Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) Thanks Epoch and Flora Who Knew
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Widely Used and Deemed Safe, These Food Additives Are More Harmful Than Thought
Over 73 percent of food is ultra-processed. While some ingredients are ‘generally recognized as safe,’ research has begun to show why that may not be the case.
“Why are there so many additives?” she exclaimed in surprise. Nearly every loaf she picked up contained ingredients that made her uneasy. After lingering by the shelves, she reluctantly chose a bag.
“At that moment, I thought: It looks like I will have to choose the best from the worst when shopping in the future,” Ms. Dunford, project consultant for The George Institute for Global Health and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, told The Epoch Times.
Beyond conventional additives such as preservatives, colors, and flavorings, many new additives are emerging. Stabilizers, emulsifiers, firming agents, leavening agents, anti-caking agents, humectants, and more have been invented to modify and improve the taste and texture of food.
Perhaps driven by a growing desire for richer and more varied flavors or by the pressures of fast-paced living, people have become accustomed to these substances, even considering them a natural part of the modern diet.
Then and Now
In the old days, families used salt and vinegar to preserve food. But with the advent of the industrial age, people became increasingly reliant on ready-made foods available on supermarket shelves.
“By the mid-20th century, more and more food additives were being used,” said Mona Calvo, who has a doctorate in nutritional sciences and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Only recently have people begun to pay closer attention to what goes into the foods they eat.
In the 1950s to 1970s, the FDA began evaluating the safety of common food additives, Ms. Calvo told The Epoch Times.
“A safety assessment involves the scientific review of all relevant data, including toxicology and dietary exposure information,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times. These include tests conducted on rodents and cells. The ingredients will be added to food after the FDA gives its approval.
Consumers can identify what is in their packaged foods by the nutrition facts and ingredient labels, said Ms. Calvo.
Ms. Calvo pointed out another unresolved issue: There is no oversight on how much of these additive-containing foods people actually consume.
“Many of the commonly used food additives were granted GRAS approval between 1970 and 1975, when people could not foresee the situation today,” she said. During that era, fewer women worked outside the home, and people consumed more home-cooked meals made from natural ingredients. With the prevalence of ultra-processed foods in today’s diet, the consumption of certain additives has naturally exceeded initial expectations.
After an additive is approved for a specific function, food manufacturers often quickly incorporate it into a wide range of products, including breads, cookies, instant soups, sausages, and frozen, prepackaged meals.
Dr. Jaime Uribarri, a nephrology specialist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has long been concerned about specific food additives, told The Epoch Times that “once an additive-containing packaged food is in the marketplace, the FDA does not have a mechanism for regularly testing its safety, such as through periodic sampling checks.”
The Useful and the Unnecessary
Objectively speaking, some food additives may offer more benefits than drawbacks, said Ms. Dunford.
Preservatives, for example, help extend the shelf life of food. Adding a moderate amount of nitrites to cured meats can prevent botulism, a serious condition.
However, she pointed out that many additives that enhance color, flavor, and other sensory aspects are “essentially not necessary.”
While part of the increased risks can be attributed to the use of high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat, and low-fiber ingredients, some additives previously thought to be safe also warrant attention.
“Phosphate additives is one that I’m very wary of,” said Ms. Dunford.
Phosphate Additives
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Renal Nutrition found that of all the 3,466 U.S. packaged foods tested, over half contained phosphate additives.
Phosphate additives encompass a range of substances with various functions, such as stabilizing, thickening, emulsifying, adjusting acidity and alkalinity, improving texture, enhancing flavor, providing antioxidant properties, preserving, and coloring. Some phosphates serve multiple functions simultaneously.
Multiple studies have shown that the health hazards associated with consuming ultra-processed foods are linked to a high intake of inorganic phosphates.
Using inorganic phosphate additives in animal or cell experiments results in immediate side effects. “That gives you enough rationale to suspect that these may happen also in humans,” said Dr. Uribarri.
Emulsifiers
Emulsifiers are another category of substances previously thought to be harmless but now shown to have adverse effects.
The FDA permits a maximum addition of 1 percent for P80, while CMC—classified as GRAS—has an allowable addition of up to 2 percent.
The researchers noted that the widespread use of emulsifiers in food “may have contributed to increased incidence of chronic inflammatory diseases.”
Authors of the Nature study noted that many of the additives consumed were granted GRAS status early on and “have not been carefully tested.” Additionally, the tests on food additives have typically used animal models designed to assess acute toxicity and cancer promotion risks, and “such testing may be inadequate.”
Unpredictable Long-Term Effects
Ms. Dunford explained that the issue with additives does not arise from consuming them once or twice. “The problem is that you have it in large amounts over a long period of time,” she said.
When looking at these epidemiologic effects, the causation is hard to prove, Dr. Uribarri noted. For example, to demonstrate conclusively that a specific additive affects human health, the researcher would need to divide tens of thousands of people into two groups randomly, have one group consume the additive while the other group does not, and continue this for five years, he explained. This is hard to achieve—in a way similar to why it took scientists so long to establish the harmful effects of smoking on the lungs.
Ms. Dunford stated that the difficulty of conducting such experiments also lies in the fact that people eat a variety of foods every day. Even the same food item, such as white bread, may contain different ingredients and additives depending on the brand or bakery.
Another issue is that additives that are safe individually might exhibit unexpected interactions when combined.
“We do not really know what happens when you put all that (different additives) together,” Ms. Dunford said. “There are no safety studies on that.
“It is this additive effect of additives that potentially can become toxic,” she explained, drawing an analogy to a familiar children’s experiment: A bottle of cola will spray violently when several Mentos candies are dropped into it.
Mindful Choices
“We were not designed to eat processed food,” Dr. Nathan Goodyear, medical director of Arizona’s integrative cancer treatment center Brio-Medical, told The Epoch Times.
The human body is better equipped to handle foods that exist in nature rather than those that are artificial, said Ms. Dunford.
Dr. Uribarri said that busy workers cannot always prepare food from scratch and may need to use some convenience items, which is unavoidable. “But it is a matter of quantity and being more selective.”
“I am a very time-limited mother with young children. And I choose processed foods a lot of the time, but I do try my best to make sure my children balance with more natural foods,” Ms. Dunford said. She added that she ensures her children eat berries, fruits, and vegetables daily, along with less-processed proteins whenever possible.