Comment by exmadscientist
3 days ago
For anyone wondering why it takes so long to actually switch this stuff out, and the available alternatives to Red 3, I thought this piece from a food dyes company (no relation) was fascinating: https://na.sensientfoodcolors.com/confection/replacing-red-3...
You have to figure that if these guys had a drop-in replacement, they'd be offering it for sale at a high price, so this probably is the best you can do. The process changes and requalification looks like no fun at all. But it also looks pretty doable for a company in this line of business, so maybe you won't see too many color changes on the shelf with this ban.
> For anyone wondering why it takes so long to actually switch this stuff out
One counterpoint is do we really NEED to have brightly colored foods? It's a hard problem if you need a food to be bright red. But, that has to boil down to strictly to improving sales, right? Hypothetically, if all the artificial food dyes were banned, then all food companies would be on the same level playing field.
Color is definitely something that catches a person's eye, so if you have a "food product" that needs extra to convince someone to buy it, color is a way to do it. You can't taste it before purchasing. You can see and smell it, so they push those levers as much as they can.
Mandate big font "contains carcinogens" label when your food contains this colour. Then let the buyer choose whether s/he finds this shade of bright red attractive or not.
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So in other words: no, we don't need it, particularly since people need to consume less ultraprocessed foods, not more.
Visuals have a pretty big impact on food. I wonder how many foods would just look disgusting without any food dyes. Reminds me of butter companies trying to pass legislation to make margerine companies unable to dye their product to look like butter
Thanks, that article was fascinating. I wasn't aware of how complex swapping it out could be, its continued use makes a lot more sense now.
I'm very curious on what's going to happen with cocktail cherries - I believe they use Red #3 (it's one of the only permitted uses in the UK).
There are a bunch of no-artificial-dye candies and whatnot on the market already, and they actually look better to me - they're not absurd unnatural colors.