And despite this history, cannabis extracts like CBD are classed as "novel foods" in the UK.
'A Novel Food is defined as food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the regulations were introduced.'
The Englishmen in this article found cannabis not industrially produced CBD concentrates/extracts. Just because we discovered that apple seeds contain arsenic a few centuries ago doesn't mean that selling 10mg pills of arsenic is safe by default.
It's the same in the US. Kava isn't a GRAS food despite records of it being a traded commodity on the US mainland decades before the GRAS list was introduced, and despite it being consumed as a food in Hawaii since the day the first Hawaiians arrived there by canoe and brought it with them.
I think it likely should not be GRAS. It’s not a typical food additive or ingredient, it’s a psychoactive drug which rarely can cause side effects. I think FDA regulation is appropriate.
If you look at other stuff on the GRAS list (eg. tea, coffee), kava definitely qualifies.
> it’s a psychoactive drug which rarely can cause side effects.
It's a drug like tea and coffee are. As per the FDA definition of a food, kava definitely qualifies. Numerous foods on the GRAS list can cause side-effects, and there are certainly more dangerous foods on there (peanuts, eggs, and shellfish kill people all the time).
Kava has a very long history of safe use, is a traditional beverage of the US state of Hawaii, and is considered a safe to drink beverage by the WHO. There is no reason why it shouldn't be GRAS.
"Medieval Christian and Muslim travelers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta expected to find marvels along the edges of their mental maps, spinning tales of roc’s eggs, “mellified man", or elixirs of life."
It’s funny because the Chinese apparently thought it was the Arabs that had elderly willing to submit themselves to mellificetion, so it would seem Ibn Battuta discovered that what he was looking for had been back home the whole time.
'A Novel Food is defined as food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the regulations were introduced.'
Sources:
https://www.healtheuropa.eu/recognition-of-cbd-as-novel-food...
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/eu-novel-food-regulatio...