Why Banning Red No. 3 In America Took Decades | Ultra-Processed Life | Business Insider

0:01 artificial dyes are all over American foods nowadays they're usually derived from petroleum some dyes like red number three have been linked to cancer ADHD and issues with the nervous system but its use in the US has only grown over the last few decades now for the first time the FDA is Banning red number3 in food products across the US California is also restricting a whole whole spectrum of food dyes and RFK Jr has vowed to do the same at the national level but what would it take to fully remove these artificial colors that are all over American food I'm MRA and I'm a health editor at Business Insider so how do we start using natural dyes in the

0:47 first place natural red dyes like kachal date back thousands of years in Mexico it comes from Bugs raised on cactuses called cinal and the acid in their guts makes a vibrant red dye across Europe and the Middle East red color was derived from matter a plant from the coffee family archaeologists found traces of it in linen found in tutan kon's Tomb and in Wool discovered in Viking burial grounds in Asia turmeric has been used to naturally color food and fabrics for thousands of years and ancient civilizations in that region also extracted Indigo or blue they were would ferment Indigo Farah plant leaves in water to extract the blue color the

1:34 first food Dy used in the US was in the late 1800s for margarine this dye was called butter yellow butter yellow is made of analine which is a derivative of coal it was designed to make buttery products look more buttery by the mid 20th century butter yellow was phased out after it was shown to cause bladder cancer headaches nausea and damage to the liver and kidneys but other dieses came in in 1878 we had Red 2 which is made from petroleum in the early 1900s we made red 3 which is another petroleum based die soon after there were more than a dozen artificial dyes available for sale and

2:20 most companies were favoring them over natural ones because they were cheaper synthetic dyes are made in Labs using byproducts from coal and petroleum these are then fused with brightly colored compounds and then ground up into a powder that can be added to food products the chemical structures can be very different depending on how they're created that's why some dyes that are the same color are classified with different numbers or letters over the years concern about the potential Health impacts of synthetic food D have not gone away on Halloween in 1950 kids across the US started developing diarrhea and stomach issues a federal investigation

3:06 found that the culprit was a food dye derived from coal it was called orange number one and it had been approved for use in 1907 the investigation found that this diey and another Dy called red 32 were extremely toxic tests on animals found that these dyes damaged vital organs and were linked to premature death the FDA assembled the Delaney committee which was meant to investigate all of these dies and their potential health risks They concluded in 1960 that any new chemical needed to get FDA approval before it could be used in food and they put the burden on companies to prove that chemicals were safe from 1963 to 1987 the FDA approved nine new synthetic

3:54 dieses to be used in foods in the US however all of those studies were done on animals there were no studies in humans and that is a really important factor to take into account in 1990 new research showed that some of the most popular red dyes had links to cancer that prompted the FDA to ban red number 3 in cosmetics to protect consumers the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission respectively keep careful watch for harmful ingredients and Cosmetics at the time the FDA promised to extend that ban to food products too but that didn't happen pressure from the Marino Cherry industry among other Industries blocked that move

4:39 however that could soon be changing California recently issued a sweeping ban on artificial food dyes in public school snacks and on January 15th the FDA followed suit announcing a ban on red number three in food products because the agency cannot condone a die that has links to cancer but red number three is everywhere one analysis shows that about a quarter of all baking decorations and dessert toppings have the dye in it it's also found in 16% of chewing gums and mints 133% of candies and 11% of cookies and biscuits manufacturers won't have to make the changes overnight they have until 2027 to take the die out of all of their products drug companies like the makers

5:26 of Tylenol will have until 2028 to reformulate their products the move comes as RFK Jr is promising to impose a ban on all artificial food dies at the federal level enough is enough president Trump and I are going to stop the mass poisoning of American children he is Trump's pick to lead the health and human services department which oversees a suite of Health departments in the US government he's proposing a lot of policy changes but his big one is to do with nutrition and in particular he is promising the American people that he will get rid of food dyes in our food system over half the research on the health effects of synthetic food dies shows a link between food coloring and behavioral issues in children in the

6:13 early 2000s two new studies in the UK showed a small but significant increase in ADHD among children who consume juices with synthetic dieses in them those findings made a huge Splash lawmakers in the EU and in the US reviewed this data the EU quickly ruled that this was enough to Warrant warning labels on any food containing synthetic dyes to tell consumers that there's a link to ADHD the FDA committee considered warning labels but concluded that more research was needed around 10 years ago a bunch of food Giants did agree to remove synthetic food dyes from cereals and snacks after pressure from consumers but in the years after that a

6:59 few of them brought the dyes back General Mills which makes tricks cereal said that they got so many complaints from consumers that the product was no longer as brilliant and colorful as it had been before so they ditched the natural dyes like radish purple carrots and turmeric and brought back the synthetic food dyes which you see in this product today let's now look at fro Loops this is the product that RFK really made the focus because of his presidential campaign he said that us fro Loops have like 18 ingredients in them and Canadian uh Froot Loops have like three ingredients that's not actually true because Canadian Froot Loops also have many ingredients but the point he was

7:45 making is that the US version does have more artificial food dyes in it than other countries so just looking the label we have red 40 yellow five blue 1 yellow six so four food dyes similar to these two Captain Crunch and [Applause] tricks and these are marketed mainly to kids it says natural fruit flavors sweetened multi-grain cereal and here it says it's a good source of nine vitamins and minerals let's look at some snacks we have Doritos they are nacho cheese flavored the best

8:32 flavor and obviously you know what you're going to get from a packet of Doritos a distinctive orange chip but looking on the label let's see there is a lot of colors in here yellow six yellow five yellow six Lake yellow five lake so that is yellow five and six made in two different ways and red 40 let's get them out all right look at these I mean you can't hate them they look amazing but Doritos are sold in Europe as well without the artificial dyes so this distinctive color this smell it is possible with natural food dyes as well so now we're going to look at some products that do

9:19 have synthetic food dyes and some which you might not expect sad to see it's a saffron yellow rice right here at the bottom we have artificial color including fdn C yellow number it's hidden yellow number five and fdn C red number three so two artificial colors to make this as yellow as it does appear then you also have Morning Star Farms veggie bacon strips it's marketed as 100% vegetarian giving you the wake up and smell the veggie protein the power of plant there's a lot of things on the front of this package which the who would describe as a health Halo so it's things

10:04 that are really marketing it as positive and good you flip it over though and you do see let me find it red number three and yellow number six you can even find food dyes in foods that you might use in healthy dishes like a salad so look at this for example this is a light raspberry and walnut vinegret dressing which on the label says all the flavor you could wish for sacrifice calories but not flavor however if you look at the fine print oh this is an eyesight test there is red 40 and blue one there's also natural colors there's caramel color the reason food companies use synthetic food D in something like

10:50 this is that while raspberries are red if you have it packaged in a product for a long period of time and if it goes through a processing like ultr processed manufacturing it might lose a bit of that color through the process so adding something like red 40 or blue one back in is going to help it maintain the look and appeal so obviously you can also get the food dyes themselves from the store for home baking or other kinds of decorating and we got them today here's what a few of them look like and this is the packaging food colors and egg dye red yellow and blue so what do these contain exactly this contains red 40 and red

11:36 three we have yellow this contains yellow five and red 40 and blue this contains blue 1 and red 40 remember California banned red number three in 2023 and most recently restricted the use of six other dyes in school food the state gave companies until 202 7 to reformulate their products so this Federal ban on one die isn't completely out of the blue for food Giants the real benefit of synthetic dyes is economic compared to Natural dyes synthetic dyes are cheaper to manufacturer they are less susceptible to environmental factors so they can be made and used anywhere they're also

12:22 easier to control so they can be more reliable color agents and you have no risk of them fading and the market for them is huge sales have grown nearly 10% from 2019 to 2023 meanwhile demand for natural dyes has increased 7% during that same time period today those could be beets Bea carotene cherries strawberries dried hibiscus flowers cranberries grapes turmeric paprika all of these things that you know when you touch them that color is going to get on your fingers so let's look at a few of them let's start with beets I have cooked with beets before and I can tell you this is a very effective dieye I'm going to be very

13:08 delicate about how I open this so let's open this oh grip strength oh my God what the hell Paige I'm going try okay take two all right now I have a jar opening glove we'll see if this works absolutely mortifying if it doesn't work okay oh came off so easy would you look at that the nice thing about a natural Dy like beets as well is that it's packed full of vitamins and minerals that you want to get in your diet anyway so obviously in a food product it's not going to be that much but it's a nicer thing to put in your body than something that could

13:53 be a carogen so looking at that juice that looks like red dye to me and I'm going to touch it so slightly more soluble than the kind of dye that I would imagine putting in food let's actually compare it to the red dye next to each other they look pretty similar this red sticks to the plate a little more I can literally see it kind of lingering on the white of the plate in a slightly more synthetic way let's look at turmeric now turmeric is something that is really widely used in the food industry in Europe and it's something that some us companies are starting to use in their products including crafts macaroni and cheese the nice thing about turmeric is that it

14:39 does have anti-inflammatory properties it's packed full of health benefits and void of some of the health risks that you apparently get in yellow 5 and yellow 6 which have historically been used to dye Foods yellow so here are some products that actually use natural dyes instead of synthetic dyes now OB obviously these are ultr processed products they are not beacons of Health by any stretch of the imagination but it is interesting to see how something like an instant mashed potato with this distinctive yellow color on it uses natural dyes instead of the food dyes that the food industry does seem to be so attached to so in this for example scrolling down the ingredients list I can see anat extract which is a

15:27 type of seed from Mexico paprika extract that's also used for color and those are the only colors in here obviously it has some other chemicals that are used in ultr processed foods now these are really marketed as healthy and I will say from a health perspective they're not necessarily going to be delivering the kind of fiber and vegetables that you would get from just eating a carrot but they don't have the food dyes that you might find in some other products so this uses beetroot powder and turmeric extract to get these kinds of colors that you see on the front of the packet so if you're trying to avoid food dyes in food the number one thing you should look for is the USDA organic seal anything with that seal cannot contain

16:14 synthetic food dyes if there isn't an organic label look on the ingredients and it might be listed under a few different names typically it will say something like f d and c and then a number fdn c means the federal Food Drug and cosmetic Act of 1938 it basically means that the number that's listed there has been put into the fda's database so it's something that's regulated by the FDA so red number 40 is fdn C red 40 and it might be listed under a few different names and I'm actually going to read them because there are so many so there's red 40 red 40 Lake F DNC red number 40 F DNC

17:05 red number 40 aluminum Lake Aura red AC CI food red 17 red number what is that okay ins number 129 and e129 and then other products it's the same thing so red number three might be FD n c number three or red dye number three generally you're looking for a color a number a few letters it might give you a red flag it's unclear how much synthetic food dye we consume because it's in so many products it's likely a very small amount but it is everywhere I'm going to eat

17:53 it it's great I can't lie okay can I give you to take another trip