| Despite what some media outlets (not Bloomberg!) reported about artificial colors being banned from US food, what officials announced on April 22 was far less impactful. They essentially asked the food industry to, pretty please, stop using synthetic colors by the end of 2026. The food industry hasn’t agreed to any of this. This wasn’t the only time the Trump administration has made a big promise for broad changes only to pull back. Earlier this week, a pledge to slash prescription drug prices turned out far weaker than drugmakers’ feared. Even if government officials and food companies eventually hammer out some kind of voluntary deal on food dyes, it’s not a real long-term solution. Marion Nestle, a nutrition and food studies professor emerita at New York University and the nation’s preeminent expert on nutrition politics, said she’s “baffled” by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assumption that the industry will play nice. Food companies need explicit regulation, she said.
“They don’t want to go first,” she said. “General Mills tried this with Trix. The message was ‘Don’t do this, you’re going to lose sales.’ But if everybody had to do it, then they would.” She spoke about the various politicians and expert panels that have called on the food industry to stop advertising sugary snacks and beverages to children.
The World Health Organization said in 2023 that self-regulation of food marketing isn’t working and told countries they need mandatory policies to protect children. “Voluntary agreements with industry just don’t work,” Mark Bittman, the author of more than 30 recipe and food history books and a former New York Times journalist, told me. “They might say they’re going to do something, but the whole thing is all about short public memory, and no one’s going to call them on it five years from now.” Bittman pointed me to the FDA’s effort to promote judicious antibiotic use in livestock. Years of mostly voluntary guidelines yielded a dip in antibiotic sales in 2017, but they have risen slightly since in a way that doesn’t scream mission accomplished. Consumer and environmental advocacy groups blame the FDA for continuing to allow antibiotics to prevent disease in healthy animals and say the agency isn't adequately tracking use.
Kennedy had already told food industry executives he met with in March that he wanted them to remove artificial dyes from food before the end of his term. This is basically the same message he called an entire press conference for a month later where Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary insisted that the FDA “is taking action” to remove dyes from the food supply. The FDA said May 9 that it approved or expanded the use of a few natural food colors, but it remains to be seen if Big Food will make the switch. — Anna Edney | 
