FDA to crack down on non-dairy beverages labeled as 'milk'

Non-dairy products such as soy milk and almond milk may not be able to label themselves as “milk” anymore, federal regulators announced this week.

As noted by The New York Post, milk is defined as coming from the “milking of one or more healthy cows," according to federal rules, and soy milk and almond milk do not fall under this category.

This often-unenforced rule is one of many listed by the FDA for mandating how certain names of products must be identified.

Commissioner Scott Gottlieb of the FDA said on Tuesday that we have not been “enforcing our own standard of identity” by letting these rules go unenforced, according to the Post.

This announcement comes on the tail of similar disputes about alternative food products, which have been gaining popularity in recent years.

The Good Food Institute, an advocate for plant-based alternatives, says the term “milk” should be allowed for non-dairy drinks “for the same reason that you can have gluten-free bread and rice noodles.”

Changes to the industry are not expected to happen overnight, however. The FDA must first notify the companies of these products, and ask for a public comment. Those notifications are likely to be issued in about a year.

Why the FDA Is planning to Crack Down on Homeopathic Drugs

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is launching a crackdown on homeopathic drugs marketed with false claims which could actually put consumers’ health at risk, the agency announced Monday.

FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb laid out the rationale in stark terms. “In recent years, we’ve seen a large uptick in products labeled as homeopathic that are being marketed for a wide array of diseases and conditions, from the common cold to cancer,” Gottlieb said in a statement. “In many cases, people may be placing their trust and money in therapies that may bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse—that may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren’t adequately tested or disclosed to patients.”

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine approach that’s drawn significant ire among the scientific community (and widely labeled as pseudoscience) but embraced by some Americans who prefer medical treatments they believe to be more “natural.” Generally, homeopathy treatments are made up of highly diluted doses of natural substances that might cause symptoms of a disease. The thinking goes that this approach could actually help fight the disease itself—but there is no credible widespread evidence to that end.

Gottlieb recognized in his statement that some consumers may simply prefer homeopathic approaches, and in many cases, they should be free to do so. But he also noted the FDA’s public safety obligation when it comes to homeopathy. “Our approach to regulating homeopathic drugs must evolve to reflect the current complexity of the market, by taking a more risk-based approach to enforcement,” he said. “We respect that some individuals want to use alternative treatments, but the FDA has a responsibility to protect the public from products that may not deliver any benefit and have the potential to cause harm.”

The FDA said that it will focus on homeopathic products that have ingredients with reported safety concerns, especially those that are targeted toward children or marketed for serious conditions like cancer and heart disease.

Last year, the FDA announced it was examining a possible link between common homeopathic teething products and side effects like fever and vomiting.

8 Confusing Labels on Foods Plus What They Really Mean

Cheese puffs don’t come from the earth in any way, shape or form, right? How could they possibly be natural? Labels such as “natural” or “artificial” may seem pretty straightforward, but in actuality they could mean a whole host of things. Some food labels are more strictly regulated than others, which leads to a lot of confusion. With the assistance of Maria-Paula Carrillo, M.S., R.D.N., L.D, we’ll help you put the grocery store guessing game to rest once and for all.

1. Natural
Don’t give a product an automatic place in your shopping cart just for boasting this label; this term has quite a lot of room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation among consumers. There’s no hard and fast definition of it because it’s not regulated by the FDA. “With that said, the FDA seems ok if this term is used on foods that do not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances,” says Carrillo. Technically speaking, you could print “natural” on a bag of licorice without being at fault. Just know that natural does not mean healthy in all cases. “A food labeled ‘natural’ isn’t necessarily healthier or better for you. This claim is very misleading to consumers,” says Carrillo. Take a look at the ingredient list if you really want to know if what you’re putting in your mouth actually comes from nature.

2. Non- GMO
Though GMO—Genetically Modified Organisms—has become more of a mainstream term, most people still don’t know exactly what it means. If you see a product labeled “Non-GMO,” it means the ingredients used have not been altered from their natural state or enhanced. The term is not regulated by the government, but rather by a non-profit organization called The Non-GMO Project. Torn by all the circulating opinions? Go with your gut feeling on this one; Carrillo believes eating non-GMO should come down to a personal choice, adding, “The truth is that foods from genetically engineered plants must meet the same safety requirements as traditional foods.”

3. Artificial Flavors
If you see artificial flavors or flavoring on the box, it’s tipping you off to how that food gets its taste, and as you would assume—the flavor did not come from anything that grows in a garden. “This term refers to any flavoring that is not derived from a whole food source, such as a spice, fruit, vegetable, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, fish, poultry, and so on,”says Carrillo. Both natural and artificial flavors are made in a lab, but artificial flavoring is created from synthetic rather than natural chemicals. One benefit of choosing natural over artificial is that natural flavors often exist in more nutrient-dense foods.

4. USDA Certified Organic
Organic is arguably the most tightly regulated label. The term organic refers to the way the food has been grown and processed by farmers. To be awarded certification, products must be produced without any genetic engineering, ionizing radiation, or sewage sludge, and also produced according to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. “Overall, if a product wants to claim that it or its ingredients are organic, it must be certified. Without certification, a product cannot use the USDA organic seal or claim anywhere on the packaging to be organic,” explains Carrillo. Eating organic definitely has its benefits. One study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that eating organic produce and meat reduces consumer’s level of pesticide ingestion and cuts your exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Also, if you are trying to avoid GMOs, certified organic products are a good bet; they’re not legally allowed to contain GMOs.

5. Made with Organic
Products may under no circumstances claim to be certified organic or use the certified organic seal unless they have passed all requirements, however, they do have some wiggle room. Foods may claim to be “made with” organic ingredients if they do contain a considerable amount. There are still some rules regarding use of this label, including the requirement that 70 percent of the product must be certified organic ingredients (excluding salt and water), points out Carrillo. Also, products must identify somewhere on the packaging—usually in the ingredients list via an asterisk or other mark—which ingredients are in fact organic.

6. Sell by
Food product dating has got to be among the most confusing data you can find on a food product. Sell by? Best by? What do they mean?! For starters, the “sell by” date does not actually concern you, the consumer. “It tells the store how long to display the product for sale,” says Carrillo. You, the hungry consumer, should buy the product before the date expires, however.

7. Best if Used by

What will happen if I eat my spinach one day after the “best if used by” date? Will I become suddenly ill, or can I actually continue eating the “expired” greens for a few days before I keel over? Carrillo assures that this date is not a warning for safety, but rather for taste. “This is the recommended date for best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date,” says Carrillo.

8. Use by
This is the date you should pay the closest attention to. It is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality, and has been determined by the manufacturer of the product. “If product has a ‘use-by’ date, follow that date. If product has a ‘sell-by’ date or no date, cook or freeze the product by the times recommended by the USDA,” says Carrillo.

FDA Says Walnuts Are Drugs: What Do You Have To Say About This?

Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.

Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate the public and supply them with walnuts,” as William Faloon of Life Extension magazine put it. On its website and packaging, the company stated that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts have been shown to have certain health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. These claims, Faloon notes, are well supported by scientific research: “Life Extension has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts”; and “The US National Library of Medicine database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and may reduce heart attack risk.” 

This evidence was apparently not good enough for the FDA, which told Diamond that its walnuts were “misbranded” because the “product bears health claims that are not authorized by the FDA.”

The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?

“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.” He adds:

This kind of bureaucratic tyranny sends a strong signal to the food industry not to innovate in a way that informs the public about foods that protect against disease. While consumers increasingly reach for healthier dietary choices, the federal government wants to deny food companies the ability to convey findings from scientific studies about their products.

Walnuts aren’t the only food whose health benefits the FDA has tried to suppress. Producers of pomegranate juice and green tea, among others, have felt the bureaucrats’ wrath whenever they have suggested that their products are good for people.

Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”

Faloon thinks he knows why this is the case. First, by stifling competition from makers of more healthful alternatives, junk food manufacturers, who he says “heavily lobb[y]” the federal government for favorable treatment, will rake in ever greater profits. Second, by making it less likely that Americans will consume healthful foods, big pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers stand to gain by selling more “expensive cardiac drugs, stents, and coronary bypass procedures” to those made ill by their diets.

But people are starting to fight back against the FDA’s tactics. “The makers of pomegranate juice, for example, have sued the FTC for censoring their First Amendment right to communicate scientific information to the public,” Faloon reports. Congress is also getting into the act with a bill, the Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364), that, Faloon writes, “protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship of science, and enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings with the public.”

Of course, if the Constitution were being followed as intended, none of this would be necessary. The FDA would not exist; but if it did, as a creation of Congress it would have no power to censor any speech whatsoever. If companies are making false claims about their products, the market will quickly punish them for it, and genuine fraud can be handled through the courts. In the absence of a government agency supposedly guaranteeing the safety of their food and drugs and the truthfulness of producers’ claims, consumers would become more discerning, as indeed they already are becoming despite the FDA’s attempts to prevent the dissemination of scientific research. Besides, as Faloon observed, “If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.”

Source: The New American – Like The New American on facebook