China doesn't have the same strict regulations, and yet when we compare life expectancy the difference isn't particularly big.
Thought terminating cliches like "Better safe than sorry" simply don't stand up to scrutiny once you actually check the numbers.
No, eating brasilian beef isn't going to kill you, and stopping imports from there is going to do a whole lot more to make you poorer than it will help your health. Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer.
Have you forgotten the origins of these laws? Around the turn of the 20th century, it was muckraker journalists that alerted the public to the deceptive and unsafe practices that food and drug companies were using at the time. People didn't know -- that's, eh, how deception works.
There are so many confounding variables and long-delay influences, it’s nearly impossible to compare.
Prior generation Chinese tended to eat much less than any generation Americans, which has a proven positive effect on longevity.
Older generation Chinese also tended to (might still?) smoke like chimneys, which has a proven negative effect on longevity.
Older generation Chinese also lived through some crazy ‘population bottleneck’ events like the Great Leap Forward, which can cause very odd one time and unpredictable long term effects on longevity.
China started and enforced their one child policy early on, which has very weird population distribution effects, which will also have weird influences on longevity for everyone (due to excess or lacking societal support, etc).
They have also (relatively recently) been exposed to a wide variety of industrial chemicals, artificial fertilizers and pollutants.
Americans have had rapidly shifting food sources, pervasive but changing exposure to pesticides and artificial fertilizers, a massive shift from rural to urban to sedentary knowledge work, and widely shifting stress factors across a wide variety of areas. And a rather unique ability to spend massive amounts of time in commutes and automobiles.
This is also offset in time; and quantitatively different than Chinese have experienced.
Huh? No you can't. Without regulation or oversight, companies will simply lie about what's in their product.
The libertarian vision really handwaves the practical reality of "I'll simply do a gas spectrum analysis on every single bite of food I put into my body. Easy!"
> Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer.
OK, before the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act and Federal Meat Inspection Act, food was frequently adulterated with e.g. formaldehyde in milk, borax in meat, copper salts in canned vegetables, and chalk/plaster in flour or milk.
Before the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, kids candy was dyed with toxic coal-tar. And on top of that was frequently contaminated with arsenic, lead, and mercury.
So please explain to all of us how taking a walk is going to save us from these issues.