- The FDA allows food manufacturers to introduce new additives without independent safety testing, meaning thousands of chemicals are in the U.S. food supply with little oversight
- Many food additives, including emulsifiers and preservatives, disrupt gut bacteria, leading to inflammation, metabolic disorders, and immune dysfunction
- The Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) loophole allows companies to self-certify chemicals as safe, even when long-term health effects are unknown
- Heavy metals like arsenic and lead are present in common foods due to weak enforcement standards, contributing to cognitive decline and increased disease risk
- Avoiding ultraprocessed foods, choosing organic when possible, and learning how to read ingredient labels will drastically reduce exposure to harmful additives
(Mercola)—Food is one of the biggest industries in America. According to a report from CBS News Health Watch, it’s estimated that Americans spend a total of $1.7 trillion every year on food and beverages. However, there’s a big issue lurking underneath that most people don’t know. “American food companies keep secret much of what they put in their products,” the report indicated.1
For decades, food companies have taken advantage of a regulatory loophole known as the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule, which allows manufacturers to determine the safety of their own additives without requiring FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval. This means that companies will be able to introduce new chemicals into the food supply without notifying regulators or conducting long-term studies on their effects.
The result is a system where profit-driven decisions affect public health, and leaving consumers exposed to substances that will undoubtedly harm their bodies over time.2
Exposing the Chemicals Affecting the Health of Americans
The FDA, the agency responsible for regulating food additives, has allowed food manufacturers to introduce new substances with little oversight, often relying on industry-funded research rather than independent evaluation — a glaring public health issue that CBS News Health Watch just tackled.3
- Allergens are rampant in food products — The report indicates that certain ingredients in food products are listed under catchall terms such as “spices” and “artificial flavors.” Other potential allergens used in food production, such as milk, wheat, eggs, and dyes are sometimes undisclosed, leading to numerous food recalls due to causing harm among consumers.4
- Banned in other countries, but not in America — An egregious oversight by the FDA is its permission to add titanium oxide in foods to help enhance their appearance. Its use is so widespread — investigations reveal that it’s in more than 1,900 products.
In the European Union, titanium oxide has been banned, and their regulatory board states that it “can no longer be considered as safe when used as a food additive.”
In a previous article I wrote, research has shown that titanium oxide negatively alters your gut microbiota composition, ultimately affecting immune function. Moreover, it’s been shown to cause obesity by affecting metabolic health, as well as contribute to neurotoxicity.
Potassium bromate is another ingredient banned in the European Union (EU) but still used in America. It’s found in more than 200 products, mostly in baked goods such as bread and bagels. According to the CBS News Health Watch report, the International Agency for Research on Cancer identified it as a possible carcinogen more than 25 years ago.5
- Ultraprocessed foods are widespread — Another striking revelation made by the report was the amount of ultraprocessed foods currently in circulation. Specifically, these products now make up a whopping 73% of the U.S. food supply. Moreover, they’re designed to be addictive, which leads to overeating that contributes to the ever-growing epidemic of obesity.6
- European regulations are ahead compared to the FDA — Another finding in the report is the ineffectiveness of the FDA when it comes to reviewing ingredients. “When the FDA formally approves substances for use in food, it can let decades pass without reassessing them — even when subsequent research raises doubts about their safety,” the report said.
But in the EU, ingredients are required to pass regulatory approval before being used in food products. In addition, the EU requires food regulators to reassess all chemical additives that were released before January 20, 2009. Jim Jones, former deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Human Foods Program, says that while the FDA has the authority to do a post-review of food additives, it’s not mandated.7
The FDA’s Weak Oversight Is Affecting Public Health
Going deeper into the oversight issue, a study published in American Journal of Public Health examined how the FDA’s outdated regulatory framework has allowed thousands of chemicals into the U.S. food supply without proper safety assessments.8,9
The research highlights how food manufacturers take advantage of loopholes to introduce additives without independent review, raising serious concerns about long-term health risks. The study also outlines how these chemicals, many of which were never tested for chronic exposure, have been linked to metabolic disorders, neurological conditions, and immune dysfunction.10
- Thousands of chemicals are currently approved for use in food — The study reveals that the FDA has not conducted independent safety reviews on most of them. Many additives were either self-certified as safe by manufacturers or were approved decades ago based on outdated research.
The lack of transparency in the approval process means that consumers are often unaware of the substances they are ingesting daily. Some of these chemicals, such as synthetic emulsifiers and preservatives, have been linked to gut microbiome disruption, which plays a key role in immune function and metabolic health.11
- Companies exploit a regulatory loophole to maximize profits — One of the major issues uncovered in the study is the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) loophole. This regulatory issue allows food companies to introduce new additives without requiring FDA approval, as long as the company deems them safe. This means that chemicals with little to no long-term research will enter the food supply simply because a company claims they are harmless.
The study points out that even when concerns arise, the FDA has little authority to reevaluate or remove these additives from the market unless overwhelming evidence of harm is presented.12
- Some chemicals that were approved decades ago remain in use — The research highlights how certain chemicals are still widespread despite growing evidence of harmful effects.13
For instance, synthetic antioxidants like BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene), which are commonly used to preserve processed foods, have been flagged in studies for their cancer risk.14
- Heavy metals are found in common food items — Contaminants such as arsenic and lead, which enter food through industrial processing, packaging, or even water sources used in agriculture, have no safe level of exposure.15 Again, since the FDA has set weak enforcement standards, this has allowed food companies to continue selling products with measurable amounts of these toxins.16
- Food chemicals compromise your gut function — Emulsifiers are chemicals used to improve the texture and shelf life of processed foods. While they help keep products from separating, research has shown that emulsifiers such as polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose disrupt gut bacteria.17
This imbalance in the gut microbiome triggers chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and autoimmune responses. The widespread presence of these additives in everything from salad dressings to frozen meals means that millions of people are exposed daily without realizing the risks.
Food Additives Upset Your Biological Homeostasis
The biological mechanisms behind the harmful effects are particularly concerning. Many food additives interfere with the endocrine system, which regulates hormones crucial for metabolism, growth, and immune function.
- Chemicals act as xenoestrogens — Phthalates, which leach from food packaging, mimic estrogen and disrupt the body’s hormonal balance, contributing to obesity, infertility, and developmental issues in children.
- Chronic exposure to synthetic preservatives alters cellular function — Compounds such as sodium benzoate, used to extend shelf life in beverages and processed snacks, have been shown to increase oxidative stress.18
This damage leads to inflammation, which is linked to conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s. Yet, the FDA does not require long-term studies on how these additives affect human health over time.19
- Food colorants influence neurological function — Artificial dyes like Red 40 and Yellow 5 have been associated with hyperactivity and behavioral disorders in children, with studies showing increased symptoms of ADHD following consumption. While some countries have banned these additives or require warning labels, the FDA continues to allow them in American food products without restriction.20
The findings from this research make it clear — the FDA’s failure to regulate food additives properly has left consumers exposed to chemicals that harm gut health, disrupt hormones, and increase disease risk. These chemicals remain in the food supply not because they are safe, but because regulatory loopholes allow companies to prioritize profit over public health.
How to Reduce Your Exposure to Harmful Food Chemicals
While thousands of chemicals have been allowed into the food supply without proper safety testing, that doesn’t mean the situation is unavoidable. Here’s what I recommend to help you take control of your health:
- Avoid ultraprocessed foods — If a food product has a long ingredient list with names you don’t recognize, it’s likely packed with chemicals your body doesn’t need. Ultraprocessed foods contain preservatives, emulsifiers, and artificial flavors that interfere with your metabolism and gut health. Stick to whole, fresh foods like grass fed meats and dairy, fruits, vegetables, and healthy carb sources like white rice. The more natural the ingredients, the better.
- Eat a healthy, organic diet whenever possible — Organic foods are less likely to contain harmful additives and are free from synthetic pesticides that disrupt hormone function. If you can, prioritize organic versions of foods like leafy greens, fruits and meats. Stringent organic standards prohibit many artificial preservatives, dyes, and flavor enhancers, reducing your exposure to hidden toxins.
- Learn how to read nutrition labels — Most food chemicals hide in plain sight under deceptive names. Artificial sweeteners like aspartame, preservatives like BHT, and emulsifiers like polysorbate 80 are all linked to gut and metabolic damage. Start checking ingredient lists and avoid anything with unpronounceable additives or vague descriptions like “natural flavors” and “modified food starch.” If you don’t recognize an ingredient, look it up before you eat it.
- Choose safe food packaging and storage — Toxic chemicals don’t just come from food — they also leach from packaging. Plastics, especially those with BPA or phthalates, release hormone-disrupting chemicals into food. Choose glass or stainless steel for storing and heating food. Never heat food in plastic containers, as it releases harmful substances.
- Cook more meals at home — Restaurants and packaged meals often contain the highest levels of preservatives, emulsifiers, and artificial colors. In addition, the majority of them cook their food with vegetable oils, which contain high amounts of linoleic acid. Cooking at home gives you full control over the quality of your food. Use real, grass fed butter or ghee instead of vegetable oils, and avoid processed seasonings filled with additives. Preparing meals from scratch doesn’t just cut out harmful chemicals — it also improves digestion, energy levels, and long-term cellular health.
Frequently Asked Questions About Chemicals Lurking in the Food Supply
Q: Why does the FDA allow so many chemicals in the U.S. food supply?
A: The FDA relies on outdated regulations that let food companies self-certify additives as safe under the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule. This loophole allows manufacturers to introduce new chemicals into food without requiring independent safety testing or FDA approval. As a result, many additives that have never undergone long-term studies remain in circulation, putting public health at risk.
Q: What are some of the most harmful chemicals still allowed in American food?
A: Several chemicals banned in other countries are still widely used in the U.S. food supply. Titanium dioxide, which is used to brighten food products, has been banned in the EU due to its harmful effects on gut health and metabolism.
Potassium bromate, found in baked goods, has been linked to cancer but remains legal in the U.S. Additionally, synthetic antioxidants, which preserve processed foods, have been associated with hormone disruption and increased disease risk.
Q: How do food chemicals affect gut health and metabolism?
A: Many additives, including emulsifiers like polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose, alter gut bacteria, leading to chronic inflammation and insulin resistance. Artificial preservatives and dyes have also been shown to disrupt digestion and contribute to metabolic disorders. Since gut health plays a crucial role in immune function and weight regulation, prolonged exposure to these substances increases the risk of obesity, autoimmune issues, and other chronic diseases.
Q: What are some of the biggest differences between U.S. and European food regulations?
A: The EU has stricter regulations on food additives, requiring ingredients to be approved before they are used. The EU also mandates regular reassessment of food chemicals, while the FDA allows decades to pass without reviewing their safety. Many substances, including certain artificial dyes and preservatives, have been banned in Europe due to their health risks, yet they remain legal in the U.S. simply because the FDA lacks a requirement for reassessment.
Q: How can I reduce my exposure to harmful food chemicals?
A: You’ll be able to minimize exposure by avoiding ultraprocessed foods, choosing organic ingredients, and learning how to read nutrition labels for hidden additives. Storing food in glass or stainless steel instead of plastic helps prevent chemicals from leaching, and cooking at home ensures better control over ingredient quality. Prioritizing whole, fresh foods over pre-packaged items significantly lowers your intake of harmful additives.
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 CBS News Health Watch, March 7, 2025
- 8 NYU, August 8, 2024
- 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20 Am J Public Health. 2024 Oct;114(10):1061-1070
- 14 NIH, December 21, 2021
- 15 Foods. 2023 Sep 6;12(18):3340
- 17 Microbiome Volume 9, Article number: 66 (2021)
- 18 Nutrients. 2022 Apr 2;14(7):1497
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
