Question from Linda
In case you haven’t heard, the Milk & Dairy Board has submitted a petition for the government to allow milk, yogurt and most dairy to have toxic chemicals added with permission to not disclose or list any of that on the ingredients’ label!
Mainly it’s HFCS and artificial sweeteners & flavors.
Dr Oz yesterday gave this link to comment and make ourselves heard before they close it (I think in May is the deadline to write your comments in.)
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2009-P-0147-0012
Debra’s Answer
You all should read this carefully. They want to be allowed to use “any safe and suitable sweetener.” What THEY consider safe and suitable is probably not what you and I consider safe and suitable.
As always, my viewpoint is PUT EVERYTHING IN THE PRODUCT ON THE LABEL.
I agree that every ingredient in a food product should be on the label. I went out one night with friends and asked for a 7-UP but was given diet 7-UP instead and within 2 hours I got a severely painful migraine. Aspartame was the reason. “Natural Flavorings” do the same thing. There are other trigers in food also, like “chemical” preservatives. You get the idea.
Can you explain what wording in this petition says they don’t want to put those items on the ingredients list? To me, it looks like they are talking only about the front of the label (i.e., the product name, “milk” vs. something like “artificially sweetened milk.”)
COMMENT FROM DEBRA:
I am sure I can’t fully explain, since this is a legal document, but I can explain a few things.
The way food is labeled is the package lists the ingredients that are mixed together to make the food product. That would be the list of ingredients like in a recipe. So a can of beans and franks would say “Beans, frankfurters, tomato sauce, etc.” The problem with this is there is no disclosure of the ingredients used to make the ingredients. Frankfurters typically contain harmful additives you might not want to eat, but you don’t have the opportunity to make a choice because the ingredients in the franks aren’t revealed.
So in this petition, one of the things they are saying is that if an ingredient is “chocolate syrup” they want to be able to use “non-nutritive” sweeteners like aspartame in the chocolate syrup. Right now manufacturers can use a nutritive sweetener such as sugar, but they want to be able to use non-nutritive sweeteners to help children eating school lunches to consumer fewer calories, and thus help the epidemic of obesity.
The other thing they are asking for is to amend the “standard of identity” for all milk products. A standard of identity is a description of what a product must be in order to use a specific term to describe the product on a label. For example, “cream” means the liquid milk product hight in fat separated from milk, which may have been adjusted by adding thereto: Milk, concentrated milk, dry whole milk, skim milk, concentrated skim milk, or nonfat dry milk. Cream contains not less than 18 percent milkfat.”
Now milk currently is what you think it is: “Milk is the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.” But the law also allows optional “safe and suitable” ingredients to be addedwithout including them on the label. Milk can contain
If you drink milk, any of these additives might be in the milk and the label just says “milk.”
There are standards of identity for ALL foods. This petition is asking to change the standards of identity for milk products to allow sweeteners that are not currently within the standard of identity. That’s my understanding of it.
You can read all about the standards of identity for milk products in the Code of Federal Regulations athttp://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2012-title21-vol2/pdf/CFR-2012-title21-vol2-part131.pdf