Government Banning Dye That Gives "Flamin' Hot" Cheetos Their Distinctive Color

From Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Fruit Loops to Gatorade and Mountain Dew's Baja Blast flavor, bizarrely-hued junk food favorites will soon lose their color thanks to a new artificial food dye ban.

As NPR reports, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced earlier this week that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is under his purview, will be phasing out the use of six popular food colorants that contain petroleum over concerns that they may cause or exacerbate health issues.

"We are going to get rid of the dyes," Kennedy said during a press conference announcing the ban, and "we're going to get rid of every ingredient and additive in food that we can legally address."

In that same press briefing, FDA commissioner Marty Makary claimed that the artificial dyes are harmful to children and constitute a "toxic soup of synthetic chemicals" — but industry experts insist that there's not much evidence to support that theory.

"Color additives have been rigorously reviewed by global health authorities... with no safety concerns," the International Association of Color Manufacturers, a food dye industry group, said in a statement. "Despite common misconceptions, [colorants] are one of the most highly regulated food additives, with a strong safety profile."

When defending the move, Markay cited a 2007 study published by the Lancet medical journal that found a link between increased hyperactivity in children who had soft drinks containing the common preservative sodium benzoate, which is not directly derived from petroleum — and, in fact, is not a dye at all.

Still, that citation is telling because it alludes to one of Kennedy's favorite bogeymen: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

Back in 2021, the state of California released a report, with evidence from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and UC Davis, declaring definitively that synthetic food dyes can induce or worsen hyperactivity in children than natural dyes.

With a growing body of evidence showing a causal relationship between artificial colorants and ADHD symptoms in some children, we won't exactly be sad to see them go — but as with everything related to the toxic wellness nut that leads American healthcare, we're taking this with many grains of non-synthetic sea salt.

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