I. A Product That Outlived a Century
In 1911, Procter & Gamble brought Crisco to the American market — the first industrial fat made entirely from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. The technology was German, patented by Wilhelm Normann in 1901: hydrogen under pressure turns liquid oil into a solid fat that resists rancidity, costs less than butter, and behaves perfectly in industrial baking.
The marketing worked brilliantly. By 1976, the average American was eating around 12 pounds of margarine a year. By 2002, U.S. shortening production had reached nearly 33 pounds per person annually. Crisco sat in every kitchen cabinet as the synonym of a modern, "healthy," scientifically approved alternative to animal fat.
By the early 1990s, a critical mass of research had accumulated: trans fats raise LDL and simultaneously lower HDL — a double hit to the cardiovascular system. The CDC estimated that fully eliminating artificial trans fats would prevent up to 20,000 heart attacks a year in the United States alone.
The industry knew from the 1950s. The regulator officially removed PHOs from the "generally recognized as safe" list only in 2015. The full ban took effect on June 18, 2018.
One hundred and seven years from launch to ban. A quarter century from scientific consensus to regulatory action. Every decade of delay, the industry paid in profits, and the consumer paid in heart attacks.
II. GRAS: How the Industry Certifies Itself
The central mechanism of U.S. food regulation is called GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe. The status allows an ingredient to be added to food without separate FDA approval, as long as "qualified experts" have deemed it safe.
In practice, those "experts" are often hired by the company producing the ingredient. The company runs the assessment, writes the conclusion, and may — at its discretion — notify the FDA. Notification is not mandatory. The agency receives documents already formatted as a final verdict.
A 2013 analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts showed: out of roughly ten thousand substances permitted in American food, about a thousand arrived there through GRAS notices where safety was evaluated without FDA involvement. Another thousand are treated as GRAS, but the FDA simply doesn't know they exist — companies exercised their right not to notify.
Standard mechanics, written into law. The regulator physically cannot keep up with the flow of new additives, and the industry built itself into that bandwidth as a production advantage.
Hence the century-long pause between "science showed" and "regulator banned." When the rules of the game allow the producer to be both player and referee, investigations begin only after a scandal — most often journalistic, rarely scientific.
III. The Sugar That Stopped Being the Problem
In 2015, The New York Times published Anahad O'Connor's investigation into the Global Energy Balance Network — a supposedly independent network of scientists promoting the thesis that obesity is driven by a lack of movement rather than diet. Simple solution: more exercise, less guilt about the soda.
The investigation, followed by FOIA requests from US Right to Know, exposed the internal correspondence. Coca-Cola directly funded GEBN with $1.5 million and distributed millions more to affiliated academics for research. The University of Colorado received about a million dollars; West Virginia University received several hundred thousand for the network's co-leaders. Since 2010, by the admission of then-CEO Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola had spent around $120 million on partnerships with medical and health organizations.
The industry did not deny the harms of sugar outright. It funded science that shifted the conversation about the cause of obesity onto an entirely different variable — physical activity.
In the internal emails, Coca-Cola edited GEBN's mission, helped select its leadership, proposed content for the website. Publicly, the organization claimed independence. The correspondence exposed a construction where "independent science" was assembled to a corporate blueprint.
After the NYT piece, the University of Colorado returned the money. GEBN shut down on November 30, 2015, citing "resource limitations." Coca-Cola's chief science officer announced her retirement. The dean of the West Virginia School of Public Health was forced out in August 2016.
The network was dismantled. A decade of the message "it's the couch, not the soda" had already settled into the media, the fitness industry, and the habits of an entire generation.
IV. How a Subsidy Becomes a Diagnosis
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) hit commercial volumes in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi had fully replaced sugar with it in their American products. The reason was strictly economic.
The U.S. Farm Bill subsidized corn for decades. At the same time, import tariffs and quotas kept the domestic price of sugar artificially at roughly twice the world price. The arithmetic became obvious: corn syrup was cheaper, more available, more stable. It poured into everything — soda, bread, barbecue sauce, yogurt, baby food, "healthy" granola.
Consumption of added sugars and HFCS in the U.S. grew by nearly 50% from the mid-1970s to the 2000s before slowly declining under public pressure. In parallel, the epidemic of metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease moved from rare diagnosis to statistical baseline.
The architecture of the American diet was written in agricultural policy. Someone buying "ordinary" American food in 1995 consumed HFCS without personal choice. Cheap corn plus expensive sugar produced the only economic outcome for the manufacturer. The choice was made at the supermarket shelf long before the consumer walked up to it.
V. The Atlantic Divide
The same brands sell products with different compositions in the U.S. and the EU. Flip the packages side by side in stores on two continents, and the difference shows up in plain sight.
Red 3 (erythrosine). Banned by the FDA in cosmetics and topical drugs since 1990 under the Delaney Clause — a law requiring that any food additive shown to cause cancer in humans or animals be prohibited. In food, the FDA allowed it for another 35 years. The ban on its use in food and ingested drugs was issued only on January 16, 2025; manufacturers have until January 15, 2027 to reformulate. In the EU, banned from food (except certain cherry products) since 1994.
Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6. Permitted in the U.S. In the EU, products containing these dyes must carry a warning label about possible effects on children's attention and behavior (since 2010). As a result, the American versions of Skittles, Gatorade, and many breakfast cereals contain dyes absent from the European versions of the same brands.
Brominated vegetable oil (BVO). Permitted in the U.S. for decades, banned only recently, partly before the start of the second Trump administration. The EU, Japan, and India banned it considerably earlier.
Potassium bromate. Used as a flour improver in more than 50 products on American supermarket shelves — including some tortillas, baked desserts, and icings. Banned in the EU. Canada, the UK, Brazil, and China have banned it as well. Classified by the IARC as a possible human carcinogen, group 2B.
BHT and BHA. Antioxidant preservatives that extend the shelf life of oils and breakfast cereals. The National Toxicology Program classifies BHA as a reasonably anticipated human carcinogen. BHT is banned from food in the EU over endocrine-disruption concerns. The European recipe for Wheat Thins differs from the American one for exactly this reason.
Titanium dioxide. A white colorant found in candy, sauces, and baked goods. The EU banned it in 2022, citing possible DNA damage. The U.S. still permits it; some manufacturers — Mars with Skittles, for instance — are removing it voluntarily, anticipating a future ban.
An ingredient does not become safer by passing through the American regulatory filter. It simply passes through a filter written by different rules.
The difference between the regulatory systems comes down to a single question: who owes whom the proof of safety. In the EU, the burden lies with the manufacturer — no approval until proof is delivered. The U.S. runs on the opposite principle: until the regulator proves harm, the ingredient stays on the shelf.
VI. Exhaustion as a Business Model
Studying food composition is work. Real work: a systematic grasp of how E471 differs from E472e, why "vegetable oil" without qualification reads as a warning, and why maltodextrin ends up in a protein bar sold as "clean."
Most people cannot afford that work for a simple reason — the cognitive budget is already spent. An eight-hour shift, a two-hour commute, bills, kids, chronic sleep deprivation, the constant background noise of notifications. After all of it, a person walks up to the supermarket shelf with a single meaningful metric: what's cheapest and what's edible right now.
The industry knows the curve. Products at eye level, products at the checkout aisle, products with big promises on the front of the package and fine print on the back — all engineered for a person in cognitive fatigue. The label reads in one word: "healthy," "natural," "sugar-free." Few ever turn the package over.
Exhaustion is the best distributor of industrial food. Stress is the best salesman of sugar.
And still, no one can offload responsibility to the system and walk away.
VII. The Label Is in Your Hands
Corporations lobby laws. Regulators move slowly. Subsidies tilt the shelves. Marketing walks around the label. Everything above is true, and none of the landscape will shift because you read an essay.
Something else will shift — your own trajectory. Five minutes on the back of a package pay the body back for decades. The ability to recognize refined vegetable oils in the composition, to understand that "fructose," "dextrose," "agave syrup," "concentrated fruit juice" are all forms of sugar, to count added sugar separately from natural, to spot carcinogenic preservatives in the ingredient list — basic literacy in an environment engineered against your health.
Responsibility here works as leverage. The corporation does not know your name. The regulator will not come to your kitchen with a plate. The doctor will meet you in fifteen years as a diagnosis, not a warning. The single point where the chain breaks is the supermarket checkout, where you hold the box in your hand and decide whether to put it back.
Start with one simple rule: five ingredients you know and can pronounce. Anything that needs a chemistry reference — a product engineered for shelf life, not for you.
Slow down at the shelf. Flip the package. Read the composition all the way through. Your health is in your hands alone.
Ayobowan.