Red Dye #3 is no more…..

[Herdfan]

The FDA has banned Red Dye #3.

FDA bans red dye No. 3 from foods

U.S. regulators are banning the dye called Red 3 from the food supply. The move comes nearly 35 years after the dye was barred from cosmetics such as lipsticks because of potential cancer risk.

apnews.com

Good first step to getting chemicals out of our food.

 

[fooferdoggie]

Don't worry not for long. trump needs his red catchup.

 

[Alli]

Somehow I thought it was gone long ago.

 

[Yoused]

It was Red #2 that was banned I think in the mid-'70s.

 

[Alli]

It was Red #2 that was banned I think in the mid-'70s.

Right, right. So what's the deal with #3 then?

 

[rdrr]

Right, right. So what's the deal with #3 then?

Studies showed that #3 (which is made from petroleum) is "possibly" carcinogenic. I quoted possibly, because it seems like there is a study that just about everything we put in our bodies can cause cancer.

Of note Red Dye #40 is already banned in CA, probably will make its way soon across the US. Goodbye red M&M.

 

[cbum]

What I don't get is that it was banned for cosmetics, which you don't ingest, LONG BEFORE it was banned for food, which you do? Seems pretty insane.

Difference in lobbying clout of affected industries? How broken is this system?

 

[cbum]

just about everything we put in our bodies can cause cancer.

Not really, but there are two aspects of carcinogenesis: Exposure and Resistance. Your environment and the diet/habits you are exposed to, and your gene combination that determines how well you deal with your environmental exposures, how well you fight cancer cells, and how predisposed you are to cancer.
One of the issues making carcinogenesis studies, which largely rely on animal models, difficult to interpret is that inbred rodents (the bulk of the experiments) develop cancers & sarcomas much more easily than humans.

 

[Nycturne]

What I don't get is that it was banned for cosmetics, which you don't ingest, LONG BEFORE it was banned for food, which you do? Seems pretty insane.

Difference in lobbying clout of affected industries? How broken is this system?

Timing, based on my reading of the original article. Worth noting that Red Dye #3 was first authorized in 1907 for food. The rejection of the request to authorize it for cosmetics was in 1990. The law that the FDA is using to revoke authorization today was passed in 1958. So effectively, the standard by which it was rejected in cosmetics didn't exist prior to 1958.

Now, as you point out, these studies are not always great simulations, and apparently these studies seemed to show a mechanism for cancer development that is not shared with humans, so there hasn't exactly been strong evidence that the FDA needed to take action. As the article implies, it's expected that there will be lawsuits over this ban, and the FDA will be expected to defend the ban in court. I suspect that because the evidence is weak, and defense of a ban seems to hinge specifically on a clause in a 1958 law, there's not been much desire to go to bat on this one. That said, if the law says that additives should be banned if they are carcinogenic to people or animals, then the authorization should have been revoked earlier.

 

[cbum]

I believe you legal analysis is likely on the mark, and explains a lot.
It just drives me nuts that the result is that we were more "careful" about cosmetics than about the stuff we eat.

 

[Nycturne]

No disagreement there.

My personal beef is that there's a suite of chemicals used in fragrances in the US that are common, and trigger bad headaches/migraines in both me and my mother. I can't even go down the cleaning isle in many grocery stores without risking one. I wish we would follow the EU's lead on a few of those.

 

[throAU]

Putting things like dies in food should be banned, period.

There is no reason for it other than to try and make something look like what it isn’t.

 

[Nycturne]

Putting things like dies in food should be banned, period.

There is no reason for it other than to try and make something look like what it isn’t.

That would have wider impacts, but perhaps making candy super colorful isn’t something we "need".

That said, the practice of using foods to color/dye other foods is pretty old. Banning artificial dyes would just mean more use of the older practices. Expect more beets in everything red.