Banned in Europe, this controversial ingredient is allowed in foods here (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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A CBC Marketplace investigation found some food manufacturers are producing snack foods for the Canadian market that contain an ingredient banned in Europe.

That additive, titanium dioxide, was banned in the European Union after a May 2021 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review couldn't rule out that it may cause DNA or chromosomal damage in humans.

"What we concluded was that we could not really exclude the possibility that titanium dioxide can damage the DNA material, the genetic material in the cells," Camilla Smeraldi, team leader for EFSA's food additive and flavourings team, told Marketplace in an interview from her office in Parma, Italy. "It's not something that we should intentionally add to foods."

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[-] Octospider@kbin.social -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wouldn't panic. Health scares happen every now and then. This one may be more serious since it's already banned in Europe. Takes a lot to get substances banned in Canada. BHT, Glyphosate (RoundUp), Aspartame, Sucralose, MSG, etc, have all been under scrutiny at one point or another, and they are still all with us after failing to repeatedly demonstrate danger.

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

All of those (except MSG as far as I know) are definitively bad, the only question is how bad.

The problem is in the US, we've basically decided if there's no acute symptoms or a direct line to a very serious long term illness, we let companies do whatever they want.

It doesn't flow from science to policy, it mostly flows from public sentiment to policy