Dukeofdoom's original comment: ``` Don't they add food coloring from ground bugs sometimes. In case of sausage they add preservatives to make it last longer. Actual poison if you were just to eat a lot of it. Generally companies are liable if they make you sick right after eating their product. So they do everything they can to prevent that. Nobody is going to held liable if they give you cancer 10 years down the line. Super hard to prove. So not a worry for them. Backlash after the failed covid vaccine makes some reform more likely now. ```

My response:

Several food colorings (e.g. Red 40, Yellow 10) are synthetic dyes derived from crude oil and other petrochemicals.

At least here in the US, it seems many people believe that if it's available for sale, that means a government agency deemed it safe, neglecting to consider that what a government agency declares safe may not actually be safe. This happens routinely for a variety of reasons - corporate capture (big business teaming up with big government to screw over human beings), gross incompetence of government employees (who in turn, are nearly impossible to fire, even with cause), complex modes of unsafety (per- and poly-fluorinated substances are bioaccumulative and persistent, and the relationship they have with our health remains ambiguous), complete lack of awareness of the risk (in the last week or so, we just discovered chloronitramide anion exists in the water supply of about 1/3 of the USA, little is known about the health effects it has on mammals in general, let alone humans), etc.

Reality is complex. We are basically one step removed from cavemen still, and need to remain humble, curious, and intellectually honest about the sheer extent of that which we do not know. That's missing in so many people these days. I think more (but not all) people would benefit from undergoing an ego death and reintegration experience that so many others have found in psychedelics, which are nonaddictive and generally safer than legal drugs like alcohol and various combinations of amphetamines (ADHD medication).

>At least here in the US, it seems many people believe that if it's available for sale, that means a government agency deemed it safe, neglecting to consider that what a government agency declares safe may not actually be safe. This happens routinely for a variety of reasons - corporate capture (big business teaming up with big government to screw over human beings), gross incompetence of government employees (who in turn, are nearly impossible to fire, even with cause), complex modes of unsafety (per- and poly-fluorinated substances are bioaccumulative and persistent, and the relationship they have with our health remains ambiguous), complete lack of awareness of the risk (in the last week or so, we just discovered chloronitramide anion exists in the water supply of about 1/3 of the USA, little is known about the health effects it has on mammals in general, let alone humans), etc.

That's not actually how it works in the US. The standard is "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS)[0], which requires the manufacturer to "confirm" that an additive is "safe."

At least that's been the requirement since 1958, although some 700 existing additives were declared exempt from the potentially biased/unconfirmed testing of the manufacturer.

If, as you suggest, "...many people believe that if it's available for sale, that means a government agency deemed it safe", those folks are woefully misinformed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe