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Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
by diob 2y ago
Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
- wnevets 2y agoSource? The last time I checked the FDA bans more food dyes than most other countries.
- joshstrange 2y agoNot sure on food dyes but my understanding is the FDA is leagues behind the EU on regulation when it comes to food. My experience in Italy with foods that normally cause some issues (dairy/cheese) really opened my eyes to that. My sister who doesn’t eat cheese/dairy at all here in the US was able to eat it there without issue because of how they process dairy over there or something.
- rconti 2y agoSo it might not have anything to do with regulation at all?
- thfuran 2y agoPossibly, but dairy processing is heavily regulated.
- estebank 2y agoSimilar thing with my wife and bread. In the US she developed/discovered/exposed a gluten intolerance, to the point that she removed it from her diet entirely, but bread in France is ok for her.
- rsynnott 2y agoIn that case it's not a gluten intolerance; there is gluten in bread in France. Might be a sugar thing? Bread in the US is more likely to contain added sugar and/or HFCS than in most countries.
- ars 2y agoThat just means that her gluten intolerance is stress related, rather than there being any difference in the gluten in France.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoIt is more complicated than this, the US has much more rigorous food safety standards in a number of dimensions. For example, the US has much stricter standards for preventing bacterial contamination than Europe, outside of the Nordics which share similar food safety regulations as the US. The US prohibits a lot of food importation from Europe because of lower food safety standards related to contamination. Europe makes a lot of food safety exceptions on the basis of a process being "traditional" in some sense, nominally preserving culture. The US is a bit more technocratic less prone to the naturalistic fallacy; the FDA doesn't care that something is cultural or traditional, if there is scientific evidence of material risk then it will be banned. If I had to summarize their food safety perspectives, the EU tends to focus more on allowable ingredients, the US tends to focus more on the uncontaminated and sterile handling of the food supply chain.
- op00to 2y agoThere are some differences between dairy in the US and elsewhere. US dairy cows produce milk containing A1 beta-casein, a protein that some studies suggest may cause digestive discomfort. In Europe, cows often produce A2 beta-casein milk, which some people find easier to digest. Dairy products in the US tend to contain more lactose, and French/Italian dairy products have less due to the prevalence of aged cheeses and fermentation. There are many other differences, and none of these seem related to some sort of mystery-makes-you-shit-yourself additive.
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoA2 is starting to be a thing in the US. <selfpromotion>We sell uncolored raw milk cheddar cheese made with A2 milk, if someone has an issue with cheese in the US give ours a try!</selfpromotion>
- lm28469 2y agoMost other countries, maybe, now compared to the EU...
- signatoremo 2y agoWhy don’t you do the comparison?
- lm28469 2y agoBecause people have done it before and we have something named the internet https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations-in-europe-vs-the-us/ https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations... https://eatwell.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2024-08/foods-us-vs-eu-2.pdf https://eatwell.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2024-08/foods-us...
- wnevets 2y agoSure the US is ahead of the EU. The EU allows 11 [1] synthetic food dyes while the US only allows 9 [2] [1] https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours [2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consumers/color-additives-questions-and-answers-consumers https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...
- mrcwinn 2y agoSource?
- Spooky23 2y agoGo to Italy or France, or any EU state. The food is better and often cheaper in almost every case. Even a McDonald's hamburger is good, and not dominated by the fake chemical garlic substitute. In the US, McDonald's french fries contain: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients. In Italy, the ingredients are: Potato, Oil, Salt.
- wnevets 2y agoI hate to break this news to you but there are countries outside of the EU. The FDA also bans more food dyes than the EU.
- Spooky23 2y agoI didn't say there was no world beyond the EU. I'm not personally acquainted with every nation's food regulatory regime. I was just struck by the obvious qualitative difference between even the lowest quality food. Feel free to regail someone who cares about the food regulations of the world. The FDA factoid is cool -- they just didn't ban the dye that causes cancer.
- wnevets 2y ago> Feel free to regail someone who cares about the food regulations of the world. You're the one that responded to my comment about comparing the US to the rest of the world by saying I needed to compare it to the EU. I didn't hop into your comment chain with random factoids. > I'm not personally acquainted with every nation's food regulatory regime. Didn't stop you from providing uninformed commentary tho.
- galleywest200 2y ago> difference between even the lowest quality food Have you been to a farmer's market in the US? Potatoes are potatoes. In fact, potatoes are native to this continent and we have more potato cultivars to choose from. You can get very high quality meat there. Saying all US food is lower quality is kind of a wild opinion.
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- h1fra 2y agoIt's literally written on the article "The EU has a more robust system to review food additives than the US does"
- Night_Thastus 2y agoBans add a lot of overhead to both the agencies responsible for enforcing them and industry. Those agencies are only so large and are spread thin, sometimes there are 'bigger fish' they need to focus on. I can understand waiting until there's sufficient evidence before starting that process.
- adamnemecek 2y agoOther countries manage to do this just fine.
- Night_Thastus 2y agoA lot of other countries do not have the shear mass of industries and services that the US does.
- rqtwteye 2y agoWhy would they have less? They produce food for their people.
- adamnemecek 2y agoThis trope tends to be wrong.
- bobro 2y agoEnforcing bans strikes me as a revenue generator, no?
- bobthepanda 2y agoAt least one proposed solution I’ve seen is to split the FDA, because regulating food is almost nothing like regulating drugs in 2025.
- rafram 2y agoWe already have the FDA (most foods and drugs), the USDA (produce, animal products besides milk), and TTB (alcohol). Each one sets its own safety and labeling standards, which is why, for example, mixed drinks containing alcohol don't have to list allergens(!). Another level of fragmentation would be a disaster IMO. We could split the FDA, but we'd need to merge the food regulator half into one of those other existing agencies.
- bobthepanda 2y agoTo be honest, I could see an argument for separating the handling of raw agricultural product from the rest of the food system. The health effects of Oreos vs. making sure our eggs don’t have bird flu are quite different regulatory concerns.
- will4274 2y agoOnly if they actually cause cancer. The FDA's statement (https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-authorization-use-red-no-3-food-and-ingested-drugs https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-...) says: > The way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans. Relevant exposure levels to FD&C Red No. 3 for humans are typically much lower than those that cause the effects shown in male rats. Studies in other animals and in humans did not show these effects; claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information. if "these sort of things" aren't actually harmful, and what we see in Europe is mostly governments reacting to unscientific panic among their citizens, then I'd say it's other countries that are wild, not the United States.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoI think I care about more than cancer. What if I cared about genetic defects, ADHD, mental health, water contamination, obesity… Maybe if the dye served ANY purpose besides getting people to eat more of it, I could find a bit of care to not remove it from foods.
- thfuran 2y agoShould all things that have only benefits that you don't care about and which aren't proven to have no downsides you care about be banned?
- will4274 2y agoWell, if you read the quote in my comment (or clicked on the source link I included), you would see that the FDA evaluated it for health risks all-up, not just cancer. Your comment violates the following hacker news guideline: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for the full set.
- bpodgursky 2y ago[flagged]
- xnx 2y agoDoes that mean the US is "ahead" for not allowing bemotrizinol in sunscreen?
- tbrownaw 2y ago> behind Is it really a competition to see who can ban the most things? What's the prize if you win?
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- thfuran 2y agoLess cancer, mostly.
- mardifoufs 2y agoSo the US is winning considering they allow less food dyes?
- op00to 2y agoFor that to be true, people would need to be consuming 4g/kg body weight of red dye 3.
- thfuran 2y agoPossibly while being a rat.
- rqtwteye 2y agoThe prize to win is public health. There is absolutely no benefit in putting all this crap into food. Maybe some things are harmful and others are not but they are absolutely useless.