Sarah Gonzalez

Now, a food additive is a pretty broad term.

It includes like preservatives, emulsifiers, dough softeners, leavening agents, flavoring agents, all of that, but also food packaging ingredients too, like the coating on the inside of a disposable coffee cup that may migrate into the food.

That's an additive.

In its broadest sense, it can be common things like sugar, coffee, flour.

What do you mean?

Like a banana is an additive?

Oh, but if it's just a whole banana.

This is Melanie Benesch.

She's an attorney at the Environmental Working Group who focuses on the regulations around food and all of the additives and chemicals in our food that the FDA is likely unaware of.

So additive isn't necessarily a bad word.

No.

Or a bad thing.

Like we have good additives.

Yeah.

So how do we know which ones are the bad ones?

Well, yeah, we'll get there.

Okay.

To understand how we even got to this place where a brand new ingredient, brand new substance, including one of the bad ones, can be added to food without rigorous safety checks, we got to go back to the origins of the FDA in 1906.

Okay.

There was growing concern about specifically meat being processed in filthy plants.