Food dyes

Friday

Jane Stannus

Farewell to America’s artificial food dyes

Start saying your goodbyes, America. Tartrazine-tinted pickles, oranges with a Citrus Red No. 2 spray tan and maraschino cherries glowing with erythrosine – all are on the way out the door, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade against artificial food colorants. And if you’ve got any tears left to cry, here’s another emotional hit: Target just announced it is pulling cereals containing petroleum-based dyes from its shelves by the end of May. Loving you was red, Froot Loops. Critics jeered that a voluntary program would never get anywhere, but Kennedy has been fairly successful That Taylor Swift song really fits the bill on RFK’s anti-dye crusade. Losing them will be blue like we’ve never known: MAHA-friendly foods will have to swap Blue No.

Thursday

Neal Pollack

RFK Jr.’s hill to dye on?

If you’re to believe media accounts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s extraordinary Tuesday press conference, the Health and Human Services Secretary has “banned” eight toxic colored dyes from American food products. Milder accounts say that the agency has ordered Big Food to “phase out” these dyes by the end of 2026. No one legitimate will argue against food-dye restrictions and anyone who does is either reflexively anti-Trump to an absurd degree or is a paid food-industry shill. But the problem is that there were no food-industry shills present at the press conference. RFK Jr. has essentially asked the food companies to do the right thing by American consumers – by self-deporting. “We don’t have an agreement,” RFK Jr. said. “We have an understanding.

Food dye