Colorful treats, iconic sodas, even staple dairy products — if you live in the USA,
there's a lot you might take for granted.
But who knew these American foods were actually banned in other countries?
Coffee creamer must have seemed like a dream come true when it first appeared on supermarket shelves
in the 1950s. A shelf-stable product that can make your coffee taste like anything from caramel
to vanilla to pumpkin — and one that doesn't even need to be refrigerated? Magic, right?
Well, not exactly. Coffee creamer is made with a combination of sugar,
flavorings, and stabilizers, not to mention hydrogenated vegetable oils. This all means that
non-dairy creamers are one of the last remaining vestiges of trans fats on the American market.
After first coming to light in the early 2000s,
the health risks of trans fats led to a good deal of legislation regarding their
use even in the U.S. They've since disappeared from most big brands.
"Several thousand fatal heart attacks
per year will not occur because of the removal of trans fat from the food supply."
But according to data from the Environmental Working Group, trans fats still show up in
everything from breakfast bars to peanut butter to pudding mixes. And worst of all,
there's often no way for consumers to know that they're in a given food item:
via a sneaky loophole, these brands have evaded American labeling laws.
In European countries, trans fats have either been banned or strictly regulated, so the least healthy
creamers don't appear on shelves. Add to this the fact that many creamers also contain carrageenan,
a seaweed-derived thickening agent that has been linked to inflammation and possibly cancer.
Perhaps it's better that the EU is taking a pass on this not-so-magical product.
Hyped north of the border since 2005, Mexican Coke boasts a better flavor than its American
counterpart, in large part because it relies on a more traditional recipe. This recipe employs
cane sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup used stateside. Otherwise known as HFCS,
this ingredient is also the reason that American Coke doesn't exist in most of Europe.
Coke first started using high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in the '80s thanks to
cheaper prices linked both to corn subsidies and a general surplus of corn. But while high fructose
corn syrup might taste like sugar, it doesn't act like sugar in the body. High fructose corn syrup
has been linked to issues like insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular illness, and more.
But while this is certainly food for thought, it's actually not the reason that high fructose
corn syrup is regulated in the EU. It's actually all down to economics. In the European Union,
production quotas of high fructose corn syrup are regulated to ensure
safe agricultural development across the nations that are part of the union. It's
been that way since 2005. But whether for health reasons or economic ones, one thing is certain:
European Coke is arguably a little bit sweeter, and it's all thanks to the absence of HFCS.
It might seem strange to Americans that the French mainly consume
shelf-stable milk. But others might argue that it's actually American milk we need
to be wary of — especially conventional milk, much of which is spiked with hormones.
Originally developed by Monsanto to help increase dairy cows' milk production,
rBGH stands for recombinant bovine growth hormone. rBGH quickly became pervasive in
the American milk supply following its approval in 1993, because it makes it easier for companies
to produce vast amounts of cheaper milk — often in awful factory farm conditions.
The use of this hormone isn't just bad for the animals, though, as it could well be
that drinking hormone-rich milk isn't very good for people, either. Human studies show
that drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH can potentially increase the risk of cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, it's not necessarily the rBGH that's causing the problem,
but that milk from rBGH-treated cows can produce another hormone, IGF-1; it's this hormone that
is linked to cancer. Unsurprisingly, rBGH is effectively banned in some EU nations.
Potassium bromate is an additive that encourages quick gluten formation,
making bread fluffy, soft, and ivory white. Unfortunately, it's also a possible human
carcinogen that is illegal in countries around the world — from China to Canada to Brazil.
Even in the U.S., this additive has mainly been phased out of baked goods,
despite the apparent fact that most potassium bromate converts to the
harmless potassium bromide during baking. Beginning in 1991, California law required an
on-label warning that foods might contain potassium bromate. To avoid having to explain
why everyday goods like bread and crackers had a danger warning on their packaging,
most food companies have since moved away from using the additive.
But there's one exception that's still widely available on the American marketplace.
General Mills' Gold Medal All Trumps flour is a high-gluten, enriched flour often used in baked
goods like pizza, bagels, and bread. You can snag massive bags of this flour easily online,
and it might even be found in professional kitchens looking to get that gleaming white
color in their bread. Just don't expect to find it on non-American shelves anytime soon.
Genetically modified foods have caused quite a stir in the past decade or so.
Some claim that they may be the secret to battling the effects of climate change,
while others argue just as vehemently that they will kill off the Earth's biodiversity.
Whereas pushes for increased GMO regulation in the U.S. have proven slow-going,
GMOs are heavily regulated in Europe. Moreover, a recent ruling saw them banned outright in Mexico.
This means that not only is the vast majority of American corn and
soy forbidden on the Mexican market, but so too are most Hawaiian papayas.
However, before you totally condemn GMO papayas, it's worth knowing that this is arguably a case of
helpful genetic modification. Following the decimation of the Hawaiian papaya industry
by the papaya ringspot virus, which almost wiped the fruit out entirely by the 1990s,
a local scientist engineered the rainbow papaya. The new variety was genetically designed to be
resistant to the virus. Today, it makes up about 90 percent of Hawaii's papaya crop.
Given EU regulations, however, this papaya is still strictly forbidden.
The first non-approved papaya appeared on the European market back in 2004, and in 2012, a
"wave" of banned papaya sightings led to a warning and a call for vigilance regarding GM papayas.
Before American chicken goes to market, it is systematically
soaked in a chlorine solution to reduce the possibility of salmonella contamination.
Although taken to reduce the risk of food-borne illness,
this process is actually the main reason that it's illegal to import American chicken into the EU.
The EU has no issue with the idea of chlorinating chicken per se. Rather,
it holds that allowing such a process paves the way for a reduction in due diligence at
the farm. In other words, if chicken producers are allowed to deep clean chicken before selling it,
they're much less likely to be careful about contaminating it in the first place. Instead,
the EU wants meat producers to lean harder into better sanitation in the earlier steps of the
process as part of their efforts to control the spread of pathogens. This distinction has
further characterized the U.S. use of chlorine as a symptom of the nation's dependency on
chemical interventions. Indeed, the very notion of chlorinating chicken is so reviled in Europe that
it is frequently used to illustrate the negative impact of Britain's departure from the EU.
"It's not the chlorine itself that's the problem,
it's the fact that it allows chickens to be stored in horrific conditions. I mean,
they're not able to move. They're like the living dead, these chickens."
As it currently stands, GMO salmon definitely isn't allowed to be sold in
parts of Argentina — but not for the reasons you might think. Indeed, Argentina hasn't banned GMO
salmon outright. In 2021, the country's Tierra del Fuego region banned something far more widespread:
salmon farmed in marine cages. The bill, which passed unanimously in the provincial legislature,
is the first such kind of regulation to address the widespread problem of
salmon aquaculture. Over the years, this practice has faced
phenomenal and increasing opposition from environmental and animal rights groups.
Salmon farming has long been denigrated by sustainability
advocates due to its negative effects on marine ecosystems.
Farmed salmon are raised in cages in the oceans and are intentionally fattened up
more than their wild cousins, increasing the accumulation of pollutants in their bodies.
Moreover, farmed fish are more susceptible to parasites like sea lice, which can require harsh
treatments that delay harvests. These carnivorous fish also require a rather unsustainable diet
derived from smaller fish, effectively consuming more protein than they provide when harvested.
As for the health risks, in addition to being less nutrient-dense than wild salmon,
farmed salmon has been found in some cases to contain dangerous levels of
chemicals — including methylmercury and dioxins.
Sorry, vegans — if you head to France, you won't be finding Beyond Meatballs anywhere at
all. At least, you won't find them with that exact name. Now,
France is historically a meat-loving society, so it's heartening for climate-conscious folks
to see that steps are being taken to reduce reliance on animal protein in the nation.
Notably, Lyon has even gone so far as to remove meat from kids' school lunches,
which is notable since the city is basically the charcuterie and offal capital of the country.
But while France is certainly taking strides towards being more vegetarian and vegan-friendly,
agricultural lobbies do want to protect one part of the meat and dairy industry that they
consider fairly essential: its language. Consequently, France heavily legislates
how products like veggie burgers and vegetarian sausage can be marketed. A number of vegetarian
products seek to emulate the flavor, texture, or appearance of animal-derived products,
such as burgers, sausages, cheese, and, indeed, meatballs. But they can't use
those words. Instead, food brands have had to employ a number of creative workarounds,
such as soy "drinks," or veggie "slices." Best of all, though, is the delightful portmanteau known
as faux-mage — a combo of the word faux, meaning false, and fromage, meaning cheese.
It's perhaps no surprise that the ultra-processed snack food known as the Twinkie is banned in some
parts of the world, but it's not because they may well outlast the apocalypse.
In fact, most opposition to Twinkies comes down to their color.
Food coloring is used to increase the appeal of many foods,
from cakes to candies to sodas. But the yellow 5 coloring used to give Twinkies
their distinctive golden hue has been linked to behavioral issues in children.
Notably, this coloring is also found in products like Mountain Dew and even some kinds of pasta.
Now, the EU requires that products containing these dyes must carry a warning label.
This legislation has led to widespread eradication of these products from much of the European
market — most likely because brands would rather not be plastering warning labels on the packaging.
This will come as a big relief too, considering that the doses of dyes used in the study
weren't even nearly as high as the amounts of these dyes typically ingested by American kids.
"In the United States, the approval of the amount
of dyes that are used in food has quadrupled in recent years."
Perhaps it's no surprise to learn that brightly colored candy requires a massive amount of food
dye to take on its trademark hue. Indeed, M&M's candies boast some of the highest
concentrations of food dyes, according to research from Purdue University scientists
published in Clinical Pediatrics. This is why the bright candy shells of M&M's lose
some of their brilliance outside the U.S. In the E.U., M&M's are made from natural dyes,
which make them a little less vibrant — but also far safer to eat according to those regulations.
This all came about as a result of the same studies that caused trouble for the Twinkie.
The Mars company promised that it would use its European formulations
on the U.S. market back in 2016, only to backtrack in early 2021. For now, it seems,
America will be hanging onto its fluorescent candy coatings… and the food dyes contained therein.
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