Under the direction of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Federal Food and Drug Agency said it will remove synthetic food dyes from the U.S. food supply to address rising chronic disease in children. Citing possible links between synthetic food dyes and health concerns such as ADHD, obesity and diabetes, the agency will work with the food industry to revoke authorization for two of the dyes in the coming months and eliminate the remaining six come the end of the year.
Part of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again campaign, the FDA will approve four new natural color additives in the coming weeks and continue to review and approve others, according to a press release.
“For the last 50 years, we have been running one of the largest uncontrolled scientific experiments in the world on our nation’s children without their consent,” Marty Makary, FDA Commissioner, said.
Kennedy and Makary said there was a wide range of issues they want to address in the food supply, but many scientists said there isn’t enough research to support that food dyes cause any of the health problems cited.
“The information out there is just so minuscule in the scheme of science that it’s really hard to make those generalizations,” Emily Acri, a clinical transplant dietitian at Yale New Haven Hospital, said.
The FDA said it will partner with the National Institutes of Health to help research how food additives effect children’s health.
The removal of synthetic food dyes will not increase food prices Makary said. He said that he expects companies will adjust their ingredients and use “watermelon juice, beet juice and carrot juice to color their food,” without enacting any statutory or regulatory changes, Reuters reported. Some other tools to ensure compliance include a proposal from the Consumer Brands Association (CBA), which represents food companies like PepsiCo and Kraft Heinz, that food companies will pledge to remove synthetic dyes from their products especially in food served in school by the end of the year.
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