Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would be reviewing a petition that calls for the reduction of refined carbs and ultra-processed foods.
Speaking to Bill Whitaker of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Kennedy promised, “We will act on David Kessler’s petition.” Kessler served as the FDA Commissioner from November 1990 to February 1997.
“And the questions that he’s asking are questions that FDA should’ve been asking a long, long time ago,” Kennedy added. He further explained that he is not saying that the agency is going to “regulate ultraprocessed food,” but instead “make sure that everybody understands what they’re getting, to have an informed public.”
Kessler wrote in his August petition to the FDA: “Evidence over the last several decades since the [Generally Recognized as Safe] GRAS evaluation of processed refined carbohydrates used in industrial processing demonstrates that ultra-processed foods that contain these ingredients put people at risk for increased caloric intake, weight gain, and metabolic abnormalities.”
“FDA’s past GRAS determinations are based on outdated data that did not properly assess the biological effects of these processed refined carbohydrates on blood insulin, blood lipid parameters, energy partitioning, inflammatory markers, brain reward signaling, or visceral adiposity,” the petition says, adding, “There is no expert consensus that refined carbohydrates in ultraprocessed foods are safe under present conditions of use.”
The FDA announced last week that it is reviewing the preservative butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), which has been listed as GRAS by the agency since 1958.
The current GRAS rule allows companies to self-approve the use of a substance without FDA approval. Kennedy moved to consider eliminating the loophole in March.
