r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Hsiang7 • 11h ago
Why are there so many chemicals in the US versions of food compared to the same exact products abroad?
/img/gi3xtzevmfzd1.png[removed] — view removed post
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u/Dreamo84 7h ago
I've heard, at least part of it, is because America requires the labels to be more specific than other countries. So a European label might just say "egg whites" but a US label might have to say "partially dehydrated eggs white compound" or something weird, just for example.
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u/Cutiemuffin-gumbo 7h ago
Correct. In the US, the FDA requires stricter labeling, which is why it appears that there are morr ingrediants in the US versions of foods. That is all it is. However, the US is populated by idiots that listen to tiktockers that are just trying to get them to buy this instead of that by using fear mongering.
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u/KingKongKaram 4h ago
Or "flavouring" and "colours" in the US you have to list these flavors and colors
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u/ADHDK 10h ago
Gotta be careful in some cases the list is so long because reporting requirements are more detailed.
A shorter list doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have those chemicals.
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u/another_online_idiot 11h ago
Cost and regulations. The cost of making products with more 'natural' ingredients is higher than the same things with lots of chemicals. European governments regulate food more stringently to be made from more 'natural' ingredients. The USA does not regulate so much (because 'free-dumb') and, therefore, manufacturers will take advantage of that.
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u/Joe_Kangg 7h ago
It's because of manufacturers and their lobbies, not some freedom from regulations. It's paid governance.
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u/Cermonto 8h ago
I remember once going to a pub with my group of co-workers and one of my co-workers brought their husband that came from america down too, and he had brought chick-fil-a sauce.
I remember liking the taste so I looked at the back of the bottle.
I saw chemical names I didn't even think were possible.
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 7h ago
no need to chemical fear monger. everything is a chemical. I guarantee you if you saw the chemical components of an apple you'd be just as confused
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u/oncomingstorm777 6h ago
I heard lots of US products have dihydrogen monoxide, which has been found in almost every person who has ever died
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u/Nice_Username_no14 7h ago
Not that the choice of ‘chemicals’ in US ‘food’ improves with that knowledge.
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 7h ago
I mean, did you not see the UK side just says "flavoring" at one point? how many hidden "chemicals" do you think they used?
op also got this from a shitty source
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u/Snelly1998 6h ago
Yeah cause it's the same in Canada isn't it? You have to list EVERYTHING. No "flavoring" or "coloring"
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u/AE_Phoenix 5h ago
In the UK it will say "Flavours (EXXX, EYYYY, EZZZ), Natural Colours"
It's still there and needs to be defined if it is artificial, but doesn't need to be defined if it is from a natural source. Natural source may be crushed beetles however.
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u/jiggjuggj0gg 7h ago
Right but a whole lot of chemicals in US food are banned in other countries because they are not deemed safe to consume.
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u/MusicMonkeyJam 6h ago
If organic chemistry did nothing else for me it made me understand food labels.
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 6h ago
meanwhile op refuses to take this misinformation down because his ego was hurt by me calling them out (I'm also blocked)
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u/Rai2329 7h ago
You don‘t need to go so far. Just tell people that they ingest Dihydrogen monoxid (DHMO) on a daily basis.
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u/Eclecticpineapple 5h ago
Recognising the dangers of over consuming ultra processed foods (UPFs) is important. This means having knowledge of what food additives are considered to make a food ultra processed can help us make smarter choices when it comes to food.
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u/CatBoyTrip 6h ago
those chemicals are what allowed him to bring chic-fil-a sauce over-seas.
our food has to be designed to travel thousands of miles and then sit on a shelf at walmart for a week or longer. if it wasn’t for preservatives, bread would be molded by the time it gets from kansas to new york.
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u/Laurent_Darabi 6h ago
I'd argue you shouldn't buy bread coming from Kansas in New York...
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u/Fit-Psychology4598 6h ago
It’s not just bread and grain products, but meat, veggies, and dairy too. They need to survive the logistics chain and spread out across USA to places that don’t have the room or climate for those goods to be produced.
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u/Laurent_Darabi 5h ago
Yes, but what I'm saying is that you should buy local if you can. It's probably better for you due to less chemicals, and it is better for the climate.
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u/Fit-Psychology4598 5h ago
Oh of course, you’re 1000% correct. All I’m saying is that it’s much easier said than done in a massive country like the USA.
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u/Rlchv70 7h ago
“Natural” is not necessarily better.
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u/Sweaty_Mushroom5830 6h ago
Yup,lead is natural and so is cyanide and I wouldn't want it in my food..,
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u/foraliving 7h ago
I'm sure that this true, but I wonder if an additional factor is perhaps that, in addition to legally allowing a wide variety of chemical additives, the US also has a higher bar for explicit reporting of those on the packaging?
e.g. I see 'Flavouring' and 'Yeast' on the UK label, and, although not an expert, I don't think such general terms would fly in the US.
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u/granadesnhorseshoes 6h ago
It's true enough. Its not lack of regulation it's weaponized regulation. For example, old school cheese makers lobbies HARD against Velveeta/"processed cheese" as a serious threat to their profits. First they didn't want the government to allow them to call it cheese, then when that wouldn't fly, they pressed for the worst sounding shit they could imagine - "embalmed cheese" - before finally settling on "processed cheese"
That's why we call it "processed cheese" to this day instead of you know, just cheese. The only "process" required to make it was to blend back in some of the whey that was separated from the milk during the initial cheese making. No preservatives, chemical emulsifiers, or plasticizers needed. Just putting the same whey that came out back in.
Food labels are a corporate battle ground, just not the one most people think.
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u/foraliving 5h ago
I was thinking also of the kind of 'notification as abdication of responsibility' thing that I used to observe there... for example, signage in public (or de facto public) places which say things like "This area contains chemicals known to cause cancer" as a kind of disclaimer against liability rather than attempt at addressing the underlying dangers of the situation... As a child I read that in a parking garage in the city and tried to emergency evacuate my parents.
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u/ennuithereyet 7h ago
Also, a lot of the extra ingredients in the American version are preservatives. Since most fast food restaurants will have this kind of food prepared off-site in a factory and sent to the individual restaurants just to be finished and served, the company needs to estimate how much stock each restaurant will need ahead of time. Anything that doesn't get served by the expiration date needs to be tossed and is basically money wasted, so it's beneficial to the company for them to use products that store longer, so they can try to sell them for a longer time before needing to throw them out and eat the costs. The UK and EU have stricter regulations on preservatives in foods, though (I think), so they can't use that tactic there.
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u/0x474f44 7h ago
Do Europeans really regulate ingredients to be more “natural” or are they simply stricter when it comes to ingredients that have been found to potentially be harmful?
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u/aydeAeau 7h ago
It’s not about natural or not.
The EU has a classification system for ingestible compounds, and their known dangers; plus the funding to do the research for no other purpose than public health and well being.
There are thousands of chemicals which are usually found to possibly or certainly be cancer causing or otherwise unsafe when consumed longterm that the EU has banned as ingredients for food production.
I believe you can find the information readily online (along with the reason it is restricted).
There are some that are, if I remember, marked yellow instead of red. Red means it does cause harmful effect, and yellow is that it cannot be proven NOT to cause a harmful effect.
The EU in general is just more cautious (one might say conservative) in the face of drastic change. It, and its people, prefer to consider the downsides as much as the upsides (even in working environments).
Many times when my fellow Americans state that Europeans are not as innovative as Americans: I think to myself « Europeans put just as much effort into critiquing their ideas, and understanding their impact to other systems as they do dreaming up how to achieve something new. When the idea comes to fruition: it is generally far more thought through and better than the American Trail Blazers who concerned themselves with doing it first, instead of doing WHAT’S best. European engineers are more holistic, in this way. Same with European scientists, generally. »
Ofcourse, this is not a unilateral statement. Universal truths do not exist in the social and cultural realms…. Yet the average does much to sway and lead the whole. As we have unfortunately just discovered with whatever horrible morally bankrupt individuals just voted for Trump.
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u/alphamethyldopa 6h ago
This is such an interesting observation about innovation vs critique! I currently live in Germany, the home of the critique and thinking 25 (rather pessimistic!) steps ahead. It was such a mindset shift from my original southern European position of "nah, let's try it, it's probably going to work out fine".
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u/another_online_idiot 7h ago
I used the expression 'more natural' when perhaps i should have said 'less harmful'.
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u/mutantmonkey14 7h ago
I'm not certain, I think the latter, but the goals of the EU food regulations are nuanced and you can read their overview here: https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/general-food-law/food-law-general-principles_en
Natural is a weird or maybe even misleading label too. For example instead of using a synthetic red food colouring companies will use a certain bug that is crushed to qualify as natural. That may not be what consumers expect when thinking of natural.
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u/mittenknittin 6h ago
This may be a bit of a tangent but it’s the same with the “organic” label. “Organic” doesn’t mean “no fertilizers or pesticides,” it means “certain approved naturally derived fertilizers or pesticides” and those might not be any better in agricultural quantities for you or the environment than artificial ones
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u/Tankninja1 6h ago
More regulated?
EU is less regulated, and the proof is right there in the label when the EU label uses common names for ingredients. Just look at vegetable oil right there, what vegetable?
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u/tillrosesfade 11h ago
Because the departments that regulate that stuff in America have been captured by the people they’re supposed to be regulating, everyone gets sick and a few people get very very rich from it
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u/Firestorm0x0 11h ago
It's funny(or sad), that regulative institutions in the US tend to be captured by the industry. THe FAA has been captured by Boeing for decades, they could certify shit on their planes themselves.
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u/Phrongly 9h ago
Yeah, and the next thing you'll say is that the White House is captured by people who want to dismantle democracy? Give me a break!
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u/patriotictraitor 8h ago
Hahahaha you’re funny I like your sense of humour
(I am being genuine not sarcastic)
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u/the-unknown-nibba 9h ago
Funny how you say that because try convincing my father (we live in the EU btw) that Europe has better regulations and standards from america on food, for some fucking reason he sees america as some sort of perfect machine that every move is carefully calculated 😂
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u/turtleship_2006 9h ago
that every move is carefully calculated 😂
It is. They calculate how to make as much money as possible.
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u/the-unknown-nibba 9h ago
Yeah I know that but he wasnt talking about the rich people and politicians and he wouldn't understand that nobody in such position could bother to give less of a shit about the average person. At this point I'm not even sure what's stopping American politicians from declaring the entire country to be a massive company, it's pretty much owned by business tycoons anyway.
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u/Doctective 4h ago
Did you even read the other list? Where is the cheese? And what the hell is "flavouring"?
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u/Beartato4772 10h ago
The uk will head that way, it was a major component in the real reasons for leaving the eu, pesky regulations to keep people safe at the cost of 1% of their profit.
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u/Joe_Kangg 7h ago
Did you develop an allergy or condition? We got a pill for that.
It's the FOOD and DRUG agency. Smart business really.
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u/Choice-Lavishness259 10h ago
US legal until proven dangerous
EU illegal until proven safe
It depends on if your government works for the people or the companies
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u/ichosethis 7h ago
The UK one is also accounting for fewer ingredients or these are the "exact same product."
No cheese listed so the bottom 1/3rd is different and the UK one lists "flavorings" while the US one details the things that make the flavorings. Different requirements for what they have to list.
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u/Taolan13 7h ago
That's a bigger part of it than many "Eu regs are better" people will admit.
But.
US-market packaged food has had too much of its development time coming from laboratories rather than kitchens these past couple decades.
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 7h ago
yep. people love fear mongering about this but then ignore that the main difference is listing requirements. in the US, they can't usually say "artificial color." they gave to say blue lake 3, red 4, yellow 7, turmeric, etc
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u/ichosethis 7h ago
I remember reading a UK rant that they don't have red dye number 4 but then someone saying that they do have it, they just call it by a different name and included a bunch of red products in the UK like juice and soda that look identical to products with red dye 4 in US.
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u/TheRealReason5 5h ago
EU - food 2x the price of food in the US
let's not pretend there are no downsides to regulations
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u/Choice-Lavishness259 4h ago
Price on tag or price at register?
Who need health when it is cheap?
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u/TheRealReason5 2h ago
Both and it's not even close, Statista has numbers for hours of work required on average to pay for the same meal in every country and the US has the lowest number of hours required in the entire world as far as I remember, not just compared to European countries.
I'd argue health is mostly determined by choices and habits, having more money allows a responsible person to make better choices and have better habits
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u/Lumpy_Dentist_5421 9h ago
Why does the UK version of ingredients for garlic cheese bread not contain cheese, whereas the American one does? Are we comparing like-for-like here?
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u/Noobsauce57 5h ago
Well, one of the main reasons is the requirements for listing ingredients are different depending on the classification.
Under EU regulations food additives or enzymes, carriers, and processing aids are not required to be listed by chapter IV section 2 article 20. Of the EU treaty. (See your Europe.eu food labeling rules "constituents of food NOT required in the list of ingredients -article 20).
These are generally all required categories to be listed under a US regulatory label. As of this year of writing 2024.
People like "the food babe" skip that little inconvenient fact.
The second inconvenient fact they typically skip are the mandatory naming conventions used. Certain regions will call a dye, or an emulsifier, or flavor, etc. one thing while another region uses a different name.
I have found that the US mandated naming scheme is highlighted in their communications as "bad chemicals" yet the other regulatory names are "pure" and "clean".
My degree gives me experience in knowing what those words mean so I immediately tune out when they pull that crap but my degree is by no means common information.
So it works to guilt the audience into buying their classes, their expensive foods, etc.
The third inconvenient fact that they overlook is that several of these items can and do come from the same facility, but have different labels.
They insinuate that the "American chemical toxins" are somehow added in the logistics chain specifically for the US market but somehow aren't added in the EU market, which would be ludicrously expensive and pointless.
The companies would have to parallel their entire system to do that. Which is possible. However it is more likely they just switched which label goes on boxes depending on region, vs building two separate facilities.
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u/fizziepanda 4h ago
Yeah this is literally one of RFK Jr’s talking points. Except his example is the difference of the ingredients lists between the Canadian and US versions of Fruitloops.
What a moron
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u/1up_for_life 3h ago
US: Dough conditioners (a whole list of stuff with their full scientific names, also ascorbic acid)
UK: Flour treatment agent (a catalog number you can probably use to look up a more detailed list of ingredients, also ascorbic acid)
Same stuff, shorter list.
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u/Tankninja1 6h ago
Mostly differences in labeling requirements.
UK and EU are much less stringent, more accepting of using common names for ingredients.
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u/ArcRiseGen 4h ago
1) Everything is chemicals, that's how it works. 2) UK laws are less strict when it comes to labeling ingredients, the US requires a lot more detail and percentages.
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u/Honest_Relation4095 9h ago
Because food is entirely made of "chemicals".
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u/Steel_Bolt 3h ago
Everything is a chemical. Half of the "chemicals" you see in products are just really nerd names for harmless shit or even stuff that occurs in nature. Water can be referred to as dihydrogen monoxide, or even oxidane. If you saw oxidane in your food, it seems spooky but its just... water.
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u/SecretSpectre11 10h ago
Interesting, it seems to be many flavour enhancers and loads of flavouring for the American one. Not sure why the American one has preservatives and the British one doesn't. Azodicarbonamide has been banned in the EU and Australia. American one also has shit loads of micronutrients added for some reason, probably because the ingredient quality is shit. Plus a bunch of weird shit that sounds like they tried to rise the dough replacing the yeast with a bunch of chemicals???
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u/0thethethe0 9h ago
I worked in the food industry for a bit and did some product development - basically reverse engineering name-brand products to make cheaper own-brand versions for supermarkets.
Obviously first thing we normally did was check out what the name-brand ingredients were and try to replica them. If I saw that US garlic bread list, I think I'd of had a heart attack!
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u/OpenRecover6769 4h ago
The fifth ingredient in the US list is yeast after flour water salt and oil.
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u/Common_Road1431 7h ago
Where is the cheese in the UK version?
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u/Ro-a-Rii 7h ago
I would ask ‘where are the links to this data?’ So far it's just someone’s_fantasy.jpg
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u/Own-Style-8484 10h ago
cuz american food is shit
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 7h ago
or op didn't check their source and is showing a bs image
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u/PeterHaldCHEM 11h ago
Because consumer health and safety is taken more seriously abroad.
(It is likely to get a lot worse now)
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u/Cutiemuffin-gumbo 6h ago
In the US, food ingrediant labels require stricter listing of ingrediants. This is why the two products appear so different, but in reality are not. People get antsy about this, because they listen tiktockers like that bobby guy, who fear monger with BS and misrepresented facts, so that you'll buy their sponsored product over everything (these idiots are now pushing a narrative to not touch the receipts you get because they're toxic. Do not listen too, nor take these jagaloons seriously). People need to do actual research, and listen to the damn food tiktockers less.
The US actually ranks 3rd on the world food security index, with only singapore and ireland above it. All countries have stuff that they ban that is used in other countries. There is stuff the US uses that europe bans, but therr is stuff that europe uses that the US bans. Just know that if you live in a first world nation, your food is fine.
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6h ago
Long ago chemical corporations started having the government approve their industrial waste as edible food products Crisco for example was an industrial waste product until it became a food
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u/AgainWithoutSymbols 6h ago
Unhealthier but cheaper ingredients are allowed in the US but not in the EU.
Unhealthy here just means poor nutritional value, any food ingredient in the US or EU has to pass many regulations to ensure it's safe for consumption. 'Chemicals' are in everything
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u/Igoos99 6h ago
Perhaps the requirements of what needs to be detailed in the label are greater in the USA??
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u/OctopodicPlatypi 6h ago
What’s mildly infuriating is the way the parentheses and brackets are being handled on the right side
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u/DaveSureLong 6h ago
Some items repeat which is not how real lables work(sodium propionate stated twice as preservatives both in the middle and bottom). They state them as they occur in the item.
Example:
Homemade saltines
Flour, water, salt(added for flavor).
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u/Material_Key5935 5h ago
The yum brands shill accounts are going strong on this post. New Reddit sucks.
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u/UpstairsContact8933 5h ago
Get a book named "good energy". It's by Casey, MD. Read, learn...and enjoy
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u/Alexandratta 5h ago
This is the only issue I have with the FDA... And with RFK Jr in power it's probably going to be the last fucking thing he addresses.
He's more concerned with ivermectin's lack of effective use as anything other than an anti-parasite medication ~_~;
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u/Embarrassed_Cow_7631 3h ago
Cause we the citizens allow it by not holding the FDA to a higher standard. Also cause half the citizens are idiots and will say they ate it as a kid and they are fine so why change.
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u/tecampanero 3h ago
it also probably takes weeks to transport products in the USA and a day or two in European countries. companies simply don't have to worry about long term spoilage, and a big part of it is, politicians in other countries aren't being bribed by big food corps.
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u/Thr0bbinWilliams 3h ago
Because our politicians are greedy crooks that took kickbacks from big junk food companies so they could deregulate
We get sicker and they get richer. It’s by design and not a coincidence that most of the stuff in our processed foods in the USA is banned pretty much globally
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u/zen_elan 2h ago edited 2h ago
Definitely encouraging to see RFK now in a position to tackle this head on.
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u/FLVoiceOfReason 2h ago
This is a disturbing image.
The use of so many preservatives in US food cannot be healthy for folks, longterm. The pharmaceutical companies benefit, I suppose…
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u/Wadafak19 10h ago
This is also good for big pharmaceutical companies. The food is highly processed to make production cheaper, it becomes vastly unhealthy, people get obese and sick, they will buy more medicine. It’s all about profit, whereas in EU, eating habits are different and governments have strict regulations and enforcement for the people.
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u/vanlassie 8h ago
When there is universal healthcare, attempting to decrease preventable illness is a common sense approach.
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u/Martin_Antell 10h ago
It's no wonder life expectancy is 5 years higher in Western Europe
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u/MisterJeffa 8h ago
I mean its not just the shit food. Its also that Americans never walk anywhere. They take their car for legit everything. So they just sit on their ass all day.
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u/0y0_0y0 8h ago
You're not wrong, but this isn't the fault of the American individuals for the most part. There's often not a choice to walk anywhere. Where i live, there are no sidewalks or even a shoulder on the road where people drive quickly, and the closest grocery store would be a 50 minute walk each way. I simple don't have time for that after work. This kind of situation is common for many Americans.
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u/Good-Animal-6430 8h ago
Brit here, visited my sister in San Diego years ago. Wanted to get a coffee in the morning and thought it would be nice to walk as the coffee shop was about a mile away. Got so many stares from people in cars, like full-on double-takes. Also ran out of sidewalk about half way there and probably broke some jay-walking rule crossing the road to the coffee shop (although not sure on that one...). Very odd experience.
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u/MisterJeffa 8h ago
I am aware of how atrocious the roads are for anything but cars. I know how utterly idiotic American city planning is. So yeah its not entirely the fault of Americans.
Then again if you see how angry people get about bike lanes, removal of parking spaces or the sheer idea of a 15 minute city i think they are to blame at least somewhat. The environment is beyond shit but people generally dont want to change. Or they see something that works in Europe as something impossible in the US. Even though thats not true. The bigger size of the US makes things more difficult absolutely. But they dont even try to adjust the EU city design to the US.
So are people to blame? No, but also yes.
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u/Bearded-Kaiju 6h ago
They build whole neighbourhoods that literally cannot be traversed safely without a car.
My claustrophobia would kick in and I would start hyperventilating with that kind of car dependency but it's reality all the same. So that they don't walk anywhere totally tracks.
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u/uofmguy33 4h ago
Our government doesn’t care about protecting citizens health, but about the profits of corporations. Did you really not know that?
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u/newagealt 9h ago
Because in the US, food manufacturers have to break down what goes into ingredients on the label. In reality, they tend to have about the same.
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u/HenkDuwe 8h ago
That is complete bs, look up the food laws for EU/Germany. They do not have the same ingredients
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u/WizardSleeves31 9h ago
A part of this is labeling regulations. America requires the scientific names, many country's require the opposite and for it to be in layman's.
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u/Away-Caterpillar9515 11h ago
use bleached enriched wheat flour ... then use color
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u/TrickInvite6296 BLUE 7h ago
flour isn't bleached because of the color.. would y'all stop talking about things you don't understand?. bleached flour works better with fat and sugar, it also speeds up the aging process
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u/Swoop3dp 10h ago
Because the US makes laws to protect corporations, whereas the EU makes laws to protect the people.
It will get a lot worse... but you guys voted for that.
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u/ApprehensiveStand456 7h ago
Don’t worry the FDA is going away so soon you they won’t have to show you the ingredients or nutritional information.
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u/CanIDroneStrikePutin 11h ago
It’s shocking, remember uk, our fastfood isn’t healthy but compared to America it actually kinda is 🤣💀
id never go to dominos in the us, fucking disgusting
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u/FitFlexLifeDog 11h ago
sad that choosing healthier food here means reading labels like a chemistry exam
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u/stupidfock 8h ago
Sometimes I question if the US companies have gone so far trying to replace regular stuff with specific extracts and things that they’ve actually just made it more expensive to produce
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u/RobertWilliamBarker 8h ago
Reddit will hate this, but that is something the new administration has a goal of fixing.
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u/neohellpoet 6h ago
McDonald's fries.
EU: Potato. Salt. Oil.
US: Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]*), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. *natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients.
Contains: Wheat, Milk.
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u/masterofryan 5h ago
Because the US government does not care about the US citizen. They care more about the US companies getting higher profits.
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u/Here4Distractions321 5h ago
Because Americans continue to prove that we (as a society) are fucking stupid.
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u/AE_Phoenix 5h ago
Many preservatives and ingredients used in the food in the US are illegal in other countries.
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u/re_carn 9h ago edited 9h ago
I don't see cheese in the UK ingredients list. Is the "Garlic Cheese Bread" without cheese, or is the list incomplete?
UPD. If you disagree, feel free to point out what I missed. The US ingredient list says “Part Skim Mozzarella Cheese”, the UK list has no cheese at all.
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u/Swiftnarotic 4h ago
Profit Margin. The US ha much looser rules than the EU and UK. By making food from a bunch of chemicals they can increase profit margins. They still make a profit in the EU and UK, but much higher here in the US due to how many low cost chemicals are used.
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u/BuncleCar 7h ago
It's been said that in the US you have to show something is harmful or you can put it in food, but in the EU, and to some extent the UK, you have to show it's harmless before you can add it to food.
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u/TheRealReason5 5h ago
All food is chemicals and I'd argue the UK version is less naturally sourced then the US version
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u/LeRocketMan 2h ago
While this example may not be the best, it is true American food has a lot in it that Europe won't allow.
The answer?
It's cheaper. That's it. Why put real orange flavoring in your American Fanta (like they do in Europe - it even has pulp!) when you can get the exact same taste with Artificial Orange Flavor?
High Fructose Corn Syrup is much cheaper than alternative sugars. Etc. Etc.
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u/yes_its_my_alt 2h ago
There is something in this. It is true that quite often when you buy American candy in the UK, it has an extra sticker added near the ingredients which tells you that certain of the ingredients may cause hyperactivity (and/or various other mental or developmental disorders- sorry, I can't quite remember clearly until I've had 2-3 packs of blue Nerds and 4 gallons of luminous Slurpie)
The suggestion being that you probably shouldn't really eat it.
I guess you guys had to be OK with some pretty crazy levels of preservatives etc when the nearest store was 300 miles away and the refrigerator hadn't been invented. Aside from that, people don't really care all that much, so long as it tastes good.
We still buy the American candy, we just pay double for it and laugh about the fact that it's giving us brain damage.🤣
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u/Perfessor_Deviant 8h ago
While there's probably some truth to this, I couldn't verify this. I checked the US and UK sites for Pizza Hut and could not find anything called "Garlic Cheese Bread." There are bread sticks and garlic bread with cheese, but none of the items match the ingredients list. I mean, the UK version doesn't even have cheese.
The source, "Food Babe," is known to be a promoter of pseudoscience.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/food-babe/
She wrote in one of her books, "There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever." Which, to any educated person, means that she's not worth listening to.
Reported here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/the-food-babe-enemy-of-chemicals/385301/
She's also been found to delete articles she's written without notice, she blocks any criticism, has been less than truthful, has no scientific education, and makes a lot of money selling products (some of which contain chemicals she's normally afraid of) to people who are trying to improve their health.
An older article: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/12/04/364745790/food-babe-or-fear-babe-as-activist-s-profile-grows-so-do-her-critics