The 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.
Borderline 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.
It 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.
I'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.
Wish they'd eliminate food coloring altogether. Leave the coloring for the packaging.
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.
Will RFK next ban artificial Carbon Monoxide (CO) Treatment that keeps the beef he thinks is so important artificially red?
I'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.
It 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".
In the food additive industry, “natural” mostly translates to “artificial, but derived with outdated and roundabout methods”.
Here, have this radium water, carefully collected from natural springs. Natural dyes only. Terms and conditions apply.
Which stock goes up ?
There has been serious erosion in the area of words meaning things.
TBH 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.
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!