Bloggers succeeding where regulators fail

Who’s watching out for us while FDA looks the other way?

For over 20 years we’ve been eating bread with an additive that’s also used to make flip flops, yoga mats and foam insulation.

And we didn’t know about it until it hit the headlines just a few weeks ago when Subway said they would remove it from their bread.

Was this the result of a big FDA investigation? Did an expert panel get together and decide that the cancer-causing compounds made when this chemical is heated are dangerous? Did Subway get a warning letter from the FDA about this toxic additive?

Of course not!

Let’s be honest, Big Food has nothing to fear from the FDA. And if all the government experts in the world got together and testified about some dangerous ingredient or drug, you know nothing would happen.

But give a concerned citizen a few hours and a keyboard — well, that’s something for industry to worry about.

The bloggers are coming, the bloggers are coming

This revolution started with blogger Vani Hari, who calls herself the Food Babe. She posted an online petition about the “yoga mat” additive in Subway’s breads. It’s called azodicarbonamide, or ADA. And it’s used in commercial baking to make dough more elastic (just like your flip flops).

One thing Hari discovered is that ADA is used in all of the Subway breads in the U.S., but not those in other parts of the world.

Maybe that’s because the World Health Organization says that ADA is linked to allergies and asthma, other respiratory symptoms and even skin problems in people who work with it.

Meanwhile, the FDA admits that during baking ADA “completely breaks down to form other chemicals,” one of which is called SEM.

In studies — or at least the ones the FDA will tell us about — SEM increased tumors in female mice.

So while other countries have banned the ingredient, the FDA is standing by its position that ADA is “safe” in low amounts, for both consumers and bakery workers.

And if it weren’t for Hari’s blog, we probably still wouldn’t know about the danger. But when her petition hit over 94,000 signatures, Subway realized trouble was brewing and took action.

Of course they didn’t admit it had anything to do the petition. They said they were “already in the process of removing” the chemical as part of their “bread improvement efforts…”

Yeah, right!

But it didn’t stop there.

Another group picked up the cause and published a list of close to 500 other foods containing the additive. If recent history is any guide, we’ll be hearing about a lot more “bread improvement efforts” in the coming weeks.

So while the FDA sits back and ignores a known carcinogen poisoning our food, one woman could actually get it removed.

And this isn’t the first time bloggers and petitions have made big changes in food ingredients — ones the FDA hasn’t taken the time to worry about.

• In 2012 a Texas “mommy” blogger made “pink slime” famous and got it out of the school lunch program. She got a whopping 225,000 folks to sign her petition.

• Last year Hari got Kraft to remove artificial colors in its mac and cheese.

• And also last year, a Mississippi teen got PepsiCo to ditch an additive called BVO that was put in Gatorade. She started a petition after reading that BVO is also used as a flame retardant.

It used to be if we wanted something to be done, we were told to write to our Congressman. But now with blogs and social media, it’s more effective to just write. Congress could never move at the speed of the internet.

Oh…and if you want to find out about those other 500 foods that still have ADA in them, click here.

Sources:
“How a chemical used in rubber found its way into 500 food products” Venessa Wong, February 27, 2014, Bloomberg Business Week, businessweek.com