Okay, so we pick on the FDA quite a bit – but usually it is for drugs and medical devices. But, as the name implies the Food and Drug Administration is also supposed to regulate our food supply.
Since April we have been hearing about the salmonella outbreak that
has sickened at least 1,000 people across the country. Although
tomatoes are allegedly to blame, the FDA has yet to prove the
connection (but none-the-less doing untold amount of damage to the
tomato industry).
So people continue to get sick and the FDA can't find the source but as we know, the FDA's problems are not just limited to recent headlines.
In Michael Pollan's (I became a big big fan of his after reading Omnivore's Dilemma) In Defense of Food – An Eater's Manifesto, among other points he rallies against processed food. In the section I was reading last night, he talked about FDA approved food labels (p. 156):
It would appear that "qualified" is an official FDA euphemism for "all but meaningless." Though someone might have let the consumer in on the game: The FDA's own research indicates that consumers have no idea what to make of qualified heath claims (how would they?), and its rules allow companies to promote the claims pretty much any way they want – they can use really big type for the claim, for example, and then print the disclaimers in teeny-tiny type.
UPDATE: Just after I posted this, I noticed that the FDA gave the go-ahead on eating tomatoes again. Thanks, but I think I'll stick to eating local produce...
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