Snack Makers Are Removing Fake Colors From Processed Foods

"PepsiCo is launching a new product, Simply Ruffles Hot & Spicy, which uses natural ingredients like tomato powder and red chile pepper instead of artificial dyes," reports Bloomberg. But it's part of a larger trend:In one of the final acts of President Joe Biden's administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Red No. 3, effective in January 2027 for food, one of a handful of synthetic colors that have become something of a symbol of all that is wrong with the American food system and the ultraprocessed foods that dominate it. Putting Red No. 3 aside, the rest of the colors remain legal, and they're used in tens of thousands of supermarket and convenience-store products in the United States, according to NielsenIQ data. The recent campaign against them became one of the pillars of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The criticism follows what health advocates have been saying for years: The synthetic colors add nothing to taste, nutritional value or shelf life but make unhealthy foods more visually appealing. Worst of all, there are concerns that the dyes may be carcinogenic or trigger hyperactivity in some kids. [Ian Puddephat, vice president of research and development for food ingredients at PepsiCo] says PepsiCo is "on a mission to get them out of the portfolio as much as we can"... PepsiCo has a dozen brands, including Simply, that don't have the artificial dyes, and the company is working to pull them out of an additional eight brands in the next year. Other companies are trying too, according to the article. Though Ironically, "the supply chain for colors like a radish's red or annatto's orange is not as robust as that for Red No. 40 or Yellow No. 6." But there's also been some success stories:In 2016, Kraft Heinz Foods Co. announced that it'd made good on an earlier promise to get artificial dyes out of its recipeand apparently, nobody noticed. "We just haven't told that story," says Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Kraft Heinz's CEO. (The lack of artificial dyes is more prominent on the boxes now...) Thanks to long-time Slashdot schwit1 for haring the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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