Why are foods banned in other places still on US grocery shelves?

From the financial squeeze of inflation, to recall after recall, and actually getting out the door, going to the grocery store can sometimes feel like an insurmountable task. Adding to the stress is something else on the mind of Vox reader Sommer. When she’s shopping for food, she finds herself wondering: Why are there different ingredients, additives, and dyes in products like candy corn and ranch dressing? 

“How is America allowed to feed us certain products that are harmful and banned in other countries?” she asked us. “Don’t you all care about us?” That’s the subject of this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s go-to hotline for all your questions. 

What some people may dismiss as a fixation of “granola moms” is actually a legitimate concern, says Melanie Benesh, the vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an organization that scrutinizes agricultural practices. The impact many of these chemicals have is chronic: They accumulate over time, after a lot of tiny exposures. For example, the whitening agent titanium dioxide in soups and dairy products can build up in the body and even damage DNA. 

European countries take a much more precautionary approach to additives in their food, Benesh says. “If there are doubts about whether a chemical is safe or if there’s no data to back up safety, the EU is much more likely to put a restriction on that chemical or just not allow it into the food supply at all.” 

In the US, we’re more likely to see action at the state level. California banned four chemicals in 2023: brominated vegetable oil, Red Dye No. 3, propylparaben, and potassium bromate. This year, lawmakers in about a dozen states have introduced legislation banning those same chemicals and, in some states, additional chemicals as well. But federal oversight has been limited, constrained by priorities, authority, and by a lack of resources.

There’s a new deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Human Foods Program, and there is some hope among advocates that could lead to changes in the administration’s approach. We reached out to the FDA, and a spokesperson said the agency needs more funding to expand its food oversight: “Prioritization and drive can only take us so far, and our current budget constraints will limit the number and speed of assessments.”

Why do things operate differently in the US? And what does that mean for our food? We answer these questions in this week’s episode of Explain It to Me. Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Benesh, edited for length and clarity.

You can listen to Explain It to Me on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.

How does approval for food ingredients work here in the US?

We are also supposed to have a precautionary approach here. The legal standard is something called reasonable certainty of no harm. This includes acute harms, but also chronic harms. Like, “is this going to increase my risk of cancer if I eat it every day for the next 30 years?” 

When did these rules get put into place? How did they come to be? 

World War II was a period of rapid industrialization and the rise of convenience foods and frozen dinners. Lots of new substances were introduced into the food supply. The FDA realized that they didn’t really know much about these chemicals, and couldn’t assure Americans that they were safe. 

The FDA created what was meant to be a premarket approval process, meaning that the FDA looks at the chemical before it can ever be used in food, before consumers are ever exposed to it in their food. They created this system in 1958, but they did not include a “lookback provision” for foods already on the shelves. So we have a lot of chemicals that just haven’t been looked at and haven’t been given a meaningful review in decades. 

The other fundamental and, I think, frightening problem with our food chemical system in the US is that today most new chemicals coming onto the market aren’t being looked at by the FDA at all.

Why is that?

When Congress wrote the food chemical law, they included an exception for things that are generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.  This was intended to be a narrow loophole, an exception for things that truly have general recognition of safety: things like spices or vinegar or flour or table salt. Rather than the FDA expending the time and the resources to do a full risk assessment of those chemicals before allowing them to be used in food, they could just say these are generally recognized as safe. 

What has happened over time is that loophole has really swallowed the entire process. [EWG] did an analysis in 2022, where we found that 99 percent of new food chemicals were exploiting this GRAS loophole.

The FDA has created a voluntary notification process, so companies make this determination on their own whether the food qualifies for GRAS exemption, either through their own internal scientist or they can contract with an outside panel. It is up to them whether or not they want to tell the FDA that their chemical is GRAS. 

Why does America deal with this so differently? Why are other countries more precautionary and we’re not?

One issue we have is that a lot of programs at the FDA, particularly drug programs, are funded by industry user fees. So they have to pay a fee if they’re trying to get a product approved by the FDA or registering it with the FDA. There’s no equivalent user fee for food chemicals. The FDA has a resource issue, and Congress has not appropriated the amount of funding that the FDA needs to do these chemical reviews. 

But I also think there has been a degree of inertia. I don’t think that there has been enough pressure on the FDA to take these food chemical reviews more seriously. A lot of leadership at the FDA — the former FDA commissioners, current FDA commissioners — have really come from more of a drug background than a food background. Sometimes the F in FDA is referred to as the “silent F.” 

Interestingly, the underlying law — the 1958 law — is a pretty good law. It’s not an issue of authority; I think it’s an issue of resources. But should that stop them from proactively identifying chemicals, taking a hard look at chemicals? No. And we have petitioned the FDA to look at particular chemicals, so that’s a good starting point.

Do you think anything will change? 

There have been some changes in the last couple of years, I think, in response to a couple of pretty scathing exposés on the FDA food program. They did reorganize their food program, which took effect October 1. There is now an Office of Food Chemical Safety. The FDA recently had a public meeting about starting up a food chemical reassessment program where they would go back and look at food chemicals. 

There are things happening. I think there is a growing awareness within the agency that this is a problem. The new deputy commissioner for human foods is someone named Jim Jones, who was in charge of the pesticide review program and other chemical review program at the EPA for a long time. He understands chemical issues in a way that a lot of leadership at FDA historically has not. Bringing Jim Jones in is a really good step and very hopeful.