One of my friends posted this list on Facebook about ten foods that are banned in other countries but are allowed here in the United States. The issue with these lists is that often there is something in them which is misleading or reaching. So I decided to take the list apart a bit and find out not only whether or not these foods and additives are actually banned, but also to find out why they are banned. The answers may surprise you.

Here is the original list as reported on MSN.
http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/10-things-americans-eat-that-are-banned-elsewhere#12

Now some of these are well known. I am not going to go over food colors, rBST, BHA and BHT. Yes they are banned and just look them up if you want to know why. Those have been covered ad nauseam. That said, some of the items on this list were new to me so I went out and tried to find out some more about these bans. So here is what the research showed.

Farm Raised Salmon – There is plenty of evidence that farm raised salmon is an ecological problem and that the fish are dyed since they eat a diet that does not contain the krill that normally cause the pink color in the flesh. However, banned? Well the list says that they are banned in Australia and New Zealand. This is NOT true. Imported farmed fish may well be banned, but both Tasmania and New Zealand have active salmon farms of their own. King Salmon is a specialty of these farms. This one appears to be false. The ban on imported farmed salmon seems at least partially designed to protect the domestic salmon industry.

See for yourself here
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/tasmanias-salmon-trade-casts-deadly-net/story-e6frg6nf-1226667828180
http://www.salmon.org.nz/

U.S. Beef – In this case the article was misleading in the other way. Russia actually banned beef, pork and turkey from the United States. They were banned because America is one of the few civilized nations that allows animals to be fed a drug called ractopamine. You can read about the drug here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine

And about the ban here

http://rbth.ru/business/2013/04/15/russias_imported_meat_ban_spreads_to_mexico_canada_25039.htm

Then there is the brominated flour and the BVO in sodas. Bromine is actually a pesticide. No really. BVO is supposed to be a flame retardant. Read what the EPA has to say about it. Not shockingly it is indeed banned in lots of places. Including India. Yes, India does not think it is safe enough. Think about that one for a few minutes.

http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/4015fact.pdf

This is the Snopes writeup on BVO
http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bvo.asp

GMO Papaya is not well known but banned in the EU. I don’t knot that papaya is necessarily a problem compared to other GMOs. It was genetically modified to avoid something called the ringspot virus, not to withstand glycosphate, but it is definitely banned.

So that is the end of the list. I hope that this has provided a few more insights into the “banned” foods and of the danger of just blindly following a list since this list has been copied everywhere, but the facts are that some of these additives are really scary and others are not so scary at all.