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>..it might surprise you to learn that, over the past 15 years or so, some makers of ice cream and many other processed foods—from pasta to ground beef products
by bob_theslob646 9y ago
>..it might surprise you to learn that, over the past 15 years or so, some makers of ice cream and many other processed foods—from pasta to ground beef products—have changed their recipes to swap out some of the table sugar (sucrose) with a sweetening/texturizing ingredient called trehalose that depresses the freezing point of food.
How the hell is the food industry not regulated more strictly.
FDA spending on regulation of food.
2017 - 1.195 Billion(https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/fda/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/fda/...)
Total size of food industry based of revenue
2016 - 2.0215 Trillion(https://www.plunkettresearch.com/statistics/Industry-Statistics-US-Food-Industry-Statistics-and-Market-Size-Overview/ https://www.plunkettresearch.com/statistics/Industry-Statist...)
1.195 Billion/2.0215 Trillion = 0.05911% spent on regulation. Is that too much or too little? You decide.
I would argue that this has to do with large companies lobbying to make sure that the consumers stay uninformed.( Do not have data on it)
I know it seems crazy implausible for people to have a digital record of what they eat. Imagine if doctors could have access to that.I am not familiar with EU laws, but sure they are better over there. (Researchers in the U.S never will get access to bulk data because of HIPA: need a personal signature from each person to obtain access.)
- hammock 9y agoIt's in the ingredients list...it is regulated. You just aren't looking.
- code_duck 9y agoI have a few serious food issues and have regularly read labels for decades. I'm surprised that I've never heard of trehalose. Perhaps they list it as disaccharides? Or is it just rolled up into 'sugar' on the label?
- drjasonharrison 9y agoIt can be listed as "natural flavor" http://nagaseamerica.com/news_release/treha-trehalose-available-as-a-natural-flavor-through-improved-production-process/ http://nagaseamerica.com/news_release/treha-trehalose-availa...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ComputerGuru 9y agoHow do you go from “x is in foods” to “x is in foods without any regulatory oversight or fda approval?”
- smallnamespace 9y agoHow about this? 1. Actually effective regulation takes money and resources. E.g. it requires hiring scientists and doing tests to measure safety, staff to administer compliance, etc. 2. There isn't much money or resources going to the regulator. 3. Therefore, de facto there cannot be much real regulatory oversight, since the money to measure and enforce the things you care about isn't there. Like sure, you can wave your hands and say these things were de jure FDA approved or GRAS or whatever, but that could just be what an overburdened and underfunded agency just does by default. We can debate whether ~$1bn is an adequate amount for the FDA to keep us safe from all the bad things it's supposed to, but certainly at some level of funding this argument must be correct. E.g. if your regulator was funded with $1mm / annum there's no way there was any real regulation.