Food industry should challenge bad science, says writer

The food industry must actively rebut the increasing number of scare stories that appear in the popular press, which are frequently based on false scientific claims, a leading science writer has said.

Speaking at a meeting of the Food Additives and Ingredients Association last week, Dr John Emsley, who has written extensively on the subject, said many falsehoods from “food celebrities and media mischief makers” had been allowed to go unchallenged, leading to widespread but unfounded concern by consumers about the safety of a range of ingredients.

Emsley was particularly critical of negative publicity given to flawed research from some organisations, which tended to use “amateur epidemiology”, where data was used selectively and “confounding variables” were ignored. ”We should always challenge wrong information,” he added.

“People think their health is being undermined by what the food industry is sneaking into their food,” said Emsley. “People are suspicious of chemicals, which are perceived as something dangerous.”

He cited the widespread misconception that natural products were safe while man-made ones were dangerous. “In fact natural products are the deadliest chemicals of all,” he countered.

Emsley continued: “Food additives almost become synonymous with something we do not want in our food, which is a nonsense.” Consequently, the ‘E-number’ system of labelling developed originally to provide assurance that additives were safe to eat had now become a pejorative term, he added.

While a number of naturally occurring products had E-numbers assigned to them, he said, other widely consumed foods and ingredients such as coffee, cabbage, almonds and oregano, would not be considered safe enough to be assigned an E-number if they were assessed today. But even these do not present a problem, as the body is perfectly capable of dealing with any toxins they contain, he added.

More positive messages were needed such as the positive role additives play in preventing early spoilage of foodstuffs, he concluded.