Comment by tw04
3 days ago
Serious question: If there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing color, why risk it? What is the benefit?
3 days ago
Serious question: If there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing color, why risk it? What is the benefit?
The problem with that premise is that almost every substance has a remote chance of causing cancer in some way or another. Just ask the state of California. So you would have to ban everything if that is really your stance.
The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done. Otherwise, anyone can simply say X is harmful and pass regulations to get their pet bogeyman pulled off the market, and that is basically what is happening here.
> only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I think it's valid to also apply heavy scrutiny on new chemicals being added to the food chain. The default being to not allow it if it's not proven safe.
Red dye 3 probably shouldn't have been added to the food supply chain with that criteria but since it's already been there for decades with no strong link to negative outcomes there's little reason to ban it now.
You really don't want to know about GRAS (Generally recognized as safe) then. 700 food substances were grandfathered into the food supply chain and most new things are self-affirmed by the company selling them.
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I don't disagree with you, but we don't have heavy scrutiny on the existing and natural chemicals that are in the food chain from all of the plants that we eat.
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> The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done.
Because we're talking about food I would actually like to see the opposite. Provide peer reviewed, gold standard studies showing that what you want to put in food is in fact safe.
There is no such thing as proving something "safe". Go back and re-read the parent comment. The important point you are missing is that basically anything can be "linked" to cancer, and if you adopt the argument you are making, there would be nothing left.
Proving something safe is logically equivalent to proving that it is not unsafe, which is the same thing as proving a negative, which cannot be done. I cannot prove there is not a teapot circling Mars, and I cannot prove that even the most inert ingredient, at some dose, will not harm you.
Anyone who has lived in California knows this absurdity more intuitively than most people, because California's stupid laws adopt the logic you are proposing, and basically everything in daily life is labeled as cancer-causing.
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There is no way to establish a food as "safe".
Health outcomes are noisy, especially if taken over a long time. Peer reviewed studies are often flawed in various ways and most scientific studies lack the statistical power to be inconclusive.
The fear based approach to human diets can not work. We have to accept risks in our lives if we want to eat at all.
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Natural food is not safe. Many natural foods that people eat, specifically plants, contain natural toxins and carcinogens that would probably not pass your threshold for "safe".[1]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2217210/
I don't know about "peer-reviewed gold-standard studies," but what you've described is basically how the EU does it – what goes in food must be proven safe.
It's the opposite of the US approach, which is to ban (only) proven-harmful ingredients.
I don't expect US food-safety laws to become more strict in the next four years, but who knows, maybe the dead-worm guy will surprise us.
It’s impossible to prove a negative.
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No, you assign a risk score as well as a cost score to all the industrial inputs that you can use. In this case, there are readily available red food dyes (eg cochineal from industrially farmed insects) that have much lower risk scores (as they are from plant and animal sources) and not significantly different cost scores.
You also need to ask, what is the cost of not having this substance? In this case, the cost would be - you have food that isn't red. Is that a substantial problem for society?
To treat these as irrelevant and boil it down to "prove it is harmful or shut up" is needlessly reductive.
Have those other been proven safe? Is it possible they too cause cancer?
I'd like to point out that eating charred meat has a clear link with colon cancer, so we can't simply appeal to nature for safety.
> that have much lower risk scores (as they are from plant and animal sources)
This is a fallacy. If anything, there's more reason to expect that a substance evolved to serve a biological function (that happens to be red) would have biological effects in humans than a substance developed specifically to be red and be biologically inert.
You didn't address the part that it adds nothing useful to the food other than color.
That's an argument against all food dyes including natural ones.
Given color improves the enjoyment of food, I'd argue it is useful though.
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"Presentation of food" is not "nothing useful". People who see basically eat with eyes. Like plate/food ratio can make you overeat. Or some food can be totally fine, but if it is just made to look bad for example rotten/expired it can be vomit inducing. Just like if someone says you just ate something bad, if you think what you eat is harmful the body will react
If there is no food coloring at all would we eat better? I bet yes. But we can't get there now. It will not pass any vote
Color is important for appeal and flavor. Otherwise we would never color food.
No you would only have to ban things with no nutritional benefit. The comment you replied to specified the case in question: it only lends the food a color.
I'm not really pro-bureaucrat, but perhaps the standard for food should be slightly different. Just maybe, (novel) food (additives/preservatives/ingredients) should first be proven safe, rather than waiting until they're proven unsafe to prohibit them. It's not as if this was a substance humans regularly ingested for centuries and people are only now wigging out... look at the wikipedia entry for this. The only halogen that's not part of this thing is apparently bromine, the IUPAC name for the chemical's about as long as my comment here.
Proven safe against what though?
I'm a big proponent of food safety regulation, but we have to acknowledge that there's no way to prove something is safe against all possible harms it might do. There will always be a risk in food. The question is how much risk will we tolerate?
Proof can take a while to get together.
I prefer the EUs precautionary principle that enables action to be taken when there is uncertainty over something.
Well, I guess you should start by banning all fruits and vegetables, because there's evidence that they contain toxins and carcinogens, and we're not sure if they're "safe"[1].
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2217210/
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I think you need to familiarize yourself with the precautionary principle, since i believe it applies here
PP Paper :
https://fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
> The problem with that premise is that almost every substance has a remote chance of causing cancer in some way or another.
What is the scientific basis of this claim ?
It's pretty extraordinary that every single thing we eat is carcinogenic.
It's not extraordinary to state that every single thing we eat[0] can have a study designed around it to show that it might cause cancer -- that is how studies and chemicals (things we eat) work.
[0]Except water, maybe. I'd bet if you shoved enough water into a rat at minimum you could observe an increase in tumor growth rate though.
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It's a strawman argument often brought up to argue against banning potentially cancer causing foods.
It's also not true, since many foods - most vegetables, for example, or many types of fiber - do the complete opposite, and reduce your risk of cancer.
> The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done.
How about only put things in food that are contributing to the actual food? It's not just nutritional value, it's absolutely taste and texture as well. But visuals? Surely you can agree the balance of "is it worth it" is different for the color of a fruity loop than for nutritional value and taste.
You're correct that the "acceptable" line needs to be somewhere because risk isn't absolute, but that line can be in different places for different purposes. (And you can't just write off all cancer concerns because some of them probably aren't legitimate.)
I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes for this because it seems to me a highly valid stance. Why do we allow mostly unchecked, highly processed junk food in our society, only banning items that have a high level of risk of being poisonous, if at all? Especially since the main target of a lot of it is children.
Shouldn't we take the opposite approach? Make it very hard to use highly processed unnatural products, to the point where it's cheaper and easier for companies to fall back on less processed "clean label" ingredients.
I work in (well, adjacent to) the F&B sector and I can tell you that every large company knows exactly what clean food means, why it's healthier, and where to source the ingredients, and that they have equivalent food products using these either already on shelves, or waiting to be produced if there's a shift in consumer desires.
The reason that they don't already use them - the reason you mostly only see advertising for processed foods - is because the more highly processed a food is, the higher the profit margins for companies. I've seen it stated as a rule that every level of processing gives a 2x profit margin. So if you can process an item 3 times, you'll 6x your profit margins (obviously a rule of thumb rather than law).
> Just ask the state of California
I've see the labels at Starbucks, by the chocolate at the grocery store, and by the balsamic vinegar.
In my experience if something is even slightly enjoyable it has a chance of causing cancer.
Anyone can say X is harmful, just not on X…
I would rather go other direction. When introducing new chemical or additive it has to be proven that is not harmful to humans before using it
> only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done.
Sounds like a good way to kill a lot of people
Alcohol causes cancer, should we reenact prohibition? Water is poisonous in large enough doses. Should we ban water?
Nothing in this world is truly free of all risk. We have to make judgement calls with every single substance. Yes, coloring food is a legitimate use with real benefits that we need to weigh against the risks. And we also need to consider the very real costs of enforcement and burden of compliance. Bans are an extreme option that does not come without costs for the government and society.
Obviously the problem is that Red no3 is so prevalent and completely unregulated. Alcohol is sold separately and ID is needed to purchase and isn't added to children's food. If the dye was only sold separately in bottles this debate wouldn't be happening.
The water thing is even more unserious so I'll ignore it.
This is a silly argument that is often made.
Everyone knows alcohol is a toxin. It is regulated. You have to be of certain age to buy it. It isn't normally in things you consume daily as a secondary ingredient in doses that would be harmful. You can taste it if it is. If you cannot taste it, you can recognize the effects from drinking it.
The dose makes the poison with any substance, that is a base tenant of toxicology. Not many people are unintentionally poisoning themselves with water.
Food and drug regulations save lives. If you want to argue against them, please at least do so in a manner that doesn't rely on absurdist examples.
Its regulation has nothing to do with its cancer causing properties. Why are you even bringing that irrelevant point here?
Who is being absurd now?
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The difference, I think, is that alcohol is a choice. But having a potentially dangerous dye in a pill you're forced to take is not.
> alcohol is a choice.
Thousands of ppl die every year from being other end of DUI. I didn't choose to be on the road with ppl who choose to drink. It was forced on me.
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We (humans) don't subsist on some Matrix-like slop that provides all of our nutrients for no pleasure. Eating is a weird combination of necessity and pleasure activity. You could ask: if there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing taste, why risk it? You'd ban most spices with this line of reasoning.
At the end of the day, the safest thing (in terms of avoiding cancer) is probably to plant some potatoes in your backyard and eat them unspiced and unbuttered for the rest of your life. Most of us prefer food that is a bit more appealing than that, however. Appealing in all aspects - taste, texture, and appearance.
Other than bakery items, what foods do you regularly eat that depend on having a specific color? I don't see how that's anything other than a marketing tool to make them stand out on store shelves. When you order something in a restaurant, you typically don't even know what their version will look like until it gets to your table. I've never, not once, added dyes to home cooking outside of cake icings and things like that.
There've been ridiculous attempts to get rid of perfectly innocent flavor enhancers before, like the fight against MSG. Take out MSG, and food tastes less good. But take out a borderline red dye, and what's the worst that happens? Factories have to sell soda that's slightly less pretty in the bottle?
> what foods do you regularly eat that depend on having a specific color?
Probably all of them. We are super sensitive to colors.
Red meat and fish like tuna and salmon have carbon monoxide and sodium nitrate treatment just to keep them red because that's how people think they can judge quality.
> Consumers will pay up to $1 per pound more for darker colored salmon compared to salmon with lighter hues, according to research by DSM, a company that supplies pigmenting compounds to the salmon feed industry.
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Cheese
Tuna
Pickles
Oranges (apples as well, but I can't find an old article)
Wasabi
Apricots
Ginger
Salmon
https://www.treehugger.com/foods-youd-never-guess-were-artif...
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Nope, eating nothing but potatoes for the rest of your life is a fantastic way to ensure that you end up with severe macro/micronutrient deficiencies, which will be a very effective way of generating disease, including cancer.
> Hyperbole.
> 1. A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
> 2. A figure of speech in which the expression is an evident exaggeration of the meaning intended to be conveyed, or by which things are represented as much greater or less, better or worse, than they really are; a statement exaggerated fancifully, through excitement, or for effect.
> 3. Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
From DuckDuckGo, quoting Wordnik, quoting The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
For fun, you could grow your own seasoning (besides herbs, easy too) for those potatoes. I recently learned about the plant Salicornia - you can dehydrate them and grind them to make a green salt. I'm going to try to grow some this year.
>We (humans) don't subsist on some Matrix-like slop that provides all of our nutrients for no pleasure. Eating is a weird combination of necessity and pleasure activity. You could ask: if there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing taste, why risk it? You'd ban most spices with this line of reasoning.
I mean, we absolutely do that already. There's plenty of folks on a low sodium diet because while the salt tastes great, it's bad for them.
In this case we aren't talking about eliminating the color red entirely, we're arguing about a slightly different color. You can get red from a strawberry, raspberry, cherry skin, etc. which will work just as well. It just won't be the neon-red that red-5 produces.
Yup, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of dyes one could use to get red that are completely harmless. Although they may be more expensive, I have no clue.
I don't think anyone really cares or thinks there's some benefit. The problem is (I think) that this leads to some people believing that the dye causes cancer, when there's been no direct link in humans.
Seems more like a problem with uneven application of bans.
Red dye 3 might cause cancer (maybe) but it's admittedly such a weak effect that studies aren't finding a link in humans.
Meanwhile, there are carcinogenic things like alcohol which anyone can buy (over 21).
Heck, we can't even mandate that alcohol must contain B12, which would absolutely save lives and prevent some of the serious injuries of alcoholism.
But we can ban this dye that may or may not in some very small percentage of people cause cancer.
But red dye has little to no value to consumers and there are equally viable alternatives. No one is going to start bootlegging red dye 3 if it is banned. Alcohol has huge value and is basically impossible to ban.
What does B12 in alcohol do?
B1 and B12 it should be.
As for what that does [1], wet brain.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke_encephalopathy
If someone you know is an alcoholic, try and get them to take b vitamins.
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But have those dye alternatives been proven safe assuming an equally rigour test of "well, this might cause cancer but we can't actually prove it"?
If you are asking what would putting B12 (or B1) in alcohol do: prevent serious irreversible deficiencies that are not only horrible for the person themselves, but people as a whole, one way or another.
Call it risk reduction.
Well, we did TRY banning alcohol, but it didn't go that well. We do at least generally attempt to prevent children from consuming alcohol, though.
Should we ban alcohol? I think people should stop drinking it, but in general I don't think the sale of things that may be harmful in some ways should be entirely prohibited, it would just be good if we minimized the amount of potentially harmful ingredients in our general food supply. e.g. if someone wanted to buy/sell Red Dye No. 3 on its own I don't think that would be a big concern.
Both alcohol and tobacco are regulated by the ATF. The FDA would ban cigarettes if they had the authority.
Yeah, B12 AND B1 in alchohol alike. There are lots of people around age 50 who get admitted to social home and have irreversible B1 deficiency, labeled as "alcohol-induced B1 deficiency".
The studies that show cancer in rats involve the equivalent of you eating like a pound of the substance a day or more when the dosage you’re exposed to is in milligrams for food.
Plenty of things you eat would kill you if you ate thousands of times as much per day. Most spices. 100 cups of coffee will likely kill you.
Follow-on serious question: who gets to decide what risk is too much and what reward isn't enough for me and my body? Why should that be anyone other than me?
Because that's what we tried for a hundred years and its how we ended up with innumerable wildly dangerous products on the market. The amount of research to vet all the products in your daily life would be astronomical and that's even assuming the companies making them are honest about the ingredients. Here's the context of why the FDA was founded:
> By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products that had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, mascara that could cause blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law did not get through the Congress of the United States for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration
A combination of economists, epidemiologists, public health officials, governments, and individuals.
Why other than you? Because you have an impact on society. Your actions affect others.
But this is to do with food I eat. I don't feed it to other people.
Here's a better question, then: what health and safety decisions do I get to make on your behalf. What can I dictate to you that you can't do, or have to do? Can I mandate that you have to run 5 miles every day? It will be good for you to do, and it will impact others by increasing your productivity and lowering the cost of your healthcare on society. Is it reasonable that I should be able to use the threat of violence to induce you to exercise? Because that's all that regulation is: it's an outline of behaviors for which the threat of violence is a legitimate response.
Would you be upset if you ate something every day and didn't understand the risks fully and then developed a disease because of it? What if no one understood the risks aside from the entity that sold it to you? Would you be upset if someone you cared about deeply, say a child, made a mistake of never understanding there was a risk to consuming something, say, baby food, and then developed a life ending disease because of it? Would you feel responsible if you facilitated giving that person you cared about the food you chose to buy and there by aided in ending their life prematurely?
Any of these scenarios should make it obvious there has to be some sort of regulation around these things, as no one individual is an encyclopedia of toxic substances, and we exist in a bazaar of choices.
There could be a compromise, much like there is with alcohol and tobacco, that if you absolutely wanted to buy something toxic, you could do so. However, that wouldn't really necessitate that you couldn't use it to harm someone else.
I'm surprised they're banning Red 3 instead of Red 40. Red 40 is a very common allergen.
Yes one member of my family would be thrilled if Red 40 was banned. They don't have an anaphylactic reaction, they "just" barf it back up shortly.
I suppose it boils down to freedom of expression. Analog is a type of red plastic does nothing to humans, but can cause cancer if rats eat it. Do we ban it? What if we're actually trying to kill rats in our area?
Humans do not eat plastic, this argument doesn't make sense.
I think it's more about overextending risk assessments
Yes, of course. Humans do not directly eat plastic. At least nobody I know chews on plastic plates or cups.
But that does not mean that humans don't eat any plastic. Tiny pieces of plastic gets transferred to the food by contact with plastic containers. Some processes like microwave ovens, radically increase the amount transferred as well. Previously it was thought that these microplastics would just be eliminated from the body through typical waste functions, but evidence is increasingly mounting that The microplastics actually stay in the body long term and destroy cells they come in contact with. Given we have found nontrivial levels of microplastics in all of our vital organs (including testicals!), that's a scary proposition.
A crude analogy might be germs. Humans don't eat germs directly either, but by nature of their size and invisibility to us, we end up consuming plenty of them.
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Humans constantly consume microplastic. This is a bad faith argument.
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