4 ms·
FDA says companies can claim "no artificial colors" if they use natural dyes
- actionfromafar 9mo agoHere, have this radium water, carefully collected from natural springs. Natural dyes only. Terms and conditions apply.
- munk-a 9mo agoA good example of a genuine natural color. Natural doesn't mean good, artificial doesn't mean bad. I dislike this change because if you care about "minimally messed with food" then avoiding extra processing for appearance alone is an easy step to take - this erodes a label that was helpful to some people.
- schiffern 9mo agoPoisoning is still illegal though. This is not an application of the naturalistic fallacy, this is just about accuracy in labeling.
- jmercouris 9mo agoIt makes sense, for example, if you use turmeric in a rice dish, would you say it is artificially colored? In a sense rice isn’t yellow, but it is a natural dye.
- cesaref 9mo agoExcept it has a taste. I think finding something with just the colour and no taste would be a better example of this.
- IAmBroom 9mo agoGo find that unicorn. Make your first $100M. Also: that's a completely different issue to "describing its presence as 'artificial'". Needs a new thread.
- elil17 9mo agoThat is not what this is about. You've always been able to advertise rice with turmeric as free from artificial colors. Here, the FDA is allowing for so-called natural dyes which are just chemicals that have been extracted from plants (usually through solvents). Imagine taking the turmeric, soaking it in gasoline, then distilling the color back out of the gasoline. The only requirement is that the color itself is not petroleum-derived.
- gruez 9mo ago>Here, the FDA is allowing for so-called natural dyes which are just chemicals that have been extracted from plants (usually through solvents). Imagine taking the turmeric, soaking it in gasoline, then distilling the color back out of the gasoline. That's basically what's done for vegetable oils so should vegetable oils be called "artificial" as well? Is there a principled way of defining what amount of scary chemical involvement is needed for something natural to lose its "natural" designation? Are pretzels at risk because they're dipped in lye (ie. drain cleaners)?
- josefritzishere 9mo agoThere has been serious erosion in the area of words meaning things.
- parineum 9mo agoThe category of words used to describe food to give the impression that it's healthy have been abused beyond recognition for my entire life. I assume that's always been the case (radium!) but I'm less certain.
- kotaKat 9mo agoWelcome to America, where over half the population can’t understand words meaning things at a 6th grade level.
- gruez 9mo agoThe reasoning against this seems questionable: >Are they safer? Possibly, but they are not as well studied or regulated. According to Time, >> …their natural sources of color do not necessarily mean that they are safer or free of potentially harmful compounds. Natural sources may be treated with pesticides and herbicides, and are also prone to contamination with bacteria and other pathogens…To strip natural products of these contaminants, manufacturers process them with various solvents—some of which could remain in the final coloring and contribute to negative health effects…[and] it generally takes more natural color than synthetic color to make the same shade in a final food. I agree with the sentiment that "natural" doesn't imply something is healthy and consumers should be skeptical of it, but all of the objections exist for both naturally derived dyes (eg. beetroot red) and the underlying natural product (eg. beetroots), so it's hard to make a principled argument against allowing the natural label for the latter but not the former.
- pointlessone 9mo agoEnjoy our new smokes with 20% more all-natural nicotine while you’re lining your attic with—also ours—all-natural asbestos! Choose All-Natural WonderTeck products every day!
- gruez 9mo agoCigarettes are unironically "natural", which is why I specifically started my comment with >I agree with the sentiment that "natural" doesn't imply something is healthy and consumers should be skeptical of it
- coffeefirst 9mo agoThe premise of this whole thing is bunk. Food does not require dyes. You do not need to paint a banana. This is a debate about what kind of paint is acceptable in marketing ultra processed products that would look gross if you did not paint them.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoLots of foods are not raw goods - like cakes, pastries, etc. Presentation is extremely important to food. This is entirely harmless from a scientific point of view, but treads on food purity folk religion.
- close04 9mo agoIt probably boils down to the definition of the word artificial, and both options can be correct. Just that in this climate I'll take anything the FDA does as a move with ulterior, probably nefarious, reasons. No artificial colors can mean "no artificially created (synthetic) color" or "no artificially added (not naturally in the product) color". We have a precedent with "no added sugar" for things that already contain a lot of it, like fruit juices. So the distinction is between "no added coloring" and "no synthetic coloring".
- ziml77 9mo agoThat would be the right way to make this distinction. But of course the FDA is totally fine letting people be misled by ambiguity if it benefits the companies selling these products.
- IAmBroom 9mo ago"Mexican saffron", harvested from a plant unrelated to the crocus family. And completely devoid of saffron's flavor.
- schiffern 9mo ago>In the past, companies were generally only able to make such [no artificial color] claims when their products had no added color whatsoever — whether derived from natural sources or otherwise So what is the word "artificial" doing here? Apparently it applies to the addition of color itself, not the source of the color? This is extra confusing because on ingredients lists they distinguish between "natural colors" and "artificial colors." But apparently that's not the same sense that they're using "artificial" as when they say "no artificial colors??" Seems like this move is just fixing a confusing situation -- so confusing I didn't even know I was confused until just now!
- watwut 9mo ago"No artificial color" meant that food had the color it really had, without additional coloring. Natural banana does not have little green ponies on red background. If you color it with green and red, you have banana that does not have its natural color. Banana in artificial color.
- schiffern 9mo agoRight, I got it now. But for literally the entire time I've seen that (now obsolete) label, I've misunderstood it as "no artificial colors" not "no artificially added colors." I can't be the only one! It's unclear why they didn't say "no added colors" from the beginning, since apparently that's what they meant all along.
- 306bobby 9mo agoThe only way I can read it and have it make sense is using "artificial" as in a by-product outside of the usual make-up of the product. It makes sense in other industries, like calling vinyl wrap an artificial cosmetic change on cars compared to painting. But makes less sense in this situation
- mrguyorama 9mo agoThe label "no artificial color" meant that there was no color added to the product. This was a useful label. It meant you could expect the food looked like it should. It meant the food was not adulterated. Now, "No artificial color" simply means that the chemists involved in producing this food product do not work for the petrochemical industry. Granted, this labeling was in direct contrast with the ingredient listing. You could have only "natural color" on the ingredients and be unable to claim "No artificial color". This change "fixes" that by making "No artificial color" as meaningless as "Natural" vs "Artificial" color. As petrochemical and plant feedstock processes produce chemically identical substances that your body is incapable of distinguishing, this takes a label that had some actual value, telling you how adulterated your food was, and replaces it with a label that means nothing. Yay. However, labeling around "natural" vs "artificial" ends up being a huge educational issue. The FDA's rules are pretty straightforward, but you will never be able to get people who think education is a liberal scam to actually learn them. It also wasn't obvious what they really meant. There's room for improving the names and labeling, but that is not at all what this administration wants to do. They do not respect the sanctity and power and value of labeling regulation. FDA food labeling regulations are wonderful and trusted and provide immense value. Them being toyed with by morons with a grudge scares me.
- sciencesama 9mo agoWhich stock goes up ?
- sigwinch 9mo agoLook in the natural aisle. Those products which don’t rely on dyes.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoIn other words, the foods catering to purity food culture are the ones that benefit.
- sigwinch 9mo agoMars has committed to removing dyes, at great expense and effort. What if they simply left out dyes for a year?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoWish they'd eliminate food coloring altogether. Leave the coloring for the packaging.
- Arubis 9mo agoIn the food additive industry, “natural” mostly translates to “artificial, but derived with outdated and roundabout methods”.
- bilsbie 9mo agoTBH this is getting so complicated. I’m really starting to think the only solution is a household mass spectrometer we can run all our foods through. Literally see every constitute of each food. Maybe we need an X prize for the under $300 molecular food scanning system. Welcome to the world of broken institutional trust.
- KempyKolibri 9mo agoEven that wouldn't be sufficient. Look at the heterogeneity in dairy - the same amount of SFA in yoghurt has a markedly different impact on LDL-c compared to butter, likely because of both the calcium content of the yoghurt _and_ the actual molecular structure (non-churned dairy has intact milk fat globule membranes). I actually think we need to go the other way and look at foods as foods where we have the data, rather than individual components. Most recent dietary guidelines are more "x% of your plate should be vegetables" than "you should consume x% of your energy as cereal fibre", at least in their headline advice.
- bilsbie 9mo agoI agree but I think both approaches are needed. If this device simply found most bad stuff (when above safe limits) we’d be in a way better position. Eg. Arsenic, lead, pesticides, etc. * edited to add “above safe limits” since folks seem to be strawmanning my point. In case it really wasn’t clear.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoSo you never eat rice or apples right? They always contain arsenic. They always have
- KempyKolibri 9mo agoThis is what regulation already does (quite effectively too, at least over here in the UK). We already know that harmful substances aren’t likely to be present in our foods thanks to regulatory checks. Then we’d be left with checks for substances at levels lower than regulations are concerned with, but I’m not sure why we’d care about that. Fish has mercury present in it, but increased consumption seems to be associated with positive health outcomes. If the device said “danger, mercury”, what are we replacing it with? Red meat? Sausage? The current evidence would suggest that would be a retrograde step.
- KempyKolibri 9mo agoI'm torn - the anti-UPF crowd is increasingly tying themselves up in knots with this kind of thing. Potentially this causes even more public confusion and avoidance of yet more perfectly healthy things because they're understandably lost trying to navigate what the orchestrators of the moral panic around UPFs, artificial colours, non-organic foods etc claim they should eat. I see people swapping wholemeal UPF bread in favour of homemade white bread on social media all the time already! In an ideal world IMO this would lead to people getting fed up and going back to the dietary heuristics we had before this fad (HFSS, etc). Unfortunately I suspect this will _actually_ result in increasing distrust/refusal to engage with dietary guidelines entirely, and if we do ever identify a novel mechanism by which certain UPFs cause harm that we weren't aware of, no one will engage with it because they're totally exhausted from the current debacle.
- bityard 9mo agoBorderline off-topic but I'm miffed about all the products in grocery stores lately that loudly proclaim "Zero Sugar" yet their first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. Okay, it may be technically true, but practically speaking, anyone you ask would call it a lie.
- gruez 9mo ago>I'm miffed about all the products in grocery stores lately that loudly proclaim "Zero Sugar" yet their first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. Example?
- estimator7292 9mo ago[flagged]
- jjj123 9mo agoWoah there… likely neither? I was curious too, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this “zero sugar but not actually” label before in stores.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoThe US FDA explicitly gives you wiggle room to label something with less than 0.5g sugar per serving as "Zero Sugar" This means that TicTacs, a product which is a sugar tablet with some flavor, can be "Zero Sugar"
- dsr_ 9mo agohttps://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-additives/no-artificial-colors-new-fda-policy-a1010392178/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-additives/no-art... is an article that doesn't just quote the press release and actually discusses the previous policy as well as critiquing the change.
- xnx 9mo agoWill RFK next ban artificial Carbon Monoxide (CO) Treatment that keeps the beef he thinks is so important artificially red?
- tartoran 9mo agoI'd prefer to see something like artificially colored with natural colors instead of no artificial colors. I want to know if something has colors added to it, even if those are natural colors.