This isn't backlash to anything. "Food giant Kraft Heinz vows to stop using artificial dyes" is the title.
Wonder if we will see an uptick in allergic reactions.
https://news.umich.edu/food-dye-can-cause-severe-allergic-re...
That said Kraft is just positioning itself to provide what it thinks the market will want. They haven't suddenly found some ethics and decided they are going to produce good healthy food for its own sake.
People blame science when a company does something they don't like and then credit the free market when it does something they do, forgetting that a huge public company doesn't do anything because it is the right thing, they do it because they think they will make money by doing it.
We can either change the incentives that exist to sell people hyper processed food, or we can regulate everything to death, or we can figure out how to make people not want to eat it. I'm not sure which answer is the best one, but I think that making scientists the boogeymen for a human incentive problem is the wrong way to find it.
AIUI, there's ample evidence that (certain) artificial food dyes can cause various problems. I know that I have anecdotal evidence that they can—even in "blind" situations, where we didn't realize they were in the food until after having problems—cause things like headaches, lightheadedness, and other vague but unpleasant reactions.
I find it frustrating that, as another commenter said, it took an absolute nutter like RFK Jr to make this happen, and also that I have to give him credit for anything positive—but it's pretty clear that this specific thing is, indeed, positive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvvshpw4FxM
Check at 6 minutes into the video.
Turmeric can go both ways, but the ground turmeric that's historically common for preservation reasons is much less flavorful than the fresh root. It's mostly a color thing.
Of course, we can also just open up a medieval cookbook to see what they say. The Forme of Cury is a nice 14th century example that's available from Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102
As to colours, which perhaps would chiefly take place in suttleties, blood boiled and fried was used for dying black. saffron for yellow, and sanders for red. Alkenet is also used for colouring, and mulberries; amydon makes white; and turnesole [for yellow]
Have you ever cooked? Most stews use spices for colouring. A paella looks ill without saffron in it.
Why do we need these dyes in food?
Why are so many people so unhealthy? Could it be the food we are consuming?
Are we tracking the health and safety data from these policy changes to know if there is a change?
Because being unhealthy is the natural state of things, and keeping a handle on that fact, at scale, is difficult and complicated. We used to do a much worse job of it, though. Humans living in developed economies where everyone eats all these oft-maligned foods live much longer than their ancestors did a few centuries ago. And those who live into old age tend to remain healthier longer than those who did a few centuries ago.
That's to say that there isn't room for improvement, or that there aren't things in our food supply that don't belong there. But a sense of perspective is important. "Is this food coloring increasing people's lifetime risk of a specific cancer from 0.005% to 0.01%?" is still a pretty tidy improvement over, "Ugh, yet another outbreak of ergotism. Well, why don't we try burning witches to see if that puts it to a stop."
Go look at how native or indigenous people live vs people in cities.
In wealthy countries these would-be-dead people walk amongst us.
The ones that don't achieve it through access to very unnatural artifacts such as vaccines that are quite likely to have been made using ultramodern technologies such as genetic modification.
Or, I've got quite a few friends who have various congenital conditions that mean that they absolutely would not have survived in a society with a more "natural" foodway. With the modern food supply chain, though, they're doing just fine. Unnatural things you get in some ultraprocessed foods, such as vitamin fortification, mean they can even do it without having to worry about developing comorbid chronic ailments due to malnutrition.
There's no doubt about this. High sugar, low fiber is the biggest culprit.
That’s also to say that “trust the science“ can be a dangerous way to shut down discussion when people are actually grasping for words to understand whether a scientific method is being improperly used.
95% of people wouldn't realize that's code for "insect juice," and they might prefer the artificial color.
I think it's important to judges individual policy, not just judge an individual.
The government is so intertwined in the Pharma industry, that no I don’t really see a 1A problem here.
Sparing misused, and completely incorrect fire in a theater, tropes, there is a good point we made that freedom of speech does not extend to unnecessarily dangerous things. Remind me which company has received the largest criminal fine in history (Pfizer).
I just don’t think you’re gonna have a lot of sympathy for oh poor Pharma companies and their lack of free speech.
This is perhaps the worst argument possible for restricting the rights of a certain group.
Do you think the original intention of the first amendment was to have a scattered subjective enforcement based on prevailing popular winds at any given time?
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/central-hudson-test/
> The Central Hudson test has a threshold prong – does the speech concern lawful activity and is it non-misleading. If it meets these requirements, then there are three other prongs:
> The government must have a substantial interest.
> The regulation must directly and materially advance the government’s substantial interest.
> The regulation must be narrowly tailored.
It would seem like restricting medical ads would be within the realms of constitutionally acceptable government power.
See https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/central-hudson-test/
You may want to check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E100%E2%80%93E199_(co...
Almost all dyes approved in the US are also approved in the EU. There are even a number of dyes approved in the EU but not in the US.
> often with warning labels required on packaging about the way this stuff makes kids ADHD
This does not happen.
Never mentioned is that the US has also banned food dyes and additives that are still in use in the EU.
/s
People say all sorts of things about what they do and do not want to buy, but actions speak louder than words.
The downside of course is that once you get where you're going you're practically retarded for the next 12 hours or so and can't get any work done.
a) Make claims that are not as extraordinary.
b) Back your claims up with evidence.
Making absolutely wild claims without evidence just makes you sound like a quack.
What isn't reasonable is to also expect large numbers of people to take them seriously without evidence (see above for evidence of people questioning unsupported claims).
I actually thought that particular red dye was banned where I'm from some time back, though I don't recall why. Allergies perhaps? But that's just a guess.
I'm sure you can grasp how ridiculous that statement is, and reflect on your own.
I don't think this was because people were putting pressure, otherwise the sheer numbers of those communities would have done something by now. It only required one person in power to say enough, fix this.
My personal bugaboos are added sugar and generous use of weird preservatives. If your supermarket has 20 aisles, 16 of them are loaded with sugary sulfite-preserved stuff, removing choice and visibility to consumers. And breads fortified with folic acid.
They all went stale before the day was out. She compared the ingredients between what she had made and what came out of the box at the grocery store, and the ones that she didn't use? They were all preservatives.
Choose your battles wisely.
I will concede that the use of sweeteners in everything in the US is unhinged. It's hard to really understand until you've spent enough time out of the country to where you're buying groceries and looking at the ingredients. You come back to the states and everything tastes weirdly sweet. It was a real "fish don't know they're wet" moment for me, which mostly came about from marrying an Australian.
After Mexico Implemented a Tax, Purchases of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Decreased and Water Increased: Difference by Place of Residence, Household Composition, and Income Level - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ | https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892
Building upon the sugar beverage tax in Mexico: a modelling study of tax alternatives to increase benefits - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227
USA Facts: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says - https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...
(~40 million acres of corn is used for inefficient ethanol biofuels as well, but I will reserve that rant for another thread)
We tax alcohol and cigarettes similarly, and I don’t think it’s wild to consider processed sugars close to that same category from a health and reward center perspective.
Like there is probably some argument to be made about satiety, but I assure you, it is quite possible to consume excess calories in the form of pasta.
And then corn subsidies mostly benefit livestock and ethanol producers, processed food products are a small portion of the end use of field corn.
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-chemical-safety/list-select-ch...
For example carmine is crushed up cactus parasite insects which a very small number of people are vulnerable to extreme allergic reactions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal
>much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our food
How much human testing of every agricultural product do you want?
They had replaced a lot of them already. Kraft's most iconic product (Mac & Cheese) replaced the artificial dyes years ago and this is only the last 10% of their products.
Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?
People act like taking the food dye out of gushers is suddenly going to fix their problems. You need to avoid this food in the first place.
You are correct, but I find it alarming that anyone would deem this necessary to say out loud. These companies would happily watch us suffer an die from chronic illnesses en masse if it inched up their share value, as would any for-profit enterprise. The phrase "duh" comes to mind. The only thing stopping them is government regulation, though that approach is under perpetual attack by anti-government zealots, the most recent of which being Musk and his child assistants.
EU and US supply chains are vastly different, plus shifting the production lines from one to another doesn't happen overnight. This means that it could well take two years to fully move all their production facilities off synthetic food dyes.
bookofjoe•3h ago