FDA says it will phase out petroleum-based food dyes, authorize four natural color additives

The US Food and Drug Administration plans to phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the US food supply due to health concerns, Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced Tuesday.

The US Food and Drug Administration plans to phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the US food supply due to health concerns, Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced Tuesday. “For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals,” Makary said. “Now, there’s no one ingredient that accounts for the child chronic disease epidemic, and let’s be honest, taking petroleum-based food dyes out of the food supply is not a silver bullet that will instantly make America’s children healthy, but it is one important step.” The dyes can be found in many candies, cereals, beverages and even in some medication. Companies use the dyes to give food and drinks brighter colors and make them more appealing. Makary emphasized that this effort to eliminate dyes will be done by working with, rather than against, the industry. “There are a number of tools at our disposal. And so I believe in love, and let’s start in a friendly way and see if we can do this without any statutory or regulatory changes, but we are exploring every tool in the toolbox to make sure this gets done very quickly,” he said. “They want to do it. So why go down a complicated road with Congress when they want to do this? They don’t want to deal with a patchwork of 30 different state plans.” The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for the makers of consumer packaged goods, said that ingredients in the US food supply have been “rigorously studied following an objective science and risk-based evaluation process and have been demonstrated to be safe.”