Food dyes do nothing to enhance the flavor, texture, longevity, or nutritional composition of food products. They solely exist to change the color of food. With that in mid, I think a "better safe...
Food dyes do nothing to enhance the flavor, texture, longevity, or nutritional composition of food products. They solely exist to change the color of food.
With that in mid, I think a "better safe than sorry" approach makes total sense as long as there is any evidence suggesting that this purely cosmetic food additive poses any kind of health risk.
Food additives in America are regulated very differently from Europe, and I was shocked when I learned (as a Brit) that the US in so different. Europe operates on a "precautionary principle",...
Food additives in America are regulated very differently from Europe, and I was shocked when I learned (as a Brit) that the US in so different.
Europe operates on a "precautionary principle", essentially the safety of an additive must be proven before it can be used, otherwise it's easy to be restricted/banned.
Whereas the US works on a "risk-based approach" where an additive is presumed safe until there is evidence of harm.
That's a huge difference and it makes me wonder what other additives you use there that is causing damage on a barely perceptible level...
This is a simplification and there are other factors, but these are the guiding princples
It really is shocking. No matter how many 100's of times something we add to our food or drugs or environment turns out later to have incontrovertable negative health impacts, we keep going with...
It really is shocking. No matter how many 100's of times something we add to our food or drugs or environment turns out later to have incontrovertable negative health impacts, we keep going with the fuck around and leave finding out to someone else philosophy of public (and planetary) health.
Which, of course, is because there's profit in it. But it's not just the US. For example most of the world is still using PFAs and adjacent chemicals despite a growing pile of evidence that it's a terrible idea. Ditto for other plastic additives and overuse of plastics in general. And when a particular chemical in the family gets too much of a bad name, they replace it with something similar that doesn't yet have specific evidence of harm.
Don't imagine that just because wherever you live is doing better than the US where public health is concerned that you don't have to worry about labels.
As the world burns, mass extinction continues unabated and rates of cancer and other diseases rise alarmingly in young people, we should really consider a new strategy.
Side note: The FDA has known that red #3 is carcinogenic since 1980 when the first animal study was published. The message is clear: profit first unless you can prove it's bad multiple times over and probably not even then.
In my personal opinion, colorants are generally bad if you find it in food products. Not because they're bad for your health in a vacuum, but because they are used to hide the fact that the...
In my personal opinion, colorants are generally bad if you find it in food products. Not because they're bad for your health in a vacuum, but because they are used to hide the fact that the ingredients used to make the thing are low in quality or to counterfeit the existence of ingredients you would have expected. They are used to enhance foods you would probably be better off not eating.
I think there are cases where intentionally changing the color of a food product is merited, such as when color serves an artistic purpose (e.g., cake decorating) or makes it easy to differentiate...
I think there are cases where intentionally changing the color of a food product is merited, such as when color serves an artistic purpose (e.g., cake decorating) or makes it easy to differentiate between products (e.g., a mixture of candies where color is used to indicate flavor). There can also be cultural significance associated with colors (e.g., tumeric used as a yellow dye in many curries).
But if dye is used to disguise the ingredients or quality of a product, I completely agree with you. It borders on false advertising.
i'm confused—i think turmeric is usually added for flavour? at least that's the only reason i use it. (contrariwise, ground turmeric has itself sometimes been dyed yellow with lead-based dye, but...
tumeric used as a yellow dye in many curries
i'm confused—i think turmeric is usually added for flavour? at least that's the only reason i use it. (contrariwise, ground turmeric has itself sometimes been dyed yellow with lead-based dye, but that is a separate problem)
Turmeric is added to things for flavor, but it can also be used for color simply because it's such a typically brightly-colored ingredient. It can be used for either or both in a given recipe.
Turmeric is added to things for flavor, but it can also be used for color simply because it's such a typically brightly-colored ingredient. It can be used for either or both in a given recipe.
The FDA is amending its color additive regulations to no longer allow for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs in response to a 2022 color additive petition. The petition requested the agency review whether the Delaney Clause applied and cited, among other data and information, two studies that showed cancer in laboratory male rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No. 3 due to a rat specific hormonal mechanism.
The Delaney Clause, enacted in 1960 as part of the Color Additives Amendment to the FD&C Act, prohibits FDA authorization of a food additive or color additive if it has been found to induce cancer in humans or animals.
FD&C Red No. 3 is a synthetic food dye that gives foods and drinks a bright, cherry-red color. [It] has been primarily used in certain food products, such as candy, cakes and cupcakes, cookies, frozen desserts, and frostings and icings, as well as certain ingested drugs.
Manufacturers who use FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs will have until January 15, 2027 or January 18, 2028, respectively, to reformulate their products.
I felt that this was the most interesting part of this article. So, combined with the explanation on the Delaney Clause, it seems that this removal is based on a technicality, rather than any...
I felt that this was the most interesting part of this article.
Studies in other animals and in humans did not show these effects; claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information.
So, combined with the explanation on the Delaney Clause, it seems that this removal is based on a technicality, rather than any evidence of risk.
This kind of thing is why I'm so uneasy about food safety when visiting USA. The UK passed legislation in 1995 based on an EU directive to ban E127 in almost all cases. In other words, Americans...
This kind of thing is why I'm so uneasy about food safety when visiting USA. The UK passed legislation in 1995 based on an EU directive to ban E127 in almost all cases. In other words, Americans have been eating E127 for almost thirty years after Europe banned it (except for cherries) for safety reasons. For many other artificial food colours we have mandatory safety warnings.
See this NYTimes article for some other potentially unsafe food additives that are common in the USA. Even bread is potentially dangerous in the USA and, even if you were to try and make your own, lots of flour is unsafe because it contains the same ingredients used in store-purchased bread.
What is "food"? In context, this is a serious question. Rigorously, what is food? Because you're not going to come up with any definition which doesn't include stuff which is objectively way worse...
What is "food"?
In context, this is a serious question. Rigorously, what is food? Because you're not going to come up with any definition which doesn't include stuff which is objectively way worse for you than Red 3. (Ethanol is going to be the most obvious gotcha here, but it's far from the only one.)
Is poison a defining category or just the point at which a quantity of a thing is harmful and/or lethal. There's synthetic stuff that'll nearly never kill you Chemo is arguably poison, it's also...
Is poison a defining category or just the point at which a quantity of a thing is harmful and/or lethal. There's synthetic stuff that'll nearly never kill you
Chemo is arguably poison, it's also medicine.
But plenty of foods have things in them that are eventually harmful in the correct quantity. Nutmeg is a food and toxic in large quantities. Cherry pips and apple seeds have toxins in them. Potatoes can become poisonous. Chocolate is not typically poisonous to humans but is to other animals. Water can kill you. And if you're allergic that's definitely harmful.
So yeah, poison is sometimes food. Food is sometimes poisonous.
Sure, the dose makes the poison, but ethanol is poison in any dose. If ethanol is truly food (and not just food by common convention), then something else that I forgot while researching a...
Sure, the dose makes the poison, but ethanol is poison in any dose. If ethanol is truly food (and not just food by common convention), then something else that I forgot while researching a tangent, but which proves my point very well.
Ah well, such compelling debate (◠‿・) I don't think there's a clear categorical separation that everyone could agree on the placement of every substance we ingest. Especially given the propensity...
Sure, the dose makes the poison, but ethanol is poison in any dose. If ethanol is truly food (and not just food by common convention), then something else that I forgot while researching a tangent, but which proves my point very well.
Ah well, such compelling debate (◠‿・)
I don't think there's a clear categorical separation that everyone could agree on the placement of every substance we ingest. Especially given the propensity for calling things like sugar "poison"
Entirely off-topic, but thank you for your honesty, lol. The number of times I’ve had this happen only for me to not send out my comment at all is way too high. But even those “unfinished”...
Entirely off-topic, but thank you for your honesty, lol.
The number of times I’ve had this happen only for me to not send out my comment at all is way too high. But even those “unfinished” comments can contribute to the discussion still, IMO.
Is wine food? Because ethanol is really truly remarkably bad for you. It's acutely toxic, chronically toxic, and carcinogenic, and the evidence for all of those in humans is overwhelming. (Protip:...
Is wine food? Because ethanol is really truly remarkably bad for you. It's acutely toxic, chronically toxic, and carcinogenic, and the evidence for all of those in humans is overwhelming. (Protip: excluding wine from your definition of "food" will bring the French down on you like a ton of baguettes.)
Is fugu food? Because the toxin there has to be carefully removed, and it can be acutely fatal if done incompletely. (Protip: excluding a national delicacy, however dumb, is unlikely to fly.)
Is glutamate food? It naturally occurs in a bunch of stuff that definitely ought to be food (e.g. tomatoes—protip, Italy, yeah, yeah, you get the joke), but also seems to rile up a bunch of folks when used as an additive. But if concentrating stuff from food results in not-food, surely sugar shouldn't be food? On the basis of the evidence, refined sugar is probably worse for you than Red 3…
One thing to maybe note is that I'm not trying to argue in favor of food dyes here. I agree with Akir's comment elsewhere in this thread: dying food is mostly a bad practice to obscure the actual appearance of the ingredients. But I do think that it's worth being rigorous in our thought, and drawing a bright line around something as subjective and culturally diverse as "food" is going to fail at that immediately.
The point on fugu or puffer fish is a bit misleading. The gland with the poison must be carefully removed, but the meat itself is not directly poisonous. Many animals have toxic or nasty parts...
The point on fugu or puffer fish is a bit misleading. The gland with the poison must be carefully removed, but the meat itself is not directly poisonous. Many animals have toxic or nasty parts which are removed when preparing for human consumption; fugu is on the extreme end of that scale.
What makes you think that Spiro[isobenzofuran- 1(3H),9'-[9H]xanthen]-3-one, 3',6'-dihydroxy-2',4',5',7'-tetraiodo-, disodium salt isn't food? It has salt right there in its name!
What makes you think that Spiro[isobenzofuran- 1(3H),9'-[9H]xanthen]-3-one, 3',6'-dihydroxy-2',4',5',7'-tetraiodo-, disodium salt isn't food? It has salt right there in its name!
What, you think I cherry picked the scariest name from among the many synonyms on Wikipedia or something? I bet you're one of those freaks who is willing to consume...
What, you think I cherry picked the scariest name from among the many synonyms on Wikipedia or something? I bet you're one of those freaks who is willing to consume (5R)-[(1S)-1,2-dihydroxyethyl]-3,4-dihydroxyfuran-2(5H)-one and Poly(1,4-β-D-anhydroglucopyranose).
IIRC, it’s a similar situation with aspartame. It does reliably cause bladder cancer in mice, but at doses equivalent to a human chugging five gallons of diet coke every day for a year. It’s not a...
IIRC, it’s a similar situation with aspartame. It does reliably cause bladder cancer in mice, but at doses equivalent to a human chugging five gallons of diet coke every day for a year. It’s not a relevant safety risk.
Xylitol is the one I personally would like to see more regulated. It is fine for humans, but extremely dangerous for dogs even in very small amounts, and it is often present in food products...
Xylitol is the one I personally would like to see more regulated. It is fine for humans, but extremely dangerous for dogs even in very small amounts, and it is often present in food products commonly fed to dogs (such as peanut butter, which is a popular filling for Kong toys).
I'm not saying it should be banned in any way, but I would love to see some kind of "contains xylitol: not safe for dogs" warning label.
Speaking off-topic about FDA issues for dogs, Seresto flea & tick collars used two chemicals that were provably safe in isolation. However, when combined, they were occasionally deadly to small...
Speaking off-topic about FDA issues for dogs, Seresto flea & tick collars used two chemicals that were provably safe in isolation. However, when combined, they were occasionally deadly to small dogs.
House Republicans stalled the investigation for no good reason.
There is a long list of ingredients which aren't safe for dogs, and I don't think the FDA should prioritize animal safety when they're stretched thin as is.
There is a long list of ingredients which aren't safe for dogs, and I don't think the FDA should prioritize animal safety when they're stretched thin as is.
I mean..I knew people who would drink a gallon or so of diet coke a day. This is not outside the realm of American consumption. But also, artificial sweeteners are being linked to thyroid cancer...
I mean..I knew people who would drink a gallon or so of diet coke a day. This is not outside the realm of American consumption.
Looks like enough for further research. Would be nice to see it broken down by sweetener and see it controlled for other behaviors/environmental factors.
Looks like enough for further research. Would be nice to see it broken down by sweetener and see it controlled for other behaviors/environmental factors.
Alright then, let's not dye anything. That's really where I was going with it. I don't care if my food is a specific color unless it's naturally supposed to be that color.
Alright then, let's not dye anything. That's really where I was going with it. I don't care if my food is a specific color unless it's naturally supposed to be that color.
Other than that your first statement was literally asking to stop people being allowed to eat "non food items"... Natural does not mean food and unnatural does not mean not food! It's not that simple!
Other than that your first statement was literally asking to stop people being allowed to eat "non food items"...
Natural does not mean food and unnatural does not mean not food! It's not that simple!
Food dyes do nothing to enhance the flavor, texture, longevity, or nutritional composition of food products. They solely exist to change the color of food.
With that in mid, I think a "better safe than sorry" approach makes total sense as long as there is any evidence suggesting that this purely cosmetic food additive poses any kind of health risk.
dye used in drug compounding is not always strictly cosmetic; it can also be used to quickly visually estimate if a mixture is uniform
Food additives in America are regulated very differently from Europe, and I was shocked when I learned (as a Brit) that the US in so different.
Europe operates on a "precautionary principle", essentially the safety of an additive must be proven before it can be used, otherwise it's easy to be restricted/banned.
Whereas the US works on a "risk-based approach" where an additive is presumed safe until there is evidence of harm.
That's a huge difference and it makes me wonder what other additives you use there that is causing damage on a barely perceptible level...
This is a simplification and there are other factors, but these are the guiding princples
Yet Europe's ban on this red dye has a carveout just for cherry farmers...
It really is shocking. No matter how many 100's of times something we add to our food or drugs or environment turns out later to have incontrovertable negative health impacts, we keep going with the fuck around and leave finding out to someone else philosophy of public (and planetary) health.
Which, of course, is because there's profit in it. But it's not just the US. For example most of the world is still using PFAs and adjacent chemicals despite a growing pile of evidence that it's a terrible idea. Ditto for other plastic additives and overuse of plastics in general. And when a particular chemical in the family gets too much of a bad name, they replace it with something similar that doesn't yet have specific evidence of harm.
Don't imagine that just because wherever you live is doing better than the US where public health is concerned that you don't have to worry about labels.
As the world burns, mass extinction continues unabated and rates of cancer and other diseases rise alarmingly in young people, we should really consider a new strategy.
Side note: The FDA has known that red #3 is carcinogenic since 1980 when the first animal study was published. The message is clear: profit first unless you can prove it's bad multiple times over and probably not even then.
They can definitely enhance the experience of eating, but yeah, it's extra chemicals that we don't really need to be eating
In my personal opinion, colorants are generally bad if you find it in food products. Not because they're bad for your health in a vacuum, but because they are used to hide the fact that the ingredients used to make the thing are low in quality or to counterfeit the existence of ingredients you would have expected. They are used to enhance foods you would probably be better off not eating.
I think there are cases where intentionally changing the color of a food product is merited, such as when color serves an artistic purpose (e.g., cake decorating) or makes it easy to differentiate between products (e.g., a mixture of candies where color is used to indicate flavor). There can also be cultural significance associated with colors (e.g., tumeric used as a yellow dye in many curries).
But if dye is used to disguise the ingredients or quality of a product, I completely agree with you. It borders on false advertising.
i'm confused—i think turmeric is usually added for flavour? at least that's the only reason i use it. (contrariwise, ground turmeric has itself sometimes been dyed yellow with lead-based dye, but that is a separate problem)
Turmeric is added to things for flavor, but it can also be used for color simply because it's such a typically brightly-colored ingredient. It can be used for either or both in a given recipe.
I felt that this was the most interesting part of this article.
So, combined with the explanation on the Delaney Clause, it seems that this removal is based on a technicality, rather than any evidence of risk.
Dang, not more red 3 maxxing. On a more serious note, does anyone have a list of restricted/banned food additives?
This kind of thing is why I'm so uneasy about food safety when visiting USA. The UK passed legislation in 1995 based on an EU directive to ban E127 in almost all cases. In other words, Americans have been eating E127 for almost thirty years after Europe banned it (except for cherries) for safety reasons. For many other artificial food colours we have mandatory safety warnings.
See this NYTimes article for some other potentially unsafe food additives that are common in the USA. Even bread is potentially dangerous in the USA and, even if you were to try and make your own, lots of flour is unsafe because it contains the same ingredients used in store-purchased bread.
I personally would love to stop ingesting things that are not food.
What is "food"?
In context, this is a serious question. Rigorously, what is food? Because you're not going to come up with any definition which doesn't include stuff which is objectively way worse for you than Red 3. (Ethanol is going to be the most obvious gotcha here, but it's far from the only one.)
Is poison food?
Is poison a defining category or just the point at which a quantity of a thing is harmful and/or lethal. There's synthetic stuff that'll nearly never kill you
Chemo is arguably poison, it's also medicine.
But plenty of foods have things in them that are eventually harmful in the correct quantity. Nutmeg is a food and toxic in large quantities. Cherry pips and apple seeds have toxins in them. Potatoes can become poisonous. Chocolate is not typically poisonous to humans but is to other animals. Water can kill you. And if you're allergic that's definitely harmful.
So yeah, poison is sometimes food. Food is sometimes poisonous.
Sure, the dose makes the poison, but ethanol is poison in any dose. If ethanol is truly food (and not just food by common convention), then something else that I forgot while researching a tangent, but which proves my point very well.
Ah well, such compelling debate (◠‿・)
I don't think there's a clear categorical separation that everyone could agree on the placement of every substance we ingest. Especially given the propensity for calling things like sugar "poison"
Entirely off-topic, but thank you for your honesty, lol.
The number of times I’ve had this happen only for me to not send out my comment at all is way too high. But even those “unfinished” comments can contribute to the discussion still, IMO.
Which foods do you think require objectively way worse stuff? It seems to me like most of the bad things are put there, not occuring naturally.
Is wine food? Because ethanol is really truly remarkably bad for you. It's acutely toxic, chronically toxic, and carcinogenic, and the evidence for all of those in humans is overwhelming. (Protip: excluding wine from your definition of "food" will bring the French down on you like a ton of baguettes.)
Is fugu food? Because the toxin there has to be carefully removed, and it can be acutely fatal if done incompletely. (Protip: excluding a national delicacy, however dumb, is unlikely to fly.)
Is glutamate food? It naturally occurs in a bunch of stuff that definitely ought to be food (e.g. tomatoes—protip, Italy, yeah, yeah, you get the joke), but also seems to rile up a bunch of folks when used as an additive. But if concentrating stuff from food results in not-food, surely sugar shouldn't be food? On the basis of the evidence, refined sugar is probably worse for you than Red 3…
One thing to maybe note is that I'm not trying to argue in favor of food dyes here. I agree with Akir's comment elsewhere in this thread: dying food is mostly a bad practice to obscure the actual appearance of the ingredients. But I do think that it's worth being rigorous in our thought, and drawing a bright line around something as subjective and culturally diverse as "food" is going to fail at that immediately.
The point on fugu or puffer fish is a bit misleading. The gland with the poison must be carefully removed, but the meat itself is not directly poisonous. Many animals have toxic or nasty parts which are removed when preparing for human consumption; fugu is on the extreme end of that scale.
What makes you think that Spiro[isobenzofuran- 1(3H),9'-[9H]xanthen]-3-one, 3',6'-dihydroxy-2',4',5',7'-tetraiodo-, disodium salt isn't food? It has salt right there in its name!
Imagine I linked 3 or 4 relevant SMBC comics here. Big scary IUPAC names also apply to fully natural and necessary molecules.
What, you think I cherry picked the scariest name from among the many synonyms on Wikipedia or something? I bet you're one of those freaks who is willing to consume (5R)-[(1S)-1,2-dihydroxyethyl]-3,4-dihydroxyfuran-2(5H)-one and Poly(1,4-β-D-anhydroglucopyranose).
Can we please just get rid of any food dyes that are not natural? Their only need is to market food differently.
Natural dyes are not inherently safer, nor is there any cited evidence that Red 3 is dangerous in any application other than force-fed to rats.
IIRC, it’s a similar situation with aspartame. It does reliably cause bladder cancer in mice, but at doses equivalent to a human chugging five gallons of diet coke every day for a year. It’s not a relevant safety risk.
Xylitol is the one I personally would like to see more regulated. It is fine for humans, but extremely dangerous for dogs even in very small amounts, and it is often present in food products commonly fed to dogs (such as peanut butter, which is a popular filling for Kong toys).
I'm not saying it should be banned in any way, but I would love to see some kind of "contains xylitol: not safe for dogs" warning label.
Speaking off-topic about FDA issues for dogs, Seresto flea & tick collars used two chemicals that were provably safe in isolation. However, when combined, they were occasionally deadly to small dogs.
House Republicans stalled the investigation for no good reason.
https://congressionaldish.com/cd256-poisonous-pet-collars/
There is a long list of ingredients which aren't safe for dogs, and I don't think the FDA should prioritize animal safety when they're stretched thin as is.
Xylitol will also trigger diarrhea in humans.
I had an unfortunate incident with some xylitol candies about 20 years ago. Do not reccomend.
gestures at the reviews for the giant bag of sugar free gummy bears
I mean..I knew people who would drink a gallon or so of diet coke a day. This is not outside the realm of American consumption.
But also, artificial sweeteners are being linked to thyroid cancer incidence at much lower levels of consumption..
Looks like enough for further research. Would be nice to see it broken down by sweetener and see it controlled for other behaviors/environmental factors.
Missing the rest of your usage rate? 5gal/day for a year maybe?
I’ll go correct that
Alright then, let's not dye anything. That's really where I was going with it. I don't care if my food is a specific color unless it's naturally supposed to be that color.
You can eat non food items if you want, we won't stop you.
Other than that your first statement was literally asking to stop people being allowed to eat "non food items"...
Natural does not mean food and unnatural does not mean not food! It's not that simple!