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FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

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581–590 of 605 posts

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#581
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my child ingests sesame, they go into anaphylactic shock and without an epipen administered in minutes they will die. Please excuse my skepticism, I am asking this out of a genuine desire to become better informed: how can you possibly know this? Unless you happened to have an epi-pen handy the first time your kid ever ate a sesame seed, which seems unlikely, then if this were true would not your kid have died t…

I can’t answer for sesame, but my kid has an allergy to a specific nut, that we discovered after mum picked baby up after handling said nut, leaving bright red welts on their little body. No ingestion required. Subsequently, immunology department, skin prick tests to identify the specific culprit, “risk of anaphylaxis” posters, and an Epipen - with risk factor based on the size of the reaction, in millimeters, to the…

Was the nut cashew?

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#582
post #495
post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you assume literal translations capture 100% of the details, "kochen" has multiple meanings. One of them is "boiling", another is "cooking" in the general sense of "preparing meals".

Well Wikipedia says there is a narrow definition, that necessarily involves boiling of a liquid. This is the one I always used. But in the broader sense, it seems to also mean the preparing of meals, but I never encountered it like this. "Kochen (von lateinisch coquere, „kochen, sieden, reifen“ entlehnt) ist im engeren Sinne das Erhitzen einer Flüssigkeit bis zum und am Siedepunkt, im Weiteren das Garen oder Zubereit…

the cognate 'cook' in english also has a broad meaning (preparing food) and a narrow one (heating food to induce chemical change) but even the narrow one is not so narrow as to require boiling water

the problem with 'cooking bread' is that 'baking bread' is a set phrase, not that baking doesn't count as cooking

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t answer for sesame, but my kid has an allergy to a specific nut, that we discovered after mum picked baby up after handling said nut, leaving bright red welts on their little body. No ingestion required. Subsequently, immunology department, skin prick tests to identify the specific culprit, “risk of anaphylaxis” posters, and an Epipen - with risk factor based on the size of the reaction, in millimeters, to the…

Was the nut cashew?

No, it was walnut and pecan (they are related, it turns out). Some other minor reactions but those were the big two.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#584
post #573
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance only works if the majority pay but only the minority get paid. Anything else and you risk not getting paid if the event occurs.

Nope. Assume you have insurance with a one-time fee of $X. It insures against a single kind of event that happens with 60% probability, and pays out $1.6X. So the majority of people are likely to have the event happen to them. The EV of the cost to the insurer is then $1.6X * 0.6 = $0.96X, so the books are expected to balance. Obviously I'm ignoring variance in this calculation, but you can easily adjust the numbers…

You have an insurer which insures you against an even that happens 1% of the time, but you are its one and only customer. The event happens to you, so the insurer has to pay you out. Since it doesn't have any more money than what you paid into it, it goes bankrupt and you do not get paid.

For insurance to work more people have to pay into the system than people who receive payment, otherwise the insurer will go bankrupt.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#585
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it’s going the way of prop 65. To be on the safe side, everything gets the label, thus making the label pointless -it no longer helps differentiating things.

I don’t think prop 65 is super useful but I don’t get why people think it’s meaningless. I’ve definitely seen prop 65 on things that made me pause because nothing about the object (like a food bowl) should give me cancer and often I won’t buy it.

The update to the law that requires a brief explanation of what is carcinogenic is helpful.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad outcome can be yielded in a very short number of steps. If perceived and not acted upon, what is that? How long must it go on until we say "No, this is evil."?

> If perceived and not acted upon, what is that? It’s a coordination problem. > How long must it go on They can last indefinitely at immense cost. > until we say "No, this is evil."? Call it evil for as long as you want, especially if you’d prefer it remain unsolved. When you feel like solving it, a different framing will be much more useful.

Do you mean that the people who are actually capable of solving these problems are also turned away by that label?

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case at all. It's done for gluten free foods. Gluten free foods have to be under 20ppm to be called GF, and there are many gluten free foods out there. Even some made on the same equipment as gluten containing foods (just cleaned thoroughly).

Gluten free foods are 50% more expensive, and far more restricted in availability.

This is true for gluten free subs of foods that aren't normally GF, yes. But GF mustard, for example, isn't any more expensive then non-GF mustard.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're saying what, in an era of atomic scale manufacturing it isn't possible to design a manufacturing line that segregates macro-scale ingredients? I've spent time in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines. Corraling shit the size of a sesame seed is trivial in comparison. So yeah, this is still bullshit.

Possible, yes. Economical, no.

Uneconomical to corral macroscopic ingredients several orders of magnitude larger than dust? I'm unconvinced although I'm certain that's the line of rhetoric being advanced by manufacturers.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're saying what, in an era of atomic scale manufacturing it isn't possible to design a manufacturing line that segregates macro-scale ingredients? I've spent time in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines. Corraling shit the size of a sesame seed is trivial in comparison. So yeah, this is still bullshit.

I can’t wait until bread costs the same as drugs per gram. /s

I can't wait until a bread manufacturer tries to advance the argument that the same level of contamination mitigation infrastructure required to contain sub-micron active ingredient powder has to be brought to bear to keep sesame seeds from moving around at random.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#590
post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but corporations are paid lots of money to not be lazy.

No, they're not -- they're paid lots of money to satisfy the demand that actually exists in the market.

But they are not even doing that - see: false advertising, captive markets, monopolies, etc.
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