But who will watch the watchers?
—Juvenal (ca. 70–138 C.E.)
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n a democratic society like that of the United States, one function of the government is to protect its citizens from possible risks posed by large corporations. For example, the Food and Drug Administration is charged with the responsibility of watching over the foods, drugs, cosmetics, and other chemicals that are made available to Americans in the marketplace.Without this protection, it would be possible for companies and individu-als to sell products that were useless (that did not perform the function for which they were advertised) or even dangerous (that caused harm to users).
But governmental agencies are not infallible. They make errors, just as individual humans make mistakes. So it is important that nongovernmental agencies exist to keep an eye on the regulators. In the United States, hun-dreds of such organizations exist, including such well-known examples as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council for Excellence in Government, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Worldwatch Institute. In the area of food and drug policy, one of the most eff ective watchdog agencies has long been the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
The CSPI was founded in 1971 by three scientists who had been working at Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law: Albert J. Fritsch, a chemist; James B. Sullivan, a meteorologist; and Michael F. Jacobson, a mi-crobiologist. The guiding principle behind the organization was that, given an opportunity, some scientists would be willing to abandon their careers in the laboratory and devote all their energies to working on public-interest issues. The CSPI’s early work refl ected the diverse interests of its founders
Almost since olestra was fi rst discovered, however, P&G has had to deal with complaints by public interest groups about possible health effects of the new substance. Shortly after the company fi led its fi rst petition with the FDA in 1987, the CSPI suggested in a letter and included projects on strip mining, nuclear power, toxic chemicals, high-way development, air pollution, food additives, and nutrition. Results of the organization’s research were published in a regular newsletter written by the three founders.
In 1977, Fritsch and Sullivan left the CSPI to pursue other interests. With only Jacobson left, the CSPI’s focus shifted to areas of his own interest—food and nutrition—that have remained the organization’s primary concern over the last 20 years. The original all-purpose newsletter also evolved into a more specialized publication, “Nutrition Action Healthletter,” that increased in circulation from about 30,000 in 1980 to more than a million at the turn of the century.
As with most public service organizations, the CSPI has produced a num-ber of educational materials, ranging from books to pamphlets to posters.
The CSPI’s current publications include Is Our Food Safe? (book); “Protecting the Crown Jewels of Medicine: A Strategic Plan to Preserve the Eff ectiveness of Antibiotics” (report); Marketing Booze to Blacks (book and video);
“Citizen’s Action Handbook on Alcohol and Tobacco Billboard Advertising”
(handbook); and “Chemical Cuisine: CSPI’s Guide to Food Additives” (URL:
http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm).
The CSPI is especially active in communicating with the FDA and other regulatory agencies, expressing their concern about food safety and other issues. For example, the organization has petitioned the FDA to withhold ap-proval for a number of food additives, including olestra and salatrim, and to require health warning statements in all television ads for such products.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is one of the best known and most highly regarded consumer organizations working to protect Americans’ food supply. The organization has been criticized, however, for acting like “food police” and frightening the general public with unwar-ranted claims of health risks in the food supply. In any case, the CSPI contin-ues to act as an important balance to federal organizations responsible for regulating the nation’s food.
to the FDA that P&G’s testing of the new product was inadequate and failed to address health concerns. Over the next two decades, CSPI, other consumer groups, and many individuals continued to express concerns about the safety of olestra.
Critics attribute a variety of gastrointestinal complaints to the consumption of olestra. Symptoms cited include bloating, diarrhea, cramps, loose stools, and urgency of defecation. In addition, olestra apparently has the tendency to bind to certain essential biochemi-cals, preventing the human body from absorbing them. Among these biochemicals are fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) and carot-enoids, such as beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin. In an attempt to resolve this problem, the FDA now requires food pro-ducers to add fat-soluble vitamins to products containing olestra.
The debate over olestra and other synthetic foods has hardly been resolved. Companies that manufacture artifi cial sweeteners and fat substitutes continue to promote the safety and health values of their products, arguing that their more extensive use can help improve the nutritional diets of the average American. At the same time, many organizations and individuals point out that the vastly increased availability of synthetic diet foods (such as aspartame, saccharin, caprenin, and olestra) has had no discernible impact on that very problem. As these supposedly nutritionally sound synthetic foods have become more available, the average American’s nutritional health has continued to deteriorate, with more and more people confronting the very problems of weight that those foods were sup-posed to help solve. For example, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that 66.3 percent of all adults studied could be classifi ed as overweight and 32.2 percent as obese. These fi gures represent an increase of 18 percent and 40 percent, respectively, over similar data collected in a 1994 NHANES survey.
Food chemists have developed a number of synthetic foods with the potential for improving the quality of food available to Americans and people around the world. Artifi cial sweeteners and fat substitutes can be useful for diabetics, people who are trying to lose weight, and others concerned about maintaining a healthy diet.
At the same time, this is not to ignore the potential health risks for
some people who may be allergic to such products and may develop other health problems by using them.
The fl urry of research on synthetic foods appears to have abated to some extent in the last decade. Relatively few artifi cial sweet-eners and fat substitutes have appeared on the market during that time. But research on such products has certainly not come to an end. Food chemists will continue to search for new products with which to augment and improve peoples’ diets.
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