Until you make a behavior of carefully studying diet labels—or watching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s YouTube channel—you won’t understand simply how a lot tartrazine you’re ingesting. Kennedy, the U.S. well being secretary, is fixated on the chemical, in any other case generally known as Yellow 5. Many People are unknowingly consuming this and different “poisons,” he warned in a YouTube video posted final fall. The lemon-yellow hue tints junk meals equivalent to Skittles and Mountain Dew; it’s additionally in hen bouillon, pancake combine, and pickles. In Europe, merchandise containing Yellow 5 are branded with a label warning that it “could have an adversarial impact on exercise and a spotlight in kids.” However for twenty years, the FDA has declined to ban the dye, citing inconclusive proof.
As we speak, the FDA introduced that it’ll transfer to rid the meals provide of Yellow 5 and several other different artificial meals dyes, equivalent to Crimson 40, Blue 1, and Inexperienced 3, by the top of subsequent yr. It’s not a ban: Kennedy, who oversees the FDA, mentioned in a press convention that he has reached an “understanding” with the meals firms to part out these dyes, though he supplied scant particulars on the specifics. (An HHS spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.)
As we speak’s motion was, in some ways, a win for Kennedy. Democrats have lengthy grumbled that meals firms shouldn’t be foisting on People chemical-laden variations of merchandise equivalent to Doritos and Froot Loops whereas promoting additive-free variations in different international locations. RFK Jr.’s “Make America Wholesome Once more” motion has introduced Republicans onboard too. In October 2023, California turned the primary state to ban a synthetic meals dye, Crimson 3; it has since been joined by West Virginia, which banned seven dyes this March. In 2025, greater than half of the 50 states have launched comparable payments, in some instances particularly shouting out MAHA.
Cracking down on meals dyes is a refreshingly modest, incremental step towards reforming America’s meals system. There may be actual proof that these dyes are dangerous, significantly to kids. A assessment from 2021 discovered that “artificial meals dyes are related to adversarial neurobehavioral results, equivalent to inattentiveness, hyperactivity and restlessness in delicate kids.” Many kids aren’t affected by these consideration issues, to be clear, and it’s additionally tough to pinpoint one dye as worse than one other, as a result of they’re usually studied collectively. However, as opponents to the dyes have argued, subjecting any proportion of children to neurobehavioral points doesn’t appear price having bright-red Skittles.
Shifting away from artificial dyes can be a monumental change for meals firms, however they’ve a motive to cheer for immediately’s information as properly. Since states started taking over the food-dye difficulty in earnest, the trade has complained that differing state legal guidelines for meals dyes would make it tougher to run their companies. In a press release, the Shopper Manufacturers Affiliation, which represents firms equivalent to Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Common Mills, mentioned {that a} “state patchwork of differing legal guidelines creates confusion for shoppers, limits entry to on a regular basis items, deters innovation, and will increase prices on the grocery retailer,” and the group maintained that the components it makes use of “have been rigorously studied following an goal science and risk-based analysis course of and have been demonstrated to be protected.” The trade is definitely glad to listen to that the FDA, at the very least proper now, isn’t implementing a ban for frequent dyes equivalent to Yellow 5. “I consider in love,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary mentioned immediately. “And let’s begin in a pleasant method and see if we will do that with none statutory or regulatory modifications.” He added that meals firms can use pure dyes equivalent to beet, carrot, and watermelon juice to paint their merchandise as a substitute of synthetic dyes.
If Kennedy’s purported understanding with the meals trade falls by way of and corporations balk, Kennedy’s and Makary’s jobs will change into trickier.
The FDA has traditionally taken years to formally ban only a single meals ingredient. It took almost three years to behave on a petition to ban Crimson 3 in meals, even if scientific research confirmed many years in the past that the dye causes most cancers in rats. At the least a few of that slowness is by design. Regulators must doc professional hurt that’s brought on by these merchandise, and that course of can take years. The FDA’s job additionally has change into much more tough in mild of the mass layoffs which have performed out within the early days of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Among the many 89 staffers from the FDA’s meals middle are 9 individuals particularly tasked with reviewing components in meals, in keeping with Jim Jones, a former head of the middle. (He resigned in protest of the layoffs in February.)
Both method, the pace with which the meals trade phases out these dyes shouldn’t be seen because the true measure of simply how profitable RFK Jr. is. Cracking down on meals dyes has change into a serious plank of the MAHA platform, however the chemical substances are nowhere close to the most important obstacle to creating America wholesome once more. The true check can be how Kennedy and his motion offers with way more urgent, and intractable, challenges within the American weight-reduction plan. Even with out artificial dyes in our meals, People will nonetheless overwhelmingly be consuming ultra-processed meals loaded with extra sodium and sugar. This doesn’t appear to be a degree misplaced on Kennedy, who issued a stern warning immediately that “sugar is poison.” And but, he hasn’t articulated any plans to remove the ingredient from our meals. Phasing out meals dyes is simple, at the very least as compared with tackling these larger points. The actual check of the MAHA motion can be not whether or not it may get the purple dye out of Skittles, however whether or not it may persuade People to forgo the Skittles altogether.