The need to preserve food and feed a planet of people has existed for as long as humans have. The technical ability and knowledge of the micro biome of the gut

The need to preserve food and feed a planet of people has existed for as long as humans have. The technical ability and knowledge of the micro biome of the gut is extraordinarily new areas of research. We barely know anything about it still. In modern times additive safety to food is a pretty new concept. Safety means observable effects. We don’t look exclusively at the benefits of something (although I don’t know why we wouldn’t look first at our objective before discerning side effects) before approving it as a food additive, there’s actually quite a lot of regulation and research that goes into declaring something safe to add to food. But thus is the way of knowledge. Until you understand something you can’t assert requirements around it. It’ll be easy to look back with new knowledge and second guess old knowledge, but it’s ill informed to say we don’t regulate food additives on any measure other than benefit.