Eating a wide variety of foods is desirable for nutritional reasons, and increasing fruits and vegetables in the diet has always been recognized as good nutritional advice. Synthetic chemicals are present in foods at much lower levels than are many naturally occurring carcinogens and toxins. Also, in many cases the synthetic chemicals are less potent carcinogens than the ones that are a natural part of our food. The dose makes the poison. There is a need to distinguish between real and hypothetical hazards and between functional and unnecessary substances when setting regulatory priorities.
More research is needed on natural food components.