Unnoticeable food ingredients now being scrutinized at UC Davis


"I was like, 'Whoa,"' said Sarah Kavanagh, a 16-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who wanted to know how an oil that contains a chemical also found in flame retardants got into her favorite sports drink. After she posted a petition on Change.org asking Pepsi to remove it, more than 200,000 people signed.

"I just wanted to make sure it was something that I could drink," said the teen.

From oil in Gatorade to the amount of caffeine and other stimulants in energy drinks and the so-called "pink slime" found in beef, previously unnoticed ingredients are coming under scrutiny as health-conscious consumers demand more information about what they eat and drink, and sometimes go public via social networking and the Internet.

So how does some of this stuff get into our food?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reviews and approves most additives to food or drinks before they hit the marketplace. But others can bypass that process if they are deemed "generally recognized as safe" by the government or food companies and the experts they hire.

Take the story of Gatorade.


In those days, the oil was included in a list of additives, preservatives and chemicals that the government calls "generally recognized as safe." The "GRAS" designation took root more than a half-century ago as a way to help the processed food industry avoid lengthy reviews for ingredients that were considered, by qualified experts, to be safe under conditions of intended use.

Then, the list included ingredients such as vitamin A and citric acid -- about 180 in all.



Carl Keen holds the chair in developmental nutrition at UC Davis -- a position funded by Mars, Inc. As such, Keen develops new ingredients for the candy giant, and his research has found that certain nutrients in cocoa powder can lower heart disease risk.


"You'll have the average consumer say industry research taints the system," he said. "But if you ask them should the federal government be vetting research on the health benefits of chocolate and cocoa, they'll probably say no."

But no one knows exactly how many "GRAS" ingredients are in products because manufacturers are not required to notify the FDA before adding them.


The ingredient, which is banned as an additive in Japan and the European Union, will remain in orange Gatorade through this spring, said spokeswoman Molly Carter of PepsiCo, which now owns Gatorade. She added that the decision to drop it was sparked by consumer rumblings over the past year, not Kavanagh's petition specifically.

"While our products are safe, we are making this change because we know that some consumers have a negative perception of BVO in Gatorade," Carter said in a statement.

In 1958, Congress amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to establish the "generally recognized as safe" exemption. In the following years, FDA added ingredients to its "safe" list after reviewing the supporting science. However, that proved a time-consuming process, so in 1997 FDA changed its procedures to allow food companies to voluntarily notify the agency of ingredients they consider safe by submitting published research and expert opinion. Not all do. But since 1997, the FDA has received 451 such notifications, and the agency disagreed with the science in 17 cases.




Consumers may also petition the FDA to take an ingredient off the "safe" list, although those requests can take years to review.


Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods, said in an interview that he feels the program works well but that it is time to consider updating it to ensure the evidence supporting "safe" designations reflects the latest science. He added that FDA would benefit from having access to the scientific evidence companies use to determine that an ingredient is GRAS.

"We're not driven by a sense that there is a pressing public health emergency," Taylor said. "But there are decisions being made based on data that we don't have access to, and that creates a question about the basis on which those decisions are made."

In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered FDA to review food additives then on the "safe" list. While concluding most ingredients were safe, the review panel questioned the safety of 35 substances. In its 2010 examination of the program, the GAO found FDA had yet to review 18 of those. The agency could not readily explain why, but has in the past pointed to short staffing.

The GAO also recommended that companies be required to tell FDA and the public about any ingredients they deem "safe," and that FDA take steps to prevent scientific conflicts of interest.


George Washington University's Public Health Dean Lynn Goldman, who in 2011 studied the GRAS program at FDA's request, believes letting companies evaluate their own ingredients risks biased science. "The public should expect that the FDA can give some assurance that the safety of our food is not simply determined by the industry," she said.