this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday.

The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 — potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group.

The legislation was popularly known as the “Skittles ban” because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance.

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[–] [email protected] 135 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Ahhh but I don't have enough cancer yet :( On a serious note, sometimes people shit talk California but they have a massive economy and when they do things like this it has a huge positive benefit for the entire country. Most companies will just reformulate instead of having California specific products so everyone benefits.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (3 children)

To me this is amazing news, I am allergic to Red Dye #3. If I eat something that has it, within seconds my throat closes and I can barely breathe. The worst part is that there is no need to use it. Sweet Tarts for example uses beets to get the red coloring in their candy.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well that's terrifying. If you don't live in California you'll still have to watch for it after the law takes affect but it should be used a lot less.

[–] JJROKCZ 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Most brands will reformulate and all their products will be compliant rather than making a California only version and a rest of the us version. They aren’t going to just stop serving California either, it’s the largest economy in the nation and if it was on its own it would be roughly equivalent to Germany gdp wise

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

How... was the process of identifying that very specific allergy?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I started to to compare ingredient lists from packages of candy and it was the only thing that was on all of them.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Kinda weird this has to be done at the bill level, there isn't a health agency that monitors these things and bans as necessary?

[–] PetDinosaurs 81 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

There is, but banning these substances is a political process not a scientific one. It's definitely true that this should be done by experts and not politicians.

The thing is that it's impossible to set up an experiment to show that something is safe. All you can do is collect more evidence that something is not dangerous. This leads to GRAS.

There's also the additional fact that the dosage makes the poison. There is no substance for which a single molecule can harm you meaningfully.

Roundup is about as toxic as tablesalt. Caffeine is vastly more toxic than that. And Tylenol, well, that simply wouldn't be approved if it were invented today. The ratio between the therapeutic dose and the lethal dose is too small.

Then there's tradition and utility.

Plenty of herbal supplements and even foods are quite dangerous but are sold because they always were and they are "natural".

We can all agree that certain substances don't belong in food - either because they are useless or there's strong evidence they're harmful.

It's the useful ones for which there is some evidence that they may cause issues when given in extreme doses, but a vast number of substances exhibit that behavior. Caffeine and Tylenol, for example. You do not think of these as poisons, but they are. Caffeine is so dangerous that you have to go through a lot of trouble to get it in its pure form.

The fact is that those supstances are certainly more dangerous than the substances in the article, but people are not clamoring to ban them.

And all this complexity is before people's individual interests are involved.

This is why when you compare, say, us and eu food regulations you find substances that are on one list and not the other. One is not a superset of the other.

Anyway, these substances are not "toxic" in really any correct usage of the term, and it's probably very unlikely that a ban will make anyone healthier or happier, despite what you may read about when you Google these substances. Even if you go to the scientific level.

Scientists can have their own agenda. They're still people. Or they can just be bad scientists. Or they can just be churning out papers as fast as possible to increase their prestige.

It used to be that the top paper that came up (it may still be up in the list) when you search glyphosate and bees was a bad paper. It did correctly conclude that glyphosate killed the bees when they put it in the honey, but they had to put so much in there in order to see any effect at all that the concentration was high enough to actually kill aquatic weeds. Next it wasn't properly controlled. Do you know what else will kill bees if put it in their honey? Water. And most definitely caffeine. I assure you a very small amount of caffeine in honey will kill a nest.

It's just a political thing with good optics because who can argue with banning a "toxic" substance.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There is no substance for which a single molecule can harm you meaningfully.

Prions would like a word.

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[–] HelloHotel 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Roundup is about as toxic as tablesalt

there's a medium artificial with the same title if anyone is interested. (1 minute google search)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are bees typically used to find the toxicity of a substance for humans? I thought that was rats or something.

[–] PetDinosaurs 10 points 1 year ago

They were trying to link glyphosate to colony collapse disorder.

Yeah, you'd typically use rats or mice.

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[–] paddirn 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

There is the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and normally that’s their purview, but they’re probably a bit more lax and industry-friendly, so more likely to let that stuff slide. California is a bit more progressive and health-conscious, and they’re a big enough market that when they say they’re gonna ban something, it essentially becomes banned for everybody else. Businesses won’t develop CA and non-CA products, they’ll just rework whatever it is to conform with CA’s demands.

The FDA did step in I believe when states starting talking about introducing different labeling standards and having different requirements for what needed to be called out, because it would’ve turned into a nightmare if you had to manage 50 different sets of labeling requirements.

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[–] FireTower 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Any state health agency would fall under the executive branch of government. The power of creating laws is under the legislative branch (like the Senate). Executive agencies have the authority to enforce laws and under Chevron Deference the authority to interpret laws where vague, but not form new laws.

For example, if a bill was passed saying cars can't be louder than 110 dBs an executive agency could decide the proper way of measuring volume, if not prescribed by law.

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[–] HelloHotel 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the fact that its

... "toxic" food additives

and not

... "toxic food additives"

makes me think the one who made the title inserted their opinions.

[–] SquishMallow 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't this standard procedure for blogs/journalism? I thought the quotes are used to imply a term is not being used because the author thinks it's true, but rather to indicate that that's what the topic is centered on.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Since the article didn't list many examples, I looked them up.

brominated vegetable oil- used in sodas, usually citrus flavored ones
potassium bromate- look out for this in breads
propylparaben- used in packaged baked goods, mostly pastries and tortillas
red dye No. 3- aka Erythrosine, its a pink dye, so watch out for that ingredient in any pink foods

and lastly to cover all bases:
titanium dioxide- its a white dye, so watch out for that ingredient in any white foods

[–] IonAddis 27 points 1 year ago (5 children)

brominated vegetable oil - it's found in citrus sodas because the (natural) citrus flavoring is an oil, an orange or citrus oil of some type, and is prone to separating if there's not a way to keep is suspended in water. And I've seen separated sodas in a QA testing lab and they look pretty nasty. I imagine orange sodas that haven't already reformulated will have to, so they might end up tasting different. I know orange Gatorade reformulated to get rid of BVO about 10 years ago or more. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/brominated-vegetable-oil-bvo

As a note, California also forced (by being one of the largest markets) reformulation of dark sodas containing caramel color across the nation. Caramel color is what happens when you brown toast or caramelize sugar. I kinda just scratched my head because it seems you'll get more exposure to the carcinogen they're talking about if you burn your toast. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/questions-answers-about-4-mei . And if burned baked goods were a genuine problem, it seems we would've known it long before now.

I think most industries definitely need more regulation, but California sometimes seems to do banning so often on the slightest sliver of data, and it kinda creates a regulatory "crying wolf" situation, where people become so used to the "known to cause cancer in California" warnings that they start to ignore ALL of them and can't differentiate the ones that are dead fucking serious and the ones that honestly require unusual situations for it to happen like someone eating/consuming a physically unlikely amount of the product constantly.

I personally think it's a problem when people don't have a way to differentiate the warnings about things that'll genuinely fuck you up under current levels of exposure, and things you basically have to go dip yourself in a vat of daily for months before it harms you.

And I think it's a problem because people naturally have short attention spans, and when EVERYTHING has a warning, you know people aren't going to actually do research to figure out which one is dead serious and which is fluffed up and starting at shadows. So you start to get inconsistent heeding of the warnings. Eventually you'll ignore the boy crying wolf because you're so tired of going to to check if the wolf is there, and the wolf'll come eat you then.

I have no solutions for solving it though, given how polarized things are (one side massively under-regulating, and the other sometimes starting at shadows) and how few people are willing to listen to nuance.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

A reason you don't see those warning labels as often today as 20 years ago is that a pattern has emerged of:

  1. California bans or labels something

  2. biggest companies change it to avoid ban/label

3.US implements a national regulation to match California (since the big companies have already complied anyway)

  1. Labels no longer necessary
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Bans are different from warnings, particularly because they don't require you to pay attention to them in order to work.

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[–] wafflez 6 points 1 year ago

Brominated vegetable oil used to be in Mountain dew and it's the reason it's been banned in many countries around the world for decades

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For anyone interested in trying to avoid bad stuff, there’s this free app called Yuka I’ve been using for a year or so now where you can scan foods and other products and it gives them a score and a comprehensive breakdown of the additives and overall health of the food with linked sources.

[–] ryry1985 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have this app too. It's depressing how many foods I actually enjoy have additives in them.

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[–] Desistance 19 points 1 year ago

If the food conglomerates are whining then there is truth to the legislation.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Well this follows the example of Europe, UK and Canada on dealing with toxic ingredients.

[–] paddirn 15 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Work for a food company dealing with fallout from this, all of our strawberry products have red #3 in it and there’s alot of discussion swirling around this (though none of the stuff I personally work on is affected, so I’m not privy to any specifics). For whatever reason, they’re not going with any alternative red dyes (cost is a probable factor), so we’re just going to have not-pink strawberry stuff. Though I think there was quite a bit of market research done and alot of people just preferred not having any sort of coloring added. So then we have to wrestle with the packaging because how do you convey that this vanilla-looking food is actually strawberry-flavored? It messes a bit with the packaging we already had, but whatever. I imagine food companies all over the place are dealing with this same question.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The bromate ingredients are only dangerous if the factory fucked up during production as well. If they're doing their job correctly, there is no bromate in your food.

It's sort of like how you don't have to worry about food poisoning from chicken when it's cooked through, even though it's not recommended to risk eating the raw stuff.

No idea about the other two banned ingredients, but the risk seems pretty low for these at least. I wouldn't bother throwing food away over their presence, personally, but that's just me.

Edit: too tired

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"The bromate ingredients are only dangerous if the factory fucked up during production as well. If they're doing their job correctly, there is no bromine in your food."

Idk if that's true or not so not commenting on that portion. However, "I wouldn't bother throwing food away over their presence, personally, but that's just me." We all have different risk tolerances so that's fine. What isn't fine is that the FDA makes a practice of taking corporate bribes, allowing flawed or outright manipulated studies, etc and then suddenly approving foods, additives, drugs, that are known or strongly suspected to be unsafe. For example, Donald Rumsfeld (sound familiar?) was a food company exec who really really wanted aspartame approved but they were having trouble getting through the approval process because it wasn't easily demonstrable that the product was safe. Rumsfeld gets added to Ronald Reagan's transition team and suddenly it's approved. Scary stuff. It's been approved in other countries so mayyyybe it's fine but the history of its approval is appalling and simply proves that the FDA isn't always looking out for the best interest of society at large. So if a state like CA steps in and says "holy shit don't eat this", I'm listening.

One source: "Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan's transition team. This team hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. Dr. Hayes, a pharmacologist, had no previous experience with food additives before being appointed director of the FDA. On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Reagan issued an executive order eliminating the FDA commissioners' authority to take action and Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener. Hayes, Reagan's new FDA commissioner, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision. So Hayes installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What isn’t fine is that the FDA makes a practice of taking corporate bribes, allowing flawed or outright manipulated studies, etc and then suddenly approving foods, additives, drugs, that are known or strongly suspected to be unsafe.

Yeah, corruption isn't fine. I don't live on that continent though, so, I'm afraid I can't help you out much with Donald Rumsfeld. I just like accuracy in my science and proportionate anxiety about risks.

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[–] Etterra 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well great. If I can't count on my food choices to kill me some day, what am I even eating food for. At least saturated fats are still legal.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Saturated fats are healthy. Just sayin'.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Welp, I’m gonna check my pantry now for any of these ingredients.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

These aren't the only toxic additives allowed in food in the US by the way but it's a good start. On account of Google no longer being a search engine I have attempted to find you a more comprehensive list and given up after looking at the first 3 links since they don't go anywhere that looks reputable. Maybe someone else knows a good source for us?

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[–] rtxn 6 points 1 year ago

I hope it won't go the way of the "may contain carcinogens" warning label.

[–] Zerlyna 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait so eating titanium is ok still?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There seems to be some disagreement, but TiO2 (a very white pigment powder) is generally considered safe and has been used in everything from wall paint to toothpaste for decades. A few studies have suggested possible genetic toxicity, but it may be only from the extremely small nano-particle form. Another study suggested lung problems much like asbestos, but that might be from breathing high level aerosol concentrations. All in all, there’s no clear consensus, which seems like a pretty good sign for such a commonly used material, but the jury is still out.

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