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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials on Tuesday said they would phase out oil-based artificial colors in American food supplies, potentially causing an overhaul of ingredients in brightly colored products scores on American store shelves.
FDA Commissioner Marty McCurry said the Federal Food and Drug Administration will take steps to eliminate synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. Agents will establish standards and timelines for the industry to switch to natural alternatives, and take steps to revoke approvals for dyes not produced in the coming weeks and remove any remaining dyes in the market.
McCurry said removing artificial dyes will improve the health of children.
“For the past 50 years, we have run one of the world’s largest uncontrolled science experiments on children in our country without consent,” McCurry said.
Health advocates have long sought to remove artificial dyes from food, citing mixed studies that show that in some children it can cause neurological problems, including hyperactivity and attentional issues. The FDA argues that approved dyes are safe and “the wholeness of scientific evidence indicates that most children do not have a negative effect when consuming foods containing color additives.”
The FDA currently allows 36 food color additives containing eight synthetic dyes. In January, the agency announced that a dye known as Red 3 (used in candies, cakes, and several drugs) would be banned in food by 2027 as it caused cancer in laboratory rats.
Artificial dyes are widely used in foods in the US. In Canada and Europe, manufacturers primarily use natural alternatives when artificial colors are required to carry warning labels. Several states, including California and West Virginia, have passed laws restricting the use of artificial colors in food.
The announcement attracted praise from supporters who say that dyes pose health risks and do not serve any purpose other than cosmetics.
“Their sole purpose is to make food companies money,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Public Interest Science and former FDA official. “Food dyes help make them more attractive to children, especially for children, by hiding the lack of colorful ingredients, often like fruit.”
Removing artificial dyes from food has long been the goal of what is called Mahamama, a major supporter of the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his “American Health” initiative. They signed the petition and were among the protesters gathered outside WK Kellogg Co.’s Michigan headquarters last year, demanding that the company remove artificial dyes from its US breakfast cereals.
The group included Vani Hari, a popular food activist known as The Food Babe. He previously pressured Kraft Heinz Company to remove artificial dyes from macaroni and cheese. Hari spoke at the event on Tuesday.
She said the action marks a “new era” of safe food for children.
However, the food manufacturer said the action would unfairly target highly regulated color additives that have long been confirmed to be safe.
“There are not enough options to replace these products,” the International Association of Colored Manufacturers said in a statement. “The supply chain will take an estimated five to ten years to catch up and require importing more expensive materials grown in China, India and Mexico.”
A spokesman for the National Confectionery Association, a trading group for candy, gum and mint manufacturers, said the industry “needs time to find a safe and viable alternative.”
Susan Maine, a chronic disease expert at Yale University and former director of the FDA’s food center, said removing dyes from the food supply doesn’t address the major health issues that afflict Americans.
“All of their announcements are focused on something that doesn’t accomplish what they say,” Main said of Kennedy’s initiative. “Most of these food dyes have been in our food supply for 100 years. … So why aren’t they driving towards a reduction in what promotes chronic disease rates?”
In the past, FDA officials said the threat of legal action from the food industry required the government to have important scientific evidence before banning additives. Red 3 was banned from cosmetics more than 30 years before it was stripped of food and medicine. It took the FDA 50 years to ban brominated vegetable oils due to health concerns.
But Lurie said industry officials may not challenge the Trump administration.
“They don’t want to get on the wrong side of the vindictive president,” he said.
Hours before the announcement, the International Dairy Association said its members would voluntarily eliminate artificial colors from milk, cheese and yogurt products sold to US school lunch programs by July 2026. Most dairy products for schools do not contain artificial colors as most dairy processors do not use them or have already removed or replaced them.
Some state laws banning synthetic dyes in school lunches have an aggressive timeline. For example, the West Virginia ban bans red, yellow, blue and green artificial dyes from school lunches starting August 1st.
Many US food companies have already reformulated their food, according to Sensory Color, one of the world’s largest producers of food dyes and flavors. Instead of synthetic dyes, food manufacturers can use natural tints made from purple sweet potatoes, radish, beets made from red cabbage, algae, crushed insects and pigments.
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