The Daily - Faded Froot Loops and Dull Doritos: Is Big Food Losing the War on Dyes?

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

The summer, some of the biggest food companies in America have announced that they plan to stop using artificial food dyes. It’s a move that would transform the look of some of the best known brands.Julie Creswell, who covers the food industry, explains how the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., got the food industry to commit to a change that it has resisted for years — and that could be bad for business.Guest: Julie Creswell, a business reporter covering the food industry for The New York Times.Background reading: How might Jell-O look and taste when artificial dyes are removed?Mr. Kennedy’s battle against food dyes hit a roadblock: M&M’s.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroweth. This is The Daily. This summer, some of the biggest food companies in America have announced that they're planning to stop using artificial food dyes. It's not just one company making this big announcement. Kraft Heinz, one of the nation's largest food companies. General Mills, the maker of cereals including cinnamon toast, crunch and cheese. Iconic products like Kool-Aid and Jell-O poised for a new look.

Dozens of the top ice cream makers have agreed. It's also those jet popped marshmallows as well as... It's a move that would transform the look of some of the most iconic brands that we buy. Everyone is saying we just don't need these artificial dyes anymore. Especially when you're working with artificial dyes. Today, my colleague Julie Cresswell,

on how the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., got big food to commit to a change it resisted for years and that could be bad for business. It's Monday, July 28th. Julie, welcome to the show. This is your first time on The Daily, right? It is. I'm so excited to be here.

We're excited to have you. So you cover the food industry, which with RFK Junior now overseeing the Food and Drug Administration is facing a lot of potential change. And we saw our first major example of that recently, when these big food companies came out and said they are gonna eliminate artificial dyes from their products. How big of a deal are these announcements?

Just put this into context for me. This is, for the American food system, one of the biggest changes we've seen in decades. Period. this in a context for me? This is, for the American food system, one of the biggest changes we've seen in decades, period. No other administration, Republican, Democrat, has gotten the food industry to agree in mass to sort of make a significant change like this ever. If this works, this administration and Kennedy

actually do have the opportunity to really reshape the American food system. Right, I mean, he famously says he wants to make America healthy again. Exactly. Where does his war on these artificial dyes fit in with that? He sees artificial dyes as part of the bigger picture around chronic disease.

The whole issue with artificial dyes is they sort of fall in that spectrum of processed foods in America that he sees as not good for Americans and particularly American youth. But this idea of making American healthy again, and especially by going after artificial dyes, is not new. Vani and I are both food bloggers and she does investigations and we were just alarmed by what we uncovered. Basically, these companies, these are American companies. You've had a lot of these momfluencers and people within the movement that have been focusing on artificial dyes going back at least a decade. I'm here for all Americans who don't know the truth about our food industry. So I started a petition. Having petitions signed by people and taking it to Kellogg's and taking it to Mars and trying to pressure

Them to remove artificial dyes and what were the arguments they were making about why this should happen You know, there was a number of arguments that they were making so what is wrong with artificial food dyes Well, first of all, they're made in a laboratory with chemicals derived from petroleum First of all, they're made in a laboratory with chemicals derived from petroleum. One is these are dyes that are made from petroleum. The same type of ingredients like gasoline, asphalt, and tar. They're not from natural ingredients at all. A second argument is, you know, these dyes are used largely in foods that are geared and marketed towards children. And they produce bogus studies that say these food diets are healthy because their marketing

survey says that the neon colors make kids want to buy it. You know, adults aren't sitting down to a big old bowl of Froot Loops. It's geared to make children. Speak for yourself, Julie. Well, we've all been there. But yeah, these are food that children want to eat because they're bright, they're colorful, they're fun. And marketing executives inside all these companies know that.

But one of the strongest arguments lodged against these artificial food dyes really has to do with the health implications of kids consuming them in large amounts. Artificial food dyes have been proven to increase hyperactivity in children to negatively affect... And those concerns have been echoed more recently by RFK Jr. It's very clear the dyes, all of them are linked in very, very strong studies to ADHD. And are those claims actually true, Julie? Like, what do we know about the science there, about the evidence? There's not a huge body of evidence. And there's been no research showing a causal relationship between food dyes and ADHD. There was one study, though, that did start to get a lot of attention and helped kind

of kick off this push against artificial dyes. That occurs around 2007 in the UK when they do something called the Southampton study. Basically they started giving children drinks. Some had artificial colors in them and then another group that didn't. And they sort of watched their behavior. And the children that were given the drinks with red 40 or other artificial colors in them started showing more hyperactive behavior than the others. And that's what ultimately led the European Union to take sort of a tougher stance or a harder look at these artificial colors. And so in the EU when

you say they started to take a harder stance, what does that mean? What did they do? So one of the things the European Union did is in 2010, they started putting warning labels on foods and beverages and snacks that had these certain, they call them the Southampton six. It's six specific artificial dyes that they believe are linked to behavioral issues. And now if you buy a packet of candy that is made or contains one of these Southampton six artificial dyes, they have a warning label on it that says something to the effect of this product could cause behavioral issues with children.

Besides the warning labels on certain foods, you know, there are certain artificial colors like red three that have either been banned or severely restricted in other countries because of their links to possible carcinogen and cancer in male rats. In fact, the evidence linking red die 3 to cancer was compelling enough that the EU banned it back in the early 1990s. But in the US, it took us much longer. The FDA just this year passed a ban on Red 3 and it doesn't go into effect until 2027.

So it sounds like even though the body of evidence itself isn't entirely conclusive or as robust as it could be, you're saying there's these other countries that are taking a much more aggressive stance on this. Why is that? Why hasn't the US gone that route? The EU takes an approach with regulation is sort of like what's best for the consumer. So if you're introducing a new ingredient in Europe, let's say the European Union, you're going to have to produce a bunch of scientific documents and papers and research that basically says, you know, that this ingredient is not going to cause harm to the consumer, you know, and then the European regulators are going to weigh about that. They're going to think about that before

any new ingredient gets introduced there. It's something called the precautionary principle. Here in the United States, we tend to take sort of more of a what's good for industry approach. Big food here is a very powerful force, you know, very powerful lobbying. They've got their people that have been in and out of the FDA. They put their people on research groups and boards. And so I think the regulatory framework and the ability for companies to introduce new ingredients at least is a little looser. There's a little bit more self-regulation, a little bit more trust me built into the system here in the United States.

But American food companies have taken steps in the past to remove artificial colors from their foods. And basically, it was a bust. Why? So back in 2015, there was a movement here in the United States. Again, a little bit of riding off of the European Union. You had a push to get big food to change its ways, to dump some of these artificial colors.

I love right fruity tricks. Tricks? And so at the time you had companies like General Mills, which makes tricks breakfast cereal. General Mills announcing will phase out artificial colors. Come out with products that had no artificial colors. General Mills could not find good alternatives for blue and green pieces in his trick cereal. So the company is getting rid of those colors. General Mills could not find good alternatives for blue and green pieces in his trick cereal.

So the company is getting rid of those colors. Other colors such as red won't be as vibrant. And people didn't really want it. General Mills says customers have been asking for the old formula to come back. The many consumers were writing in saying that the new colors made them depressed.

So what do you think? You think it was the kids or the adults complaining about the tricks? Probably the grownups. They didn't want to eat the cereal. A cereal company is bringing its old school cereal back. General Mills' Trix cereal will once again be made with artificial dyes and flavors. The classic... And Mars, big candy company Mars, it does some consumer analysis. And basically its conclusion from looking at and talking to consumers is that people in the EU were much more willing and actually wanted to have artificial colors taken out of their candy there, while people in the US were like, do not touch my M&Ms. Right. Don't mute my reds. Don't make me... candy there, while people in the US were like, do not touch my M&Ms.

Right. Don't mute my reds. Don't make me... Don't take away my blue M&Ms, you know, without a doubt. And so they reached a conclusion that after doing this research, that they weren't going to touch M&Ms and other, you know, bright treats and candies that Americans wanted to have remain the same. It sounds like taking the dyes out of food, according to the companies, would probably reduce their sales. Companies say, we've tried this, it didn't work.

Generally speaking, yes. What's the conclusion that the companies draw about why Americans are less into the natural, muted look of food? There's a whole ton of food science around colors and how people interpret them. There's a saying that we eat with our eyes. When you see a bright colored chip or a bright colored candy, your mind is telling sort of your palate, this is going to taste strong.

This is going to taste spicy. This is going to taste salty. You have already in your head what that's going to taste like before you put it in your mouth. And I think so American food companies are trying to figure out where that balance is because they've got decades of background and research that say bright color cell. And sales are just one part of the concern inside these companies.

The other part of the concern is expenses. You know, the long and short of it is moving away from artificial colors, which are really inexpensive. That is going to drive the costs up for the company. And then one of the biggest issues for food companies right now is matching those colors. What we've created in America using artificial colors is a palette of colors that just don't exist in nature. Blue, oh, really tough for food manufacturers. Blueberry, which everybody's like, oh, we've got blueberries. When you squish a blueberry, it's red.

It's not blue. Wow. Even greens, you're like, oh, we've got kale. We've got spinach. Yes, there are greens that occur in nature, but those greens are very tricky to deal with. They degrade very, very quickly, very easily. One of the issues with natural colors is they're very sensitive

to heat and light. Think of your Gatorade in a clear bottle. One of my kids loves the blue Gatorade in a clear bottle. If you switch to natural colors, you may have to, one, switch your packaging. You may not be able to have a clear bottle because now you're going to expose that natural color to light. The greens or the blues may separate. So when you pick that off the shelf, maybe the top of it is clear, but the bottom is where you've got your color sentiment now. And then on top of that, it also is going to change your manufacturing processes for these companies. You know, artificial dyes can sit in tanks for weeks, years, who knows? You know, they're fine.

But when you start to deal with natural colors, now you may have to refrigerate that. And in order to achieve anything close to the colors that we've sort of achieved with artificial colors, you may have to use 10 times the amount of carrot juice or beet juice to get the colors that you want. You may have to reformulate your lucky charms or your fruit loops in terms of just the actual ingredients if you start to add these different colors to it. This is just much more complex than I think I could have possibly imagined before you

just laid that out. And I have to say I am personally disturbed and saddened to learn that a cool blue Gatorade doesn't occur naturally in our world. It sounds like companies also don't want to do it because they say it also increases our costs. So there's this like one, two punch, fewer sales, higher costs.

Right, and all of this is coming at a really tough time for big food. Almost across the board, you've seen volumes of their cookies and their chips decline. I think after about two years of food inflation, there's a lot of Americans that are just either buying less of what they were buying before from these big food brands, or in some cases, they're increasingly trading down to private label store brands, the less expensive versions of those foods. On top of that, we also are seeing the fallout. I think it's still early, but everybody's watching the rise of these weight loss drugs. You're in Zempex, you're GLP1s. And there's lots of research behind that that says when Americans or people go onto those drugs,

they definitely eat less of these processed foods. And so food companies are looking at these big changes around their ingredients at a time when they're just also seeing sales and volumes of their foods falling off. Okay, so these are the forces that RFK Jr. is contending with when he comes into office. This powerful food industry with little incentive to change, a regulatory environment that gives companies quite a bit of power. So how is it that Kennedy, less than a year in office, has been able to actually effectively fight these forces? To go after big food, you know, he sort of knew he

couldn't use the usual playbook, right? Regulation, right? Creating a rule, having everybody weigh in on it, including food companies and lobbyists. It would have gone down in sort of a big battle of my science versus your science. Likely would have ended up in court. He'd be gone. No change would happen. So in order to really get change to occur here, he decided to take a very novel approach. We'll be right back. Julie, before the break, you said that RFK Jr. had come up with this novel approach to

get food companies to finally eliminate artificial food dyes from their products. Tell me about that strategy. So what he did was take much more of sort of a, a peer pressure approach to regulation on artificial dyes. In April, he puts out an announcement basically saying that we're going to be banning certain dyes, popular dyes that are widely used in the American food system. And he holds this press conference.

Let's join me in welcoming a warrior for America's children, RFK Jr. You know, when Kennedy comes up on stage. I was talking with my staff about these petroleum-based dyes, and I said if they want to eat petroleum, they ought to add it themselves at home. They shouldn't be feeding it to the rest of us. And... And he and other health care leaders on stage lay out the plan to get artificial dyes

out of our food system. And I want to commend the food companies for working with us to achieve this agreement or this settlement. You know, they say they've got all these companies on board, but what's missing, you know, who's not there, are any food companies. And is that weird?

It's really weird. You know, this is a big announcement, and it's normally something that you would have, you know, a few company executives up there smiling for the cameras and shaking hands and showing that they're on board with this scene. Today we're going to take some questions from the press. You know, you actually see a reporter and there's reporters that notice that there's no food

companies that are there and they ask Kennedy. You mentioned the goal is to work with the food industry to get most of the major synthetic food dyes out. You know, like, are the food companies really okay with this? What sort of agreement do you have? What is the plan if the food industry does not voluntarily agree to do that? And what are the next steps if you can't get agreement within the industry? Thank you. Well, here the industry is voluntarily agreed.

And basically, he says, yeah, we have this understanding. It's happening. We are going to work with the industry. They've shown a lot of leadership on this. He says they are on board. Yes. And are they? Not really.

No. What's happening behind the scenes, I spoke with a person close to the administration shortly after the announcement. And basically, what they had was a soft agreement from one company. Wow, a soft agreement from one company is not everyone is lined up behind this. So did RFK Jr. just bluff? He did. He bluffed. And what he hoped was, or was sort of banking on, was that this one

company in the industry, they would not say who it was, but that they expected an announcement to be made within a couple of weeks of the press conference, and that that would be the beginning of sort of the whole industry toppling over. And it seems like his bet on that domino effect happening actually paid off. How did that exactly go down? It starts with PepsiCo, which makes Doritos and Cheetos and all these popular snacks. And the executives mentioned that they're going to start to move a number of their chips, Lay's chips are going to have no artificial colors in them by the end of this year. And

then you get to like June and Kraft Heinz comes out and they say, we are going to be rid of artificial dyes in our foods and beverages and whatever by the end of 2027. Even more recently, you know, the cascade and the domino effect is happening. More companies, you know, Nestle, General Mills, Smucker's, WK Kellogg, which is Fruit Loops, which is these cereals that says it too will be out of artificial colors in its foods and cereals and products by the end

of 2027. I'm just struck by the avalanche, the cascade you described of announcements of these food companies saying, we are willing to change. Why? Why are they doing this if the thing they're responding to is really just soft power on the part of RFK Junior? It's soft power, but it's power. And I think this administration, more so than past administrations,

causes a lot of fear, right? You've seen where if they don't like something you're doing, they can come down and they can make your life really, really hard. And I think there's an element of the food industry saying, okay, artificial dyes, we don't like it, it's going to cost us money. And maybe we will, maybe we won't change. We'll see how that plays out. But if it makes them happy, we say we're going to change it and hopefully they leave us alone Because there's other like sort of like big game here or bigger issues, right? If this administration comes out and says less sugar less fat less salt

That will really throw this industry into you know a downward spiral That's even harder than dies to remove from this stuff. Much more difficult and would absolutely impact sales, you know. So there's a little bit of an element here of I think like, pacify this administration, give them a win and hope that you can fly below the radar for the next few years in a big way. To your point though, I have to imagine that one pitfall of this strategy is that there are no new regulations here, obviously.

RFK Jr. is just relying on his own persuasive power or perhaps the company is not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Trump administration. But that means this push doesn't actually have any real teeth. That's right. And definitely skeptics or critics will note this industry said and looked into making these changes a decade ago, and many of them didn't. Right. You know, so there's definitely a group of people that worry that we could get to the end of 2027, and most of our major food and beverages and snacks still contain artificial colors. But that's where, for the industry though,

there's another aspect of this, which is the emerging state laws that could actually be a bigger problem for them. What are those state laws? Tell me about that. So you've got a number of states, including California, Texas, West Virginia, that are actually creating laws around artificial colors that are much more stringent, that are actual, you know, in some cases, bans. In other cases, Texas wants warning labels.

They're creating a set of rules for the food industry that's going to cause it significant problems because the industry is very much worried about a patchwork quilt of rules, as they like to say. If you are M&M Mars, now if you're making your candy and you're selling it in Texas, you're going to have to have a warning label, but not in New Mexico. It's really difficult and confusing for them. But those are actual rules that could create more change than this administration can with this voluntary movement.

The fact that it's Texas and like West Virginia that's doing this, adding regulations on this stuff is surprising. I mean, those are red states, not places that I would necessarily expect to be leading the pack on food regulation. Right. I mean, obviously, you have California, you know, a much more liberal, left-leaning state, which has been ahead of all of this.

But it also shows, I think, the power, the political power of the maha movement, that you have Texas that you have West Virginia, you know, so these deep red states that are basically saying We're going to regulate artificial dies in a way that the federal government is not doing I Want to step back here for a minute and just ask what you think RFK is really up to? here. I think it's clear he's trying to bypass the bureaucracy, force companies with the soft power to make these pretty radical changes

to the way our food looks. But even if he does succeed, if you make Froot Loops less colorful, less neon, maybe you on the margins do some good if the research is right, but are you fundamentally changing the big health issues that he and other people care about? So if you talk to nutritionists, you know, or health experts, you experts, they're sort of one of their biggest criticism of going after food dyes. There's a little bit of a so-what-ism here, right? There's really no studies that say food dyes equals obesity, food dyes equals diabetes, right?

So, they're sort of like, great, fine, you get that out of the system, but it's not really attacking your core mission statement, which is that chronic disease. But then there's another sort of line of thinking around all of this is whether in making these foods and snacks and drinks less pretty, less bright? Are you in a roundabout way tackling the bigger issue, which is the chronic disease, which is the obesity, which is the diabetes? And especially when we're talking about children. If children who were drawn to brightly colored cereals and consuming boxes of them, you know,

now eat less or eat smaller portion sizes of them. Are you now tackling the bigger issue around sugar, salt, saturated fat, portion control? You know, we're really talking about retraining America, retraining the American mindset, the connection between our eyes and our palate. And you know, if we say, I don't want this, I'm going to eat less of this, that could be a win. That could absolutely be a win in terms of our overall intake of ultra-processed foods. Julie, thank you.

We really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday afternoon, President Trump announced that the U.S. and the European Union had reached a trade deal, setting a 15% tariff on most goods, including cars. The agreement is in line with a deal that Trump recently reached with Japan, and it brought an end to months of tense negotiations with some of America's closest allies and

trading partners. But the new rate was a big increase from tariffs that had previously been in place, and was much higher than Europe had been pushing for. And Israel said that it paused military activity in parts of Gaza on Sunday to allow international aid in as outrage grows over the severe hunger facing Palestinians in the enclave. Israeli forces suspended operations

in at least three areas of Gaza and plan to designate secure routes for the United Nations to deliver aid, according to the Israeli military. The UN says more than one in three people in Gaza has not been eating for multiple days in a row. And according to Gaza's health ministry, more than 50 Palestinians have died this month from starvation. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Nowitzki, Shannon Lin, Rob Zipko, and Caitlin O'Keefe. It was edited by Liz O'Balin, Patricia Willans, and Lisa Chow. Fact-checked by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, and Diane Wong. And was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Ketrowet. See you tomorrow.