Planet Money
99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment.
It was supposed to require FDA approval for new additives. But food companies and chemical makers found a workaround. And the FDA formally okayed the loophole in the 90s — in the process bringing attention to a loophole to the loophole.
The FDA has essentially admitted it doesn’t have the capacity to verify the safety of new food chemicals. So they leave it up to food companies and chemical makers to declare their brand new chemicals are safe. These chemicals are used in everything from chocolate and smoked fish, to tea bags, protein drinks, popcorn, and seeds.
So, how’d the loophole get there, and what does it tell us about the priority the U.S. places on safety versus speed and innovation? And, how much can one lawyer do about it?
Live show tour and book info. / Subscribe to Planet Money+
Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.
Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.
This episode was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez, produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, edited by Jess Jiang, fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodrguez with help from Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. Â
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
-
Cutting school… by 20%
Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher shortages and struggling to fill vacant spots, they are finding…
-
How unions are stopped before they start
Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it’s been in decades. This dissonance is due, in part, to the difficulties of…
-
Indicator exploder: jobs and inflation
When someone says “the economy is doing well”—what does that even mean? Like, for workers, for employers, for the country as a whole? According to what calculation? How do you put a number on it?…
-
Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance
Note: There is swearing in this episode. In 2017, The University of Minnesota asked comedian Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. But the University may not have known what it was in for. In…
-
Why the price of Coke didn’t change for 70 years (classic)
Prices go up. Occasionally, prices go down. But for 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola didn’t change. From 1886 until the late 1950s, a bottle of coke cost just a nickel. On…
-
A man, a plan, wind power, Uruguay
In 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn’t enough energy to power all that growth. Ramón Méndez Galain…
-
The flight attendants of CHAOS
When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants’ union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make. The union — The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA — knew that if they…
-
A trucker hat mystery, the curse of September and other listener questions
Ba-dee-yah! Say do you remember? Ba-dee-yah! Questions in September! That’s right – it’s time for Listener Questions! Every so often, we like to hear from listeners about what’s on their minds, and we try to…
-
The natural disaster economist
There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making natural disasters more and more common. Tatyana Deryugina is…
-
A black market, a currency crisis, and a tango competition in Argentina
The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world’s economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan… and Argentina. If you want to understand what happens when…