super Bowl, one of the loudest cheers came from a high school student who had made it her mission to get rid of the ingredient.
"I was like, 'Whoa,'" said Sarah Kavanagh, a 16-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who wanted to know how an oil that contains a chemical also found in flame retardants got into her favorite sports drink. After she posted a petition on Change.org asking Pepsi to remove it, more than 200,000 people signed.
"I just wanted to make sure it was something that I could drink," said the teen.
From oil in Gatorade to the amount of caffeine and other stimulants in energy drinks and the so-called "pink slime" found in beef, previously unnoticed ingredients are coming under scrutiny as health-conscious consumers demand more information about what they eat and drink, and sometimes go public via social networking and the Internet.
So how does some of this stuff get into our food?"
...
"Today, as food scientists create more and more new ingredients to add health benefits or help food stay fresh, there are at least 4,650 of these "generally recognized as safe" ingredients, according to the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts. The bulk of them, at least 3,000, were determined GRAS by food manufacturers or trade associations, and their expert scientists.
But no one knows exactly how many "GRAS" ingredients are in products because manufacturers are not required to notify the FDA before adding them."
A recent article by Pew experts concludes that the science the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) uses to assess the safety of food additives has not kept pace with recent scientific developments, and the agency should review and retool its approach to making decisions about the safety of chemicals used in food and packaging in the United States.
More info"Amid growing public concern over the safety of additives in products ranging from caffeinated energy drinks to industrial chemicals in food containers and water bottles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is under pressure to reexamine its rules, and there are signs it may do so."
More infoThe complexity of our food supply and the oversight of its safety raise fundamental questions about what we eat — some of which were answered for the first time in "Navigating the U.S. Food Additive Regulatory Program," an analysis undertaken by Pew and published in the peer-reviewed journal, Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. The following "frequently asked questions" summarize the findings and conclusions of this article.
More infoMore than 70 stakeholders examined how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ensures that people are exposed to safe levels of chemicals in food.The proceedings, published in the January 2013 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, lay out participants’ perspectives for enhancing the FDA’s methods.
More infoSarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss. But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.
More info"Grocery shoppers examining colorful packages bearing long lists of hard-to-pronounce ingredients might take comfort in the belief that those substances were deemed safe by the government. But that's not the case. Over the past 15 years, the vast majority of new ingredients added to U.S. food never received a safety determination from the government."
More info"There are serious weaknesses in a system that allows firms to self-affirm the safety of food ingredients without the approval or knowledge of regulators, according to researchers conducting a probe into the nation’s food additives law."
More infoIn the November 1, 2011, edition of the peer-reviewed journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (CRFS), Pew Health Group published a rigorous analysis of the U.S. food additive regulatory program. Key among the findings is that more than 10,000 chemicals were allowed in human food as of January 2011.
More infoIn April 2011 Pew Health Group convened a workshop bringing together more than 80 experts from government, industry, academia and public interest organizations to examine the principles underlying the development and use of scientific evidence to identify and characterize chemical hazards. Based on the workshop discussions, Pew made several important observations.
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