US will ban cancer-linked Red Dye No. 3 in cereal and other foods
(bloomberg.com)418 points by toomuchtodo 3 days ago
418 points by toomuchtodo 3 days ago
It's the same from most things, I wonder why americans are ok with that
mcdonalds fries: https://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/McDonalds-...
fanta: https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/ab2mWVvJ_Tp7.UWQpFd.pQ--/Y...
oats: https://foodbabe.com/app/uploads/2019/02/U.S.-vs.-Uk-quaker-...
chips: https://foodbabe.com/app/uploads/2019/02/U.S.-vs.-Uk-doritos...
I agree with you until you bring foodbabe into this. She’s notorious for hand-picking things that meet the MAHA agenda. For example, the oats argument, yes there is a ton of crap in the ultra processed Quaker oats, but that’s an old recipe. Here’s what they sell at target:
https://www.target.com/p/quaker-fruit-38-cream-instant-oatme...
STRAWBERRIES & CREAM INGREDIENTS: Whole grain oats, sugar, dried strawberries, salt, dried cream, natural flavor, nonfat dry milk, sea salt, dried vegetable juice concentrate (color), tocopherols (to preserve freshness).
There’s not always a one-to-one comparison, and I agree shady companies in the US have free rein over what crap they add to our foods, but this has already been debunked.
It wasn’t debunked, it worked.
They changed the recipe after it received significant attention. Before then the company was happy to use food coloring on Apples to pretend it had strawberries while actually providing strawberries in another country.
The thing is you can’t bring attention to every single product, which is the point of regulations around deceptive packaging.
One ingredient, oats. https://www.quakeroats.com/products/hot-cereals/old-fashione...
I don’t know for sure but it looks like in the image the oh so simple is a different product line. Seemingly similar to all of Lays chips which come in normal and the healthier line.
The McDonald's fries are the exact same ingredients, the FDA just requires more granular specifications which look "scary". Those are the bracketed "sub"-ingredients you see versus just "Vegetable Oil" for the other side.
As to the additional anti-caking ingredient, I can't tell you. No idea if it's omitted from the UK side due to regulatory reasons or it's actually included but has no requirement to be listed, since it's included in a plethora of British foods in the same places that it's used in the US (things like powdered/confectioner's sugar):
https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2020...
Either way, it's not particularly nefarious (despite her scary red highlight added to it).
As an aside, saying this as someone who's tried McDonald's in probably 60+ countries. It's all the same thing (except a few countries in Asia; Korea and Japan notably), especially like for like (Double Cheeseburger for Double Cheeseburger). I have no idea where this "European McDonald's is healthier/better" idea sprang up, outside of European superiority complexes (probably due to the need to self-justify how insanely busy McDonald's are in Europe). Especially in a country who's most famous takeaway item is overgreased fried chicken/fish and fries/chips tossed together in a bag, then covered and shaken in even more salt and condiments; possibly with a handful of cheese tossed on for good measure.
The "scary red" polydimethylsiloxane is in basically everything, and it's inert, non-toxic and non-flammable. It's permitted in the EU as E900. It's an anti-foaming agent used in trace quantities to prevent oil from splattering on the employees.
There were no negative effects on rats at over 2g/kg. [1]
[1] https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2020...
I’m wondering, what are we seeing here? Actual difference in ingredients used, or a difference in regulations requiring listing all ingredients?
Yeah, take the Doritos as an example: the UK bag lists "Cheese Powder", the US bag lists "Cheddar Cheese" with sub-ingredients in parentheses (plus Whey and Skim Milk).
What is in the UK Doritos' "Cool Original Flavour" (read: Ranch) ingredient? Maybe something like Tomato Powder, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Buttermilk, Natural and Artificial Flavors?
Food Babe is a terrible source with an agenda. If you actually look at the safety profile of the things involved the differences are minimal. The real risk comes from all the sugar and simple carbs in both.
- The fry ingredients are exactly the same, the US just requires more granular labelling. PDMS is used in oils in Europe too. Maybe in McDonalds oil maybe not, unclear. It's authorized for use in the EU as E900, and it is inert, non-toxic and non-flammable. It's added to stop the fryer oil from spraying on the employees.
- Both Fantas are bad.
- The oats are comparing two different products. 1/4 the label in the US is mandatory breakdowns not required in the UK. 1/4 of the label is the "creaming agent" (starch, whey protein, casein protein, some oil -- nothing a bodybuilder wouldn't consume) and 1/4 is the added vitamins and minerals not present on the UK label. The only meaningful difference appears to be using strawberry-flavored apple chunks. Does it make a difference? Probably none.
- The doritos in the UK list an ingredient that's just "Cool Original Flavour" lmao that FB somehow decides not to highlight. The US requires a breakdown of the components of said "flavor." And the use of annatto vs FD&C dyes which there's really very little conclusive evidence one way or the other. But fine, I guess we can stop using Azo dyes.
The real question is: does swapping Azo dyes for anatto make Doritos measurably healthier or is the problem that you are eating Doritos.
As an oatmeal connoisseur, I'd be remiss not to point out that the two oatmeal products being compared there are not the same. The American product is specifically "Strawberries and Cream," which looks like it was deliberately picked because it adds a few extra scary-looking ingredients from the creaming agent; whereas the UK product is just "Heaps of Fruit," sans cream.
The UK product contains freeze dried strawberries and raspberries. The USA market "strawberries and cream" contains no strawberry, instead it has freeze dried apple dyed red with added strawberry flavor.
I don't believe natural is inherently good nor artificial inherently bad but the USA product is objectively lower quality. IMHO it is cheaply made crap to fool people that do not read the ingredients.
Here's the American version of "heaps of fruit," "fruit fusion."
https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/quaker-oats-instant-oatmea...
Ingredients
Whole grain oats,sugar,dried raspberries,dried strawberries,natural flavor,tricalcium phosphate,salt,beet juice concentrate (color),iron,vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol).
The American version is identical to the UK version until "natural flavor." The US version then adds some vitamins plus tricalcium phosphate, salt, and beet juice concentrate. The only "scary" ingredient is tricalcium phosphate, which appears to be an anti-caking agent.
Edit: on Quaker's website
https://www.quakeroats.com/products/hot-cereals/instant-oatm...
It says "Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of phosphorus that also provides the essential mineral calcium." Which is actually what I suspected, it's another added vitamin that has the benefit of also being an anti caking agent.
I find this particularly interesting because it is due to market conditions, not legislation, that many Canadian foods have switched to colors from natural ingredients.
These companies appear to believe that Canadians prefer fewer artificial ingredients, and that Americans don't seem to care. Very curious.
It is happening, albeit slowly, here in the USA as well. Trader Joe’s generally has no added artificial dyes, fruit by the foot now is naturally colored, Whole Foods of course, and Wegmans bakery products.
Its just that there still are so many products you don’t expect- marshmallows with blue dye to make them more “bright white”, candies/sprinkles, any children’s medicine in syrup form (although you can now get some in dye free form finally)
I don't think Froot Loops ever used red 3. They use red 40.
I wouldn't consider Froot Loops a health food, but the Canadian version have all natural flavour and colour-
"Concentrated carrot juice (for colour), Anthocyanin, Annatto, Turmeric, Natural flavour, Concentrated watermelon juice (for colour), Concentrated blueberry juice (for colour), Concentrated huito juice (for colour)" etc
From their ingredients.
Another item is sprayed for coloring is ORANGES (Citrus Red No. 2 is the color)
https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
Hot Cheetos, outside the US and parts of LATAM, aren't red:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDOFPuy33m4
It's kinda jarring having grown up with that association.
Those companies ought to be sued. They know that their die is cancer-linked and they still use it in the US even though they don't do it in Canada/EU.
We, as humanity, should sue all this big companies (nestle, coca-cola, etc.) for poisoning our lives for profit.
I looked into it, and from what I can tell the only link to cancer they've found so far is in male rats exposed to high levels of it, but they haven't found evidence that it causes cancer in humans or other animals.
What's odd to me is that it's still fine to sell food like bacon, where the link to cancer in humans appears to be much, much stronger.
…or cigarettes, which are available for sale everywhere.
If unhealthy foods are to be banned, we must also ban cigarettes and alcohol. If we are to let people be bodybuilders, or body destroyers, then all of these things should be available for purchase.
Ultimately it is a special kind of arrogance to tell people what they are or are not allowed to do to the one thing they unambiguously own and control: their own body.
Ok, well then, I’m sure no Americans are eating high levels of foods that contain dyes. So, surely there are long term 20 year plus studies on cumulative effects, right?
in the US, priority #1 is fiduciary duty to shareholders. if customers are buying, and we make it more expensive to make, then shareholders will be mad!
Azo dyes, in the quantities used in food, do not cause cancer. What causes diabetes and cancer is obesity which you're likely getting from consuming the food -- dyed naturally or artificially. The dye is ancillary. People need to eat less of the Doritos, the azo dyes aren't the problem.
The credibility of the food industry is so low that I think people would support bans on most additives on general principle. We look back at things like putting lead and radium in paint or using asbestos in insulation and say "they should have known better, how could they be so stupid". Well, good additives have a lengthy history of containing harmful additives and I think future generations will say the same about many of these currently in use. What's interesting is that from our current time we can see just how easily it happens, even with the amount of information available to average person.
I realized a long time ago that lack of information isn’t the problem. We’re basically living in a Brave New World now; most people are too distracted to realize they’re being poisoned and would only accept it if the very institutions doing it told them they were doing it. But IMO it’s more of an emotional thing - once you realize it it’s hard to go back to the comfy world of “actually the bureaucrats and shareholders are looking out for my well-being”.
> We look back at things like putting lead and radium in paint or using asbestos in insulation and say "they should have known better, how could they be so stupid"
The main thing is: they did know better. They lied to us. They spent a lot of time, money, and effort to lie to us.
And this has happened time and time again in many different industries. Just the other day there was a story on the HN front-page about the PFAS industry has been copying the tobacco playbook for in disinformation campaign.
Also on other topics. For example canned tuna with "Dolphin friendly" logos. Looks good, right? And then people look into it to see what it means, and turns out it has no value, is something the company simply invented themselves, and has done zero-effort to make anything more "dolphin friendly". The entire thing is a basically just a lie.
Many additives are probably entirely safe. Things like vitamin C and caramel are "an E number", and those are fine. But I sure don't trust things, and I don't have the resources to see what is and isn't safe myself, so best to just avoid most of it.
What gets tracked gets improved. I think we need to update the ingredient requirements for food (wtf is seasoning) but also update the fields on Nutritional Facts.
Having a drink like Oreo Coca-Cola read 0’s down the board is illustrative of my point. There’s lots of crap in our food but it’s been selected specifically for its ability to not be captured in the dozen or so categories deemed important back when legislation passed on food transparency.
Relevant news story from a few years ago in the UK, where a bakery was using US sprinkles on cakes, that aren't legal to use in the UK, due to Red #3 :
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046348573/sprinklegate-sinks...
A moment's silence for the baker's daughter who couldn't go to Disneyland because of this regulatory overreach:
"British sprinkles just aren't the same, they're totally s*** and I hate them."
"I am extremely passionate about sprinkles."
Honestly hilarious. I feel his pain.
My goodness, for a website full of techincal individuals a lot of you are falling for the appeal to nature fallacy hard. Also, it looks like no one here knows how to defer to experts. I don't know much about food safety standards, chemical compositions, additives, etc. so I've talked with people who are experts instead. And from what I have gotten, most people are freaking out because they lack an understanding of what is really safe or not. People believe that since a certain scary sounding chemical was added that the food is now less safe when that's not the case.
> appeal to nature fallacy
Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy, it is a rhetorical device and can be a completely logical razor.
The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. If we want a yellow food dye should we:
A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
Who the hell would take B? Unless we believe that our studies are infallible, all encompassing and perfectly established and executed the first will always be a better option. Time and time again we see that things previously thought safe are not but I would argue it is far far rarer to see that on the more naturally derived side of food.
>derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years
This one stands out to me because, as they say, “the dose makes the poison”. Taking some trace element from something “natural” and highly concentrating it is basically as novel as something new. Consuming a gram of something over a lifetime is different than consuming a gram of something every day.
Also, eating something for hundreds of thousands of years only means that most people will live several decades while eating it. It doesn’t mean people won’t be killed by it. It doesn’t mean people wont get cancer from it in 30-40 years. Killing 1% of the people that eat something would be a perfectly acceptable evolutionary loss, depending on the amount of nutrition and calories provided.
That’s why it is an appeal to nature fallacy. Because it says absolutely nothing about population level long term health effects.
> doesn’t mean people won’t be killed by it. It doesn’t mean people wont get cancer from it in 30-40 years. Killing 1% of the people that eat something would be a perfectly acceptable evolutionary loss
But it would be an evolutionary loss, unlike a synthetic compound that has been equally as well studied scientifically - this odds on would make the natural compound safer to consume… not sure why this is so complicated to understand
> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past.
Okay, where in the evolutionary past did we eat Doritos colored with annatto?
> A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
A lot of things we have historically eaten are carcinogenic. Natural flavoring for root beer is flavored with sarsaparilla root. Fun fact, it contains safrole, a known carcinogen.
Carrots, bananas, parsley, black pepper, clove, anise contain alkenylbenzene compounds which cause cancer in rodents.
We've historically eaten coumarin-containing plants (tonka beans, cassia) -- carcinogenic.
Furoanocoumarins in parsnips, celery root, grapefruit, etc, can cause skin burns and prevent many drugs from working (or make them work too fast).
Cassava, sorghum, stone fruits, bamboo shoots and almonds contain cyanogenic glycosides which turn into cyanide when eaten.
Undercooked beans contain lectins, and 4-5 kidney beans are enough to cause somachache, vomiting and diarrhea.
Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants) contain solanine which is toxic.
Various fruits like pineapples have raphides which are sharp spikes made of oxalic acid. If you eat particularly aggressive ones they can even cause bleeding.
The pawpaw fruit that has been eaten for generations contains annonacin, a neurotoxin.
People have been eating (prepared) mushrooms like gyromitra that have gyromitrin (metabolized to monomethylhydrazine, rocket fuel, a neurotoxin) for generations too. It can actually cause ALS over time.
Castor beans contain ricin.
The difference is apparently God doesn't have to publish this information on an ingredients list.
> B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
"A couple studies" is wildly disingenuous. A quick search will tell you as much.
> Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy
It most certainly is.
> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past.
Our evolutionary past is full of death and disease from what we ate. Humans have been drinking alcohol for centuries and there is strong scientific consensus that it causes cancer. Just because it's what humans have been doing doesn't mean it is safe and we should continue it.
> A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
> B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
You say "derive it from petroleum" like they pump it directly from the well into your food. Petroleum is composed of hydrocarbons, it's very useful and is used in a lot of different applications. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it is dangerous.
If it's a fallacy then it's one I plan to keep falling for because it's useful.
No one inhales six apples in a sitting but I sure have eaten 200g of chocolate in an hour before.
It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible. Even if fruit loops were as healthy as an apple the apple still wins because the fruit loops are deliberately engineered to encourage you to eat more of them.
> No one inhales six apples in a sitting
If hard ciders count then I sure have.
> It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible.
I'm not saying that fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other foods you get from nature aren't healthy, of course they are. The fallacy is to say that because it's natural it's inherently better then an artificial or synthetic counterpart. Instead of worrying about if the food dye in your fruit loops uses red bell peppers or is synthetically extracted from petroleum, how about we worry about people consuming too much ultra-processed, high calorie, and low nutrional foods. That will make a greater impact on the general populations health here in America. Banning additives and food dyes won't stop people from eating 2000 calories of fried oreos.
I think an important note is that regulatory agencies in other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects.
I mentioned this in another comment, but as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two. Much easier to eat foods made of whole ingredients where I lived in Europe - even many prepackaged foods that we’d buy at the grocery store.
I came across this link yesterday[1] on a health-focused HN thread[2]. The study split a group of overweight people up into low-carb and low-fat diets, to see which produced better weight loss. The group that lost the most weight was actually neither - it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus...
> other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects
Just because another country bans something does not make that thing harmful. Politicians banning food products and additives with no real scientific evidence is not unusual. They bend to public will, they are politicians after all. Also, studies that show "possible evidence of negative affects" in mice ingested at higher dosages then a human would ever eat or drink does not show they are harmful in humans. Humans are not mice after all.
> as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two
This is purely subjective, I've been to Europe and the Middle East, both have great food. But food in America is no worse in quality. The main difference is when I visited those area's I mostly ate out, at nicer restaurants where food would of course feel/taste/look better then the average meal at home or from fast food. But when eating at friends homes, the food quality (vegetables, fruits, meats) was no different than what I could get here in America.
> it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods
I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
> I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
But the prevalence of the above ingredients serves to increase consumption of processed foods relative to whole foods, both by increasing “addictiveness” aka how much people eat, and by decreasing its cost. HFCS is the best example of this, having heightened addictive properties via increased satiety suppression and dopamine response compared to other sugars, while being heavily subsidized to the point that final prices see a 15% reduction. As a result, HFCS is added to many products it has no business being in, because it increases sales (and so consumption, of processed foods).
Have you considered that those experts might have perverse incentives? It’s not a secret that the very regulators whose job it is to make sure we don’t eat poison are the same people who sell the food. But sure feel free to “trust the experts”, I’ll be over here doing my best to not eat things made out of coal tar (even if someone in a lab coat says it’s okie dokie).
Every single thing in our society has perverse incentives. Every single person who ever sells you something has incentive to sell you as little as possible for as much money as possible. Every single employer has incentive to pay you as little as possible for as much labor as possible. But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play.
People who worked their entire life in an industry and became experts on it, then become regulators for the same industry, have incentives to favor their industry, sure. But who else should be regulating the industry if not the expert in that industry? If you get someone who is not an insider, wouldn't they just fail at regulating, because they have no idea how it works? Also, the people who put someone in that position, isn't there a chain of accountability there? There are many people working side by side with the "evil person trying to enrich themselves". Bad acts come out. Incentives tend to balance each other out. It's not wrong that part of a regulator's job is to find a balance as to not destroy an industry while regulating it.
> But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play.
Is it really not how things end up happening? We must be living in two different realities. The greater the power, the higher the likelihood it becomes corrupted. With such a high incentive to give into corruption, you can’t just hand-wave it away with “but I’m sure it gets balanced out by something”. Your local family doctor might be a good enough person to help you get better without expensive drugs, but the head of a large institution? Fat chance.
Oh come off it. The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the WORLD (excluding some small Pacific islands). The US also has some of the most overengineered food. It doesn't take much to see the connection.
We are well past the point of carefully reasoning about food. It is time to start killing off additives first and asking questions later. "Freaking out" is the reasonable stance when everything in the grocery store is poison.
You are blaming the wrong thing though. America isn't obese because of red dye 40 or food additives, it's obese because Americans eat too much ultra processed foods that are high in calories and low in nutritional value. Along with minimal exercise and walking.
Banning red dye 40 isn't going to solve anything, companies are just going to find another food dye, natural or synthetic. There needs to be major changes in the average American diet to incorporate more whole foods, fiber, vegetables, fruits, etc... Once that is done then take a harder look at the dyes and additives.
The issue isn't that it's a health risk directly, it's just the result of some very reasonable principals. The "Delaney Clause" in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is why it's getting banned. If something is known to cause cancer in animals, and it isn't necessary for the production of the food, then it shouldn't be included.
This is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle to things already associated with harm. Since we can't know all the goods or harms that can come from a substance, if something is known to cause potential harm and it's unnecessary, then we shouldn't consume it. The human body is an absurdly complex multi-variate system, and throwing a bunch of unnecessary random shit at it not a great idea in general, but is generally reasonable when we don't know whether it's producing harms or benefits or neither. However, when we know these additives can produce harms, and it is wildly impractical to do repeated, controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes on humans, all at various levels of exposure. So, since the substances are entirely unnecessary we might as well just avoid them unless they are essential to creating products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_19...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmet...
As a benzene-handling professional for decades who never intends to cease entering environments subject to exposure, I've never considered intentionally ingesting non-food ingredients or contamination to be the least bit safe. Especially dyes and pesticides, if you study the chemistry of these you can see that very good characterization and identification of complex, unique, undesired impurities has not really been very comprehensive at all. Beside the possibility that the dye molecule itself may be the most toxic component anyway.
With industrial hazards there is at least one layer of PPE, and I can do anything I see fit to further mitigate exposure in any way.
I don't even know which dye is in things like Flamin Hot pop culture materials, but they sure look fake to me. And if the only PPE between me and the potentially-hazardous substance is the bag that the Cheetos come in, I'm always going to be highly dismayed when the integrity of the PPE is compromised for any reason :)
As non-food ingredients have proliferated over the decades, all I can say is why even bother?
Give me a break, they couldn't have used very good strawberries if they had to make them pink artificially.
I am a lifelong science dude myself, studied dyes quite a bit and even synthesized some in the lab. So on this I trust the judgment of young mothers who are avoiding junk food for their kids more so than other scientists who propose that dyes are completely harmless for some reason.
I also talked with people who are experts, and they assured me banning Red Dye 3, among other things, is necessary and it will improve population health in the long term.
See, I can also make shit up.
Sure, that would be interesting to see. Point me to the experts :)
Or, maybe some of us have lived experience where artificial food dyes have detrimental effects to our children. I don't need science to tell me what my own two eyes and lived experience says. Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush?
My sibling comment goes into more detail, but claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.
> Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush?
TBH this sounds like exactly the kind of things double blind studies are invented for.
Ok - here’s one. https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2007/09/hyperactivity-in-...
But even if there were none that showed a link, I should just continue to feed my child something that would cause adverse reactions?
What’s crazy to me is … we are talking about a totally unnecessary food additive. It’s not like I’m arguing against some critical public health intervention to prevent a deadly virus. It’s a dye to make food turn a color.
Someone with one (1) anecdote is not an authority and shouldn't be trusted like one. Eroding trust in authorities by equating actual experts with somebody who has a half baked opinion based on an anecdote seems like the real issue to me.
Going around and assuming every opinion is based on objective reality instead of subjective experience filtered through human perception with all it's quirks is not a good way to arrive at truth.
I'm not asking to be treated or trusted like an authority. I'm just asking not to treat people, when sharing a lived experience shared with others (making this n>1), is told that their experience is "half baked". My lived experience is by definition my objective reality.
Arguing with me that I could not possibly have experienced a cause and effect because some people didn't hold enough large enough placebo controlled double blind studies (I say this because double blind studies have studied this exact phenomenon, and triggered the retraction of some of these dyes in other countries) is just insulting after a while.
We know so little about nutrition and how different individuals process different nutrients that the scientific consensus on healthy food habits, weight loss, etc have shifted dramatically over the years. We are facing an obesity epidemic in the US. A little humility would be nice in the face of what clearly is not working for the majority of the population.
I mean, it's just food dye for God's sake, what's the "scientific" argument that foods must contain artificial colors?
For anyone wondering why it takes so long to actually switch this stuff out, and the available alternatives to Red 3, I thought this piece from a food dyes company (no relation) was fascinating: https://na.sensientfoodcolors.com/confection/replacing-red-3...
You have to figure that if these guys had a drop-in replacement, they'd be offering it for sale at a high price, so this probably is the best you can do. The process changes and requalification looks like no fun at all. But it also looks pretty doable for a company in this line of business, so maybe you won't see too many color changes on the shelf with this ban.
> For anyone wondering why it takes so long to actually switch this stuff out
One counterpoint is do we really NEED to have brightly colored foods? It's a hard problem if you need a food to be bright red. But, that has to boil down to strictly to improving sales, right? Hypothetically, if all the artificial food dyes were banned, then all food companies would be on the same level playing field.
Color is definitely something that catches a person's eye, so if you have a "food product" that needs extra to convince someone to buy it, color is a way to do it. You can't taste it before purchasing. You can see and smell it, so they push those levers as much as they can.
So in other words: no, we don't need it, particularly since people need to consume less ultraprocessed foods, not more.
Visuals have a pretty big impact on food. I wonder how many foods would just look disgusting without any food dyes. Reminds me of butter companies trying to pass legislation to make margerine companies unable to dye their product to look like butter
Thanks, that article was fascinating. I wasn't aware of how complex swapping it out could be, its continued use makes a lot more sense now.
I'm very curious on what's going to happen with cocktail cherries - I believe they use Red #3 (it's one of the only permitted uses in the UK).
There are a bunch of no-artificial-dye candies and whatnot on the market already, and they actually look better to me - they're not absurd unnatural colors.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-00830.pdf
Related:
FDA weighing ban on red dye No. 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42542951 - Dec 2024
FDA may ban artificial red dye from beverages, candy and other foods - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42382676 - Dec 2024
US Food and Drug Administration moves to ban red food dye - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352983 - Dec 2024
The data and puzzling history behind California's new red food dye ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857175 - Oct 2023
California becomes first US state to ban 4 potentially harmful chemicals in food - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37838521 - Oct 2023
Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
Only if they actually cause cancer. The FDA's statement (https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-...) says:
> The way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans. Relevant exposure levels to FD&C Red No. 3 for humans are typically much lower than those that cause the effects shown in male rats. Studies in other animals and in humans did not show these effects; 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.
if "these sort of things" aren't actually harmful, and what we see in Europe is mostly governments reacting to unscientific panic among their citizens, then I'd say it's other countries that are wild, not the United States.
The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume. This is a much better heuristic than "we haven't found any adverse effects yet, so call it GRAS". Science is great at determining the presence of specific effects. It's not so good at finding an absence of effect.
> The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume.
I mean, that's just not true. Fruit Loops are sold in Europe as well (albeit with slightly different colors), and there's no hoof or plant that produces anything that looks like Fruit Loops. Food coloring is a worldwide phenomenon.
I think I care about more than cancer. What if I cared about genetic defects, ADHD, mental health, water contamination, obesity…
Maybe if the dye served ANY purpose besides getting people to eat more of it, I could find a bit of care to not remove it from foods.
Well, if you read the quote in my comment (or clicked on the source link I included), you would see that the FDA evaluated it for health risks all-up, not just cancer.
Your comment violates the following hacker news guideline:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for the full set.
> behind
Is it really a competition to see who can ban the most things? What's the prize if you win?
So the US is winning considering they allow less food dyes?
Source? The last time I checked the FDA bans more food dyes than most other countries.
Go to Italy or France, or any EU state. The food is better and often cheaper in almost every case.
Even a McDonald's hamburger is good, and not dominated by the fake chemical garlic substitute. In the US, McDonald's french fries contain: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients.
In Italy, the ingredients are: Potato, Oil, Salt.
I hate to break it to you, but a lot of that difference comes down to labeling and disclosure requirements. If the Italian fries don't even have to disclose what type of oil they use, they probably also don't have to disclose the oil stabilizers and seasonings they use.
Let's not forget that Europe had massive epidemic of horse meat being snuck into the supply chain with no one catching on.
I think your cultural palate is showing. The marketing of a few simple ingredients sounds good except it's not like American McDonalds is putting them in for no reason. You can make the case that fillers are used to cut cost but for french fries all that stuff costs extra. To Americans that shit tastes great.
* The beef flavor is mimicking frying in beef tallow. If you use Marmite in your brown gravy you're using the same trick.
* Americans, being flushed with corn and corn syrup which is sweeter than granulated sugar, developed a sweeter tooth than other places which is why the dextrose.
* Potatoes once cut and exposed to air get that gross dark color. Most home cooks usually solve that by keeping them submerged in water until frying but Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate works the same.
This is CLEARLY due to less strict labelling. I mean they just say "oil", what kind of oil?!?!
Not sure on food dyes but my understanding is the FDA is leagues behind the EU on regulation when it comes to food.
My experience in Italy with foods that normally cause some issues (dairy/cheese) really opened my eyes to that. My sister who doesn’t eat cheese/dairy at all here in the US was able to eat it there without issue because of how they process dairy over there or something.
It is more complicated than this, the US has much more rigorous food safety standards in a number of dimensions.
For example, the US has much stricter standards for preventing bacterial contamination than Europe, outside of the Nordics which share similar food safety regulations as the US. The US prohibits a lot of food importation from Europe because of lower food safety standards related to contamination.
Europe makes a lot of food safety exceptions on the basis of a process being "traditional" in some sense, nominally preserving culture. The US is a bit more technocratic less prone to the naturalistic fallacy; the FDA doesn't care that something is cultural or traditional, if there is scientific evidence of material risk then it will be banned.
If I had to summarize their food safety perspectives, the EU tends to focus more on allowable ingredients, the US tends to focus more on the uncontaminated and sterile handling of the food supply chain.
There are some differences between dairy in the US and elsewhere. US dairy cows produce milk containing A1 beta-casein, a protein that some studies suggest may cause digestive discomfort. In Europe, cows often produce A2 beta-casein milk, which some people find easier to digest.
Dairy products in the US tend to contain more lactose, and French/Italian dairy products have less due to the prevalence of aged cheeses and fermentation.
There are many other differences, and none of these seem related to some sort of mystery-makes-you-shit-yourself additive.
A2 is starting to be a thing in the US.
<selfpromotion>We sell uncolored raw milk cheddar cheese made with A2 milk, if someone has an issue with cheese in the US give ours a try!</selfpromotion>
Sure the US is ahead of the EU. The EU allows 11 [1] synthetic food dyes while the US only allows 9 [2]
[1] https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...
Because people have done it before and we have something named the internet
https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations...
https://eatwell.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2024-08/foods-us...
At least one proposed solution I’ve seen is to split the FDA, because regulating food is almost nothing like regulating drugs in 2025.
We already have the FDA (most foods and drugs), the USDA (produce, animal products besides milk), and TTB (alcohol). Each one sets its own safety and labeling standards, which is why, for example, mixed drinks containing alcohol don't have to list allergens(!). Another level of fragmentation would be a disaster IMO. We could split the FDA, but we'd need to merge the food regulator half into one of those other existing agencies.
To be honest, I could see an argument for separating the handling of raw agricultural product from the rest of the food system. The health effects of Oreos vs. making sure our eggs don’t have bird flu are quite different regulatory concerns.
Bans add a lot of overhead to both the agencies responsible for enforcing them and industry. Those agencies are only so large and are spread thin, sometimes there are 'bigger fish' they need to focus on.
I can understand waiting until there's sufficient evidence before starting that process.
A lot of other countries do not have the shear mass of industries and services that the US does.
Lots of other countries other than the US banned this dye years ago. So what changed in the US? Logically speaking we didn't just come to our collective senses. Did government lobbying budgets dry up? Or did the cost just increase where it wasn't worth paying anymore?
Technically it appears red dye no 3 was banned due to cancer and Delaney clause, however, keep in mind that I think the primary reason it was banned in California last year was all the studies correlating it to deleterious cognitive impacts on children
https://www.additudemag.com/red-dye-3-ban-adhd-news/amp/
https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/view/potential-impact...
For comparison:
> The European Food Safety Authority only allows erythrosine in processed cherries and pet foods.
What other things does the US need to ban to catch up with Europe? Who is "right vs wrong" here? Is Europe wrong for having too many things banned, is US wrong for not having parity with what is banned in Europe?
Is Europe being overly cautious, is America being unsafe?
Admittedly to a fault, I tend to be quick to trust institutions and don't tend to be quick to believe conspiracies (not claiming that this is). With most of the additives to products that people seem to be worried about, I default to thinking it's not the most important thing I need to be concerned with in my daily life.
But the FDA making this ruling is validating for my friends who seem to go way out of their way to find product ingredients to be afraid of. I know people have been claiming for years that Red3 being allowed in the US is crazy.
I'm genuinely here to listen: how would someone who believes that the US allows far too many dangerous ingredients in consumer goods and believes the consumer needs to actively screen and research what is in their products convince me that I need to be more serious about screening the products I use for dangerous ingredients?
I remember the concern about and ban of Red No. 2 when I was a kid. I've always been a little suspicous of colored food since then.
2027 feels like a generous timeline for something identified as harmful...
For anyone that pushes back on the government currently elected, well, far from optimal imagine that so many before them allowed a cancerous substance like this to be in so many foods
I assume all the really colorful ones, including froot loops. None / less of the organic ones.
They’re considerably more expensive and their kids prefer the others?
Look, there are plenty of things in our diets that won’t cause harm in small amounts just because a large amount causes harm to a rat. Some people (somewhat rationally) extended that to food dyes and additives.
If you or I want to choose differently that’s great, but denigrating people who don’t make the same choices you do is condescending and unhelpful.
> My kids won't eat the healthy cereal so for me the number one reason is taste.
This is one of those things where "taste" is basically sweetness. I used to love cereal. Ate bowls of it all the time. I've been on a basic oatmeal with blueberries kick for the last couple years, though, and whenever I try cereals I used to like again I'm disgusted by how sweet they are. You really can only taste sweetness. Kids love that sweetness, though, and brands are extremely focused on marketing candy to children as "healthy" breakfast staples. Lots of kids think stuff tastes bad because it doesn't taste like candy.
The price of "organic" cereals is an issue though.
Drastically more expensive. This adds up way too high for most people who make average income. I do think its also lack of information.
Edit:
The only people I've ever heard of whining about cereals having bad ingredients are the people everyone calls conspiracy nuts, this is my issue with calling things "conspiracy theories" and dismissing people, when someone brings forth valid information, you miss out because you're blindly dismissing them based on bias not fact.
Great, now ban Red 40 and the other synthetic dyes. You can't avoid them in anything marketed toward children. I have children and I know others who also have children that are highly sensitive to these dyes, causing major behavioral issues that last for 5-7 days after ingesting food/medicine/drinks that contain these dyes.
There is growing evidence that Red 40 causes IBD: https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2023/02/can-red-fo...
Never been asked to participate in one. I am a huge proponent of the scientific method. This argument always interests me, though. (by the way, just a quick search on pubmed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/; https://www.cspinet.org/page/synthetic-food-dyes-health-risk... the EU bans some of these synthetic dyes: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours). Also reference the famous "Southampton six" study in 2007 which triggered evaluation of food dyes across Europe: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
As a parent, if I notice a correlation between an action and subsequent behavior, are you saying that my lived experience is irrelevant because... nobody bothered to include me in a specific double blind study? How many things do you do every day that have not been studied through exhaustive scientific research?
From my own lived experience, when one of my my kids eats a red velvet cake or a bag of Skittles or M&Ms that he's violent and crazy for a week, but if he has a few Oreos he's fine. If one of my other kids does the same thing, she doesn't have the same reaction. If I knew the exact chemical pathway that made this happen, I'd be thrilled. I am just living my life trying to parent kids in this world, and you know what, stupid bright dyes that do nothing other than make food appear unnaturally incandescent are practically impossible to avoid. So it's just one more thing that's piled on as a parent that you have to deal with.
If you ask me, this aggressive "well, you're stupid and you shouldn't trust your own eyes because science" attitude that has triggered the strong anti-authority sentiments globally. It's why objectively crazy people like RFK Jr get huge followings- I vehemently disagree with 99% of his rhetoric, especially his anti-vax viewpoints, but I totally agree with his stance on food additives such as these synthetic dyes.
I see the effects with my own eyes. Telling me I'm stupid doesn't help science, it just serves to further diminish the trust in the very institutions we need more now than ever.
The EU allows 11 [1] synthetic food dyes while the US only allows 9 [2]
[1] https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...
> As a parent, if I notice a correlation between an action and subsequent behavior, are you saying that my lived experience is irrelevant because... nobody bothered to include me in a specific double blind study? How many things do you do every day that have not been studied through exhaustive scientific research?
"Noticing a correlation" could very well just be confirmation bias. For decades, parents thought that giving kids sugar made them more energetic, but the scientific consensus is that there is no link between the two.
A comment by redserk in another thread might be enlightening to you, as someone else made the same uninformed remark:
"Incorrect.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-00830.pdf
Scroll down to "I. Introduction".
> In the Federal Register of February 17, 2023 (88 FR 10245), we announced that we filed a color additive petition (CAP 3C0323) jointly submitted by
RFK was not the HHS nominee in February 2023.
But it appears this process has been going even earlier than that: November 15, 2022 [0]
[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/17/2023-03..."
I remain sceptical about the influence RFK has in this administration anyway, in comparison with corporate interests. Why would this time be any better than the previous Trump administration?
Might as well get some credit for the one or two good ideas he has before the antivaccine rhetoric begins and measles/mumps/whooping cough kills a few tens of thousands of people and the GQP goes "oops" and fires him and puts the old policies back in place.
The Biden admin is trying to take the few sane things the incoming Trump administration wants to do and do them first which has been funny to watch.
I think that Trump doesn't care one way or another about food coloring or Americans getting cancer, and as such his administration will likely leave such things alone and untouched for the most part unless the food lobby asks him to cancel or defund the FDA for campaign contributions or similar.
Harris blatantly copying the No Tax on Tips was particularly funny this election season. You could see on her face that she didn’t believe in it at all.
And you think that her political opponent did? His only goals seem to be either enriching himself or his donors.
The comparison between American and Canadian Froot Loop cereal is illuminating:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/uc265y/a...