Like a lot of stuff like this, it’s not that simple one way or the other.
Eggs are the usual example. US regulations require eggs to washed, removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs. Many other developed nations forbid washing eggs with solutions that would remove the same protective coating, so eggs are frequently not refrigerated there because they don’t really need to be. The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs.
Kind of different, but recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free. It’s not removing some natural defense from a food, but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options (and maybe made it more likely they’d buy something containing sesame by mistake if it was a product they’d been safe with before but had recently added sesame).
So I very much agree with you that the food regulations of the FDA and similar institutions in other countries are largely a blessing and huge boon to human welfare. It’s great to be confident my bread isn’t 50% sawdust and there probably isn’t melamine in my milk and stuff. But like any big regulatory environment mistakes have been made, and also sometimes regulations that made sense at one time outlive their usefulness.
> removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs.
The egg thing is oft repeated, but not actually true. The coating is not magic, it's just oil, and America does wash the eggs, and then applies some oil. I have not refrigerated my eggs in the US in decades with no problems at all.
> The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs.
This isn't true either. Other places avoid salmonella by immunizing their chickens. It's not required in the US (mainly because since the US refrigerates its eggs, immunization doesn't help much), but more and more farms are immunizing chickens, eventually the reason for refrigerating eggs will vanish - but I'm sure they'll still require it. (The circular relationship between these two things is not lost on me.)
Farmers in the UK value cleanliness not because of Salmonella but because dirty farms make for dirty eggs as seen by the consumer, since they aren't allowed to clean them.
To say it is "just oil" is to say that breast milk is "just formula."
Yes, the cuticle has oil in it and is an oily substance, but it's a complex mixture of proteins, lipids,some of which are oily. The starkest difference of course being that mineral oil, the usual post-wash coating, would not allow the egg to remain viable, irrespective of whether it had been sanitized. It is less permable to gases than the natural cuticle, and less effective at preventing bacterial growth. As you have discovered, less effective does not mean not at all effective, and I store both my unwashed and store-bought eggs on the counter as well, but even discounting supply chain timings, the natural eggs keep longer.
> but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options
Having eating restrictions / allergies, or even being handicapped, is a nightmare in the global south. I don't think it's a problem to restrict options out of an abundance of caution.
It wasn't an abundance of caution, it was things (that you might previously have eaten and enjoyed as a sesame allergee) newly having non-trace amounts of sesame added deliberately, to save having to qualify the previous possible trace amount as low enough once it was recategorised.
Well-intentioned change, unintentional bad outcome for those affected.
..I suppose you can read it that way if you want, but the result of something going from 'may contain trace amounts of sesame seeds' to 'definitely contains non-trivial amounts of sesame seed' is hardly a win if you're allergic to them. You at least had a choice to risk it before, or might have known it wasn't a risk because your allergy would only be triggered on a larger amount even if some did make its way in.
(And the regulators/legislators intention had been to benefit those allergic, so it's not just an unfortunate side-effect, it totally backfired.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this rule change happened because people were getting hurt from sesame in unlabeled foods. So yeah, it is a bad side-effect, but it probably actually does solve the problem it was intended to: to prevent harm, not to expand food choices or even to hold the number of food options steady. It was obviously going to reduce options, it just did so much more than expected and in an unexpected manner.
> recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free
Why do they need to add the sesame? can't they just say "might contain sesame" without having to explicitly add it?
Wait why is the expense of adding unnecessary sesame oil less than simply adding “produced in a facility that processes sesame oil” or “may contain trace amounts of sesame” or similar on the label?
Eggs are the usual example. US regulations require eggs to washed, removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs. Many other developed nations forbid washing eggs with solutions that would remove the same protective coating, so eggs are frequently not refrigerated there because they don’t really need to be. The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs.
Kind of different, but recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free. It’s not removing some natural defense from a food, but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options (and maybe made it more likely they’d buy something containing sesame by mistake if it was a product they’d been safe with before but had recently added sesame).
So I very much agree with you that the food regulations of the FDA and similar institutions in other countries are largely a blessing and huge boon to human welfare. It’s great to be confident my bread isn’t 50% sawdust and there probably isn’t melamine in my milk and stuff. But like any big regulatory environment mistakes have been made, and also sometimes regulations that made sense at one time outlive their usefulness.