Experts are sounding the alarm over the skyrocketing number of chemicals added to American food over the last few decades, including some with links to cancer.
Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at NYU, said: ‘There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of substances added to our foods for which the true safety data are unknown to independent scientists, the government, and the public.’
It’s been shown major manufacturers in the US sell slightly different products overseas to fall in line with stricter regulations there, but the domestic versions are laden with additives, chemicals, and other potentially harmful compounds.
A previous DailyMail.com investigation of foods made in the US versus those across the pond found American products contain several times more additives than the same items in Britain.
In America, for instance, we’re eating nearly three times the amount of ingredients in a common brand of whole wheat bread compared to a familiar brand in the UK.
In the snack aisle, the US household favorite Cool Ranch Doritos have 27 ingredients, compared to 15 in the UK.
Absent from the UK version are risky additives Red 40, Blue 1, and Yellow 5, all of which have links to behavioral issues in children, cancer, asthma, and DNA damage.
European and British food laws are generally more strict, banning several toxic additives that are allowed to remain in products sold in the US. It means American food often contains a lot more ingredients, as seen above
Sarah Bond, a food scientist and nutritionist, told DailyMail.com EU and UK regulators are more forthcoming about what goes into foods that stock supermarket shelves and those products are labeled according to the E-number system.
This system labels items with a unique code for easy identification of any additives, such as preservatives, colorings, and flavorings, in the foods.
She said: ‘E numbers (for example, E621 is MSG, E300 is ascorbic acid) basically serve as standardized codes, and these are listed on the food packaging.
‘These numbers help consumers to identify additives and what their purpose is. They make the ingredients label a lot less shady
‘The EU has also banned many additives that have been deemed harmful, and a lot of these are still in use in the US.’
Several questionable ingredients that make the label significantly longer are commonplace in American grocery stores that have been outright banned in Europe, such as potassium bromate, commonly used to help strengthen dough and make it rise higher, and Red 40, an oft-used food colorant in the US.
Hundreds of food additives have entered the food system in the past two decades or so with little regulatory oversight.
Unlike EU regulators, which are proactive in reviewing food ingredient lists and formulas before the products hit the shelves, US regulators are generally reactive.
The FDA’s Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) designation has been in place since the 90s and formalized a self-reporting system that allowed a company to affirm their ingredients are safe based on the conclusion of a scientific panel.
While California’s bill is promising, there are still other ingredients that, despite their known health risks and prohibition in Europe, are present in foods people eat every day
A packet of Doritos sold in America, left, is shown to contain controversial chemical compounds like ‘Red 40, Blue 1 and Yellow 5’ – but they aren’t used on the UK version
However, the companies do not need to consult the FDA, nor do they have to provide the panel’s conclusion as long as it satisfies the criteria set by the agency’s final rule.
Once an ingredient achieves GRAS status, it can bypass the FDA’s pre-market review process, allowing chemicals to be used in food even if the agency never concluded they were safe for human consumption.
One of those ingredients is potassium bromate, an additive in flour that makes baked goods like bagels and donuts rise higher, enhance their texture, and look more appealing.
Potassium bromate has been banned in the European Union, China, and India due to significant health risks. It has been linked to irritation of the nose, throat, and lungs and has been shown in laboratory studies to induce renal and thyroid tumors in rats.
Food dyes such as Red 3, Red 40, Blue 1, and Yellow 5 are also generally recognized as safe, but they’ve gained intense scrutiny in recent years after a 2007 British study published in The Lancet linked a range of dyes to hyperactivity.
In it, British researchers selected nearly 300 children from the Southampton area in the UK who represented the full range of childhood behavior, from normal to hyperactive.
For the study, parents were instructed to feed their children a diet free of additives.
Over six weeks, the children were each given identical-tasting and looking fruit juice with different amounts of food colors—Sunset Yellow (E110), Carmoisine (E122), Tartrazine (E102), Ponceau 4R (E124), Quinoline Yellow (E104), and Allura Red AC (E129)—and the preservative sodium benzoate.
Absent from the Canadian version are such risky additives as Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 6, and BHT for freshness, all of which have links to behavioral issues in children, cancer , asthma, and DNA damage.
Parents and teachers, none of whom knew which child was drinking what formula, reported on the children’s behavior after having the drinks and recorded the children in the classroom. The older kids also took a computer-based test of attention.
Each mixture caused statistically significant changes in their behavior.
Since then, a flurry of studies have been published linking dyes to behavioral issues in children, respiratory damage, and cancers of the colon, kidneys, and liver.
In 2021, the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment concluded ‘consumption of synthetic food dyes can result in hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children and that children vary in their sensitivity to synthetic food dyes.’
Then, in 2024, researchers in Brazil found links between food dyes and a range of health issues, particularly in children, including an increased risk of cancers, allergies, cell and DNA damage, and lung issues.
They also contributed to behavioral changes in children with and without diagnosed disorders like ADHD.
American Cool Ranch Doritos, for instance, are covered in artificial dyes, including Red 40, Blue 1, and Yellow 5, whereas the version sold in the UK uses paprika extract and annatto.
Another additive gaining new attention is titanium dioxide, commonly found in candy, which is permitted to be used in foods as long as it does not exceed one percent of the food’s total weight.
In America, Heinz’ classic tomato ketchup appears to have more convoluted ingredients compared to its British counterpart, right
It has been banned in Europe, though, over lab findings that showed it damaged the genetic material of cells, which can lead to mutations that may disrupt normal cellular functions and increase the risk of cancer.
The European Food Safety Authority said at the time of the ban in 2021: ‘After oral ingestion, the absorption of titanium dioxide particles is low, however, they can accumulate in the body.’
Absent regulatory pressure from the federal government, food companies have little incentive to change their formulas, which would mean using more expensive components that translate to higher prices for the consumer.
Ms Bond said: ‘Many additives are cheap. Consumers in the U.S. tend to prioritize convenience and cost over ingredient quality, so manufacturers don’t have as much pressure to reformulate as they might in the EU.’
Health advocates, parents, and high-ranking elected government officials have placed more significant pressure on big food companies in recent years to reformulate their products to strip out risky additives.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a high-profile vaccine skeptic and clean foods crusader, will likely be stationed as head of all US health agencies, including the FDA (provided he gets through the Senate Finance Committee) with the incoming Trump Administration.
RFK has been outspoken about his Make America Health Again blueprint, which would include cracking down on major food manufacturers that regularly use ingredients that scientific evidence has suggested are harmful to the endocrine system, the brain, metabolism, and children’s development and could even raise the risk of some cancers.
