You might have heard the phrase "yoga mat sandwich" tossed around lately. After a prominent food blogger/activist started a petition to get Subway to remove a chemical called azodicarbonamide from its breads, the issue went viral.
Azodicarbonamide is a chemical foaming agent, used in yoga mats and other plastic items to make the item spongy, light and strong. And apparently, bread at Subway. It supposedly "makes bread rise higher, stay soft and form an attractive crust."
But it's not just Subway making "yoga mat sandwiches" - according to a follow up study by the Environmental Working Group, azodicarbonamide actually appears in at least 500 processed food products made by a large number of companies. The World Health Organization has found that there are health risks to workers who are exposed to azodicarbonamide, but no one has done studies on its health effects in humans who ingest it.
So here's the problem. It's fine for these bloggers and activists to try to get the word out about what's in our food. I agree with that wholeheartedly, and to some degree, talk about that in this space. But ok, Subway is now removing that chemical from its bread. But what will they put in its place? Bread that's just made up of flour, yeast, salt and water? Doubtful.
It's not an effective overall strategy to get one company at a time to remove one ingredient at a time from one product at a time. What we need are comprehensive regulations and overhauls of the food industry in general, so that the FDA does not approve additives for food use in the first place with no scientific evidence as to whether or not they can threaten human health. We need a policy that considers chemicals to be dangerous for food until proven safe, with effective, third-party science.
So go ahead and stay away from processed foods with "yoga mats" in them - but don't believe that the removal of that one chemical from a food makes it healthy and/or clean. Processed foods are processed foods. Don't buy into the hype that industrial food companies are prioritizing public health by removing singular additives - even in the face of increased public awareness, they are still prioritizing profit.
Personally, I find it scary that the FDA never actually says these additives are safe. They give them the designation of GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe). In other words, as long as they don't know for sure that someone has been hurt and/or some lobbyist paid enough to get it through the approval process and/or some lazy bureaucrat decided it was too much work to check on it, then you're ostensibly good to go... Yet another reason not to look to the government to protect you.
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