Comment by VanillaCafe
3 days ago
> 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.
Multiplied by the hundreds of decisions people make every day and now you know why we have the FDA.
People cannot become experts for every decision they must make.
You mean like the big ugly boxes on cigarettes?
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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