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gruez • yesterday at 6:19 PM • 8 replies • view on HN

That's likely untenable for food companies because it means disclosing their recipe.


Replies

fwlr • today at 2:26 AM

Sorry if it sucks for their competitive advantage or profit margin or whatever but people are literally going to put this stuff in their bodies to sustain their existence so you have to say what’s in it. If you want to keep your product composition a mystery go make SaaS and put it behind an API.

nvme0n1p1 • yesterday at 6:28 PM

The same argument could be used against disclosing ingredients altogether.

I'd rather know what I'm eating and not have greedy CEOs pinching their pennies of profit like they're guarding the Krabby Patty formula, because they're scared someone else will learn the generational secret of how to make (checks notes) strawberry jelly. Trust me, the economy will survive if Smuckers tells you how much sugar you're eating.

autoexec • yesterday at 6:25 PM

A company's desire to hide their recipe shouldn't matter over the consumer's desire to know what's in the food they buy and eat.

JumpCrisscross • yesterday at 6:25 PM

> it means disclosing their recipe

“Natural flavors.”

I doubt you can’t reverse engineer those fractions from a product and ingredient list anyway.

asdff • today at 6:25 AM

You can be sure the competitors are putting their product on the mass spec already

StevenWaterman • yesterday at 6:22 PM

Well if becomes law, not doing it is even more untenable

phyzome • today at 2:06 AM

It works in the EU.

hn_throwaway_99 • today at 1:36 AM

As another commenter mentioned, EU rules already require this for "prominent" ingredients (e.g. ingredients that appear in the name of the product, like "Strawberry" jam), but not all ingredients in the list, which seems like the appropriate compromise.