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Posted by Nicholas Florko

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/04/food-dye-crackdown-rfk-jr/682548/?utm_source=feed

Unless you make a habit of closely reading nutrition labels—or watching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s YouTube channel—you might not realize just how much tartrazine you’re ingesting. Kennedy, the U.S. health secretary, is fixated on the chemical, otherwise known as Yellow 5. Many Americans are unknowingly eating this and other “poisons,” he warned in a YouTube video posted last fall. The lemon-yellow hue tints junk food such as Skittles and Mountain Dew; it’s also in chicken bouillon, pancake mix, and pickles. In Europe, products containing Yellow 5 are branded with a label warning that it “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” But for two decades, the FDA has declined to ban the dye, citing inconclusive evidence.

Today, the FDA announced that it will move to rid the food supply of Yellow 5 and several other synthetic food dyes, such as Red 40, Blue 1, and Green 3, by the end of next year. It’s not a ban: Kennedy, who oversees the FDA, said in a press conference that he has reached an “understanding” with the food companies to phase out these dyes, although he provided scant details on the specifics. (An HHS spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Today’s action was, in many ways, a win for Kennedy. Democrats have long grumbled that food companies should not be foisting on Americans chemical-laden versions of products such as Doritos and Froot Loops while selling additive-free versions in other countries. RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement has brought Republicans onboard too. In October 2023, California became the first state to ban an artificial food dye, Red 3; it has since been joined by West Virginia, which banned seven dyes this March. In 2025, more than half of the 50 states have introduced similar bills, in some cases specifically shouting out MAHA.

Cracking down on food dyes is a refreshingly modest, incremental step toward reforming America’s food system. There is real evidence that these dyes are harmful, particularly to children. A review from 2021 found that “synthetic food dyes are associated with adverse neurobehavioral effects, such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and restlessness in sensitive children.” Many children aren’t affected by these attention concerns, to be clear, and it’s also difficult to pinpoint one dye as worse than another, because they are often studied together. But, as opponents to the dyes have argued, subjecting any proportion of kids to neurobehavioral issues doesn’t seem worth having bright-red Skittles.

Moving away from synthetic dyes would be a monumental change for food companies, but they have a reason to cheer for today’s news as well. Since states began taking up the food-dye issue in earnest, the industry has complained that differing state laws for food dyes would make it more difficult to run their businesses. In a statement, the Consumer Brands Association, which represents companies such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, and General Mills, said that a “state patchwork of differing laws creates confusion for consumers, limits access to everyday goods, deters innovation, and increases costs at the grocery store,” and the group maintained that the additives it uses “have been rigorously studied following an objective science and risk-based evaluation process and have been demonstrated to be safe.” The industry is surely glad to hear that the FDA, at least right now, is not implementing a ban for common dyes such as Yellow 5. “I believe in love,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said today. “And let’s start in a friendly way and see if we can do this without any statutory or regulatory changes.” He added that food companies can use natural dyes such as beet, carrot, and watermelon juice to color their products instead of artificial dyes.

If Kennedy’s purported understanding with the food industry falls through and companies balk, Kennedy’s and Makary’s jobs will become trickier.

The FDA has historically taken years to formally ban just a single food ingredient. It took nearly three years to act on a petition to ban Red 3 in food, despite the fact that scientific studies showed decades ago that the dye causes cancer in rats. At least some of that slowness is by design. Regulators need to document legitimate harm that is caused by these products, and that process can take years. The FDA’s job also has become even more difficult in light of the mass layoffs that have played out in the early days of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Among the 89 staffers from the FDA’s food center are nine people specifically tasked with reviewing additives in foods, according to Jim Jones, a former head of the center. (He resigned in protest of the layoffs in February.)

Either way, the speed with which the food industry phases out these dyes should not be seen as the true measure of just how successful RFK Jr. is. Cracking down on food dyes has become a major plank of the MAHA platform, but the chemicals are nowhere near the biggest impediment to making America healthy again. The true test will be how Kennedy and his movement deals with much more pressing, and intractable, challenges in the American diet. Even without synthetic dyes in our foods, Americans will still overwhelmingly be eating ultra-processed foods loaded with excess sodium and sugar. This doesn’t seem to be a point lost on Kennedy, who issued a stern warning today that “sugar is poison.” And yet, he hasn’t articulated any plans to eliminate the ingredient from our food. Phasing out food dyes is easy, at least in comparison with tackling these bigger issues. The real test of the MAHA movement will be not whether it can get the red dye out of Skittles, but whether it can persuade Americans to forgo the Skittles altogether.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/04/food-dye-crackdown-rfk-jr/682548/?utm_source=feed