[fabian2k]

How many artificial food dyes have been actually banned? I mean in the time where we actually had some regulations, the old days were quite wild in terms of safety in all areas, so I don't think that would be a useful comparison.

[Retric]

I don’t recall the exact number, but well over half that have been in common use were eventually banned.

Edit Prior to this administration: Butter yellow, Green 1, Green 2, Orange 1, Orange 2, Orange B, Red 1, Red 2, Red 4, Red 32, Sudan 1, Violet 1, Yellow 1, Yellow 2, Yellow 3, Yellow 4 + some more in the really early days.

EU had a longer list including Titanium dioxide.

[greygoo222]

Titanium dioxide is naturally occurring.

[Retric]

The poster was using the phrase natural dye.

It’s a naturally occurring non organic molecule, but it’s not naturally a white pigment. It takes a lot of processing to get that brilliant white powder and as such it’s not something our ancestors dealt with.

[hollerith]

It is not naturally occurring in the human diet.

[halJordan]

This is the same argument people use against bread, and against meat.

[hollerith]

Huh? Our ancestors have been eating meat for 2 million years. We know because bones do not biodegrade so we've found many prehistoric bones with tool marks left when prehistoric people cut the meat off the bone.

[Incipient]

So is arsenic.

[dlivingston]

Totally off-topic, but your comment reminded me of some lyrics to a song by one of my favorite folk singers [0]:

  [Weed is] jus' a plant
  Like poppies and sugar cane
  Coca and some science make some good cocaine

[0]: https://youtu.be/ixE73z_a37U

[pfexec]

I'm in awe at the number of people that will go to bat for things like artificial dyes in food, only because the policy is coming from the present administration. It's just common sense. We don't need to be ingesting this shit. It's cosmetic and not needed for nutrition. Why are you feeding your child Fruit Loops and not Cheerios?

I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial dyes. We can sit here and snipe and play semantics and argue over pointless details but why bother? Just get rid of them all.

[fabian2k]

I want these decisions to be bases on scientific and medical data, not on gut feeling or unfounded personal belief. I have no issue with regulating specific dyes or additives in food, or groups of related chemicals.

And your anecdote is not scientific data. You cannot draw any conclusions from that.

[tengbretson]

There is no scientific framework that can tell you the correct amount of non-food material to intentionally add to your otherwise fine food.

[throwawayqqq11]

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/qualified-presump...

Its a risk assessment not a measure of absolute certainty.

[pfexec]

[flagged]

[ethersteeds]

I know this feels cut and dry to you, but what you're kicking is a fundamental pillar of the industrial food system. Many food products emerge from processing a dull or unappetizing color. Food needs to last as long as possible and still look like food. It's tempting to say that food should all be made with love in home kitchens, but that's untenable for feeding 8 billion people.

My favorite example of this is orange juice. OJ is kept in long term storage to stretch a seasonal crop into year-round availability. What comes out is brown and flavorless! This brown mush is restored to something a person would drink with the addition of "flavor packs" made by the perfume industry. This has the added benefit of giving brands a consistent and repeatable flavor. Regulatory bodies in their wisdom allow this product to be called "100% juice".

You might say well get rid of that too. I'm not arguing this is the ideal food system. But it has to be said, this goes a lot deeper than the easy ones like frosting and fruit loops.

[Clamchop]

Calling it "the perfume industry" is a half truth. It's the flavoring industry, but it so happens that there's a lot of overlap between perfume and flavoring in terms of raw materials.

However, flavoring is a distinct profession. Besides that, very few novel compounds are allowed in food compared to fragrance. If any flavoring is synthetic in origin (which is not the same thing as novel, to be clear) then the product must be labeled as artificially flavored. If they call the product 100% juice and added flavoring is used, then that flavoring in turn has to have been sourced from the fruit.

In other words, they're using extracts from real oranges to reconstitute the flavor lost during pasteurization. They can further adjust which parts of the extract they use (called fractions and isolates) to dial in a particular flavor.

[ethersteeds]

I appreciate the nuance! My intention was to show that there's a surprising amount of correction for flavor and taste necessary even for one-ingredient "natural" foods.

[speff]

Food presentation has an effect on taste. This is why the dyes are used. Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in a world where the only food we're allowed to eat has to demonstrate that it's only made of ingredients necessary to sustain life and be nutritional.

[dcrazy]

We don’t make decisions to ban foodstuffs based on whether they are “necessary to sustain life.”

[kelipso]

Maybe we should. Ideally we should ban ingredients that are not on a whitelist instead of banning ingredients on a blacklist.

Why are we as a society allowing these paperclip maximizing companies to experiment on hundreds of millions of people for their own profits..

[kyleee]

Bingo; should have to prove something is safe rather than the opposite

[faangguyindia]

> scientific and medical data,

which has never been been manipulated by funding.

[rootusrootus]

> I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial dyes

Yeah, my mom was the same way when she had food with MSG in it. But only when she knew there was MSG in it.

[hollerith]

When your mom eats something that is bad for her and her brain can tell it is bad for her, then if that experience is repeated a lot, then every time it encounters that thing or even thinks about that thing, her brain will tend to cause a defensive reaction, which itself is unpleasant and can affect your mom's behavior. None of this need be conscious or deliberate.

[gruez]

I don't think gp is trying to imply that she's explicitly making it up, just that the phenomena is in her head. To take an absurd example, it's probably safe to say that electromagentic sensitivity doesn't actually exist (ie. radio waves aren't actually causing people pain/distress), even if sufferers aren't lying to others about their experiences.

[colpabar]

Not wanting multi-billion dollar conglomerates putting poison in everyone's food is a far-right position now, didn't you get the memo?

[Belopolye]

It's weird being a 90s/2000s anti-war, anti-globalization, and pro-labor Democrat in a 2025 world.

[4d4m]

+1. G.R.A.S. (generally recognized as safe) is long overdue for reform

[greygoo222]

You can live your life how you want. What the rest of us eat isn't your business.

[rightbyte]

Fluoride in communal drinking water is another thing I notice strange ingroup outgroup thinking in ...

[tayo42]

If I want to eat fruit loops, why are you getting involved?

We have options and can make our own decisions about what to eat.

[kelipso]

Your unhealthy habits should not be normalized but unfortunately it is via mass advertising.

[tayo42]

You don't know anything about me what kind of comment is this?

Assumptions like this is why I don't want other people making decisions for me

[kelipso]

I don’t need to know anything about you to know that eating fruit loops is an unhealthy habit.

[pixl97]

1. Because you'll feed them to your kids who do not make their own decisions, other than if they'll pay to remove cancers off their anus or die at home at 25.

2. Because a massive food industry would gladly lie about how unsafe their product is just like tobacco companies and they have far more money than you to befuddle the research.

[tayo42]

This is a little dramatic

Tobacco still isn't illegal. We're all free to smoke.

Were given information and we're free to do what we want with it.

[pixl97]

All... give your kids some cigs and see what happens.

[gruez]

>1. Because you'll feed them to your kids who do not make their own decisions, other than if they'll pay to remove cancers off their anus or die at home at 25.

How about we mandate physical activity for kids as well, given all the known harms of being inactive? Maybe refer kids to CPS if they're too fat too?