In the natural living world, food is probably one of the biggest topics there is. What’s in our food? Is it safe? Can I trust the government? Should I make all my food from scratch? It can be a little overwhelming.

This is one of those things that gets controversial for people. I try to touch on it a little when I have topics like this without going too deep into it. Today I want to give a little more detail on how food regulation is managed, including what governing bodies can and can’t do to protect you.

My hope is that you can make consumption choices for your family from a place of knowledge and empowerment, rather than fear and ambiguity.

How “safe” limits are determined

Where the FDA fails

Where to be extra cautious

Summary / TLDR

In my opinion, safe limits can generally be trusted but should be taken with a grain of salt? I’m not sure a better way to say that but you know what I mean.

How “safe” limits are determined

Contrary to what some people will say, most safe usage limits are not arbitrarily set. They are based on research and testing to determine what concentrations of a compound are likely to cause harm. The levels also aren’t put right under that line. Scientists take “X concentration is harmful” and they undercut that a ton to provide their recommendation.

Additionally, there is a lot of consideration of what the ingredient is being used for, how it will be consumed, how much of it will be consumed, and who will be consuming it. All of these questions are intended to be able to adequately account for the amount that will actually be consumed by the general population and use the scientific data with this to determine how much can be allowed and still be safe.

Theoretically, the outlined “safe” limits for concentrations of anything within a product are so far below what any research has shown to have any kind of effect that you can rest assured you’re unlikely to experience harm from consumption of that compound.

However, that’s not necessarily a guarantee. For one thing, new data emerges and things are understood better or differently. It doesn’t happen too often that governing bodies drastically change their stance based on new evidence, but it can happen. Stances certainly shift somewhat due to new evidence all the time.

It’s kind of like everything in life. Science is great but it’s not perfect. We simply can’t know everything. We do our best to collect data and make best choices based on that, but that will evolve over time.

In general I would encourage you not to freak out about all of the little things in your food. Be mindful. Seek to understand. Decide what you are willing to risk and not risk as well as what’s likely to be a risk to you or not, based on evidence. Then let that stuff go. The FDA, USDA, and so on and so forth are not perfect. I could preach my woes with them forever. But they’re also not trying to kill you… There are agendas that seep into what they do and how they regulate, but the core of their decisions are based around consumer safety, even if they’re not always perfect.

Where the FDA fails

At the same time, it is important to know that the FDA is severely limited in its capacity to protect consumers. So it’s kind of contradictory. Unfortunately, there’s only so much a massive governing body can do to monitor the millions of products both on and coming to shelves every year in the US. And the FDA may do a poorer job than some other countries…

Because it is such a massive job and really difficult to manage, the FDA has created some “rules” that the industry has come to see as loopholes to add untested ingredients to food. The major one is the “generally recognized as safe” designation. You can read more about this here, but it’s essentially a gap in the system that allows food producers to add ingredients with no real oversight.

Add to this the fact that the FDA cannot possibly keep up with all the products, and people have a right to fear what’s in their food. However, we do have data for some ingredients. For those ingredients, I say follow the data. Be cautious if you need to, but don’t make every ingredient the boogeyman. I tend to minimize added ingredients in my diet, but I’m not going to freak out over a little of this or that every now and then.

Where to be extra cautious

If you had to pick an area to be extra cautious about despite what any governing body says is safe, I would encourage you to be particularly mindful of endocrine disruptors (EDCs). There’s so much growing evidence on this right now and we are still trying to understand the whole picture.

What is clear is that the endocrine system works in very small changes so very small impacts from what we consume can cause significant health impacts. Because of this, it’s a little more difficult to use current methods of determining “safe” thresholds for these chemicals or determining the extent of their adverse affects at varying concentrations. We can still determine safe thresholds that are helpful for avoiding the worst effects, but it’s unclear how effective we are at protecting against less obvious and immediate impacts.

One problem with EDC research and determining “safe” thresholds historically has to do with the different nature of EDCs from other toxins and chemicals. Specific toxins, say a neurotoxin, can be tested on animals and extrapolated to humans to say that this level causes no adverse effects and a limit for use can be set based on that. That’s not as easy to do with compounds and systems that respond to such minor changes.

I’ve done a couple posts on endocrine disruptors going into a lot more detail on what they are, how they impact health, and how to minimize your exposure to them. (LINK) I’d highly encourage you to go read those if you’re at all curious to learn more about this.

Summary / TLDR

The FDA is not out to get you, regulated limits are based on science, and you should generally be able to consult these guidelines for reasonable health recommendations.

At the same time, there is new evidence coming out all the time on everything under the sun and it’s important that we remain open to changing our minds about ingredients and processes if it’s revealed that something may not be safe after all.

Additionally, though the FDA does a good job protecting consumers in some ways, it is severely lacking in its capacity to adequately do so. Because of this, there is a massive gap in the proper regulation of the food we eat and what can be added to it.

Generally, I say follow the evidence where it exists, be mindful of what you eat, and where possible, keep your food simple and less processed. My philosophy is not to freak out over every single ingredient, especially when we’re talking about occasional consumption. At the same time, if you’re a serial processed food eater, you likely should pay more attention than someone who eats meat and veggies for every meal.

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