Food Additives Exposed: What Lies Beneath America’s Food Supply

Scientists at the University of Texas–Dallas recently discovered that a common food additive can make flesh translucent—literally. They found that applying a solution of the food coloring yellow 5 (tartrazine) to the skin of live mice allowed them to see right through the skin and into the tissues beneath. This discovery could offer a simple and inexpensive alternative to conventional imaging technologies such as ultrasound.

Through the skin covering the skull, the scientists could look directly at blood vessels on the surface of the murine brain, and through the skin of the abdomen they could observe internal organs and even the process known as peristalsis, the contractions that move food through the digestive passage.

Pretty cool, huh?

The physics behind this discovery aren’t actually that complicated. When added to water, tartrazine changes the water’s refractive index—the way it bends light—so that it matches the refractive index of molecules in the skin, such as lipids, reducing the degree to which light scatters as it passes through the skin. Instead of dividing, the light travels straight and true, revealing what’s on the other side.

The process is totally reversible in only a few minutes. When the tartrazine solution is washed off, the effects disappear. What tartrazine is absorbed by the skin is metabolized and excreted through the urine.

The researchers’ next goal is to test the solution on humans. Human skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s, so it’s likely that a larger dose will be needed, and it’s not clear if the delivery method—just rubbing the stuff on the skin—will be adequate.

This is a miraculous discovery, for sure, and one that will no doubt benefit medicine. But it’s also a reminder of an unpleasant, dangerous truth about the food supply in America today: It’s full of substances about which we know next to nothing. There are thousands upon thousands of additives—texturizers, colorings, humectants, anti-fungals, anti-caking agents, preservatives—in Americans’ food that have never been independently tested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or by scientists who aren’t employed by the companies that make those chemicals and add them to food.

As we’re discovering, many of those additives—the ones we know about and have begun to test—turn out to be extremely harmful, with links to every single chronic health condition you could care to name, from cancer and obesity to neurological and behavioral conditions such as Alzheimer’s and autism. Tartrazine, which is found in Twinkies, Mountain Dew, candy, and cereals, among other foods, has been linked to hyperactivity in children and cancer. In the European Union, foods containing tartrazine must carry a warning label: “May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”

It sounds absurd—insane, actually—but it’s not a glitch or an organized system of corporate deception. We’re not talking about companies lying to regulators or acting beyond the boundaries of the law. No, this is all above board. The system even has a name. The FDA calls it “generally recognized as safe,” or “GRAS” for short.

The GRAS system was first introduced by the FDA in 1958 after the passage of the Food Additive Amendments. These new additive regulations were intended to ensure that ingredients capable of causing long-term harm never entered the food supply, but something very different happened. The GRAS designation was used to “grandfather” in additives that were already used in food. It mutated into a system that allowed companies to introduce and safety-test additives themselves without the FDA ever getting a look-in.

This happened in large part because the FDA simply couldn’t keep up with demands from companies to test their new additives for the burgeoning category of processed food. So companies started testing additives themselves and adding them to their food products without any consultation with the regulator.

Companies did this for decades, and instead of stepping in to assert its authority, the FDA did what any poorly staffed, hopelessly compromised organization would do: It simply chose to regularize the process, which was completed in 2016.

According to one study, since 2000, there have been only 10 applications to the FDA for full approval of a new food additive, out of a total of 766 that have been added to the American food supply. The safety of the other 756 was self-determined by the manufacturers themselves, in secret.

We’ve ended up in a situation in which a company can produce a new food additive, decide it’s safe by whatever means it chooses, and then bring it to market without any scrutiny at all from the FDA. As I said, nobody knows the exact amount, but a common estimate is that there are as many as 10,000 food additives in use in the United States, compared to around 2,000—all known quantities, by contrast—that are permitted in the EU.

Thankfully, the FDA and the GRAS system are now firmly in the sights of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tasked by President-elect Donald Trump with making America healthy again. Trump has nominated Kennedy as secretary of health and human services.

The “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and the son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, said on social media platform X last month. He listed a whole range of compounds and treatments that he claims the FDA has suppressed, from psychedelics and peptides to “sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you,” he said. “1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Strong stuff.

Kennedy has made it clear that if he is confirmed as secretary of health and human services, his areas of focus—besides root-and-branch reform of agencies such as the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture—will include water supply fluoridation, vaccinations, environmental pollution, and processed food. This is a comprehensive program, and if Kennedy can make meaningful changes in all of these areas in four years, he will have done the American people and their health an enormous service.

If anybody can get to the bottom of why Americans are so sick, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has spent decades campaigning on environmental and health issues and suffered personal loss and public vilification as a result—but still kept on going. He knows well the corruption that lies beneath the façade of public health in America, and now, at long last, he’s in a position to do something about it.