Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) was in Washington D.C last week to take questions from lawmakers he tries to convince to confirm his nomination after Donald Trump takes office.
Many skeptics of his policies and beliefs say that he takes a heavy regulatory approach to "Make America Healthy Again." Kennedy attempted to emulate the European model of food regulation, but as a European who is very familiar with Europe's failed experience with food reforms leading to less choice and higher prices, I would caution against this approach.
RFK Jr. has previously taken aim at food dyes, telling Fox News that food dyes are carcinogenic and cause ADHD, implying that they ought to be banned by the FDA. The Food and Drug Administration recently started considering a ban on red dye No. 3, which activists believe is "linked" to hyperactivity.
Here's the crucial point to consider: The word "linked" does a lot of heavy lifting here because this particular dye only affected rats that were given unusually high doses in scientific studies.
One could write at length about the reliability of animal studies and what they really mean for humans, but the mere fact that the doses were much higher than what even a human would consume shows us that environmental activists do not understand the concept of dosage. Too much of anything will be bad for you — in fact, "too much" describes quite literally the exact quantity that is excessive.
For instance, this is equally true for glyphosate residues in beer or aspartame sweetener in Diet Coke. You would need to drink 264 gallons of beer for the glyphosate to adversely affect you or gulp down 36 cans of sugar-free Coke for the aspartame to be bad for you.
Farmers are people who know this very well: the right amount of fertilizer grows your crops; a too large amount will kill them. This is precisely why we look to scientific agencies to analyze the dosage that is safe for human consumption.
As a European, the approach of regulating everything with such a heavy hand reminds me of home. Over here in Europe, the precautionary approach to food regulation means that we spend more on food and have fewer choices in our supermarkets.
Each time I visit a supermarket in America, I walk the aisles in awe, like a refugee of communist East Germany discovering capitalism in the West after the fall of the wall. In Europe, we take the precautionary approach in most things: We ban or slap labels on things that don't need them, much like California, which requires coffee to carry a cancer warning label.
When I visit American grocery stores I see that Fanta has a bright and appealing orange color, while its European equivalent looks like expired lemon juice. Why is that? The food dye used in American Fanta isn't banned, because regulators in Europe were also unable to prove any negative health effects related to the dyes, but in a precautionary approach, still require a health warning label.
To presumably avoid a label that would scare off consumers, Coca-Cola simply doesn't color the drink in Europe.
I find a future without food coloring bleak. While we might be adults, we still enjoy color. It inspires us to see things other than gray.
A supermarket aisle is supposed to be a colorful experience, whether it's the packaging or the food itself. However, on a more significant point, how paternalistic is the approach to removing color in the first place?
My impression was that the last presidential election was also a repudiation of big government — that the government ought not to tell you how to live your life, what to eat, and what to do. More individual freedom, instead of government mandates, through which bureaucrats determine how best to live your life.
It is a laudable aim to want to make Americans healthier, but the idea of banning food dyes neither achieves that nor entices Americans to become more responsible consumers. If we look to the government to even tell us what color our food should be, where will it end?
Bill Wirtz is the senior policy analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, focusing on new technology, agriculture, trade and lifestyle regulations. He recently published "No Copy-paste: What Not to Emulate from Europe's Agriculture Regulations." Read Bill Wirtz's Reports — More Here.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.