The wildly popular MAHA movement, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior, is gaining steam, particularly when it comes to getting rid of artificial food dyes in the nation’s food supply. The synthetic colorants are largely used in ultra-processed foods like cereals, candy, desserts, and more.
This year, major companies like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Nestle, PepsiCo, and others have stated they will voluntarily remove all artificial dyes from their products within the next two years, replacing them with natural colors. Meanwhile, more than half of all states currently have passed or are considering legislation to restrict these ingredients.
The Food and Drug Administration is also doing its part by banning the synthetic “Red Dye 3” by 2027, while approving three new natural food colors.
“This administration is not interested in continuing down the path of doing the same old things as we watch our nation’s children get sicker,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
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Studies suggest a link between artificial food dyes and neurobehavioral issues in children, including hyperactivity and problems paying attention.
Sensient Technologies in St. Louis makes natural food colors using things like beets, turmeric, and carrots. It’s seeing a surge in orders, which means more time will be needed to meet the demand.
“Tens of millions of pounds of these products need to be grown, pulled out of the ground, extracted, extract the color from them,” said Paul Manning, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Sensient Technologies.
Still Really Unhealthy
While virtually all health experts agree the idea of processed food companies getting rid of artificial colors is a good one, many see it as a brilliant marketing move if it convinces consumers that no synthetic dyes equals healthy food products.
Author Michael Moss, who wrote two bestsellers, Salt Sugar Fat and Hooked, about the ultra-processed food industry’s grip on America, said removing artificial dyes doesn’t mean these products are in any way good for us, although the move might lead many consumers to believe they are.
“Taking artificial dyes out of Skittles is still going to leave you with Skittles,” Moss told CBN News. “So one of my concerns is that what if that puts sort of a ‘halo of health’ on Skittles now that they have something other than artificial dyes.”
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Moss believes the amount of sugar in all its forms, such as high fructose corn syrup and fruit juice, that companies put in their products is far more dangerous to our health than the synthetic colors they use.
“Sugar, they call the ‘bliss point’ because they work-up formulas, they call this ‘food engineering,’ to achieve the perfect amount of sweetness in products,” he said. “And they’ve marched around the store adding sugar, engineering bliss points to things that never used to be sweet.”
He gives examples such as bread, pasta sauce and yogurt that consumers don’t normally think of as sweet, yet often contain as much sugar as a serving of cookies or ice cream.
Glyphosate In Grain Products
Cardiologist, heart surgeon, medical researcher, and author Dr. Steven Gundry said it’s unsurprising many food companies are voluntarily removing dyes from their products because it may boost their sales even long before the change takes place.
“What we’re really doing with this is a magician’s trick,” Gundry told CBN News. “It’s ‘look over there, and these food dyes are the troublemaker’ when in fact the actual trouble is in these processed foods themselves.”
Dr. Gundry points to companies’ use of the chemical herbicide glyphosate sprayed on conventionally-grown grains.
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“They found out that they could spray normal crops, normal wheat, normal oats, normal corn, normal soybeans with glyphosate and kill it so that they can have their giant combines, their harvesters, on a field on a particular date,” he said.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The product’s developer, Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018, reported spent approximately $11 billion settling lawsuits over the cancer allegation.
Glyphosate has also been linked to “leaky gut,” a severe disruption of the gut microbiome which can cause migraines, fatigue, and autoimmune disease, according to Dr. Gundry.
“Glyphosate was discovered by Monsanto Corporation in the 1970s, and it was actually patented not as a weed killer, not as an herbicide, but as an antibiotic. And that should raise our eyebrows,” he said.
MAHA Pushback
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said eliminating artificial dyes is just the beginning of his fight against the ultra-processed food industry. Others predict a short fight, ending in defeat, largely because of the industry’s massive contributions to Washington, D.C.’s power players.
“The problem with fighting it from RFK’s standpoint is that Congress, which eventually makes the laws, has an interest in monetarily supporting their campaigns,” Dr. Gundry said.
Likewise, Moss points out the vast number of jobs provided by the ultra-processed food industry.
“You have the HHS secretary leading the charge that would try to change the impact of these products, but then you’ve got the economic advisors in the White House saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this is a humongous industry. Do we really want to be messing around with it?'”
Moss also thinks Kennedy doesn’t have the power to make the changes necessary to truly restructure the nation’s ultra-processed food industry, which makes up an estimated 70 percent of the calories most Americans consume.
“The vast power to regulate and change our eating habits is not at HHS,” Moss said. “It’s with the Agriculture Department, because that’s where you find the power to make good food or bad food affordable, and the marketing efforts, et cetera. And by-and-large the Agriculture Department is controlled and dominated by this handful of processed food companies. So it’s almost like he got appointed to the wrong corner of government, and that Ag department is hugely sensitive to the economic power the industry has and the hold that it has over the budget and the GDP.”
So even in the absence of artificial dyes, health experts advise staying away from ultra-processed foods and go the natural way, choosing whole foods made from scratch, even if they take a little getting used to.
“If you serve plain steamed broccoli to your kids 20 times, by the 21st time, they may actually like it. And it worked in our family,” Moss said. “My boys are now 25 and 20, and I tell you, even today when they come over, they’re asking for plain steamed broccoli.”
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