[HN Gopher] Backlash to artificial dye grows as Kraft ditches co...
___________________________________________________________________
Backlash to artificial dye grows as Kraft ditches coloring for
Kool-Aid, Jell-O
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-06-23 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Wq46t
| N_A_T_E wrote:
| I don't think this is a science or safety issue, it's an issue
| with bad ingredient labeling. They should name these numbered
| dyes something more understandable. "Red dye 4" sounds pretty
| sketchy when they could say "Cochineal extract for coloring".
| People can reject the product because the ingredients include a
| bug derived coloring rather than fear of the unknown "red dye"
| invented by their imagined evil food scientists.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Since cochineal casues so many allergic reactions, there's
| already a law that they have to put it on the label.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was a kid I ate lunch with a girl who couldn't have
| M&Ms because she was allergic to the red die. I was appalled
| by this.
|
| And the strangest thing about that story is that she was
| maybe 4 years old when Mars pulled the red M&Ms due to a
| cancer scare _with a different red food coloring_. Though my
| recollection was that it was a few years more recent than
| that, given how shelf life and supply chains work, I may have
| been getting back stock. I think I eventually proved to her
| that there were no red M &Ms anymore. I guess her parents
| hadn't bothered to check for years. Not the first injustice I
| had tried to right but the easiest one.
|
| Five years later they added Red back and I would think of her
| every time I ate M&Ms for a long time after.
| toast0 wrote:
| Wikipedia reports red M&Ms were eliminated in 1976, and
| added back in 1987. I'm sure it took several months for
| these changes to make it to the marketplace, but probably
| not years; M&Ms have a reasonable shelf life, but they do
| degrade, so year old stock isn't great.
|
| My Mom was pretty salty about the red M&Ms going missing,
| and refused to eat blue M&Ms for quite some time.
| hinkley wrote:
| As I said, I'm pretty sure that number is wrong by a
| little. And does 76 mean January or December? That's a
| long time for small children. This thread is about people
| announcing things and then taking a while to do them. But
| we were in a town hit particularly hard by a recession. I
| have no doubt they were turning inventory closer to the
| Best By date than yours was. I bet all those sales I
| remembered seeing (3 for a dollar!) were overstock.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| The only reason they add dyes, outside of baked goods IMO, is
| because they've used so many artificial ingredients, fillers,
| and preservatives that the resulting food product no longer
| looks appetizing. Whole, fresh food has never needed dyes added
| to it to be enticing to our monkey brains.
| larrled wrote:
| That's not super true. Salmon for instance. Or Easter eggs.
| bwestergard wrote:
| Wild salmon have their characteristic color because they
| are eating organisms that contain the naturally occurring
| Astaxanthin. Farmed salmon subsist on grains, fish oils,
| etc and come out looking grey unless pigments are added to
| their feed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astaxanthin
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Great lakes salmon flesh lacks orange coloring as well
| SirMaster wrote:
| Definitely not.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvvshpw4FxM
|
| Check at 6 minutes into the video.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| interesting, the Salmon I have caught has not been as
| colorful- I mostly fish in the rivers though
|
| edit: it looks like that vid had some steelhead (trout)
| mixed in? This is more like what I have seen, but the
| color is even more "dulled" in person
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e09UmeqAd4g
| lm28469 wrote:
| jell-o of any color looks absolutely vile to me
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Although you're free to like/dislike whatever you want,
| calling other people's food vile seems kind of mean. There
| are plenty of old/ancient foods that look exactly the same
| as jell-o
|
| warabi-mochi, nata-de-coco, aiyu jelly, kokum, annindofu,
| kanten, blancmange, to name just a few
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| People have been coloring food for thousands of years with
| dyes like Saffron, carmine, turmeric, and squid ink.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Those are spices with taste.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| flash freezing some paprika to remove the flavor is
| probably easier than boiling coal in a vacuum to make red
| 3.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Carmine is better known as Red 4 these days. Doesn't have
| much taste. Saffron adds basically no taste in the
| amounts typically used for something like Saffron rice.
| Squid ink again, mostly for the striking color. The taste
| isn't particularly great.
|
| Turmeric can go both ways, but the ground turmeric that's
| historically common for preservation reasons is much less
| flavorful than the fresh root. It's mostly a color thing.
|
| Of course, we can also just open up a medieval cookbook
| to see what they say. The Forme of Cury is a nice 14th
| century example that's available from Gutenberg:
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102
| As to colours, which perhaps would chiefly take place in
| suttleties, blood boiled and fried was used for dying
| black. saffron for yellow, and sanders for red. Alkenet
| is also used for colouring, and mulberries; amydon makes
| white; and turnesole [for yellow]
|
| Alkanet is commonly used today for Rogan josh, but
| historically would have been more known for rouge and
| dying wine. A Mediterranean cookbook might have instead
| chosen amaranth for the same purpose
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You need so little tumeric or annatto to color food and
| they impart so little flavor in so many applications that
| the reason they are used is very obvious.
| xnx wrote:
| Fruits and vegetables from a few hundred years ago would be
| almost unrecognizable and unpalatable to modern consumers.
| The colorful, delicious, and durable fruits and vegetables of
| today are the result of lots of work and selective breeding.
| jyounker wrote:
| Most fruits and vegetables in grocery stores taste pretty
| bland. They're bred more for appearance, shelf stability,
| regularity, and transport rather than taste.
|
| There are legendary varieties that are lost to time.
| Occasionally we rediscover them, and we get to compare.
| Usually the modern industrial varieties are pale
| imitations.
|
| https://gastropod.com/the-most-dangerous-fruit-in-america/
| mslansn wrote:
| > Whole, fresh food has never needed dyes added to it to be
| enticing to our monkey brains.
|
| Have you ever cooked? Most stews use spices for colouring. A
| paella looks ill without saffron in it.
| alienbaby wrote:
| _Most stews use spices for _coloring? A quick glance over
| my recipes and books shows none of the stews use any spices
| for colouring.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think this is a health and safety issue, and I think the food
| business has corrupted a lot of science.
|
| Why do we need these dyes in food?
|
| Why are so many people so unhealthy? Could it be the food we
| are consuming?
|
| Are we tracking the health and safety data from these policy
| changes to know if there is a change?
| bunderbunder wrote:
| > Why are so many people so unhealthy?
|
| Because being unhealthy is the natural state of things, and
| keeping a handle on that fact, at scale, is difficult and
| complicated. We used to do a much worse job of it, though.
| Humans living in developed economies where everyone eats all
| these oft-maligned foods live _much_ longer than their
| ancestors did a few centuries ago. And those who live into
| old age tend to remain healthier longer than those who did a
| few centuries ago.
|
| That's to say that there isn't room for improvement, or that
| there aren't things in our food supply that don't belong
| there. But a sense of perspective is important. "Is this food
| coloring increasing people's lifetime risk of a specific
| cancer from 0.005% to 0.01%?" is still a pretty tidy
| improvement over, "Ugh, yet another outbreak of ergotism.
| Well, why don't we try burning witches to see if that puts it
| to a stop."
| newsclues wrote:
| I think being healthy is far more natural than you say.
|
| Go look at how native or indigenous people live vs people
| in cities.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is somewhat survivor bias though, because all the
| dead that didn't survive their youth are actually dead.
|
| In wealthy countries these would-be-dead people walk
| amongst us.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| One of the things they have that people in developed
| economies generally don't is a 50% infant mortality rate.
|
| The ones that don't achieve it through access to very
| _un_ natural artifacts such as vaccines that are quite
| likely to have been made using ultramodern technologies
| such as genetic modification.
|
| Or, I've got quite a few friends who have various
| congenital conditions that mean that they absolutely
| would not have survived in a society with a more
| "natural" foodway. With the modern food supply chain,
| though, they're doing just fine. Unnatural things you get
| in some ultraprocessed foods, such as vitamin
| fortification, mean they can even do it without having to
| worry about developing comorbid chronic ailments due to
| malnutrition.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That is a survival bias. Ironically if you want signs of
| good health practice look for unhealthy people - it means
| that they can survive vs the unhealthy just dying.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| A really good example of this was the paper that kicked
| off the whole "omega-3 fatty acids for heart health"
| thing. It ultimately got retracted.
|
| The gist of the paper was that they observed that Inuit
| communities have really low rates of heart disease, and
| hypothesized that it could be because their traditional
| diet is very high in omega-3 fatty acids. The problem is,
| they don't actually have low rates of heart disease. They
| just have low rates of heart disease _diagnosis_ ,
| because they also have limited access to health care.
| xnx wrote:
| > Why are so many people so unhealthy? Could it be the food
| we are consuming?
|
| There's no doubt about this. High sugar, low fiber is the
| biggest culprit.
| nradov wrote:
| There's doubt about this. While high sugar and low fiber is
| problematic, sheer _quantity_ might be a bigger culprit.
| And some indigenous populations seem to remain relatively
| healthy on low-fiber diets (i.e. eating mostly animal
| products).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Little s Science can't get "corrupted" because it is just a
| tool. When the scientific method is used to determine what
| people prefer to buy based on one second of looking at the
| product, that is arguably an immoral use of the scientific
| method especially if the health of the users is not taken
| into account.
|
| That's also to say that "trust the science" can be a
| dangerous way to shut down discussion when people are
| actually grasping for words to understand whether a
| scientific method is being improperly used.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Are people so unhealthy? Life expectancies continue to rise.
| The "a majority of americans have a chronic health problem"
| stats include things like back pain. It turns out that if you
| live a long time you get chronic health problems.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Do yellow 5 next.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Cochineal extract for coloring
|
| 95% of people wouldn't realize that's code for "insect juice,"
| and they might prefer the artificial color.
| hinkley wrote:
| Red 4 is already bug paste. Always has been. The "preference"
| based only on perception is just advertising.
|
| Naturally colored candies use beet extracts for red.
| cma wrote:
| Wait until people find out where jelly beans come from.
| kozubik wrote:
| "... it's an issue with bad ingredient labeling ..."
|
| I've been working on some improved labeling for certain grocery
| products:
|
| https://kozubik.com/items/ThisisCandy/
| AyyEye wrote:
| Awesome idea. Are you doing anything else in a similar vein?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I hope they remove them from animal food as well. Ol' Roy dog
| food uses tones of the stuff. Why?? So unnecessary.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Pet food is some of the most unsanitary "food" on earth. A lot
| of it is mass produced overseas with little to no regard as to
| the safety of the ingredients, and I would venture to say at
| least half of it is adulterated. We only find out about it when
| large numbers of pets start dying.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was a kid Ralston Purina owned a bunch of human food
| enterprises as well and that always disturbed me.
| vel0city wrote:
| I mean the company that makes M&Ms and Kind Bars also makes
| Whiskias and Royal Canin. In the end I don't get why it
| matters. Do we not expect there to be good standards for
| both?
| Gracana wrote:
| In Smithfield Virginia there's a big Smithfield Foods
| pork plant, and right next door is Premium Pet Health,
| which is a Smithfield-owned pet food plant. I've only
| ever been in the Smithfield plant, and it seems fine.
| Very industrial, but similar to other meat plants.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was a kid it was still considered normal for your
| dog to sleep outside. Most people drew the line at
| chaining your dog instead of having a fence, but that was
| about it. My dad built an insulated doghouse for our dog
| rather than let her stay inside. I thought that was
| weird, but I was the "weird kid" so who cares what I
| thought.
|
| The number of things I thought should be true at that age
| that finally are is baffling. Even accounting for recent
| regressions.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Why would it be weird to have a dog sleep in a shelter
| outside? Lots of people have dogs not just as pets, but
| to guard their property, and it's done all over the
| world.
|
| My parent's shepherds stand by the door at bedtime asking
| to be let out to their dog house.
| hinkley wrote:
| Because they're pack animals and you're their pack.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| That doesn't make dog houses weird, especially for dogs
| that were purpose-bred for work/protection.
| someonehere wrote:
| One of the lesser known things about heavily processed dog food
| is kind of dark. People don't realize that they use animals
| from shelters that have been put down in dog food. It's been a
| while, but I had read a few years ago that they found three
| amounts of the medicine they used to put animals down in dog
| food. I also recall your before that reading that some shelters
| make money by selling the dead animals they put down to food
| processing companies.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| Even in the 90s artificial dyes already had a bad reputation. The
| manufacturers must have considered removal and it's shocking to
| me that their analysis must have guided them to keep them in
| despite nobody really asking for them. I guess people love bright
| colors.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Just guessing, they did research and found that products with
| dyes sell better.
|
| People _say_ all sorts of things about what they do and do not
| want to buy, but actions speak louder than words.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| _Silly Rabbit! Original Trix With Artificial Colors Is Back
| After Customers Revolt_
|
| https://archive.ph/GFMs0
| sudobash1 wrote:
| It's not just the bright colors. The color of food greatly
| influences our perception of it. My grandmother was a caterer
| for many years, and she would tell me that the main difference
| between a chocolate cake and a vanilla one, is that one is
| brown. If you colored a cake brown, people would start to
| perceive it a chocolate.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I can believe this for the cake itself, not the icing, which
| is probably what she/you mean. Interesting.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Chefs have a famous saying that "You eat with your eyes
| first." The color of one's food is a huge part of that first
| sample.
| cma wrote:
| I can report that Crystal Pepsi tasted like Pesi and not
| Sprite at least, so there must be some limitations.
| icameron wrote:
| Oh yes there was huge conspiracy in my school of "Yellow 6" as
| found in Mountain Dew will shrink your testicles.
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| 2004 eastern US reporting in, can confirm the school Mountain
| dew conspiracy. I wonder if there's a site dedicated to
| tracking these kind of pre-social media viral memes and
| conspiracies. (I should say 'mass' social media since myspace
| was a thing, just barely anyone used it)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > despite nobody really asking for them
|
| What people say they want and what people choose to buy are
| very different things.
|
| If you ask people "Do you want ____" in isolation, they'll
| always say "No" if they thing you're asking about has any
| negative connotation.
|
| If you put two different products on the shelf next to each
| other that differ by that same thing and even advertise it
| prominently (e.g. one says "No artifical dyes or coloring")
| most people would probably choose the brighter one because, at
| time of purchase, their reveleaed preferences are actually
| different. Now add an extra $0.10 to the retail price for
| sourcing more expensive natural colorings and even more people
| will choose the artificial coloring version.
|
| This pattern plays out prominently in all things food related.
| If you ask people "Do you wish the food supply was healthier?"
| everyone is going to tell you "Yes". Then when they're deciding
| where to go for lunch or what to order, they'll skip right past
| the healthy items and choose what tastes the best.
|
| These hypothetical free-lunch questions are useless because
| consumers will always claim they don't want the thing they
| don't understand. If you ask people if they want their food to
| be "preservative free" they'll tell you yes, until they see
| their food going bad immediately and their options dry up. Ask
| if they want "anti caking agents" removed from food and they'll
| emphatically agree, until their shredded cheese is sticking
| together. Food science and popular opinion are two different
| worlds.
| CjHuber wrote:
| ...or is the most convenient
| like_any_other wrote:
| > What people say they want and what people choose to buy are
| very different things.
|
| As the mac & cheese box featuring Super Mario in the article
| hints, a big chunk of these people are children. Is it any
| surprise they don't make the most rational of choices?
|
| On the other hand, this is like asking an alcoholic if he
| wishes to quit drinking. He'll _say_ yes, but then go into a
| bar on his way home from work... People claim to want to be
| healthy, yet their discipline isn 't perfect and their will
| is not iron - what hypocrites!
|
| On the third hand - people do vote and lobby for what they
| say they want (in this case banning artificial dyes). Why
| should we give preference to their decisions in the market,
| vs. their decisions in the voting booth? Or in other words -
| why do purchasing decisions reveal preference, but voting
| decisions do not?
| jyounker wrote:
| The problem historically was that when consumers were given
| detailed ingredient labels, they often decided to not
| purchase the products. Chemical and food manufacturers spent
| vast amounts of money to get ingredient labels watered down
| so that consumers wouldn't see the chemical names. In the 70s
| labels were _much_ more detailed.
|
| Labels like "natural flavors" exist to cover up what's
| actually in the food. "natural vanilla flavoring" sounds much
| nicer than "vanillin and acetovanillone extracted from waste
| sawdust".
| jyounker wrote:
| It's goes back even further. Artificial dyes already had bad
| reputations by the late 70s.
|
| In the mid-late 70s labels on foods and cleaning products told
| you _exactly_ what was in them. I remember because my father
| was an organic chemist by training, and he would look at most
| labels and explain what was in them, and why we weren 't buying
| them. (My family ended up shopping for most of our groceries at
| organic food stores.)
|
| It turns out that a lot of people didn't want those ingredients
| either, and it was impacting sales, so companies successfully
| lobbied to get the disclosure requirements watered down. These
| days labels in the US basically tell you nothing.
|
| I studied organic chemistry in college, and there's little as
| disturbing to me as "natural flavors" or "natural colorings".
| You have no idea what the chemicals are, what they were
| extracted from, how they were extracted, and what
| compounds/processes were used in the extraction. It's a non-
| label that tells you _nothing_ about what 's actually in the
| food.
|
| We should be entitled by law to know what we're consuming, so
| that we can actually make informed decisions, and industrial
| food manufacturers don't want us to know, and have spent vast
| sums of money to ensure that we can't easily find out.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I studied organic chemistry in college, and there's little
| as disturbing to me as "natural flavors" or "natural
| colorings". You have no idea what the chemicals are, what
| they were extracted from, how they were extracted, and what
| compounds/processes were used in the extraction. It's a non-
| label that tells you nothing about what's actually in the
| food
|
| Ironically, this is what the legislation is moving toward:
| Anything "natural" is good, while anything "chemical" is bad
| to a lot of the world.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _In the mid-late 70s labels on foods and cleaning products
| told you exactly what was in them._
|
| This is not true, and for some reason this seems to be a
| common urban myth.
|
| The distinction between natural and artificial flavors goes
| back to 1906, and in 1938 there was a stronger law requiring
| the disclosure of artificial flavoring, color, or
| preservatives. I don't know if you're referring to the 1958
| Food Additives and Amendment Act, but that didn't really
| affect ingredient listings either -- it was about food
| safety, not disclosure. But there was nothing substantially
| different about ingredient listings between the 1970s and
| today. I honestly don't know where you got this information,
| or what kind of ingredients you were under the impression
| that your father was able to analyze. The 1960s and 1970s was
| definitely the era when awareness around these things began
| to grow among consumers, so it definitely helps explain your
| father's attention to these things. But the idea that
| disclosure requirements have been watered down, or that this
| is due to corporate lobbying, is something like an urban
| legend. There are certainly issues around trade regulation
| and naming, like which species of fish are or are not allowed
| to be labeled as catfish, similar to how champagne can only
| come from a particular region of France. So there is
| definitely massive lobbying around geographical disclosures
| and naming. But the idea that there has been some kind of
| massive shift of disclosure in terms of chemicals is just not
| true. If you look up the ingredients on actual historical
| processed snack labels from the 1970s, they're not any
| different from today.
| freedomben wrote:
| "natural flavors" and "natural coloring" is also aggravating
| when you have food allergies. An example is paprika, which is
| sometimes listed and sometimes not. I hate that practice so
| much
| msgodel wrote:
| The red dye they use in a lot of stuff is absolutely
| psychoactive. I used to intentionally consume things with it on
| long drives because it zaps my short term memory so I don't get
| bored and fall asleep. I noticed this effect after eating some
| red candy while trying to do math homework in college.
|
| The downside of course is that once you get where you're going
| you're practically retarded for the next 12 hours or so and can't
| get any work done.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Source on red dye being psychoactive?
| msgodel wrote:
| You'll have to look for it yourself I guess? I don't know if
| anyone has even tried studying it, the effect is pretty
| subtle if you don't know to look for it. I'm just posting my
| experiences with it.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| You can't just make a massive claim like that about such a
| common ingredient without backing it up. I'm not saying
| it's not true, it could be, but it's just inappropriate to
| state something is true like that with 0 evidence aside
| from personal experience.
| msgodel wrote:
| If that were the case posting on forums like this would
| be either entirely inappropriate or a complete waste of
| time.
| account42 wrote:
| Not at all. You can
|
| a) Make claims that are not as extraordinary.
|
| b) Back your claims up with evidence.
|
| Making absolutely wild claims without evidence just makes
| you sound like a quack.
| maxerickson wrote:
| You complainers are missing the mark. You obviously can
| make extraordinary claims (see above for evidence).
|
| What isn't reasonable is to also expect large numbers of
| people to take them seriously without evidence (see above
| for evidence of people questioning unsupported claims).
| msgodel wrote:
| Maybe a better way to phrase our question is "is making
| such claims productive?"
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| See my above comment - it's a relatively well studied
| topic, and yes - there is a link.
| eythian wrote:
| I thought it was moderately well known. A couple of decades
| ago a friend would take some red candy when hiking as it
| could give her (at least the feeling of) a significant short-
| term energy boost if needed, more than just regular sugar
| would.
|
| I actually thought that particular red dye was banned where
| I'm from some time back, though I don't recall why. Allergies
| perhaps? But that's just a guess.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| A quick web search brought this:
|
| * https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/
|
| * https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/downloads/ri
| s...
|
| * https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/red-dye-40-adhd
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| _Cherries are absolutely dangerous because when I eat them my
| breathing gets difficult. No idea why they still allow
| companies to sell them to people..._
|
| I'm sure you can grasp how ridiculous that statement is, and
| reflect on your own.
| msgodel wrote:
| Heh, never said it shouldn't be allowed. I was just pointing
| out that some of these things are often more complex than
| they initially seem.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| For the people downvoting this comment - it's a relatively well
| researched topic covered by at least three major studies with
| published papers, etc. If you are not aware of something, it
| does not necessarily mean it is wrong.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they
| could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time they
| wanted to, but didn't. Clearly these companies are in it to make
| money, and they will sell the public whatever the public will
| eat, synthetic ingredients be damned, but maybe.. just maybe the
| government should be much, much more restrictive on the
| ingredients that goes into our foods...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They don't care until there is some combination of public and
| government pressure, so you just have to keep pressuring,
| forever. Corporations are fundamentally unaccountability
| laundering profit machines (limited liability, nebulous
| shareholder ownership), and must be treated accordingly.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Which is the worst part about all of this: It took government
| pressure and calling them out to force a change. My anger at
| government is why they didn't do this SOONER? Why did it take
| someone like RJF jr. to move this needle? After all the
| people we've had at Sec. of Agriculture, HHS, and FDA
| Commissioners..
|
| I don't think this was because people were putting pressure,
| otherwise the sheer numbers of those communities would have
| done something by now. It only required one person in power
| to say enough, fix this.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Are you asking why people are more susceptible to
| demagoguery than science education? History tells us what
| we need to know about that.
| carefulfungi wrote:
| But, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, others _have_
| done this before RJF 's appointment.
|
| During the Obama administration, cherry picking some
| example:
|
| * Food safety regulatory improvement bill:
| https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-
| dietar... * Improved labelling rules:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-
| labe... * EPA water safety rules made stricter, then rolled
| back by Trump: https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-
| to-revoke-obama-w....
|
| It isn't correct to see these changes a singular
| improvement. These rules are constantly being fought over,
| sometimes becoming stricter, sometimes looser.
|
| Another example, NYC has fought to reduce sugary drink
| serving sizes and to require labels on high sugar foods.
| (https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-
| sugar...)
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The greater problem is normalization of unhealthy food across
| an entire supermarket. Then it becomes unavoidable and
| invisible to consumers.
|
| My personal bugaboos are added sugar and generous use of weird
| preservatives. If your supermarket has 20 aisles, 16 of them
| are loaded with sugary sulfite-preserved stuff, removing choice
| and visibility to consumers. And breads fortified with folic
| acid.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| I'm still upset that I picked up a set of those little fruit
| cup things advertising "no added sugar", only to be met by
| intensely bitter and gross flavor. Turns out they added monk
| fruit extract instead, as an artificial sweetener. To FRUIT.
| Fruit is naturally sweet!
| vel0city wrote:
| Del Monte's No Sugar Added line of canned fruits often has
| Acesulfame Potassium and Sucralose in it. Similar no sugar
| added generic/house brands are similar.
|
| https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-
| pears-...
| leviathant wrote:
| Re: preservatives, I remember watching a video a few years
| ago, where a woman decided that she didn't like all the
| preservatives in store-bought tortillas, so she was going to
| make them herself at home. It's a really simple thing to
| make, so why not?
|
| They all went stale before the day was out. She compared the
| ingredients between what she had made and what came out of
| the box at the grocery store, and the ones that she didn't
| use? They were all preservatives.
|
| Choose your battles wisely.
|
| I will concede that the use of sweeteners in _everything_ in
| the US is unhinged. It 's hard to really understand until
| you've spent enough time out of the country to where you're
| buying groceries and looking at the ingredients. You come
| back to the states and everything tastes weirdly sweet. It
| was a real "fish don't know they're wet" moment for me, which
| mostly came about from marrying an Australian.
| devin wrote:
| Is sodium content comparable?
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| This is fair, but I think overstated. It's possible to
| preserve a tortilla for a few days without exotic
| additives. I'm not even criticizing sodium, although that's
| not a lot better. And yes, preservatives are better than
| eating spoiled food.
|
| The problem is when the whole supermarket is full of highly
| preserved food, then this is normalized and health
| consequences are obscured. The deeper issue is that for
| perhaps 80% of people this is fine and profitable, but for
| let's say 20% it introduces weird, hard to trace health
| problems, which don't appear to come from the supermarket
| because _all_ the _normal_ foods are like this.
| ksenzee wrote:
| Flour fortification is one of the great public health
| successes of the 20th century, and I'm not aware of any data
| showing that folic acid is any more harmful than any of the
| other synthetic B vitamins added to our food. I've actively
| looked for such data, as someone with the fairly common
| genetic mutation affecting MTHFR, and frankly all I find is
| nonsense.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| To expand on "great public health successes": folic acid
| supplementation is particularly important if you're
| pregnant, because it significantly reduces the odds of
| having a baby with neural tube defects like spina bifida
| (which is one of the milder NTDs, frankly). But it's also
| important even if you're not pregnant because B vitamin
| deficiencies will wreck your health.
|
| This also reminded me of a great post from a few years ago
| about why salt is fortified with iodine:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38782954
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Yes, the FDA has been emphatic that the folic acid
| supplementation program is a success and we would be fools
| to think anything else. The reality, as best I can tell, is
| more nuanced and for a minority of people it's possible to
| have too much of a good thing, particularly where 5-MTHF
| would be more beneficial.[1]
|
| I don't hope to resolve the debate, only to point out it
| _should_ be possible to eat bread that is not fortified
| with folic acid, if for no reason than I 'm not in the high
| risk group targeted by the FDA and there are potential
| benefits from reducing folic acid intake in the context of
| robust intake of folate from other sources.
|
| Or, even simpler: why can't I buy bread without folic acid?
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11930790/
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I can buy unfortified bread at each of the grocery stores
| in my small town. I can also buy it at the local bakery
| and at the bread stand at our small farmers market.
|
| It would not surprise me that there are some places in
| the US that only have easy access to packaged industrial
| sandwich bread. It would surprise me very much if that
| was the norm for Americans.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Bread is fortified with folic acid because it turns out it is
| really important for brain development during pregnancy and
| it can be too late to take supplements if you wait until you
| find out that you are pregnant. This is a positive public
| health intervention.
| xnx wrote:
| The most harmful ingredient in our foods is sugar. Should the
| government restrict that?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Absolutely, stop subsidizing corn and glucose syrup through
| ag policy, and tax sugar consumption. Mexico taxed sugar to
| mitigate obesity to great success. GLP-1s destroy demand
| (Walmart already sees this in their purchasing data for
| consumers who are on GLP-1s), but we should also restrict
| supply by not subsidizing it in the first place. Why are we
| paying both to make the poison and then treat the poison? Not
| very capital efficient!
|
| _After Mexico Implemented a Tax, Purchases of Sugar-
| Sweetened Beverages Decreased and Water Increased: Difference
| by Place of Residence, Household Composition, and Income
| Level_ - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ |
| https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892
|
| _Building upon the sugar beverage tax in Mexico: a modelling
| study of tax alternatives to increase benefits_ -
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ |
| https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227
|
| _USA Facts: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says_ -
| https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-
| da...
|
| (~40 million acres of corn is used for inefficient ethanol
| biofuels as well, but I will reserve that rant for another
| thread)
| xnx wrote:
| I completely agree with removing subsidies. I'm less
| convinced that ingredients should be banned. Weirdly the
| entire "supplement" industry can do whatever they want.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Not banned, taxed. These are behavioral economic nudges
| to encourage healthier outcomes. You can still get a Coca
| Cola, but the economics shouldn't make it your primary
| source of hydration, right? If you're expecting "will
| power" to fix this, the evidence is _robust_ [1] that is
| not going to happen.
|
| We tax alcohol and cigarettes similarly, and I don't
| think it's wild to consider processed sugars close to
| that same category from a health and reward center
| perspective.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917096
| maxerickson wrote:
| The wheat starch in pasta is rapidly converted to sugar
| during digestion.
|
| Like there is probably some argument to be made about
| satiety, but I assure you, it is quite possible to consume
| excess calories in the form of pasta.
|
| And then corn subsidies mostly benefit livestock and
| ethanol producers, processed food products are a small
| portion of the end use of field corn.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/choosing-
| good...
| maxerickson wrote:
| So if that's your concern, why are you talking about
| manipulating the market for the supply of one food,
| rather than taxing high GI foods? Or is it a case of corn
| syrup being good enough?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yes to the point of having it go under FDA review along with
| PFAS, BPA, mercury, etc. If sugar can survive their empirical
| heath analyses, then you can have all you want. Everyone
| should go and comment on the FDA's public docket if they feel
| the same: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/FDA-2025-N-1733
|
| https://www.fda.gov/food/food-chemical-safety/list-select-
| ch...
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is accepting the premise that something synthetic is
| automatically worse than something extracted more directly from
| nature. I'm all for researching and banning substances which
| are actually harmful, but not for paranoia and the automatic
| assumption that a certain amount of chemistry turns something
| "natural" into something bad.
|
| For example carmine is crushed up cactus parasite insects which
| a very small number of people are vulnerable to extreme
| allergic reactions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal
|
| >much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our
| food
|
| How much human testing of every agricultural product do you
| want?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they
| could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time
| they wanted to, but didn't
|
| They had replaced a lot of them already. Kraft's most iconic
| product (Mac & Cheese) replaced the artificial dyes years ago
| and this is only the last 10% of their products.
|
| Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?
| nradov wrote:
| There are a lot of different artificial dyes. Most of them
| haven't been extensively studied in a rigorous way. It
| probably isn't even possible to determine whether they have
| any negative effects on human health because there's no
| ethical or affordable way to run that experiment. Since dyes
| are purely cosmetic and there's no actual need for them then
| it might be better to just avoid the risk.
| tayo42 wrote:
| If you care about being healthy why are you eating kraft mac
| and cheese in the first place.
|
| People act like taking the food dye out of gushers is
| suddenly going to fix their problems. You need to avoid this
| food in the first place.
| recursive wrote:
| Good example of perfect being the enemy of good, or less
| bad.
| klik99 wrote:
| > Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?
|
| The fact that this is a legitimate question is very
| concerning. Some of these dyes are/were ubiquitous and there
| is very little research about them. IIRC a few have evidence
| of harm. Nothing should be this widely deployed without
| understanding them more.
|
| If you were more questioning "Is natural actually better for
| people or just a nice sounding word" which could also be
| implied by your question, I agree with that, with the caveat
| that artificial stuff has more potential for surprises since
| it doesn't have the history of being used safely "natural"
| stuff does, and should have a higher bar of research.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It's also an easy thing to focus on. How many products that
| use dyes are extremely unhealthy for other reasons? If you
| are buying a cereal loaded with sugar and pretend to care
| about dyes for health reasons I'm going to laugh at you.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Clearly these companies are in it to make money, and they
| will sell the public whatever the public will eat,
|
| You are correct, but I find it alarming that anyone would deem
| this necessary to say out loud. These companies would happily
| watch us suffer an die from chronic illnesses en masse if it
| inched up their share value, as would any for-profit
| enterprise. The phrase "duh" comes to mind. The only thing
| stopping them is government regulation, though that approach is
| under perpetual attack by anti-government zealots, the most
| recent of which being Musk and his child assistants.
| decide1000 wrote:
| Why does it take so long? Existing EU recipes are already
| compliant Kraft's European products have for years used natural
| colours such as turmeric, paprika, beet juice or no colouring at
| all. That is why the 2025 U.S. pledge to go dye free by 2027 is
| largely irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. So 2027? That
| does not make sense at all.. it's a n economic perspective, not a
| healthy one.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Guessing it's to ramp-up suppliers, change equipment over, and
| stockpile enough for the transition.
| giarc wrote:
| I understand the need to phase out/in ingredients in this
| situation, however I've never understood when there is a
| simple ban on an unnecessary ingredient why it takes long.
| I'm specifically talking about those "microbeads" in bodywash
| that were banned a few years ago. The companies got years to
| phase them out. They served no real purpose and were not
| replaced with anything. Companies just had to stop adding
| them to the bodywash - why give them years to do so? I get
| that labelling would be inaccurate so give them a few months
| to change that.
| mslansn wrote:
| Of course the beads served a purpose: they were abrasive
| and exfoliating. And they were given time because they have
| to sell their existing inventory and use all the beads they
| already have purchased to put in their products.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Not sure why you're greyed out, because you're correct
| that those were _literally_ exfoliant face washes. (No
| real loss in phasing them out because there are much
| better ways to exfoliate than rubbing your face with
| little pellets, but it wasn 't some meaningless design
| choice.)
| giarc wrote:
| Sorry, yes I realize their purpose, but I meant the
| product still worked without them, so they could have
| stopped adding them and continue to sell the product. I
| guess the same is technically true for food dyes. I just
| mean that there are times where the ingredient is
| critical to the product, microbeads was not one of them.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| With something like that it's tough, though, because they
| sold those as an _exfoliating wash_ product, but if you
| take away the beads it's not exfoliating anymore. So
| you'd either have to rebrand it to remove any mentions of
| exfoliation (at which point it becomes a totally
| different product) or rework the ingredients list to
| include a "chemical" exfoliant rather than the "physical"
| exfoliant (but that also drastically alters the product,
| especially since some people avoid chemical exfoliants).
|
| Not defending microbeads--those products were truly shit,
| both for your skin and for the environment--I just want
| to illustrate that it might not be so straightforward.
| hinkley wrote:
| And run out existing contracts with existing suppliers.
| indrora wrote:
| Supply chains.
|
| EU and US supply chains are vastly different, plus shifting the
| production lines from one to another doesn't happen overnight.
| This means that it could well take two years to fully move all
| their production facilities off synthetic food dyes.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Demanding an entire industry change everything overnight
| doesn't work. Suppliers have to ramp up production, processes
| have to be reworked, purchasing contracts have already been set
| a year in advance.
| decide1000 wrote:
| I don't understand why Americans accept this behavior from
| corporates. They are basically poisoning people for economic
| reasons. Why don't they use that extra profit, made over the
| health of millions, to speed up this process.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Because the USA politicians for the most part do what
| corporate interests want. When it looked like consumer
| interests might gain a foothold in 1960-1970s, a member of
| the US chamber of commerce wrote the Powell memo as a guide
| to corporate responses to consumer activism, this is still
| followed by USA corporations and he was appointed to US
| Supreme Court to put his influence on legal standards for
| generations. He's not the first nor the last as
| traditionally in the USA due to how weak the framers made
| the federal government originally, a private public
| partnership is always exalted as the best of both worlds
| for governance but this leads to regulatory capture we have
| now without sufficient safeguards. edit: an adjacent
| comment mentions GRAS,Generally Recognized as Safe
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe
| - laws in the USA last forever unless new laws supercede
| them so this law set in stone thousands of chemicals
| (including the aforementioned dyes) as safe because they
| didn't kill anyone quickly in 1958 and companies are free
| to use those in food - only a handful of items have been
| removed since then because the FDA is required to
| scientifically prove harm, unlike how those items got put
| on the list.
| cma wrote:
| Tumeric sometimes contains lead. I think only in India so far,
| but the FDA is about to move lots of testing to the states.
| Hopefully on a roadtrip or layover you won't have to research
| each state you are in before eating.
| throwworhtthrow wrote:
| They'd have to scrap all the food currently in the production
| and distribution pipeline, plus there would be a gap in food
| delivery as producers switch over to a new process. It's less
| disruptive to transition gradually.
|
| Similar to why the USAID closure was gradual and gave aid
| recipients plenty of time to find new donors, because we
| wouldn't want hundreds of thousands of women and children to
| die of starvation and disease just to save a few bucks or wring
| out more viral memes [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-cuts-
| do... / https://archive.is/5BIAF
| klik99 wrote:
| Why did it take an insane person to actually get sensible
| regulation for food dyes in? Rhetorical question because I think
| people like RFKJr got into power because previous administrations
| didn't take care of the obvious things that need regulation, and
| if you ignore the basics for too long people flip over to someone
| who packages a couple of reasonable stances with a lot of
| damaging ideas.
|
| I agree with RFK for pushing for change in this industry but I
| give him no credit, instead I blame previous administrations on
| both sides for not taking a better stance on regulating food like
| every other developed country in the world.
| adestefan wrote:
| Healthy food and cleaning up the food supply was an initiative
| of Michelle Obama. There was a big push to regulate healthly
| public school lunches and the FDA to have sensible regulations
| that matched the rest of the world. This all would have been
| accomplished a decade ago.
|
| Instead, every Republican and Fox News called her a Communist
| (and worse) and that it was un-American to have the government
| tell people what to eat.
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/06/house-gop-wants-...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michelle-obamas-scho...
| boston_clone wrote:
| Even the whole notion of abolishing the food pyramid to
| advocate for more fibrous whole foods (e.g., vegetables,
| fruits) and stylizing it as a plate was her idea, later
| coopted by RFK Jr.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/health-healthy-
| eating-a9f5cd19e17...
| refurb wrote:
| As a scientist I don't think this change is really science
| based.
|
| Banning artificial colors because "chemicals are bad" isn't
| logical. Banning artificial dyes because one random paper maybe
| found a cancer link isn't rational (generally if studies are
| all over the place the effect is so small you're seeing noise).
|
| If you want to avoid artificial dyes, cool, avoid them! But
| blanket bans of dyes where the data is questionable about harm
| isn't logical.
| croes wrote:
| Allowing artificial dyes that are consumed without proper
| testing for harm is illogical.
|
| You wouldn't eat something you don't know if it's edible just
| because it has a nice color
| gruez wrote:
| >You wouldn't eat something you don't know if it's edible
| just because it has a nice color
|
| Easy for you to say while writing a HN comment, but people
| would certainly be turned off by gray yolks[1] for
| instance, even if theoretically they were safe to eat.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/12/2015019
| 77/he...
| j-bos wrote:
| While it's easy to fake a healthy golden yolk, in my
| experience raising chickens, pale yolks are usually from
| a troubled hen.
| croes wrote:
| And?
|
| Just because people don't like grey yolk doesn't mean we
| should put an untested color in it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| These colors are all extensively tested, precisely
| because people were scarred of them being "unnatural".
|
| The "natural" colors HAVE NOT been tested so extensively.
|
| So do you want to put "Natural" but utterly untested
| chemicals in our food or "unnatural" but extensively
| tested chemicals?
|
| Because unless you ban food coloring outright, companies
| are going to color your food. They have the data that in
| the American market, (fake) bright yellow yolks sell more
| and for more profit than natural yolk colors.
|
| Your assumption of "artificial dye" == "Untested" is
| currently wrong. The US requires almost no testing for
| pretty much anything put in our food right now, due to
| "Generally recognized as safe" bullshit. There are
| hundreds of chemical additives that have not really been
| tested that you can just put in food legally.
|
| US food law does not distinguish between "artificial"
| chemicals and "natural" chemicals except in labeling. You
| can source a chemical from oranges, turn it into a
| completely different chemical, put that in your food
| product, and call it "natural". The only difference from
| a chemistry standpoint is that you sourced your chemical
| feedstock from some sort of plant or animal instead of
| taking simple hydrocarbons and building up your chemical.
|
| Salicylic acid does the exact same thing in your body
| whether you process it from willow bark or build it up
| from Phenol, and both versions are simultaneously a
| horrible birth defect inducing toxin, as well as an
| utterly essential and safe modern medicine.
|
| This change does nothing to make us safer.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I think that's the biggest issue nowadays/back then: we
| don't test shit like at all and find out decades later that
| it destroys us. For what? Because the market incentivizes
| temporary gains for "competitiveness". The whole system is
| misaligned. We have those e/acc and silicon valley peeps
| telling us it's for the PrOgReSs and it's necessary. All
| the while they eat grass fed beef. You gotta live what you
| preach!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| They may eat "grass fed beef" (which in no way magically
| makes a steak any healthier) but they are the same people
| who microdosed LSD for two years because it was the fad
| of the time.
|
| They aren't super aware and taking advantage of us, they
| are actually that utterly stupid. They are the epitome of
| that software dev you worked with who only just learned
| about <thing> yesterday, read a few articles and
| wikipedia pages, and assume they must know enough about
| <thing> to have better takes than people who have been
| working knee deep in <thing> for 30 years. They love to
| say they are "reasoning from first principles" because
| they have no actual expert experience to how those "first
| principles" haven't been useful or relevant in that field
| for centuries.
|
| It's the classic "I know just enough to be dangerous"
| problem we are all familiar with of Users of our software
| products, the kind that uninstall System32 to "speed up
| their machine" like the internet told them, but 100
| million people gave them the power of the US government.
| They vastly overestimate how much of the space they have
| so far learned, and don't even know how much they don't
| know.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| In context, entirely logical!
|
| We have extremely pervasive health problems across the west,
| and many theories (you can surely think of 20), but all of
| them are weak under scrutiny, specifically because the
| phenomena are effectively impossible to isolate and pin down.
| You can't actually achieve a strong signal.
|
| So if multiple studies link a low-value and/or easily
| replaceable additive to problems, we can remove it as a
| precaution.
|
| Food colorants in particular serve _primarily_ an advertising
| role. In general, advertising junk food to children is often
| restricted and highly contested. The difference here is the
| child is expected to physically consume the artefact.
|
| We should adopt a "default deny" stance and contested
| ingredients at least should show some kind of value. You can
| make a case for many preservatives. Paint is not like that.
| refurb wrote:
| That fails the scientific method in several places.
|
| Science doesn't ban things with questionable data from
| poorly designed studies when other studies say the
| opposite.
|
| Science doesn't ban things because of some other problem
| where a causal link hasn't been proven.
|
| We already have a "default deny" system in place. Unless
| you have data saying it's safe (according to regulations),
| a chemical can't be used as a food additive.
|
| Edited to add:
|
| GRAS definition....." _the use of a food substance may be
| GRAS either through scientific procedures or, for a
| substance used in food before 1958, through experience
| based on common use in food Under 21 CFR 170.30(b), general
| recognition of safety through scientific procedures
| requires the same quantity and quality of scientific
| evidence as is required to obtain approval of the substance
| as a food additive._ "
| clcaev wrote:
| > We already have a "default deny" system in place.
|
| GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) defies this reasonable
| expectation.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-
| packaging/generall...
|
| GRAS approvals include some rather novel food additives.
| Here is a list of recent notifications.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/food/gras-notice-inventory/recently-
| publ...
| krisoft wrote:
| > Science doesn't ban things with questionable data from
| poorly designed studies when other studies say the
| opposite.
|
| Science doesn't ban anything. That is simply put not the
| role of science.
|
| Science can inform decision making, but it is not the
| only valid way to make decisions.
| fernmyth wrote:
| Science is a tool for finding truth, or at least weighing
| evidence. It isn't policy and doesn't have anything to
| say about policy.
|
| You can have a policy of waiting for overwhelming proof
| of harm before banning anything. But there are an awful
| lot of chemicals added to our food and environment, with
| precious few studies competently and honestly tracking
| their effects. I want a much more careful policy - don't
| put unknown chemicals in my body without convincing me
| the benefit.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's called the precautionary principle. It's generally a
| good idea. And yes, you have to implement it at the
| regulatory level because otherwise Food Inc. will try to get
| away with everything they can.
| tptacek wrote:
| The precautionary principle is not entirely benign. Here,
| though, it's not even apposite: the dyes being ditched here
| have been intensively studied for decades.
| timr wrote:
| As a chemist, I can tell you that nearly everything you can
| think of -- "natural" or otherwise -- has been correlated
| to some negative outcome, in some organism, by some
| (usually crappy) study. These get laundered and blurred
| into "linked to negative health effects", by the lay press,
| which is widely repeated by people who don't know what
| they're talking about. P-hacking virtually _guarantees_
| that this will be the case, as long as someone, somewhere
| has the incentive to publish.
|
| If you apply the "precautionary principle" this broadly,
| there's nothing left. It's basically the same reason that
| everything is labeled as "linked to cancer" by CA prop 65
| (e.g. coffee, or...trees [1]).
|
| [1] https://x.com/RhonaA_PhD/status/1056921307634380800
| codedokode wrote:
| Dye is not an essential component of food and therefore
| should be banned, at least for food that has natural
| color (like meat or cheese). Not only it might be
| harmful, it causes false expectation of quality and
| freshness and should not be allowed. Because otherwise
| for a manufacturer it is easier to color low-quality
| product rather than make high-quality product.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The precautionary principle is not "Ban scary sounding
| things", it's "Prove that chemical is safe before you can
| expose people to it", which places like the EU often
| attempt to do.
|
| But notably, nothing about this action takes any steps or
| effort towards enforcing "Prove it is safe BEFORE you sell
| it" and "natural" does not make any impact there. Ricin is
| plenty natural, so is methanol, and this change would not
| stop you from selling people literal poison as long as it
| wasn't already banned.
|
| If Bayer makes a new derivative of carminic acid ("Natural"
| red #4) tomorrow that is easier for production lines to
| handle but also gives you cancer if you eat it for 20
| years, there's no legal requirement that they demonstrate
| it doesn't give you cancer before they can sell it. It is
| YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as a consumer to do that science for
| them! It being "Natural" is utterly meaningless marketing
| bullshit.
|
| None of this bullshit safety theater makes any of us more
| safe.
|
| As I note elsewhere, this isn't exactly damaging though.
| Most other countries already encouraged manufacturers to
| develop formulas without artificial dyes, primarily due to
| differences in _consumer opinion_ (which is usually
| similarly not fact based), so companies are going to make a
| big hubub about how this will be so hard for them and then
| they just shut down the "this is American specific"
| production line and retool it for the international formula
| and then insist that they made such a huge change to help
| everyone.
|
| But "natural colors only" has zero relation to "more
| healthy", and that goes double when you are talking about
| processed food. If you actually wanted people to eat
| healthier, you would be better off banning all food
| coloring additives, all food texture additives, and
| anything that lets you modify how food presents itself
| after processing. People would buy less processed food if
| it all looked like what it actually was.
|
| Other countries have better food than the US because 1)
| They often force food additives to be PROVEN safe before
| any use and much more importantly 2) consumers are way more
| discerning about food. European bread doesn't have a
| spoonful of sugar or sugar syrup because Europeans don't
| _want_ their bread to be addictively sweet, while Americans
| objectively buy more bread that 's been sweetened than
| "normal" bread. I'm not a fan of treating "revealed
| preferences" as too meaningful, but it's hard to sell bread
| to people who wont buy it because they would rather eat the
| cake in bread form. So it's important to ask why Europeans
| want their cakes cakey, and their bread not.
| why_at wrote:
| As a non-scientist, I am not really any more qualified to
| give an opinion on this than any random person, but the fear
| around food dyes seems way overblown IMO.
|
| You can read the statement from the FDA where they banned red
| dye 3, it's very short. [1] Here's a relevant quote:
|
| >claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in
| ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the
| available scientific information.
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-
| revoke-...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| As a non-scientist and definitely talking about anecdotes: I
| know of at least one kid who has Tourettes that is made worse
| by artificial dyes...
|
| Also it's often hard to figure out...for example, is caramel
| color artificial or natural?
| fnord77 wrote:
| > If you want to avoid artificial dyes, cool, avoid them!
|
| Except in many cases it is hard to avoid them. Or very
| expensive.
| danudey wrote:
| Easy, just avoid any processed food. Eat only fresh meat,
| fruit, and vegetables. Make your own bread, jams, pickles,
| etc. Never eat any fast food, anything from a cafe, or
| anything at a restaurant. Wrap all your work lunches in
| linen you made yourself from flax you grew yourself. Boom,
| problem solved, no more toxic chemicals in your food unless
| they were in the air or groundwater where your fruits and
| vegetables were grown, harvested, or processed, or your
| cattle grazed or were slaughtered or packaged.
| codedokode wrote:
| Why would one color meat, fruit or vegetables? This can
| create false expectation of their freshness and quality
| and must be banned. This is much easier solution.
|
| Also coloring cheese should be banned. I always choose
| cheese without dyes but many people might be not aware
| that many types of cheese are artificially colored.
| spicybbq wrote:
| I have the same view, and I was hoping that someone would
| provide some evidence as to why they are harmful in typical
| quantities found in foods. It seems to me that because these
| additives are so widely used, we would know for sure if they
| were dangerous.
| kevincox wrote:
| The problem isn't that "chemicals are bad" but that we don't
| know which chemicals are bad. Ones that we have been eating
| for centuries are unlikely to be significantly harmful and we
| can stop consuming them them when evidence is found. But for
| things that we haven't been eating for that long we don't
| really know. Right now the system is sort of set up as
| default-allow. So what happens is that some company wants a
| blue dye because they think blue candy will sell. They try
| things until they find something that isn't obviously harmful
| and start selling it. Then in 20 years it is found that it
| actually was harmful in the long term and impacted a huge
| swath of the population. The company then searches around
| until they find another blue dye that isn't obviously harmful
| and the cycle repeats.
|
| To some degree we do need to experiment and try new things.
| However for something like food dyes it likely isn't really
| worth the risk. Or at least they are far overused. Many of
| the foods with dyes aren't that healthy anyways, so maybe it
| is is best to have them less attractive to avoid ingesting
| more chemicals which we don't have strong long-term evidence
| that it is safe.
|
| We see a very similar cycle with plastics, refrigerants and
| many other things. We use something for a long time before
| realizing that it actually has harmful effects, then industry
| just creates a new very similar chemical that isn't known to
| be bad yet (or at least isn't bad in the same way the last
| one is). In some cases it is probably worth it (refrigeration
| is a valuable technology) but in the cases where it isn't as
| valuable to society we should be much more conservative with
| what we allow.
|
| That being said, the proposed regulation isn't scientific and
| doesn't play with this nuance. A more reasonable approach
| would be raising the standards for introducing new chemicals
| (natural or artificial) to food. Not just banning anything
| "artificial" (whatever that means).
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Tobacco and alohol are significantly harmful and we have
| been consuming them for centuries. Also lead pipes
| danudey wrote:
| Trump admin is trying to prevent the banning of asbestos,
| and undo the regulations that have been banning it. Trump
| seems convinced that "it's all fine, actually" and policy
| is being based around that, but the catalyst seems to be
| that the Biden era finalized the last ban on the last
| type of asbestos still being used (which would take up to
| twelve years to take effect anyway).
|
| It wouldn't surprise me at this point if the Trump
| administration started rolling back regulations on lead
| pipes and enforcing minimum cadmium concentrations in
| tobacco.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yes, and due to having been used for a long time we are
| aware of the effects (and at least for lead have
| implemented reasonable rules around its use).
|
| My point is that the longer we have used and consumed
| something the better we understand it. We are more likely
| to know and understand the risks. So we should be extra
| cautious with new materials. Something that we have been
| eating for hundreds of years with no known negative
| effects is wildly different than something that a company
| discovered (naturally or artificially) last year and
| didn't find any negative effects with some short-term
| tests.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Why did it take an insane person to actually get sensible
| regulation for food dyes in?_
|
| They still aren't regulating it, they just held a press
| conference announcing, literally "we don't have an agreement;
| we have an understanding" (and, as covered in this article, no
| one in the food industry seems to know who exactly the
| "understanding" is with).
|
| Meanwhile they're firing anyone at the FDA or HHS that can do
| anything, and the EPA is trying to not regulate coal plants
| while the Trump administration uses emergency powers to keep
| coal plants running even over the economic objections of the
| power companies running them. And of course the EPA is delaying
| and relaxing the new limits on PFAS in drinking water from last
| year.
|
| So...no, not really any sensible regulations here.
| jibe wrote:
| But it is creating real change already? All you have to do is
| ask, apparently. Regulation is coming, but not going to
| complain that companies are preemptively taking action.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/hhs-
| fda-...
| magicalist wrote:
| I'm not going to complain, but real change of what? It's no
| apparent loss, so I'm happy to say "cool", but we know we
| won't even be able to measure any public health benefit of
| what this non-binding, non-regulatory "understanding" is
| going to bring about.
|
| Seems more like some number of food companies are happy to
| go along with something that costs them basically nothing,
| while anything meaningful won't actually be done or is
| actually in the process of being reversed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You should note, that Republicans only decided to go after
| artificial colors _after_ the industry had already solved
| this "problem" for a hundred other countries.
|
| Meanwhile, all this hubbub over "artificial" vs "natural"
| colors is fucking nonsensical. Very very few of the
| "artificial" colors have _some_ evidence of _maybe_ causing
| _some_ harm from chronic exposure. Not that you should have
| chronic exposure to any of these foods in the first place
| since the sugar and fat and salt content alone is unhealthy
| and will cause you significant chronic health problems
| unless you exercise for a couple hours a day.
|
| But it doesn't matter whether a chemical is produced by
| some process in nature or some process in a lab. What
| matters is how the human body reacts to it. Do we have
| tomes of evidence that eating "natural" colors is actually
| safe? No, we do not. Most of them are just GRAS (Generally
| recognized as safe, which is an outright misnomer) and
| therefore have no evidence of any safety other than "We
| used in the 50s so whatever".
|
| Nevermind that "natural" food dyes aren't even! To make
| "natural red #4" involves taking large amounts of carminic
| acid from some bugs and reacting that with aluminum or
| calcium salts. In fact in the US, you can do pretty much
| whatever you want to a naturally sourced chemical and still
| call the product of that chemistry "natural".
|
| Replacing well studied, simple, dyes with less studied dyes
| just because a core part of their chemistry was able to be
| sourced from """Nature""" is utterly stupid and pointless
| and meaningless. What actually matters is replacing
| ingredients that show some toxicity to chronic exposure
| with ingredients that have significant data to show they
| are _not_ chronically toxic. There 's no structural system
| in "natural" dyes to actually do that.
|
| This push will not stop Dupont from extracting curcumin
| from turmeric, massively modifying it to make it easier for
| an industrial process to use without fouling up their
| equipment, accidentally make it cancerous after you eat it
| for 20 years, and poison us all with a "natural" chemical
| for decades.
|
| "Natural" has no structural overlap with "Isn't unhealthy".
| Organic Ricin will kill you just as dead.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| My favorite photo of Trump is him grinning his ass off because
| he forced RFK Jr not to kiss the ring, but to touch a
| cheeseburger. They really do deserve each other.
| toast0 wrote:
| The writing was on the wall for this before RFK Jr got
| installed. He may or may not be putting it over the finish
| line, but things were moving in that direction anyway. In 2023,
| California passed a law banning some additives effective 2027
| [1].
|
| In 2016, Mars pledged to remove artificial dyes from their
| products by 2021 [2]; they didn't do it [3], but they pledged
| to.
|
| [1] https://text.npr.org/2023/10/10/1204839281/california-ban-
| fo...
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190902043853/https://www.mars....
|
| [3]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210204131124/https://www.cspin...
| timewizard wrote:
| > Why did it take an insane person
|
| I think the mark of political insanity is labeling someone
| "insane" simply because you apparently partially disagree with
| them.
|
| > but I give him no credit
|
| So you're not interested in solving the actual problem in favor
| of ensuring your preconceived ideas are never changed?
|
| > instead I blame previous administrations
|
| Yea I can't imagine the type of person they would have been
| pandering to. :|
| klik99 wrote:
| Google AI says: "While the term "insane" is subjective,
| dumping a bear carcass in Central Park is both illegal and
| highly inadvisable."
|
| RFK believes "For decades, the CDC has kept a tight grip on
| the Vaccine Safety Datalink, concealing vital vaccine safety
| information from the public," - IE that CDC has conspired to
| conceal harmful effects of vaccines. If he finds that
| database, I'll gladly sit up and listen. But until he finds
| it I'll consider this a conspiracy theory and, according to
| Psychology Today, belief in conspiracy theories is not
| necessarily associated with mental disorders.
|
| I disagree with a lot of people in the Trump administration,
| but I only use the word insane (in the subjective sense, not
| in the literally diagnosed sense) to describe RFKJr.
|
| I don't give him credit because he comes to his view from a
| lot of dangerous mistrust of science and medicine. I know a
| lot of people at CDC who work on flu vaccines and AIDs
| research, and my step-father was on the team that eradicated
| smallpox. RFKJr has done unimaginable harm to public health
| and is pushing us backwards. The people at CDC genuinely want
| to help people. You can say they've done things wrong,
| overstepped in some way, or have too much research money from
| private industry, and that could be a good discussion. No
| group is perfect, but the answer isn't to destroy it all, or
| think the CDC is part of a conspiracy.
|
| I think food dyes need more research and better understanding
| before deploying to millions of people, that is not the same
| as his anti-science stance. While breaking a lot of things,
| he also happened to do something good, I don't think that
| counts as "solving the actual problem".
|
| And, as far as your last point about previous administrations
| I meant both democrat and republican, but it's been obvious a
| long time that Democrats pandering would cause a backlash.
|
| At any rate, I don't discount peoples ideas as brainwashing
| or preconceived ideas, even people I disagree with. I want
| America to succeed. Trump even did a few things in his first
| term I agreed with. You seem to have a filter to think people
| who don't buy into this "new golden age" are brainwashed or
| tribal. This isn't true. Spend some time considering other
| view points.
| timewizard wrote:
| > RFKJr has done unimaginable harm to public health and is
| pushing us backwards.
|
| Show me the evidence this is true. I believe there's a term
| for people who believe things that haven't been proven.
| Could you ask google AI for me?
| klik99 wrote:
| I doubt you'll agree with any article sources I could
| provide, and for a lot of diseases it doesn't happen
| immediately. Measles is one - 285 cases in 2024, so far
| in 2025 there have been 1214. I'm sure you'll have a
| reason that is unrelated, so not sure what evidence I can
| provide.
|
| Anecdotally, I know people who track flu to create the
| vaccine for next year, basically tracking trends in other
| countries that have leading indicators. People have been
| fired/rehired/fired from these positions across multiple
| rounds. Imagine not knowing if you'll be somewhere next
| week. The instability has caused a lot of people to look
| at other jobs. The smart people have options will leave
| when they think there's a better chance, the dumb ones
| will stay. Public health, which are like the roads - it's
| easy to forget how much work is involved to keep up - is
| going through a brain drain. These are people who are
| doing real work, for everyone, not just people who can't
| afford healthcare.
|
| Since anecdotal stories probably don't sway you, check
| out reddit for public health and see how the actual
| workers: https://www.reddit.com/r/publichealth/
|
| I'm sure none of this will affect your opinion, so can
| you provide hard data that what he is doing is good?
| Flatcircle wrote:
| how did it take this long?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It would cost companies money to change their formula for food
| products and most additives are made by petrochemical companies
| so two industries with very strong lobbies to fight to keep
| them in use.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Lumping all artificial dyes together is a sign the regulations
| RFK Jr. is proposing or implementing are unscientific. These are
| different chemicals, and actual scientific or medical arguments
| would treat them as such.
|
| There's plenty of good discussion possible about which additives
| in food should be regulated more. But making this kind of
| unscientific push is harmful in the end.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Some consumer advocacy groups argue the dyes aren't worth the
| potential risk because they lack nutritional value."
|
| It's the precautionary principle in action. Is it scientific?
| Not really. But does it make rational sense? Possibly.
| avidiax wrote:
| I somewhat support being unscientific in this case.
|
| It's not as though food dyes are being used to make healthy
| foods more palatable. It's quite the opposite, that food
| colorings are used to make processed foods more stimulating,
| which in turn makes non-processed foods less attractive.
|
| I support this in the same way that I'd support an outright
| ban on processed food advertising (especially to children).
| There is a health crisis in the US (and much of the western
| world), with one factor being the prevalence and poor
| nutrition provided by processed foods.
| someonehere wrote:
| It's bizarre, reading people here defending the artificial food
| dyes. Most of these are derived from petroleum. The stuff that
| comes out of the ground and powers your car and lubricates gears.
| It's in your food and you're OK with that?
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