On the campaign trail and during his confirmation hearing, Robert Kennedy Jr. said he would propose removing artificial dyes from the American food supply.
Kennedy, Health and Human Services secretary, and Marty Makary, M.D., administrator of the Food and Drug Administration, are expected to make an announcement on artificial dyes at a news conference Tuesday.
The ban is extremely important and long overdue.
Synthetic dyes are known to trigger or exacerbate behavioral problems in some children. Consumer and health groups have been asking for decades for the removal of these dangerous and unnecessary substances from the food supply.
Food manufacturers can substitute safe natural colors or other ingredients, such as fruit or fruit juices, for dyes.
“The most important thing to know about food dyes is that their only purpose is to make food companies money,” Peter G. Laurie, M.D., president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, said in an email message. “They are purely cosmetic, serving no nutritional function.”
Laurie said food dyes help make ultra-processed foods more attractive, especially to children, often by masking the absence of a colorful ingredient, such as fruit.
My concern is that the food industry will fight any action in the courts and Congress as they have done hundreds of times in the past on any issue that could reduce their profits.
In addition, Laurie said, the FDA needs to close the “generally recognized as safe” loophole that lets food companies determine for themselves which additives are safe to use in food. And, he said, the agency needs to continue its efforts to fix the broken system that allowed these food dyes to linger in the food supply long after it was known they were unsafe.
“But thanks to the brutal staff cuts to FDA imposed by Secretary Kennedy and Elon Musk’s DOGE, it will be harder now for FDA to police other food additives, inspect factories, or perform just about any function than it was four months ago,” Laurie said.
Synthetic dyes in the food supply aren’t needed, and no one will be harmed by their absence.
