4 ms·

Food labeling seems to be getting excessively ambiguous, “spices,” “flavor”, “natural flavor,” and “artificial flavor” are all legal USDA terms. I'm not exactly

Food labeling seems to be getting excessively ambiguous, “spices,” “flavor”, “natural flavor,” and “artificial flavor” are all legal USDA terms. I'm not exactly sure what's legal or being used in food processing factories, but industrial solvents and other chemicals used to modify foods are not legally required to be listed as ingredients. Given the ambiguous black box of industrial food processing, it's only mildly disappointing to actively avoid processed foods like Girl Scout cookies and frozen foods. Historically, it's often taken decades to discover the toxicity of chemical innovations thought to be safe like DDT, BPA, pesticides, asbestos, lead, & C8/Teflon [2] . Acrylamide is now suspected as carcinogenic [3] and forms from heating starchy foods, notably cooked potatoes. [1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131608 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045156 [ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemist... ] [3] http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/chemical-risks/acrylamide/en/ http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/chemical-risks/acry... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide#Toxicity_and_carcinogenicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide#Toxicity_and_carcin...

kazinator 11y ago
Then there is all the alternative naming. Some people don't want to buy crap loaded with MSG, so it gets called by names like "hydrolized vegetable protein".
- Swizec 11y ago
  My favourite so far has been "dehydrated cane juice".
  - pyre 11y ago
    I still see that in Canada, but in the US the FDA has gone after companies for improper labelling because sugar isn't juice.
    - Swizec 11y ago
      I saw it in the US last week. I agree that sugar isn't juice, but technically if you take juice and dehydrate it, you get crystalized sugar.
      - pyre 11y ago
        I get the "technically" but I believe that the FDA was going after it as a deceptive labelling practice.
        kazinator 11y ago
        And deceptive it arguably is. The clear issue is not that people are too dumb to realize that dehydrating cane juice results in sugar, but that when they scan the ingredients looking for "sugar", they may not always spot its disguised form.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    And the less egregious "skimmed milk powder". Sure, it also has some protein in it, but it's definitely used a lot in baby/children's food as a sweetener just so they can say "no added sugar".
plonh 11y ago
acrylamide is a byproduct of cooking a Starches, a practice which goes back centuries older than our grandmothers, and seems to be as dangerous as everything else, now that scientists at able to detect toxins at 100-1000x more dilute concentrations than are health threats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide
- kazinator 11y ago
  There was a big hoopla surrounding Acrylamide some 13 years ago. It was a real bogey man for a while ("OMG, there is a deadly poison in anything you cook and fry; we are doomed!"). You don't hear about it much nowadays.
pyre 11y ago
> BPA When BPA was added to plastics it was known to be toxic. The issue was that it was thought to be inert and encapsulated in the material. The revelation came when we found that extreme heat (e.g. in your microwave) or extreme cold (e.g. in your freezer) causes it to leach out of the material and into (e.g.) you food.
- grogenaut 11y ago
  I remember reading a study in 2005 that said that cold had nothing to do with it (from Harvard). Just googled it now and now the same group says "even drinking cold water for a week resulted in increased levels in the urine". Grreat.
scoot 11y ago
"it's often taken decades to discover the toxicity of chemical innovations thought to be safe like [...] C8/Teflon [2]" You appear to be conflating the toxicity of C8/PFOA (previously used in the manufacturing of PTFE (Teflon®) with that of Teflon itself. The article you linked to is primarily about the health risks to those involved in the manufacturing of PTFE through exposure to PFOA. However, regarding the toxicity of PTFE itself: American Cancer Society: "[...] there are no known risks to humans from using Teflon-coated cookware. While PFOA is used in making Teflon, it is not present (or is present in extremely small amounts) in Teflon-coated products.' [1] US Environmental Protection Agency: "[...] consumer products made with fluoropolymers and fluorinated telomers, including Teflon® and other trademark products, are not PFOA. [...] The information that EPA has available does not indicate that the routine use of consumer products poses a concern." [2] [1] http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid--pfoa http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/a... [2] http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/pubs/pfoainfo.html http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/pubs/pfoainfo.html

kazinator 11y ago

Then there is all the alternative naming. Some people don't want to buy crap loaded with MSG, so it gets called by names like "hydrolized vegetable protein".

Swizec 11y ago
My favourite so far has been "dehydrated cane juice".
- pyre 11y ago
  I still see that in Canada, but in the US the FDA has gone after companies for improper labelling because sugar isn't juice.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    I saw it in the US last week. I agree that sugar isn't juice, but technically if you take juice and dehydrate it, you get crystalized sugar.
    - pyre 11y ago
      I get the "technically" but I believe that the FDA was going after it as a deceptive labelling practice.
      - kazinator 11y ago
        And deceptive it arguably is. The clear issue is not that people are too dumb to realize that dehydrating cane juice results in sugar, but that when they scan the ingredients looking for "sugar", they may not always spot its disguised form.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  And the less egregious "skimmed milk powder". Sure, it also has some protein in it, but it's definitely used a lot in baby/children's food as a sweetener just so they can say "no added sugar".

plonh 11y ago

acrylamide is a byproduct of cooking a Starches, a practice which goes back centuries older than our grandmothers, and seems to be as dangerous as everything else, now that scientists at able to detect toxins at 100-1000x more dilute concentrations than are health threats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide

kazinator 11y ago
There was a big hoopla surrounding Acrylamide some 13 years ago. It was a real bogey man for a while ("OMG, there is a deadly poison in anything you cook and fry; we are doomed!"). You don't hear about it much nowadays.

pyre 11y ago

> BPA When BPA was added to plastics it was known to be toxic. The issue was that it was thought to be inert and encapsulated in the material. The revelation came when we found that extreme heat (e.g. in your microwave) or extreme cold (e.g. in your freezer) causes it to leach out of the material and into (e.g.) you food.

grogenaut 11y ago
I remember reading a study in 2005 that said that cold had nothing to do with it (from Harvard). Just googled it now and now the same group says "even drinking cold water for a week resulted in increased levels in the urine". Grreat.

scoot 11y ago

"it's often taken decades to discover the toxicity of chemical innovations thought to be safe like [...] C8/Teflon [2]" You appear to be conflating the toxicity of C8/PFOA (previously used in the manufacturing of PTFE (Teflon®) with that of Teflon itself. The article you linked to is primarily about the health risks to those involved in the manufacturing of PTFE through exposure to PFOA. However, regarding the toxicity of PTFE itself: American Cancer Society: "[...] there are no known risks to humans from using Teflon-coated cookware. While PFOA is used in making Teflon, it is not present (or is present in extremely small amounts) in Teflon-coated products.' [1] US Environmental Protection Agency: "[...] consumer products made with fluoropolymers and fluorinated telomers, including Teflon® and other trademark products, are not PFOA. [...] The information that EPA has available does not indicate that the routine use of consumer products poses a concern." [2] [1] http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid--pfoa http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/a... [2] http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/pubs/pfoainfo.html http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/pubs/pfoainfo.html