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What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

nytimes.com

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Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#81

Post by maxerickson »

lj3 wrote: post #25
nugator wrote: post #7

As a European I'm interested in knowing what most Americans thinks about this (their food has additives that is forbidden in Europe). Is there a feeling of Europeans being too cautious or would you like to have the same rules?

I would love to if the US had the same food quality laws that European countries have. By HN standards, I'm a right wing nutcase and am in favor of as small a government as we can stand, but our food is killing us. Bread has sugar in it. If you want bread without sugar in it, you must either pay more for the organic stuff or make it yourself. If you want bread without any additives or preservatives at all, you must b…

Starch is just polymerized sugar.

There's probably some room for slower digestion and absorption to matter, but calorie availability and density is likely the bigger problem then the exact nature of the calories.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#82

Post by freedomben »

skh wrote: post #80
freedomben wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting into specific policy prescriptions is tempting the fate of Godwin's Law, but I don't believe it's wise or even possible to regulate every single molecule that gets sold for consumption. Constant evaluation, testing, and liability for people/companies that knowingly use dangerous or harmful ingredients can go a long way here. In fact often times it's the only way broader datasets can be gathered. The market pr…

The market provides a strong incentive here as well not to poison your customers. The history of corporate malfeasance and the desire of people to optimize for short term gain versus long term gain indicates that your view is not supported by reality. For example see the cigarette industry and how it deliberately made its products addictive and more dangerous.

The history of corporate responsibility and the desire of many other people to optimize for long term viability and survival does indicate that my view is supported by reality.

Your implication that because one or several persons (or companies) did something wrong, therefore all of mankind is bad/evil is fallacious. Because a neighbor of mine is a thief or a murderer, does not make all neighbors thiefs and murderers. We hold him accountable for his actions.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#83

Post by tchaffee »

nugator wrote: post #7

As a European I'm interested in knowing what most Americans thinks about this (their food has additives that is forbidden in Europe). Is there a feeling of Europeans being too cautious or would you like to have the same rules?

Having lived in both places for extended periods and observing that it's mostly America that has an alarming obesity problem, I think there is something to be said for simple foods that come out of the ground and aren't highly processed with chemicals. It's only a suspicion and I don't have proof. But even most of the packaged foods in Europe have a much simpler list of ingredients, all stuff you would recognize as basic ingredients you use at home.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#84

Post by danmaz74 »

freedomben wrote: post #64
orf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a disservice to demand we are sure something won't harm us before we build and industry around it? Can you name any specific items that you feel it was a disservice to ban, and say why?

The nature of bans makes it pretty difficult to specifically name items that I feel banning them was a disservice :-) But here's an example: Cannabis. Why? There's now tremendous evidence that the ban was misguided, and that there are very real medicinal properties that benefit the human body and help control inflammation. When banning it (and making it a schedule 1 substance) research was severely hampered and in ma…

Banning ingredients for food is a very specific kind of ban. I'm against the war on drugs, but I'm totally for banning strongly psychoactive ingredients from food - cannabis should be a controlled substance.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#85

Post by yongjik »

freedomben wrote: post #22
DRW_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anytime we talk about "banning" something I prefer a very conservative approach (conservative as in let's not ban things unless we are really sure). We are constantly learning new things that upend what we used to accept as science regarding nutrition and how the human body works. I think we do ourselves a disservice sometimes by banning things that we don't understand (and sometimes we think we understand but reall…

> Surely it makes more sense to be cautious about the things we ingest.. Completely agree > If you aren't sure, then I don't think I get the logic on the default being "okay, feed it to your kids!". False dichotomy. I don't think the choices are either "ban it" or "okay, feed it to your kids!" There's a middle ground there that I think makes more sense.

> There's a middle ground ...

You mean the good old "Okay, I won't say anything when you feed it to your kids, but I didn't say it's OK, so if they die it's your fault!" ground?

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#86

Post by user982 »

applecrazy wrote: post #68
user982 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mustard oil.

That's not completely true. While it is banned for consumption, Indian cooking and more recently, American cooking, has begun using mustard oil[1]. Edit: the linked article mentions that research into the health risks of mustard oil has not been conclusive. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/dining/american-chefs-dis...

> That's not completely true. While it is banned for consumption, Indian cooking and more recently, American cooking, has begun using mustard oil

How is it untrue? The chefs in that article are (technically illegally) using massage oil with a required "for external use only" warning label, because that is "the only use for which it is legally approved in the United States."

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#87

Post by iguy »

kortilla wrote: post #73
ilikehurdles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cause of starvation were under-production, I’d sympathize with this argument. But given the amount of food waste in Western countries, I’d say the real issue is one of distribution or access. Producers make production efficient not in order to feed the poor, but to increase margin by lowering the costs of production. Growth hormones exist to make the agriculturist more money, they don’t help feed a war torn co…

The cause of starvation is lack of food available at a given price point. Producers make production efficient to capture more of the market at the lower price points on the demand curve. There aren’t enough rich people to pay for thick margins at a large scale in the food industry. The only ones with large margins are the organic farmers selling to rich people. Growth hormones exist to make chicken much faster, which…

Nobody is starving who is able to buy food on the world market. People starve in Yemen because there are guys with AK47s between them and the nearest functional port.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#88

Post by freedomben »

skh wrote: post #78
freedomben wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no, there's plenty of people that believe wheat not be safe. Obviously this is true as well if you have Celiacs, which also wasn't widely known until relatively recently.

Your definition of safe does not correspond to most peoples’ definition when it comes to food. Safe, in this context for most people, means safe for general consumption. Unsafe means that the product causes harm in just about everyone who consumes it.

I'll agree with that wrt to Celiacs, but not the broader point. Many of the people that follow the Paleo diet (which is no small contingency) believe that wheat in general is indeed not safe.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#89

Post by skh »

freedomben wrote: post #82
skh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market provides a strong incentive here as well not to poison your customers. The history of corporate malfeasance and the desire of people to optimize for short term gain versus long term gain indicates that your view is not supported by reality. For example see the cigarette industry and how it deliberately made its products addictive and more dangerous.

The history of corporate responsibility and the desire of many other people to optimize for long term viability and survival does indicate that my view is supported by reality. Your implication that because one or several persons (or companies) did something wrong, therefore all of mankind is bad/evil is fallacious. Because a neighbor of mine is a thief or a murderer, does not make all neighbors thiefs and murderers.…

I suggest you have things backwards. There are lots of examples of corporations and people doing the right thing when incetivized by market forces. There are lots of examples of corporation and people doing the wrong thing when incentivized by market forces. The conjunction of these two facts ought to lead you to the conclusion that we should not rely on the market for incentivization against corporate malfeasance and wrong doing. Society, in the form of government, needs to be vigilant against wrongdoing and in the case of food we ought not rely on market forces to prevent bad actors from unleashing their bad intentions on society. Your view is not based in reality because history has shown that corporations sometimes do bad things in response to market forces. So relying on market forces to regulate corporate behavior is not a good idea.

Your view would make sense if market forces always lead to companies not wanting to poison their clients. But this isn’t the case.

Re: What Foods Are Banned in Europe but Not Banned in the U.S.?

#90

Post by jacquesm »

guidedlight wrote: post #15

Interestingly, Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs are banned in the US but sold almost everywhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise

After 30 billion of them sold you'd think that if they were really dangerous we'd have noticed by now.
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