US Will Ban Cancer-Linked Red Dye No. 3 in Cereal and Other Foods

> only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done

I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I think it's valid to also apply heavy scrutiny on new chemicals being added to the food chain. The default being to not allow it if it's not proven safe.

Red dye 3 probably shouldn't have been added to the food supply chain with that criteria but since it's already been there for decades with no strong link to negative outcomes there's little reason to ban it now.

> The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done.

Because we're talking about food I would actually like to see the opposite. Provide peer reviewed, gold standard studies showing that what you want to put in food is in fact safe.

No, you assign a risk score as well as a cost score to all the industrial inputs that you can use. In this case, there are readily available red food dyes (eg cochineal from industrially farmed insects) that have much lower risk scores (as they are from plant and animal sources) and not significantly different cost scores.

You also need to ask, what is the cost of not having this substance? In this case, the cost would be - you have food that isn't red. Is that a substantial problem for society?

To treat these as irrelevant and boil it down to "prove it is harmful or shut up" is needlessly reductive.

> Just ask the state of California

I've see the labels at Starbucks, by the chocolate at the grocery store, and by the balsamic vinegar.

I'm not really pro-bureaucrat, but perhaps the standard for food should be slightly different. Just maybe, (novel) food (additives/preservatives/ingredients) should first be proven safe, rather than waiting until they're proven unsafe to prohibit them. It's not as if this was a substance humans regularly ingested for centuries and people are only now wigging out... look at the wikipedia entry for this. The only halogen that's not part of this thing is apparently bromine, the IUPAC name for the chemical's about as long as my comment here.

Obviously the problem is that Red no3 is so prevalent and completely unregulated. Alcohol is sold separately and ID is needed to purchase and isn't added to children's food. If the dye was only sold separately in bottles this debate wouldn't be happening.

The water thing is even more unserious so I'll ignore it.

But red dye has little to no value to consumers and there are equally viable alternatives. No one is going to start bootlegging red dye 3 if it is banned. Alcohol has huge value and is basically impossible to ban.

What does B12 in alcohol do?

Well, we did TRY banning alcohol, but it didn't go that well. We do at least generally attempt to prevent children from consuming alcohol, though.

Should we ban alcohol? I think people should stop drinking it, but in general I don't think the sale of things that may be harmful in some ways should be entirely prohibited, it would just be good if we minimized the amount of potentially harmful ingredients in our general food supply. e.g. if someone wanted to buy/sell Red Dye No. 3 on its own I don't think that would be a big concern.

Both alcohol and tobacco are regulated by the ATF. The FDA would ban cigarettes if they had the authority.

Yeah, B12 AND B1 in alchohol alike. There are lots of people around age 50 who get admitted to social home and have irreversible B1 deficiency, labeled as "alcohol-induced B1 deficiency".

Humans do not eat plastic, this argument doesn't make sense.

Other than bakery items, what foods do you regularly eat that depend on having a specific color? I don't see how that's anything other than a marketing tool to make them stand out on store shelves. When you order something in a restaurant, you typically don't even know what their version will look like until it gets to your table. I've never, not once, added dyes to home cooking outside of cake icings and things like that.

There've been ridiculous attempts to get rid of perfectly innocent flavor enhancers before, like the fight against MSG. Take out MSG, and food tastes less good. But take out a borderline red dye, and what's the worst that happens? Factories have to sell soda that's slightly less pretty in the bottle?

Nope, eating nothing but potatoes for the rest of your life is a fantastic way to ensure that you end up with severe macro/micronutrient deficiencies, which will be a very effective way of generating disease, including cancer.

>We (humans) don't subsist on some Matrix-like slop that provides all of our nutrients for no pleasure. Eating is a weird combination of necessity and pleasure activity. You could ask: if there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing taste, why risk it? You'd ban most spices with this line of reasoning.

I mean, we absolutely do that already. There's plenty of folks on a low sodium diet because while the salt tastes great, it's bad for them.

In this case we aren't talking about eliminating the color red entirely, we're arguing about a slightly different color. You can get red from a strawberry, raspberry, cherry skin, etc. which will work just as well. It just won't be the neon-red that red-5 produces.

For fun, you could grow your own seasoning (besides herbs, easy too) for those potatoes. I recently learned about the plant Salicornia - you can dehydrate them and grind them to make a green salt. I'm going to try to grow some this year.

Historically I would agree, but we are in a new world. RFK Jr is the face of increased FDA regulation and banning of potentially toxic materials, and he is coming under the Trump administration. For the vast majority of his life, he was a Democrat Fighting frequently Republican administrations purposes of environment and health, but he is now very much rejected by The Democratic party. The Republican party seems to be welcoming him fairly warmly, although it will be interesting to see how long that persists as soon as he has some disagreement with Trump or starts making a real impact.

Personally I really hope many Democrats can put The health of our people ahead of other things and work together to make meaningful changes, because something really needs to be done. Chronic health issues have exploded and it may already be too late for multiple generations who will suffer from chronic disease their entire life as a result of this. If those of us alive and aware of these problems now don't do something to correct this course, we will be guilty of criminal negligence to our descendants in my opinion.

Incorrect.

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-00830.pdf

Scroll down to "I. Introduction".

> In the Federal Register of February 17, 2023 (88 FR 10245), we announced that we filed a color additive petition (CAP 3C0323) jointly submitted by

RFK was not the HHS nominee in February 2023.

But it appears this process has been going even earlier than that: November 15, 2022 [0]

[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/17/2023-03...

Where did you read that?

> Trump is extremely pro Corporation and anti-regulation

Trump is actually very, very anti-corporation. It's a very prominent part of his stump speeches and campaigning. He's accusing corporations of everything.

His fortune was made from real-estate speculation and the Trump corporation is basically run like a family business. If you were try to attach a label - he is pro-aristocracy. He believes wealth tied to land and inheritance is "legitimate", and wealth tried to trade and commerce as illegitimate.

RFK Jr is MAGA where it counts: Anti-vaccine, vaccines cause autism, HPV vaccine doesn't work, Covid attacks whites/black but spares jews/chinese by design.

Right. Michelle Obama pushed for a lot of things that RFK wants. Now that the Republicans suddenly want what the Democrats have always wanted of course they're going to pass those laws

Yeah, take the Doritos as an example: the UK bag lists "Cheese Powder", the US bag lists "Cheddar Cheese" with sub-ingredients in parentheses (plus Whey and Skim Milk).

What is in the UK Doritos' "Cool Original Flavour" (read: Ranch) ingredient? Maybe something like Tomato Powder, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Buttermilk, Natural and Artificial Flavors?

[flagged]

The UK product contains freeze dried strawberries and raspberries. The USA market "strawberries and cream" contains no strawberry, instead it has freeze dried apple dyed red with added strawberry flavor.

I don't believe natural is inherently good nor artificial inherently bad but the USA product is objectively lower quality. IMHO it is cheaply made crap to fool people that do not read the ingredients.

Here's the American version of "heaps of fruit," "fruit fusion."

https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/quaker-oats-instant-oatmea...

Ingredients

Whole grain oats,sugar,dried raspberries,dried strawberries,natural flavor,tricalcium phosphate,salt,beet juice concentrate (color),iron,vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol).

The American version is identical to the UK version until "natural flavor." The US version then adds some vitamins plus tricalcium phosphate, salt, and beet juice concentrate. The only "scary" ingredient is tricalcium phosphate, which appears to be an anti-caking agent.

Edit: on Quaker's website

https://www.quakeroats.com/products/hot-cereals/instant-oatm...

It says "Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of phosphorus that also provides the essential mineral calcium." Which is actually what I suspected, it's another added vitamin that has the benefit of also being an anti caking agent.

> food in the US is overly colored for no other reason than it looks cool

My understanding is that a lot of food is colored to look "natural" for uniformity. A good example of this is applesauce.

Are you sure that Canadian version is less detrimental to the health of the consumer? It too looks artificial color-loaded to me.

It's colored so some set of people can make more money.

Neither color of Fruit Loops is natural. American food is colored to look cool, because cool sells better with Americans. Canadian food is colored to look dull, because dull sells better with Canadians.

…or cigarettes, which are available for sale everywhere.

If unhealthy foods are to be banned, we must also ban cigarettes and alcohol. If we are to let people be bodybuilders, or body destroyers, then all of these things should be available for purchase.

Ultimately it is a special kind of arrogance to tell people what they are or are not allowed to do to the one thing they unambiguously own and control: their own body.

Ok, well then, I’m sure no Americans are eating high levels of foods that contain dyes. So, surely there are long term 20 year plus studies on cumulative effects, right?

Not causing cancer falls under fiduciary duty.

I hate to break it to you, but a lot of that difference comes down to labeling and disclosure requirements. If the Italian fries don't even have to disclose what type of oil they use, they probably also don't have to disclose the oil stabilizers and seasonings they use.

Let's not forget that Europe had massive epidemic of horse meat being snuck into the supply chain with no one catching on.

I hate to break this news to you but there are countries outside of the EU.

The FDA also bans more food dyes than the EU.

I think your cultural palate is showing. The marketing of a few simple ingredients sounds good except it's not like American McDonalds is putting them in for no reason. You can make the case that fillers are used to cut cost but for french fries all that stuff costs extra. To Americans that shit tastes great.

* The beef flavor is mimicking frying in beef tallow. If you use Marmite in your brown gravy you're using the same trick.

* Americans, being flushed with corn and corn syrup which is sweeter than granulated sugar, developed a sweeter tooth than other places which is why the dextrose.

* Potatoes once cut and exposed to air get that gross dark color. Most home cooks usually solve that by keeping them submerged in water until frying but Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate works the same.

It is more complicated than this, the US has much more rigorous food safety standards in a number of dimensions.

For example, the US has much stricter standards for preventing bacterial contamination than Europe, outside of the Nordics which share similar food safety regulations as the US. The US prohibits a lot of food importation from Europe because of lower food safety standards related to contamination.

Europe makes a lot of food safety exceptions on the basis of a process being "traditional" in some sense, nominally preserving culture. The US is a bit more technocratic less prone to the naturalistic fallacy; the FDA doesn't care that something is cultural or traditional, if there is scientific evidence of material risk then it will be banned.

If I had to summarize their food safety perspectives, the EU tends to focus more on allowable ingredients, the US tends to focus more on the uncontaminated and sterile handling of the food supply chain.

Similar thing with my wife and bread. In the US she developed/discovered/exposed a gluten intolerance, to the point that she removed it from her diet entirely, but bread in France is ok for her.

So it might not have anything to do with regulation at all?

Sure the US is ahead of the EU. The EU allows 11 [1] synthetic food dyes while the US only allows 9 [2]

[1] https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours

[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...

Why don’t you do the comparison?

To be honest, I could see an argument for separating the handling of raw agricultural product from the rest of the food system. The health effects of Oreos vs. making sure our eggs don’t have bird flu are quite different regulatory concerns.

Unless you sell that crap.

Things like Veggie Libel Laws are very much against the public interest but farm owners have managed to somehow be both rich and adored by the populace so here we are

So the US is winning considering they allow less food dyes?

A lot of other countries do not have the shear mass of industries and services that the US does.

> The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume.

I mean, that's just not true. Fruit Loops are sold in Europe as well (albeit with slightly different colors), and there's no hoof or plant that produces anything that looks like Fruit Loops. Food coloring is a worldwide phenomenon.

Should all things that have only benefits that you don't care about and which aren't proven to have no downsides you care about be banned?

Cancer is a genetic defect.

Well, if you read the quote in my comment (or clicked on the source link I included), you would see that the FDA evaluated it for health risks all-up, not just cancer.

Your comment violates the following hacker news guideline:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for the full set.