Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods
corporate.walmart.com55 points by prossercj an hour ago
55 points by prossercj an hour ago
My understanding is that there are somewhat more restrictive regulations on food dyes in the EU compared to the US. But that overall there isn't a big concern about the majority of these dyes.
There also isn't a fundamental difference between a synthetic and a natural dye. Okay, humans are more likely to have encountered a natural dye during their evolution and adapted to ingesting them. But that is unlikely to matter to all kinds of dyes, and also wouldn't filter out any health effects that don't affect reproductive fitness.
Treating a whole category of molecules this way does not make sense. It makes sense to evaluate the health effects of individual dyes. But that is not unique to synthetic dyes.
The sheer percentage of artificial food dyes that have been banned suggests otherwise. There’s a long pattern of banning something once enough evidence builds up only to be replaced by something that’s then eventually banded.
If there where significant value that might be different, but there isn’t a great argument for experimenting on millions of people here.
How many artificial food dyes have been actually banned? I mean in the time where we actually had some regulations, the old days were quite wild in terms of safety in all areas, so I don't think that would be a useful comparison.
I don’t recall the exact number, but well over half that have been in common use were eventually banned.
Edit Prior to this administration: Butter yellow, Green 1, Green 2, Orange 1, Orange 2, Orange B, Red 1, Red 2, Red 4, Red 32, Sudan 1, Violet 1, Yellow 1, Yellow 2, Yellow 3, Yellow 4 + some more in the really early days.
EU had a longer list including Titanium dioxide.
I'm in awe at the number of people that will go to bat for things like artificial dyes in food, only because the policy is coming from the present administration. It's just common sense. We don't need to be ingesting this shit. It's cosmetic and not needed for nutrition. Why are you feeding your child Fruit Loops and not Cheerios?
I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial dyes. We can sit here and snipe and play semantics and argue over pointless details but why bother? Just get rid of them all.
> I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial dyes
Yeah, my mom was the same way when she had food with MSG in it. But only when she knew there was MSG in it.
I want these decisions to be bases on scientific and medical data, not on gut feeling or unfounded personal belief. I have no issue with regulating specific dyes or additives in food, or groups of related chemicals.
And your anecdote is not scientific data. You cannot draw any conclusions from that.
Again with this, you are just proving my point further. I don't need a panel of credentialed scientists to tell me if this stuff is okay or not. It's unnecessary to sustain life and provides no nutrition whatsoever. Get rid of it. The end.
Fluoride in communal drinking water is another thing I notice strange ingroup outgroup thinking in ...
But this is likely also an attempt to market to people who think things like "but I don't want to be exposed to chemicals" while not realizing water is a chemical.
This is the kind of nerd-snark that makes normal people not trust anything from the mouths of "experts."
The thing is, there are many chemicals which are safe to drink in reasonable amounts, and many chemicals that are not safe to drink in any amount. People deciding not to eat something because "it has chemicals in it" is a pretty ignorant take.
> People deciding not to eat something because "it has chemicals in it" is a pretty ignorant take.
When people say this they are obviously not referring the the definition of "chemical" that a chemist would use. Pretending otherwise is exactly the "nerd-snark" mentioned above which makes people distrust experts because they clearly aren't intending to use the term "chemical" in a sense that would include substances like water.
Experts, aka the people on this site on multiple meds, with chronic physical and/or mental illness, who somehow believe their approach to health is superior just because they heard it from some authority figure with a financial incentive to say so.
they might not drink water
Most likely so if they buy their food at walmart.
It's extremely presumptuous of you to assume that everyone who shops at Walmart are uneducated simpletons.
Maybe they're smarter than you with money. The same box of cereal that costs less than $2 at Walmart is almost $6 at Whole Foods.
> My understanding is that there are somewhat more restrictive regulations on food dyes in the EU compared to the US.
There isn't. The US's FDA allows fewer of them than the EU's EFSA.
I could not find my reference but I thought it was something more along the lines that either they don’t need to be disclosed in the EU or they go under different safer sounding names.
> It makes sense to evaluate the health effects of individual dyes
I wonder if changing the color of food is actually that important.
Ah, yes. The "I don't think anyone needs to do this, therefore no one needs to do this" argument.
Hardly. I'm openly wondering. If you _need_ to do this, then please, by all means, share that with us here now.
There are people with allergies to some naturally derived dyes. Annatto (from tree seeds) and carmine (from bugs) in particular.
A small number of people get anaphylaxis from carmine.
We are exposed to so much anti-customer behavior thanks to HN. But this move is a shining example of alignment between customers and a commercial entity.
Businesses doing things in line with customer preferences is exciting to see.
Synthetic and “natural” is so hazy. What’s the difference between a dye that’s synthetically made and one where we crush up bugs and extract the same exact chemical (real thing.). Why don’t we just eliminate most dyes overall…
Eh. Being honest with dyes there's a pretty strong distinction between "natural" dyes going through several extraction and purification steps but remaining more or less the same intact molecule found in something alive.
"Synthetic" dyes being the result of a long chain of steps and intermediate molecules which are usually ultimately sourced from things like air, petroleum, and seawater.
Science literacy is bad so people have problems articulating the issue of concern which is "it is fair to have concerns about novel chemicals making their way into the food supply which evolution has not had a chance to address", not that something not found in nature is automatically bad but that such things need to be introduced carefully.
People don't know science though so everything is turning into "if it's not found in nature it is a monster and unclean", which to be honest is fair to a degree for people who don't know being forced to accept things blindly and asked to trust that everything is fine from people who would gladly disregard dangers in exchange for a fraction of a cent in profit margin.
That doesn't mean they're making good decisions just that their fear is justified.
You will eat the bugs...
I have some bad news for you if that bothers you https://www.livescience.com/36292-red-food-dye-bugs-cochinea.... That’s where “natural” dye comes from
I participated in some consumer testing when Kellogg's Canada was switching their breakfast cereals to natural colours. Beyond some muted colours, the cereal tasted exactly the same. Seemed like a no brainer, really.
IIRC they switched to natural dyes in 2017, but sales fell because average people are "shiny object" driven. So they reverted it.
If China stops buying our soybeans, we can start planting other things. Aren't natural food dyes just a great way to encourage diversity in domestic agriculture?
I am not an expert in synthetic vs. natural, but I feel like this decision isn't actually about health (I don't see any reason to believe why Wal-Mart cares at all about the health of Americans) but rather some larger macroeconomic reality.
What a HUGE win for everyone's health. Kudos.
it's already easy to eat and drink things without any dyes or even artificial flavoring
(except OTC medication always has that nonsense, but now my advil is also dye-free)
but Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the life-expectancy of people back when everything was natural and organic
Hope this spreads to other countries.
Which other countries?
I'm sure I'm simplifying things, but I think this ban is common practice at this point in most of the EU, Canada.
Where else is hypercouloring cereal common?
If RFK gets his way there will certainly be things spreading to other countries.
Generally, I tend to eat natural foods. I have for decades. They just taste better. Dyes are mostly used in processed foods, because otherwise they would look unappealing next to fresh natural food. And for a very good reason.
All that is to say, doesn't much matter to me what they regulate, I eat hardly any of that stuff anyway.
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Please don't post unsubstantive comments.
Please especially don't do that when a thread is new, because threads are sensitive to initial conditions.
Good, there is a reason why just about every other country outlaws these.
Can you clearly state what that reason is? The only reason stated in the article is that this move "is in line with evolving customer preferences and in support of a more transparent food system".
They're mainly petrochemicals and were dubiously granted protected status. Lots of colors are poisions, read "A Rainbow of Risks" - great paper on documented problems with these
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yeah, kids scarfing down the same cheeto’s minus synthetic orange is probably worth a polio epidemic
> We won’t see the full effect of his efforts until years down the road.
What are the expected outcomes of this change? What are the efforts that are driving this? The linked article cites consumer preferences as a primary driver for removing synthetic dyes, not any FDA regulations enforcing their removal.
I predict that years down the road, a high-quality randomized study of Walmart versus non-Walmart shoppers will show that this move had no impact whatsoever on human health. I'm happy to make this a formal wager with you if you want.
Years down the road, when US children are dying from easily preventable childhood diseases.
Nothing RFK Jr. might do will outweigh the death and suffering he will cause by restricting and maligning vaccines today.