Innocent Until Proven Harmful

It's Monday, April thirteenth, and welcome to HigherIQ. If you've ever traveled to Europe and thought the food tasted different, you weren't imagining it. A bag of Skittles in Paris doesn't contain the same ingredients as a bag of Skittles in New York. A loaf of bread in London is missing a chemical that strengthens the dough in American bread. A carton of milk in Berlin doesn't contain a growth hormone that's legal in American dairy. The products look the same on the shelf. They are not the same inside the package. The reason comes down to a philosophical split between two regulatory systems that look at the same science and reach opposite conclusions about what to do with uncertainty. In the United States, food additives are regulated by the FDA under a framework that dates back to 1958. The system operates on a principle similar to criminal law: substances are presumed safe unless evidence proves they're harmful. This is formalized through a designation called GRAS, which stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. When GRAS was created, it applied to obvious ingredients like salt, vinegar, and baking soda, things with centuries of safe use that didn't need formal review. The logic was reasonable: don't waste regulatory resources testing flour. But in 1997, the FDA changed the rules. Companies could now determine GRAS status themselves by convening their own expert panels, without mandatory FDA review. The result, as documented by Chris Van Tulleken in his book "Ultra-Processed People," is striking: since 2000, only ten applications have been made to the FDA for full approval of new food substances. During the same period, seven hundred and sixty six new food chemicals entered the American market. That means 98.7 percent of new chemicals in American food were self-certified as safe by the companies that profit from selling them. The European Union operates on a fundamentally different principle called the precautionary approach. If regulators can't dismiss the possibility of harm, they can't declare an additive safe. The burden of proof is reversed. In the US, the government must prove a substance is dangerous before it can ban it. In the EU, the company must prove a substance is safe before it can sell it. Same science. Opposite defaults. This philosophical split has a specific origin. In the 1980s and 1990s, Europe went through the mad cow disease crisis. BSE, a brain-wasting disease in cattle, spread partly because regulators were slow to act on early warning signs. The crisis killed over two hundred people, devastated the British beef industry, and permanently scarred European public trust in food safety institutions. In response, the EU created the European Food Safety Authority in 2002 and built its entire regulatory framework around the precautionary principle. The lesson Europe took from mad cow was that waiting for proof of harm before acting meant people died while you waited. The concrete differences are everywhere once you start looking. Titanium dioxide is a whitening agent used in candies, pastries, and sauces. It makes the coating on Skittles bright and opaque. In 2022, the European Food Safety Authority banned it after concluding that potential DNA damage couldn't be ruled out. The FDA reviewed the same studies and decided the evidence wasn't definitive enough to act. Titanium dioxide remains legal in American food. Potassium bromate strengthens bread dough and improves texture. It's in more than two hundred products sold in American grocery stores, including bread, buns, and bagels. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as a possible carcinogen in 1999. The World Health Organization identified it as a genotoxic carcinogen in 1992. It's been banned in the EU, the UK, Canada, India, Brazil, and Peru. It remains legal in the United States, though California banned it starting in 2027. BHA and BHT are preservatives used in cereals, crackers, and snack foods to extend shelf life. They're in Wheat Thins, which is one reason you won't find that exact product in Europe. The EU banned BHT in food due to concerns about endocrine disruption. The FDA launched a safety review of BHA in February 2026 after years of concerns that it might cause cancer. Azodicarbonamide, sometimes called the "yoga mat chemical" because it's also used in the production of foam plastics, is used in American bread as a dough conditioner. It's banned in the EU. Growth hormone rBST is injected into American dairy cows to increase milk production. It's banned in the EU, Canada, and several other countries over concerns about animal welfare and potential effects on human health. The total gap is staggering. Researchers estimate that at least nine hundred and fifty more additives are permitted in American food than in the EU. The exact number is impossible to pin down because the FDA doesn't require companies to inform it of everything used in American food. As one food safety researcher put it: "It's so bad, nobody knows, not even the FDA knows, what's in our food." This is why the food tastes different when you travel. European Fanta is colored with actual fruit juice. American Fanta uses synthetic dyes. European McDonald's fries contain three ingredients: potatoes, oil, and salt. American McDonald's fries contain nineteen, including dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent also found in cosmetics and silicone caulk. The reformulation isn't because European companies are more virtuous. They operate under a regulatory system that makes it cheaper and simpler to use fewer, better-studied ingredients than to prove the safety of every additive individually. The companies respond to the regulatory environment they're in. When the rules require proof of safety, they simplify the recipe. When the rules require proof of harm, they optimize for cost, shelf life, and appearance. The practical effect on your daily life is hard to see and easy to ignore. Most of these additives exist in small quantities in any single product. The concern isn't one Skittle or one slice of bread. It's cumulative exposure across thousands of products over decades, in a system where the interactions between chemicals in your diet have barely been studied. The EU's precautionary approach doesn't mean European food is risk-free. It means Europeans are exposed to fewer substances whose long-term effects are uncertain. Americans are running a longer experiment with more variables, and the results won't be clear for years. The uncomfortable truth is that both systems involve a bet. The EU bets that caution is worth the cost of slower innovation. The US bets that the market, plus eventual regulatory catch-up, will sort out the problems. The question is which bet you'd rather be on the wrong side of. The landscape is shifting slightly. California has begun banning ingredients that the federal government allows, and because it's hard to manufacture different versions of a product for one state versus the rest of the country, those bans effectively push reformulation nationwide. The FDA banned Red Dye No. 3 in January 2025 and has announced plans to phase out several synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as head of Health and Human Services, has ordered the FDA to review the GRAS system. Whether these moves lead to structural change or cosmetic adjustments remains to be seen. But the underlying question is the same one it's been since 1958: when you don't know whether something is safe, who should have to prove it? So if this comes up in conversation, here's how to think about it. The US and EU regulate food using opposite philosophies. In the US, a substance is legal until proven harmful. In the EU, it's restricted until proven safe. The US lets companies self-certify their ingredients as safe without FDA review, and nearly ninety nine percent of new food chemicals enter the American market that way. The EU, scarred by the mad cow crisis, requires independent government review before anything reaches the shelf. The result is that identical products contain different ingredients depending on which side of the Atlantic you buy them. The Skittles are different. The bread is different. The milk is different. The food tastes different in Europe because the question "is this safe?" gets answered by different people, using different rules, with different defaults about who bears the risk when the answer is uncertain. Stay informed, stay curious, and we'll see you tomorrow.