Ultra-Processed Foods Policy Proposals

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We are in our annual health convening, which WNYC hosts every year with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as an opportunity for healthcare experts and practitioners to inform WNYC's health reporting. And this year, as you've been hearing for most of the show, we are for the third year now, bringing it onto the air for all of you as well, even as we take notes on this show and elsewhere in our news department. And we are tackling ultra-processed foods as this year's health convening topic. What are they? How do they impact our health? And how can the food system in the United States change? For our final installment today, we're joined now by Dr. David Kessler, who is perhaps best known for taking on industries that profit from addiction. As FDA commissioner under both Presidents George HW. Bush and Bill Clinton through the 1990s, he brought tobacco executives before Congress, remember that, some of you, and argued successfully that the FDA had the authority to regulate nicotine as a drug. And now he's trying to do something similar with ultra-processed foods.
Last August, Dr. Kessler filed a citizens petition, as it's called, with the FDA, arguing that the very ingredients that make ultra-processed foods what they are, corn syrup and maltodextrin, should no longer be considered generally recognized as safe. Now, that's a legal designation that we're going to get into with him, because it's central to this conversation.
Generally recognized as safe, or known by the acronym GRAS, that has allowed the food industry to introduce thousands of industrial ingredients into the food supply, without formal FDA review or approval. Dr. Kessler says that loophole needs to be closed. Now, this past February, Health Secretary RFK. Jr. said on 60 Minutes that the FDA would act on Dr. Kessler's petition, but he stopped short of saying the administration would regulate the ultra-processed food. So, where does that leave us? Let's find out. Dr. David Kessler is also a pediatrician and a lawyer, as well as former FDA commissioner. He's the former dean of the medical schools at Yale and UC San Francisco, and the author of multiple books on food and health, including his most recent Food or Fiction. Dr. Kessler, so nice of you to join us. We're honored to have you. Welcome to WNYC.

**David Kessler** (2:45)
Thank you for having me, Brian, and thanks for the important work you're doing.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:48)
Thank you. The core legal argument in your petition involves this thing called GRAS, or GRAS, which stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. I took a stab at defining it in the intro just now.
You argue that the FDA is legally obligated to revisit it for these ingredients, so many ingredients. What is this loophole exactly? What are you calling on the FDA to revisit?

**David Kessler** (3:16)
So, we are asking that the petition that we filed calls on the administration to remove processed, refined carbohydrates from the food supply on the basis that, as you just said, they are no longer considered Generally Recognized as Safe or GRAS. Now, can I explain what GRAS is and then the reason for this?

**Brian Lehrer** (3:42)
Please.

**David Kessler** (3:44)
So, if you want to introduce, add something to the food supply, there's a relatively high burden that Congress set back in the 1950s. If you want to add, it's called a food additive, you have to show that the additive is safe for use under the conditions it's used. So, you have to show it's safe. Safety is defined as reasonable certainty of no harm, and you have to go through an entire application process, you have to study it, you have to submit petitions, you submit the food additive petition, FDA looks at that. There is an exception in the law. There was an exception that was put in, it was put in for grandfathered substances primarily. This is what is called grass.
And if you were generally recognized as safe, then you were exempted from putting in that food additive petition.
So it was, in some ways, it was the loophole that became the rule. Because the majority of substances that are added to food today, come in under this grass exception. Now, this was looked at, the grass status of these refined carbohydrates, was looked at four decades ago.
And it's during those four or five decades that we see this crisis, that America became, the American body became ill, we became obese. It's not about weight. I mean, it's very important. You know, why are we doing this? Is the fact that only 12% of us meet, you know, are generally healthy from a metabolic perspective when you look at things like blood pressure or blood lipids or, you know, or waist circumference. 25% of us will go on to have heart failure. 30% of us will become diabetic. 25% of us will have a stroke. And we're waking up to the fact, again, it's not just weight, it's that visceral fat, that fat in places in our abdomen where fat does not belong. And that's responsible. That visceral adiposity is responsible for much of the cardio, renal, metabolic disease, the chronic disease, certain forms of cancer, and even neurodegenerative disease. So enormous chronic disease burden. And when this was looked at four decades ago, these refined carbohydrates, you go look at the Federal Register back in the 1980s, the fact that that grass determination was based on outdated data. They did not properly establish the biological effects of these processed refined carbohydrates. The grass affirmation statement written back in 1988, said there was no link between refined, these refined sweeteners and carbohydrates and obesity, no link with that cardiovascular disease and diabetes. That is no longer true. So there is no expert consensus that these refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods are safe under the present conditions of use, and that, in my opinion, leaves FDA with no choice but to determine that processed refined carbohydrates as a matter of science and law can no longer considered be grass, and thus must be removed from commerce.