There also isn't a fundamental difference between a synthetic and a natural dye. Okay, humans are more likely to have encountered a natural dye during their evolution and adapted to ingesting them. But that is unlikely to matter to all kinds of dyes, and also wouldn't filter out any health effects that don't affect reproductive fitness.
Treating a whole category of molecules this way does not make sense. It makes sense to evaluate the health effects of individual dyes. But that is not unique to synthetic dyes.
I wonder if changing the color of food is actually that important.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13411-015-0031-3#...
But yes I think the food color is ultimately important to succeeding in the marketplace and we aren't going to be getting rid of food dyes in manufactured food anytime soon.
Maybe they're smarter than you with money. The same box of cereal that costs less than $2 at Walmart is almost $6 at Whole Foods.
When people say this they are obviously not referring the the definition of "chemical" that a chemist would use. Pretending otherwise is exactly the "nerd-snark" mentioned above which makes people distrust experts because they clearly aren't intending to use the term "chemical" in a sense that would include substances like water.
If there where significant value that might be different, but there isn’t a great argument for experimenting on millions of people here.
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.
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.
And your anecdote is not scientific data. You cannot draw any conclusions from that.
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.
There isn't. The US's FDA allows fewer of them than the EU's EFSA.
A small number of people get anaphylaxis from carmine.
"Synthetic" dyes being the result of a long chain of steps and intermediate molecules which are usually ultimately sourced from things like air, petroleum, and seawater.
Science literacy is bad so people have problems articulating the issue of concern which is "it is fair to have concerns about novel chemicals making their way into the food supply which evolution has not had a chance to address", not that something not found in nature is automatically bad but that such things need to be introduced carefully.
People don't know science though so everything is turning into "if it's not found in nature it is a monster and unclean", which to be honest is fair to a degree for people who don't know being forced to accept things blindly and asked to trust that everything is fine from people who would gladly disregard dangers in exchange for a fraction of a cent in profit margin.
That doesn't mean they're making good decisions just that their fear is justified.
I'm sure I'm simplifying things, but I think this ban is common practice at this point in most of the EU, Canada.
Where else is hypercouloring cereal common?
All that is to say, doesn't much matter to me what they regulate, I eat hardly any of that stuff anyway.
I am not an expert in synthetic vs. natural, but I feel like this decision isn't actually about health (I don't see any reason to believe why Wal-Mart cares at all about the health of Americans) but rather some larger macroeconomic reality.
(except OTC medication always has that nonsense, but now my advil is also dye-free)
but Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the life-expectancy of people back when everything was natural and organic
Businesses doing things in line with customer preferences is exciting to see.
justonceokay•46m ago
dang•45m ago
Please especially don't do that when a thread is new, because threads are sensitive to initial conditions.