re barbecued foods and health risk in article cup portal com mmm cup portal com mark robert thorson writes i don t understand the assumption that because something is found to be carcinogenic that it would not be legal in the u s i think that no there is something called the delany amendment which makes carcinogenic food additives illegal in any amount this was passed by congress in the s before stuff like mass spectrometry became available which increased detectable levels of substances by a couple orders of magnitude this is why things like cyclamates and red were banned they are very weakly carcinogenic in huge quantities in rats so under the act they are banned this also applies to natural carcinogens some of you might remember a time back in the s when root beer suddenly stopped tasting so good and never tasted so good again that was the time when safrole was banned this is the active flavoring ingredient in sassafras leaves if it were possible to market a root beer good like the old days someone would do it in order to make money the fact that no one does it indicates that enforcement is still in effect an odd exception to the rule seems to be the product known as gumbo file this is nothing more than coarsely ground dried sassafras leaves this is not only a natural product but a natural product still in its natural form so maybe that s how they evade delany or maybe a special exemption was made to appease powerful louisiana democrats i think what we have to keep in mind is that even though it may be illegal to commercially produce sell food with carcinogenic substances it is not illegal for people to do such to their own food smoking etc is this true
