Food and Drug Administration

Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened a 90-day comment period for the public to share its thoughts concerning how the word “natural” should be defined on food labels.
To keep up with consumer demands for organic, GMO products, food companies have been slapping terms like “natural,” “all natural,” “simply made,” and “made with natural ingredients” on their goods, but there aren’t any formal rules or regulations that determine what they mean.

Americans already pay more for pharmaceutical drugs than almost any other nation, and we also take the lion’s share of them, though our overall health as a nation is relatively poor. Do we really need a Big Pharma insider as the chief of the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)? That is just what may happen.

Are you sick of unlabeled GMOs in our food? Let the FDA know. You can file a formal complaint. Let’s send them so many that their servers bust!
FDA scientists once said that genetically modified ingredients were possibly unsafe. The agency ignored their own experts, and have since been acting like a dog on a chain, bowing to the whims of the biotech industry without any concern for public health.

A report published in the BMJ says that the new federal nutrition guidelines recommended by a health expert lack the most recent dietary research and reinforce bad advice that many believe is behind America’s obesity epidemic.

Federal health experts are taking another look at Essure, a permanent birth control device for woman that is associated with numerous serious side effects.
The Food and Drug Administration will be asked to consider further clinical studies on Essure, and will be asked to make changes to the device’s warning label.

The Food and Drug Administration is making the most dramatic changes to its food safety regulations in more than a century in an effort to stave off outbreaks of food poisoning, which claims more than 3,000 lives a year.
The purpose of the changes, as obvious as it may sound, is to make food processors anticipate where pathogens might enter food products and to take preventative action. [1]

Five manufacturers of powdered caffeine have been informed by the FDA that they must stop producing some of their products, provide measuring devices for their products, or package their products in smaller amounts after the agency found that some packages of the substance contained as much as 50,000 servings of caffeine. [1]

On Thursday, the FDA approved the powerful painkiller OxyContin for use in children ages 11 to 16 who have severe, long-term pain.
The extended-release opioid has been used for years to treat constant pain in adults, but it is one of the few prescription painkillers approved for children. The only other known opioid drug approved for use in children is Duragesic, or the fentanyl patch. [1]

First, the good news: the FDA has ordered food companies to remove trans fats from their products over the next three years. The bad news: many food companies are looking for a way around the directive.

Last month, the FDA ruled that trans fats are not “generally recognized as safe” for use in human food and gave manufacturers three years to remove them. Companies have been required to list trans fat content on their products since 2006, and while many consumers are happy to see “Trans fats 0 grams per serving” on food labels, that doesn’t mean the product doesn’t contain any partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs). This is one way trans fats are still lurking in your food. [1]