“The bromate ingredients are only dangerous if the factory fucked up during production as well. If they’re doing their job correctly, there is no bromine in your food.”

Idk if that’s true or not so not commenting on that portion. However, “I wouldn’t bother throwing food away over their presence, personally, but that’s just me.” We all have different risk tolerances so that’s fine. What isn’t fine is that the FDA makes a practice of taking corporate bribes, allowing flawed or outright manipulated studies, etc and then suddenly approving foods, additives, drugs, that are known or strongly suspected to be unsafe. For example, Donald Rumsfeld (sound familiar?) was a food company exec who really really wanted aspartame approved but they were having trouble getting through the approval process because it wasn’t easily demonstrable that the product was safe. Rumsfeld gets added to Ronald Reagan’s transition team and suddenly it’s approved. Scary stuff. It’s been approved in other countries so mayyyybe it’s fine but the history of its approval is appalling and simply proves that the FDA isn’t always looking out for the best interest of society at large. So if a state like CA steps in and says “holy shit don’t eat this”, I’m listening.

One source: “Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan’s transition team. This team hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. Dr. Hayes, a pharmacologist, had no previous experience with food additives before being appointed director of the FDA. On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Reagan issued an executive order eliminating the FDA commissioners’ authority to take action and Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener. Hayes, Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry’s decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision. So Hayes installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame’s favor.”