How thousands of unreviewed ingredients got into our food

At least 1,000 ingredients in food products on our grocery store shelves have never been checked for safety by the Food and Drug Administration. Dozens have raised serious safety concerns among experts. How did the FDA allow this?

The answer can be found in the agency’s lax interpretation of a little-known legal designation that lets companies decide for themselves if ingredients in their products are safe.

Fortunately, there are steps the agency can take right now to stem the flow of potentially unsafe ingredients into our food supply. Environmental Defense Fund outlined these steps in a letter we recently sent to the agency, but first let’s take a closer look at how we got here.

"Generally Recognized as Safe" is a designation Congress created in 1958 to allow commonly used food ingred