Comment by diob
Comment by diob 3 days ago
Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
Comment by diob 3 days ago
Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume. This is a much better heuristic than "we haven't found any adverse effects yet, so call it GRAS". Science is great at determining the presence of specific effects. It's not so good at finding an absence of effect.
> The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume.
I mean, that's just not true. Fruit Loops are sold in Europe as well (albeit with slightly different colors), and there's no hoof or plant that produces anything that looks like Fruit Loops. Food coloring is a worldwide phenomenon.
I 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.
Well, 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 for the full set.
> behind
Is it really a competition to see who can ban the most things? What's the prize if you win?
So the US is winning considering they allow less food dyes?
Source? The last time I checked the FDA bans more food dyes than most other countries.
Go 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.
I hate to break it to you, but a lot of that difference comes down to labeling and disclosure requirements. If the Italian fries don't even have to disclose what type of oil they use, they probably also don't have to disclose the oil stabilizers and seasonings they use.
Let's not forget that Europe had massive epidemic of horse meat being snuck into the supply chain with no one catching on.
I think your cultural palate is showing. The marketing of a few simple ingredients sounds good except it's not like American McDonalds is putting them in for no reason. You can make the case that fillers are used to cut cost but for french fries all that stuff costs extra. To Americans that shit tastes great.
* The beef flavor is mimicking frying in beef tallow. If you use Marmite in your brown gravy you're using the same trick.
* Americans, being flushed with corn and corn syrup which is sweeter than granulated sugar, developed a sweeter tooth than other places which is why the dextrose.
* Potatoes once cut and exposed to air get that gross dark color. Most home cooks usually solve that by keeping them submerged in water until frying but Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate works the same.
EU law mandates listing all the ingredients in the food, you can't pick and choose:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product-requirements/f...
I 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.
This is CLEARLY due to less strict labelling. I mean they just say "oil", what kind of oil?!?!
Not 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.
It 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.
There 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.
A2 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>
Sure 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
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...
I count 14 for the EU.
Quinoline Yellow (E 104), Sunset Yellow FCF/Orange Yellow S (E 110), Azorubine/Carmoisine (E 122), Amaranth (E 123), Ponceau 4R/Cochineal Red A (E 124), Erythrosine/Red No. 3 (E 127), Allura Red AC (E 129), Patent Blue V (E 131), Indigotine/Indigo carmine (E 132), Brilliant Blue FCF (E 133), Green S (E 142), Brilliant Black PN (E 151), Brown HT (E 155), Litholrubine BK (E 180)
Some of these names may be confusing since their names imply they're natural when in fact they are synthetic (e.g. Amaranth, Cochineal Red A, Indigo carmine).
Because people have done it before and we have something named the internet
https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations...
https://eatwell.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2024-08/foods-us...
At least one proposed solution I’ve seen is to split the FDA, because regulating food is almost nothing like regulating drugs in 2025.
We 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.
To 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.
Bans 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.
A lot of other countries do not have the shear mass of industries and services that the US does.
Only if they actually cause cancer. The FDA's statement (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.