If you watch the video, he states that there are thousands more ingredients in the US that is generally regarded as safe to Europe’s couple hundred. That’s not normal; plus for some reason, we’re allowing the companies themselves to decide if their own products are generally regarded as safe. Obvious conflict of interest.
My only potential concern is that since he’s directing the FDA and NIH to conduct these studies, I sincerely hope these agencies are or get cleaned out beforehand, if they haven’t been already.
Hmm...I'm not sure attacking GRAS is really the way to begin this fight. That's one of the few things I actually think the FDA gets right. If people have been eating it safely in other countries for thousands of years, I think we should be able to consume it here as well without spending a million dollars on safety studies.
How about just better enforcement so that people can't abuse the system.
Better enforcement is good, and an absolutely necessity, if we're going to have a centralized system run the "regulatory approval agency." The problem is, however, that companies are not going to Europe to identify "for thousands of years," but are looking to their pocketbooks.
NOTE: I wrote out this example while I still thought gellan gum was GRAS. But I learned, through researching and writing this comment, that gellan gum is FDA approved through the Code of Federal Regulations. (4) Still, I think this example of gellan gum could be in lieu of the types of materials that could be classified as GRAS before they're used.
An example is gellan gum within Oat Milk. What is it? It's an artificial thickener that has the benefit of not being broken down in your stomach. (1, 2) Gellan gum is derived from soy beans. (1) Gellan gum may be used to deliver medications into your digestive tract by preventing degradation in your stomach's HCl. Gellan gum was FDA approved in 1996 (3, 4), but I am not aware of any studies to see if it impacts your microvilli and their ability to absorb nutrients.
Why not use rice flour or potato starch? Why immediately jump to gellan gum? Because it's cheaper.
Progress and opportunities in Gellan gum-based materials: A review of preparation, characterization and emerging applications, D. Gomes et al., Carbohydrate Polymers, Elsevier Publishing, Volume 311, 1 July 2023, 120782, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144861723002461
This is an attack that throws the baby out with the bathwater. GRAS exists because there are things that we know are safe and we recognize that it is a very time-consuming and costly process to demand long-term health testing on every possible chemical that may find its way into food.
I have no problem with doing the work of testing things which have become controversial. They're good questions to ask and good ones to answer. But as someone with a bit of background in the clinical healthcare sciences, I understand that there is a devil in the details here that has to be addressed. Getting the data to do this kind of assessment isn't easy. Isolating the variables isn't easy. Trying to prove what they're seeking to prove is going to require fairly extensive testing. Who's going to pay for the work? Who's going to do the work? In medicine, there's a reason it's the pharma companies who do all the testing. They're the only ones with a vested interest in actually doing the work. No one else is going to pay for it. But if you're going to go test various GRAS food additives that are widely used in the food supply, now who pays? Are you going to force General Mills to pay to test Red Dye No. 40 when it's hardly the only one using it?
This isn't simple. I hear a lot of screeching from people here demanding why perfection hasn't been instituted less than 2 months into Trump's presidency. None of the real solutions to these problems is simple. It didn't break overnight. It got this way because people thought these were the right policies for a very long time.
I think the GRAS designation needs to exist. I think if Kennedy is concerned about particular additives, then a process needs to be put into place to define what the threat may be and develop a path to test it including to pay for it. Congress is going to have to authorize money for this. And I want guarantees that all of this will be publicly posted transparently if the taxpayer's going to pay for it.
Sounded like multiple other countries have their own GRAS which has hundreds, not thousands, of items on that list.
My initial thought is to look at the healthiest country's GRAS list, and require food companies to offer the exact same ingredients in the US for the same price they charge to that country (similar to the drug costs that Trump demanded drop during his first term). Maybe even go with the top 10 healthiest countries.
I don't know what those prices will look like once they hit the shelves, but requiring the lowest price sold to other nations to be offered here should help with the keeping the pricing honest. Stock the product ls side by side clearly labeled as "Clearly Safe Foods" & the other right next to it labeled "Testing For Saftey" with prices side by side. That will allow consumers an easy choice. If the box/bag of cereal is twice as much for the Clearly Safe option, then many are likely to keep using the Testing Saftey option. Though if that Clearly safe is less than a dollar difference, I would believe most would take the Clearly Safe option.
Run the data based on self reporting during well visits at doctors offices between groups of like individuals (ie age, gender, race, known medical condition, vaccination statuses, etc...). I would think that we could get a similar set of data monkeys to work on this like they are for DOGE to quickly find patterns that cross similar groups.
Maybe I am wrong, though that is where my head is initially at.
Instead of an edit on my first response, I figured this could be it's own response to further stimulate ideas.
A more extreme (if we wanted to call it that) solution would be to ban all GRAS that are not on the healthiest nations lists & then if a food company truly believes the ingredient they want to add is worth it, they can show the data in open-source silos/information depots on how those ingredients should be considered a safe ingredient. Once that is established, any other company using that ingredient would pay the researching company a fee for the following 7 years to use the ingredient also. Multiple companies could join together for that research.
That said. It is very likely a combination of thousands of micro poisonings that have slipped through/combined as generally safe that cause these issues. Along side vaccines that cannot be sued for damages, there are a potential for a plethora of variables.
Whenever my brother and I would go to Canada to fish, he would rave about how good the bread was! And he likes O Henry candy bars. He would order a box to be shipped to him in the states. He says the US OHenrys don't taste as good. He doesn't believe that the additives are bad for you (LOL), but he certainly can taste the difference. This is a HUGE step, to have a health secretary reveal how many chemicals are added to our various foods. This won't happen overnight, but it is a major advancement. Utah is looking at taking Fluoride out of it's water supply statewide! I'm not sure that would have happened if RFK had not been appointed. WINNING!
I am directing the FDA commissioner to start the process of changing the rules to eliminate the self-affirmed GRAS pathway for new ingredients. I am also calling on the
@US_FDA
and
@NIH
continue to conduct and improve post-market assessments of GRAS chemicals currently in our food so we can rapidly identify the compounds that are making Americans so sick, and so that American consumers and regulators can make informed decisions. This is an important step in our pursuit to Make America Healthy Again.
If you watch the video, he states that there are thousands more ingredients in the US that is generally regarded as safe to Europe’s couple hundred. That’s not normal; plus for some reason, we’re allowing the companies themselves to decide if their own products are generally regarded as safe. Obvious conflict of interest. My only potential concern is that since he’s directing the FDA and NIH to conduct these studies, I sincerely hope these agencies are or get cleaned out beforehand, if they haven’t been already.
Hmm...I'm not sure attacking GRAS is really the way to begin this fight. That's one of the few things I actually think the FDA gets right. If people have been eating it safely in other countries for thousands of years, I think we should be able to consume it here as well without spending a million dollars on safety studies.
How about just better enforcement so that people can't abuse the system.
Better enforcement is good, and an absolutely necessity, if we're going to have a centralized system run the "regulatory approval agency." The problem is, however, that companies are not going to Europe to identify "for thousands of years," but are looking to their pocketbooks.
NOTE: I wrote out this example while I still thought gellan gum was GRAS. But I learned, through researching and writing this comment, that gellan gum is FDA approved through the Code of Federal Regulations. (4) Still, I think this example of gellan gum could be in lieu of the types of materials that could be classified as GRAS before they're used.
An example is gellan gum within Oat Milk. What is it? It's an artificial thickener that has the benefit of not being broken down in your stomach. (1, 2) Gellan gum is derived from soy beans. (1) Gellan gum may be used to deliver medications into your digestive tract by preventing degradation in your stomach's HCl. Gellan gum was FDA approved in 1996 (3, 4), but I am not aware of any studies to see if it impacts your microvilli and their ability to absorb nutrients.
Why not use rice flour or potato starch? Why immediately jump to gellan gum? Because it's cheaper.
Progress and opportunities in Gellan gum-based materials: A review of preparation, characterization and emerging applications, D. Gomes et al., Carbohydrate Polymers, Elsevier Publishing, Volume 311, 1 July 2023, 120782, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144861723002461
Gellan gum in drug delivery applications, M. Milivojevic et al., Natural Polysaccharides in Drug Delivery and Biomedical Applications, Academic Presss, Elsevier Publishing, 2019, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amit-Verma-46/publication/334698942_Locust_bean_gum_in_drug_delivery_application/links/5ed010dc92851c9c5e65d5f1/Locust-bean-gum-in-drug-delivery-application.pdf#page=172
https://www.hfpappexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?set=FoodSubstances&id=GELLANGUM
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172/subpart-G/section-172.665
Edit: Fixed grammar in the first paragraph.
This is an attack that throws the baby out with the bathwater. GRAS exists because there are things that we know are safe and we recognize that it is a very time-consuming and costly process to demand long-term health testing on every possible chemical that may find its way into food.
I have no problem with doing the work of testing things which have become controversial. They're good questions to ask and good ones to answer. But as someone with a bit of background in the clinical healthcare sciences, I understand that there is a devil in the details here that has to be addressed. Getting the data to do this kind of assessment isn't easy. Isolating the variables isn't easy. Trying to prove what they're seeking to prove is going to require fairly extensive testing. Who's going to pay for the work? Who's going to do the work? In medicine, there's a reason it's the pharma companies who do all the testing. They're the only ones with a vested interest in actually doing the work. No one else is going to pay for it. But if you're going to go test various GRAS food additives that are widely used in the food supply, now who pays? Are you going to force General Mills to pay to test Red Dye No. 40 when it's hardly the only one using it?
This isn't simple. I hear a lot of screeching from people here demanding why perfection hasn't been instituted less than 2 months into Trump's presidency. None of the real solutions to these problems is simple. It didn't break overnight. It got this way because people thought these were the right policies for a very long time.
I think the GRAS designation needs to exist. I think if Kennedy is concerned about particular additives, then a process needs to be put into place to define what the threat may be and develop a path to test it including to pay for it. Congress is going to have to authorize money for this. And I want guarantees that all of this will be publicly posted transparently if the taxpayer's going to pay for it.
Sounded like multiple other countries have their own GRAS which has hundreds, not thousands, of items on that list.
My initial thought is to look at the healthiest country's GRAS list, and require food companies to offer the exact same ingredients in the US for the same price they charge to that country (similar to the drug costs that Trump demanded drop during his first term). Maybe even go with the top 10 healthiest countries.
I don't know what those prices will look like once they hit the shelves, but requiring the lowest price sold to other nations to be offered here should help with the keeping the pricing honest. Stock the product ls side by side clearly labeled as "Clearly Safe Foods" & the other right next to it labeled "Testing For Saftey" with prices side by side. That will allow consumers an easy choice. If the box/bag of cereal is twice as much for the Clearly Safe option, then many are likely to keep using the Testing Saftey option. Though if that Clearly safe is less than a dollar difference, I would believe most would take the Clearly Safe option.
Run the data based on self reporting during well visits at doctors offices between groups of like individuals (ie age, gender, race, known medical condition, vaccination statuses, etc...). I would think that we could get a similar set of data monkeys to work on this like they are for DOGE to quickly find patterns that cross similar groups.
Maybe I am wrong, though that is where my head is initially at.
Instead of an edit on my first response, I figured this could be it's own response to further stimulate ideas.
A more extreme (if we wanted to call it that) solution would be to ban all GRAS that are not on the healthiest nations lists & then if a food company truly believes the ingredient they want to add is worth it, they can show the data in open-source silos/information depots on how those ingredients should be considered a safe ingredient. Once that is established, any other company using that ingredient would pay the researching company a fee for the following 7 years to use the ingredient also. Multiple companies could join together for that research.
That said. It is very likely a combination of thousands of micro poisonings that have slipped through/combined as generally safe that cause these issues. Along side vaccines that cannot be sued for damages, there are a potential for a plethora of variables.
Rewrite the headline. Poor communication. No one understands your point.
Speak for yourself.
What is GRAS?
Generally Recognized As Safe
Whenever my brother and I would go to Canada to fish, he would rave about how good the bread was! And he likes O Henry candy bars. He would order a box to be shipped to him in the states. He says the US OHenrys don't taste as good. He doesn't believe that the additives are bad for you (LOL), but he certainly can taste the difference. This is a HUGE step, to have a health secretary reveal how many chemicals are added to our various foods. This won't happen overnight, but it is a major advancement. Utah is looking at taking Fluoride out of it's water supply statewide! I'm not sure that would have happened if RFK had not been appointed. WINNING!
I was absolutely floored Gov Cox would endorse that. I would have lost on that bet.
edit - added Gov
Full text:
I'm for Bobby thank God he is doing this. I am waiting for bioengineered ingredients to be removed. Get the poisons out.