Gastronomica magazine has some things for online reviewing. Not much was interesting, but this one got my attention: We are what we eat. Here's an excerpt
In June 1938, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (“FDCA”) repealed much of the former Pure Food Act and created a more detailed regulatory scheme. It carried forward the 1906 Act’s emphasis on outlawing adulteration and misbranding of food. The operative paradigm of the FDCA is to provide consumers with food content information and let them decide whether the food is appropriate for them to eat.
When the FDCA was enacted in 1938, it too did not define what constitutes “natural” or “organic” food. It defines the word “food” as “(1) articles used for food or drink for man or other animals, (2) chewing gum, and (3) articles use for the components of any such article.”[21] “Processed food,” in turn, “means any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling.”
The FDCA distinguishes food from drugs. A drug includes “articles intended for use in the diagnoses, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals” as well as “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals.”[23] When food producers make unsubstantiated health claims to promote their food products, they risk having their food categorized as an unapproved, hence an unlawful new “drug.”