Health and nutrition news worth your attention, about one item a week. Every item carries what actually happened, then what I make of it, kept clearly apart. When nothing clears the bar, nothing gets posted.Last updated August 10, 2026
Petition to strip GRAS status from refined carbohydrates is a year old and still pending
What happenedCBS News reposted the transcript of a 60 Minutes segment on ultraprocessed food on 9 August 2026. Ultraprocessed food is the shorthand for food assembled in a factory from refined ingredients and additives rather than cooked from whole ones. The segment first aired on 15 February 2026 and has not been updated. It features David Kessler, FDA Commissioner from 1990 to 1997, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and food author Michael Pollan.
The segment centers on a citizen petition Kessler filed with the FDA in August 2025. A citizen petition is a formal request that anyone can file asking a federal agency to change a rule. It asks the FDA to declare that it no longer considers a group of processed refined carbohydrates to be generally recognized as safe, and to begin revoking any existing GRAS regulation covering them. GRAS is short for generally recognized as safe. It is the legal category that lets a company put an ingredient into food without the FDA approving it first. The list in the petition includes corn syrups, dextrose and maltodextrin, refined flours and starches pushed through a machine under heat and pressure in a process called extrusion, and sugar or refined starches used alongside emulsifiers and dough conditioners, the additives that hold texture together and stretch shelf life.
Kennedy said on camera that the administration will act on the petition, subject to White House approval. In the same interview he also said: "I'm not saying we're going to regulate ultraprocessed foods. Our job is to make sure everybody understands what they're getting, to have an informed public." The FDA has issued an interim response, which means it has acknowledged the petition without deciding it, and the petition remains under review as of August 2026. There is still no federal definition of ultraprocessed food. The Consumer Brands Association, which represents food manufacturers, declined to respond directly and said there is no agreed upon scientific definition of ultraprocessed foods.
Two things in this story are worth keeping apart.
The petition is real and it is unusually specific. It does not ask for a warning label or another study. It asks the FDA to withdraw the safe status of ingredients that are already in most of the packaged food on the shelf. That is a far bigger ask than anything else in the ultraprocessed conversation, and it is probably why it has sat for a year.
The promise to act on it is a different thing, and it arrived with its own limit attached. In the same sitting he said he is not saying they will regulate ultraprocessed foods, and that the job is an informed public. Those two statements are not a contradiction. They are a scope: move on a named list of ingredients, leave the category alone. Which of the two you heard depends entirely on who quoted it, and the promise itself was made on camera in February. The transcript went back up in August. The petition is still under review. When a food policy story crosses your feed, check the date on the action, not the date on the interview.
The industry response is the part we would watch closest. Saying there is no agreed scientific definition of ultraprocessed food is accurate. It is also the single most useful sentence a manufacturer can offer, because nothing gets regulated until it is defined, and nobody is required to define it. The argument over the definition is the argument.
None of this has to be settled for you to use it. If corn syrup, maltodextrin or modified starch sits in the first five ingredients, you are holding something built to a formula rather than cooked to a recipe. Pick the shorter ingredient list and let the agencies keep arguing.
FDA’s GRAS notification rule slips to December 2026
What happenedThe FDA's proposed rule requiring companies to notify it when they classify a food substance as generally recognized as safe has moved from an October 2025 target to December 2026. Generally recognized as safe is usually shortened to GRAS. It is the legal category that lets a company put an ingredient into food without the FDA approving it first. That December target is for the proposed rule only, not a final one. The draft has been sitting at the Office of Management and Budget, the White House office that reviews federal rules before they are published, since 1 December 2025, past the usual 90 day review window. Separately, there is still no federal definition of ultra-processed food, the shorthand for food assembled in a factory from refined ingredients and additives rather than cooked from whole ones. The joint FDA and USDA request for information, which is the step where an agency asks the public and industry for input before writing a rule, closed in October 2025 and a definition was promised for April 2026.
Here is how a new ingredient gets into your food.
A company decides on its own that it is safe. It can hire its own experts to agree. Then it starts selling it, and it never has to tell the FDA.
Telling them is optional. When a company does tell them, the FDA does not approve anything. It writes back saying it has no questions, and puts in writing that the company is still responsible for safety.
Most new ingredients reached the shelf without anyone outside the company checking them first. That is not a conspiracy, it is how the law is written. It is also why reading the ingredient list is still on you.
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Dutch study models what happens when animal foods are swapped outA Dutch modeling study used national food survey data from 3,570 people aged 1 to 79 to simulate replacing animal foods with…
A Dutch modeling study used national food survey data from 3,570 people aged 1 to 79 to simulate replacing animal foods with plant alternatives, gram for gram. Animal protein fell by 68 to 78 percent. Zinc dropped below recommended intake in every age group, and vitamin B2, B12, vitamin A, calcium, iodine and selenium also fell. Older adults, adolescents and women were most affected. No one was fed anything and no health outcomes were measured. This is modeled intake compared against reference values.
Three things the headlines skipped.
The study was part-funded by a dairy company, and one of the authors works there. That is written in the paper. It does not make the numbers wrong, but you should know a dairy-funded study concluded that eating less dairy lowers your calcium.
The plant milks they tested had nothing added to them. Nearly every soy and oat milk you can actually buy has calcium and B12 added, so a big part of the gap comes down to which products they picked.
And in one version of their test they swapped cheese for chocolate sprinkles. That is not a plant-based diet. That is just a worse diet.
Eat plants, not plant-flavored products. If you drink plant milk, check the carton says calcium and B12 added. The ones that do not are where these numbers came from.
FDA revokes two food color additivesThe FDA issued a final order revoking Orange B, used on frankfurter and sausage casings, effective 8 September 2026. Objections are open…
The FDA issued a final order revoking Orange B, used on frankfurter and sausage casings, effective 8 September 2026. Objections are open until 24 August. Separately it proposed revoking Citrus Red No. 2, used on the skins of mature oranges, which was last certified for use in 2020. In both cases the stated reason is that industry abandoned the use. Neither action was taken on safety grounds.
Two dyes almost nobody was using got pulled, and it is being reported as a crackdown.
Nine dyes were legal in your food when this was published, and eight from 8 September 2026, the day the Orange B revocation takes effect. One of them is Red No. 3. The FDA already decided that one causes cancer in animals and revoked it back in January 2025. It is still allowed in food until January 2027.
You may also have seen a headline about six dyes being removed. That is not a ban either. It is a promise the food companies made, with a deadline of the end of 2027. Nothing forces them to keep it.
Orange B was also one of three that the EU and UK never allowed at all, so from 8 September two of those are left on the US list. The three you will actually meet on a label, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, are legal there too, but have to carry a printed warning that they may affect attention in children. Same dye, same food, and only one side of the Atlantic has to tell you.
Update, 3 September 2026. The two counts above were written when nine dyes were legal, and they were correct then. They are now written so they stay correct after 8 September, when the count drops to eight. Checked against the Federal Register final rule itself, document 2026-14910, published 23 July 2026, effective 8 September 2026. Nothing else in this item changed, and nothing in it was wrong.