My goodness, for a website full of techincal individuals a lot of you are falling for the appeal to nature fallacy hard. Also, it looks like no one here knows how to defer to experts. I don't know much about food safety standards, chemical compositions, additives, etc. so I've talked with people who are experts instead. And from what I have gotten, most people are freaking out because they lack an understanding of what is really safe or not. People believe that since a certain scary sounding chemical was added that the food is now less safe when that's not the case.
From the CNN article:
> There don’t appear to be any studies establishing links between red dye No. 3 and cancer in humans, and “relevant exposure levels to FD&C Red No. 3 for humans are typically much lower than those that cause the effects shown in male rats,” the FDA said in its constituent update posted Wednesday. “Claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information.”
> But “it doesn’t matter, because the FDA mandate under the Delaney Clause says that if it shows cancer in animals or humans, they’re supposed to keep it from the food supply,” said Dr. Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.
Even more confusing - the FDA still doesn't believe there's a cancer link with humans. But they are banning it anyway on a technicality.
Serious question: If there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing color, why risk it? What is the benefit?
The problem with that premise is that almost every substance has a remote chance of causing cancer in some way or another. Just ask the state of California. So you would have to ban everything if that is really your stance.
The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done. Otherwise, anyone can simply say X is harmful and pass regulations to get their pet bogeyman pulled off the market, and that is basically what is happening here.
> only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I think it's valid to also apply heavy scrutiny on new chemicals being added to the food chain. The default being to not allow it if it's not proven safe.
Red dye 3 probably shouldn't have been added to the food supply chain with that criteria but since it's already been there for decades with no strong link to negative outcomes there's little reason to ban it now.
> The correct (and scientifically valid) thing to do is to only take action when there is actual evidence and proof of harm being done.
Because we're talking about food I would actually like to see the opposite. Provide peer reviewed, gold standard studies showing that what you want to put in food is in fact safe.
There is no such thing as proving something "safe". Go back and re-read the parent comment. The important point you are missing is that basically anything can be "linked" to cancer, and if you adopt the argument you are making, there would be nothing left.
Proving something safe is logically equivalent to proving that it is not unsafe, which is the same thing as proving a negative, which cannot be done. I cannot prove there is not a teapot circling Mars, and I cannot prove that even the most inert ingredient, at some dose, will not harm you.
Anyone who has lived in California knows this absurdity more intuitively than most people, because California's stupid laws adopt the logic you are proposing, and basically everything in daily life is labeled as cancer-causing.
>There is no such thing as proving something "safe". Go back and re-read the parent comment. The important point you are missing is that basically anything can be "linked" to cancer, and if you adopt the argument you are making, there would be nothing left.
Really? You have some studies linking wheat and whole grains to cancer? And I don't mean wheat crops sprayed with glyphosate, just straight up wheat? Raspberries? Strawberries?
The reality is, very little of the actual natural food in our food chain is directly linked to cancer. All the additives we pile on top, on the other hand, are.
I would argue if we can't show a direct benefit to the consumer, it shouldn't be in the food chain. So, what is the direct benefit to a human consuming red-5? "It looks better on store shelves" isn't a direct benefit.
A shelf stabilizer? Sure, plenty of instances that makes a lot of sense. Food coloring that happens to be cheaper than natural alternatives? Just... no.
> The reality is, very little of the actual natural food in our food chain is directly linked to cancer.
Natural things aren't inherently safer. Are alcohol and red meat both considered natural? Alcohol is a group 1 carcinogen (same as tobacco and asbestos) and red meat is group 2A (probably linked to cancer). A cursory search shows some studies linking fish consumption to cancer, though I have no idea how accurate those studies are.
There is no way to establish a food as "safe".
Health outcomes are noisy, especially if taken over a long time. Peer reviewed studies are often flawed in various ways and most scientific studies lack the statistical power to be inconclusive.
The fear based approach to human diets can not work. We have to accept risks in our lives if we want to eat at all.
It’s impossible to prove a negative.
Why wouldn't you be able to prove a negative link?
No, you assign a risk score as well as a cost score to all the industrial inputs that you can use. In this case, there are readily available red food dyes (eg cochineal from industrially farmed insects) that have much lower risk scores (as they are from plant and animal sources) and not significantly different cost scores.
You also need to ask, what is the cost of not having this substance? In this case, the cost would be - you have food that isn't red. Is that a substantial problem for society?
To treat these as irrelevant and boil it down to "prove it is harmful or shut up" is needlessly reductive.
Have those other been proven safe? Is it possible they too cause cancer?
I'd like to point out that eating charred meat has a clear link with colon cancer, so we can't simply appeal to nature for safety.
> that have much lower risk scores (as they are from plant and animal sources)
This is a fallacy. If anything, there's more reason to expect that a substance evolved to serve a biological function (that happens to be red) would have biological effects in humans than a substance developed specifically to be red and be biologically inert.
> Just ask the state of California
I've see the labels at Starbucks, by the chocolate at the grocery store, and by the balsamic vinegar.
I'm not really pro-bureaucrat, but perhaps the standard for food should be slightly different. Just maybe, (novel) food (additives/preservatives/ingredients) should first be proven safe, rather than waiting until they're proven unsafe to prohibit them. It's not as if this was a substance humans regularly ingested for centuries and people are only now wigging out... look at the wikipedia entry for this. The only halogen that's not part of this thing is apparently bromine, the IUPAC name for the chemical's about as long as my comment here.
Alcohol causes cancer, should we reenact prohibition? Water is poisonous in large enough doses. Should we ban water?
Nothing in this world is truly free of all risk. We have to make judgement calls with every single substance. Yes, coloring food is a legitimate use with real benefits that we need to weigh against the risks. And we also need to consider the very real costs of enforcement and burden of compliance. Bans are an extreme option that does not come without costs for the government and society.
Obviously the problem is that Red no3 is so prevalent and completely unregulated. Alcohol is sold separately and ID is needed to purchase and isn't added to children's food. If the dye was only sold separately in bottles this debate wouldn't be happening.
The water thing is even more unserious so I'll ignore it.
I don't think anyone really cares or thinks there's some benefit. The problem is (I think) that this leads to some people believing that the dye causes cancer, when there's been no direct link in humans.
Seems more like a problem with uneven application of bans.
Red dye 3 might cause cancer (maybe) but it's admittedly such a weak effect that studies aren't finding a link in humans.
Meanwhile, there are carcinogenic things like alcohol which anyone can buy (over 21).
Heck, we can't even mandate that alcohol must contain B12, which would absolutely save lives and prevent some of the serious injuries of alcoholism.
But we can ban this dye that may or may not in some very small percentage of people cause cancer.
But red dye has little to no value to consumers and there are equally viable alternatives. No one is going to start bootlegging red dye 3 if it is banned. Alcohol has huge value and is basically impossible to ban.
What does B12 in alcohol do?
B1 and B12 it should be.
As for what that does [1], wet brain.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke_encephalopathy
If someone you know is an alcoholic, try and get them to take b vitamins.
If you are asking what would putting B12 (or B1) in alcohol do: prevent serious irreversible deficiencies that are not only horrible for the person themselves, but people as a whole, one way or another.
Call it risk reduction.
But have those dye alternatives been proven safe assuming an equally rigour test of "well, this might cause cancer but we can't actually prove it"?
Well, we did TRY banning alcohol, but it didn't go that well. We do at least generally attempt to prevent children from consuming alcohol, though.
Should we ban alcohol? I think people should stop drinking it, but in general I don't think the sale of things that may be harmful in some ways should be entirely prohibited, it would just be good if we minimized the amount of potentially harmful ingredients in our general food supply. e.g. if someone wanted to buy/sell Red Dye No. 3 on its own I don't think that would be a big concern.
Both alcohol and tobacco are regulated by the ATF. The FDA would ban cigarettes if they had the authority.
Yeah, B12 AND B1 in alchohol alike. There are lots of people around age 50 who get admitted to social home and have irreversible B1 deficiency, labeled as "alcohol-induced B1 deficiency".
I suppose it boils down to freedom of expression. Analog is a type of red plastic does nothing to humans, but can cause cancer if rats eat it. Do we ban it? What if we're actually trying to kill rats in our area?
Humans do not eat plastic, this argument doesn't make sense.
Yes, of course. Humans do not directly eat plastic. At least nobody I know chews on plastic plates or cups.
But that does not mean that humans don't eat any plastic. Tiny pieces of plastic gets transferred to the food by contact with plastic containers. Some processes like microwave ovens, radically increase the amount transferred as well. Previously it was thought that these microplastics would just be eliminated from the body through typical waste functions, but evidence is increasingly mounting that The microplastics actually stay in the body long term and destroy cells they come in contact with. Given we have found nontrivial levels of microplastics in all of our vital organs (including testicals!), that's a scary proposition.
A crude analogy might be germs. Humans don't eat germs directly either, but by nature of their size and invisibility to us, we end up consuming plenty of them.
Humans constantly consume microplastic. This is a bad faith argument.
Just because an argument is wrong (and in this case gp is very wrong), does not mean it is in bad faith. Arguing in bad faith requires intent. I see no evidence of intent in gp's message. Ironically, if it didn't then one could say that dismissing arguments as bad faith (without evidence) of such is itself a form of bad faith, meaning your dismissal would be in bad faith. However, I see no evidence that you intended to argue in bad faith.
I'm surprised they're banning Red 3 instead of Red 40. Red 40 is a very common allergen.
We (humans) don't subsist on some Matrix-like slop that provides all of our nutrients for no pleasure. Eating is a weird combination of necessity and pleasure activity. You could ask: if there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing taste, why risk it? You'd ban most spices with this line of reasoning.
At the end of the day, the safest thing (in terms of avoiding cancer) is probably to plant some potatoes in your backyard and eat them unspiced and unbuttered for the rest of your life. Most of us prefer food that is a bit more appealing than that, however. Appealing in all aspects - taste, texture, and appearance.
Other than bakery items, what foods do you regularly eat that depend on having a specific color? I don't see how that's anything other than a marketing tool to make them stand out on store shelves. When you order something in a restaurant, you typically don't even know what their version will look like until it gets to your table. I've never, not once, added dyes to home cooking outside of cake icings and things like that.
There've been ridiculous attempts to get rid of perfectly innocent flavor enhancers before, like the fight against MSG. Take out MSG, and food tastes less good. But take out a borderline red dye, and what's the worst that happens? Factories have to sell soda that's slightly less pretty in the bottle?
> what foods do you regularly eat that depend on having a specific color?
Probably all of them. We are super sensitive to colors.
Red meat and fish like tuna and salmon have carbon monoxide and sodium nitrate treatment just to keep them red because that's how people think they can judge quality.
> Consumers will pay up to $1 per pound more for darker colored salmon compared to salmon with lighter hues, according to research by DSM, a company that supplies pigmenting compounds to the salmon feed industry.
> according to research by DSM, a company that supplies pigmenting compounds to the salmon feed industry
Seriously?
Alternatively, if we stopped dyeing fish, a year later people will have totally recalibrated what they think fresh, healthy fish looks like.
Cheese
Tuna
Pickles
Oranges (apples as well, but I can't find an old article)
Wasabi
Apricots
Ginger
Salmon
https://www.treehugger.com/foods-youd-never-guess-were-artif...
Those are dyed, but they don't depend on the dye for nutrition or taste. Wasabi isn't less delicious if it's a lighter or different hue.
The saying goes you eat with your eyes. These things depend on dye as they rot on the shelf otherwise.
A paper on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00319...
Nope, eating nothing but potatoes for the rest of your life is a fantastic way to ensure that you end up with severe macro/micronutrient deficiencies, which will be a very effective way of generating disease, including cancer.
> Hyperbole.
> 1. A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
> 2. A figure of speech in which the expression is an evident exaggeration of the meaning intended to be conveyed, or by which things are represented as much greater or less, better or worse, than they really are; a statement exaggerated fancifully, through excitement, or for effect.
> 3. Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
From DuckDuckGo, quoting Wordnik, quoting The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
>We (humans) don't subsist on some Matrix-like slop that provides all of our nutrients for no pleasure. Eating is a weird combination of necessity and pleasure activity. You could ask: if there's even a slight chance it causes cancer, and it adds nothing to the food other than a slightly more appealing taste, why risk it? You'd ban most spices with this line of reasoning.
I mean, we absolutely do that already. There's plenty of folks on a low sodium diet because while the salt tastes great, it's bad for them.
In this case we aren't talking about eliminating the color red entirely, we're arguing about a slightly different color. You can get red from a strawberry, raspberry, cherry skin, etc. which will work just as well. It just won't be the neon-red that red-5 produces.
Yup, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of dyes one could use to get red that are completely harmless. Although they may be more expensive, I have no clue.
For fun, you could grow your own seasoning (besides herbs, easy too) for those potatoes. I recently learned about the plant Salicornia - you can dehydrate them and grind them to make a green salt. I'm going to try to grow some this year.
They are banning it now so that the incoming administration can't claim credit for banning it in a few months.
But... they will anyway, if public sentiment favors it. If not, they'll blame the predecessor. This seems predestined to be.
These regulations fit pretty well with the Democrats platform but until now they would have been near impossible to pass.
Historically I would agree, but we are in a new world. RFK Jr is the face of increased FDA regulation and banning of potentially toxic materials, and he is coming under the Trump administration. For the vast majority of his life, he was a Democrat Fighting frequently Republican administrations purposes of environment and health, but he is now very much rejected by The Democratic party. The Republican party seems to be welcoming him fairly warmly, although it will be interesting to see how long that persists as soon as he has some disagreement with Trump or starts making a real impact.
Personally I really hope many Democrats can put The health of our people ahead of other things and work together to make meaningful changes, because something really needs to be done. Chronic health issues have exploded and it may already be too late for multiple generations who will suffer from chronic disease their entire life as a result of this. If those of us alive and aware of these problems now don't do something to correct this course, we will be guilty of criminal negligence to our descendants in my opinion.
Increased food regulation is only one part of his platform. And it's something that Democrats have wanted for a long time.
He has a ton of other stuff much more aligned with the right
From AP, seems like this has been in the works for over 2 years:
> Food and Drug Administration officials granted a 2022 petition filed by two dozen food safety and health advocates, who urged the agency to revoke authorization for the substance that gives some candies, snack cakes and maraschino cherries a bright red hue.
They never would have banned it if RFK Jr. wasn't the HHS nominee.
Incorrect.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-00830.pdf
Scroll down to "I. Introduction".
> In the Federal Register of February 17, 2023 (88 FR 10245), we announced that we filed a color additive petition (CAP 3C0323) jointly submitted by
RFK was not the HHS nominee in February 2023.
But it appears this process has been going even earlier than that: November 15, 2022 [0]
[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/17/2023-03...
Where did you read that?
If a food additive is banned in the EU, it should be banned here IMO. The EU has a good track record on what should or should not be included in food
You do know the US bans more food colors then the EU, right? You can't just say LGTM and go with what the EU does.
Strictly speaking it isn't banned in the EU, it is banned in the EU _with the exception of processed cherries_. Quite why the cocktail cherry industry was considered so critical that it received a specific exception is unclear.
By what measurement is their track record good?
It's not a technicality, it's the law.
Would it be better for them to just ignore the rules if they don't feel that the rules make sense?
How about the idea that it serves absolutely zero purpose, and could cause cancer?
Maybe that is reason enough to remove it from food? “Some people here” love Europe so much, they banned it for that reason. But, during this election, conservatives pushed for the same so now it’s strange how “some people here” are “pro food dyes”.
"conservatives pushed for the same"
RFK Jr is basically the polar opposite of a conservative, even though he hitched his wagon to Trump after Harris refused to return his calls. Seeing the Trump base adopt RFK's positions is...super weird. Trump is extremely pro Corporation and anti-regulation. RFK is anti-corporation and super pro regulation, and believes that fast food should be banned and the government should provide every American with three organic meals a day, which isn't really a Republican platform. And there's a good chance RFK Jr has served his purpose to the MAGA group and he'll start facing opposition that leads to his elimination from the administration.
Indeed, it's normal on HN to see endless attacks on California (which had already banned both red dye #3 and 40, among others, to the extent that they can as a state) for banning potential carcinogens, making this a rather hilarious turn of events.
And FWIW, the FDA started the process for this months ago, and months earlier received a petition (from a Democrat, if it matters) to ban the dye.
> Trump is extremely pro Corporation and anti-regulation
Trump is actually very, very anti-corporation. It's a very prominent part of his stump speeches and campaigning. He's accusing corporations of everything.
His fortune was made from real-estate speculation and the Trump corporation is basically run like a family business. If you were try to attach a label - he is pro-aristocracy. He believes wealth tied to land and inheritance is "legitimate", and wealth tried to trade and commerce as illegitimate.
Trump is actually very, very whatever will get Trump elected or whatever was last whispered in his ear.
Trying to find a coherent philosophy from Donald Trump is impossible.
RFK Jr is MAGA where it counts: Anti-vaccine, vaccines cause autism, HPV vaccine doesn't work, Covid attacks whites/black but spares jews/chinese by design.
Right. Michelle Obama pushed for a lot of things that RFK wants. Now that the Republicans suddenly want what the Democrats have always wanted of course they're going to pass those laws
It's the old "better safe than sorry" routine. Very popular with politicians and managers, who are incentivized to take action on extremely minor issues and hold them up as heroic accomplishments while avoiding all the work and mess involved with fixing _actual_ systemic and cultural problems.
The comparison between American and Canadian Froot Loop cereal is illuminating:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/uc265y/a...
It's the same from most things, I wonder why americans are ok with that
mcdonalds fries: https://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/McDonalds-...
fanta: https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/ab2mWVvJ_Tp7.UWQpFd.pQ--/Y...
oats: https://foodbabe.com/app/uploads/2019/02/U.S.-vs.-Uk-quaker-...
chips: https://foodbabe.com/app/uploads/2019/02/U.S.-vs.-Uk-doritos...
I agree with you until you bring foodbabe into this. She’s notorious for hand-picking things that meet the MAHA agenda. For example, the oats argument, yes there is a ton of crap in the ultra processed Quaker oats, but that’s an old recipe. Here’s what they sell at target:
https://www.target.com/p/quaker-fruit-38-cream-instant-oatme...
STRAWBERRIES & CREAM INGREDIENTS: Whole grain oats, sugar, dried strawberries, salt, dried cream, natural flavor, nonfat dry milk, sea salt, dried vegetable juice concentrate (color), tocopherols (to preserve freshness).
There’s not always a one-to-one comparison, and I agree shady companies in the US have free rein over what crap they add to our foods, but this has already been debunked.
I’m wondering, what are we seeing here? Actual difference in ingredients used, or a difference in regulations requiring listing all ingredients?
Yeah, take the Doritos as an example: the UK bag lists "Cheese Powder", the US bag lists "Cheddar Cheese" with sub-ingredients in parentheses (plus Whey and Skim Milk).
What is in the UK Doritos' "Cool Original Flavour" (read: Ranch) ingredient? Maybe something like Tomato Powder, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Buttermilk, Natural and Artificial Flavors?
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Whoa, hold on. RFK may be right about this one thing in the same way a broken clock happens to occasionally be right, but let's not rush to take away his nutcase title. He has some truly messed up opinions about a variety of topics.
The dude literally got a brainworm from eating roadkill.
The idea that people want to take him seriously as a food safety crusader is wild.
The idea that he got brainworm from roadkill is literally a lie.
I'm being flip, but it's not a lie. He doesn't know where the brainworm came from, and it was revealed later that he has been eating roadkill meat his whole life.
Exotic parasites is a known risk when eating roadkill. It's not a difficult connection to make.
More lies. He didn't eat roadkill. You need to stop.
https://apnews.com/article/rfk-new-york-ballot-access-lawsui...
Speaking to reporters in a hallway after court ended Wednesday, Kennedy was asked whether he picked up other roadkill.
“I’ve been picking up roadkill my whole life. I have a freezer full of it,” he said, eliciting laughter.
Kennedy campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear later said by text that he wasn’t joking. She said that’s how Kennedy — a falconer who trains ravens — feeds his birds. She added that he no longer has the 21 cubic foot (0.59 cubic meter) refrigerator, which had been in New York’s Westchester County suburbs.
How's that a lie? It came from his own mouth! It's his PR person who walked it back and cooked up an explanation.
RFK Jr is not a child. He's in full control of the narrative he wants to portray about himself. If he wants to go say kooky things to reporters, he can't be upset if people think he is a kook. And he clearly seems to personally enjoy the reputation of being a kook, based on willingly he throws out jokes about it.
I have no problem with him being a kook! It's just ironic how many criticisms and conspiracy theories he throws out there about others and yet how seriously people want to take him.
He explained it was for his birds. If you don't believe the words from his mouth, now you're in conspiracy theory territory and believing what you want to believe instead of what is documented. You're free to do that, but understand that it's a lie.
Where did he say he actually eats the roadkill? One source?
Eating roadkill is not that uncommon in the US. So it's not a crazy connection to make. He admitted to having a walk-in size freezer of the stuff and that he's a redneck.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/12/robert-f-kenne...
> He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)
Now this is clearly a joke. But the important thing is, he clearly enjoys trolling reporters. If you are not happy with the way RFK Jr. is treated in the media, take it up with RFK Jr.
He's not even really a food safety crusader, he's just a vocal proponent of the "whole foods movement". Other than that, he's a former heroin addict Kennedy dynasty failson.
>truly messed up opinions about a variety of topics.
I would actually really like to hear what the messed up opinions are, when I've watched interviews with him they've seemed pretty reasonable. He cites sources for basically all the claims he makes.
I hesitate to dive into this because I'm really not interested in arguing the nuances of RFK with people on the internet (not you, others). RFK Jr. has a long history of controversial statements regarding COVID, COVID vaccines and being anti-vaccine, or vaccine-skeptical as his supporters like to frame him.
For me, one of his most controversial statements in recent memory had to be during a press conference he gave in 2023 when he stated that COVID might have been "ethnically targeted" to "attack Caucasians and Black people" and that "the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."
He tried to defend the statement by citing scientific studies, which is a habit of his that his supporters admire about him. However, actual experts in the field pointed out that his interpretation of the studies was flawed and there was no credible evidence to support the idea that COVID was engineered or had evolved to target or spare certain groups.
Sources:
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-f-kennedy-jr-false-claim...
2. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/19/robert-f-k...
3. https://nypost.com/2024/11/15/media/jake-tapper-rips-rfk-jr-...
https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
>COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
>Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research
So the US government has concluded that the virus almost certainly came from a lab conducting gain of function research.
What is gain of function? Making a virus more lethal.
RFKs words:
>There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately
It DOES impact some races more than others.
This is a completely plausible theory. I don’t understand why it’s a crazy idea at all.
Why wouldn’t a country trying to make a virus more lethal also try to curve its lethality away from its own people?
Like what? are you sure you understand his opinions?
Many who finally talk to him directly who thought like you do find out maybe not so crazy.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/01/14/los_angel...
RFK Jr is not a good person, is not a smart person, and we should not attempt to whitewash or legitimize him. He has a complex early life, but his actions today are his own choices.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
I fail to see how your link supports your questioning or your statement, could you explain it? It looks like it's just the opinion of the owner of the Los Angeles Times, a person that some might feel is heavily biased.
I’ll quote from another comment in this thread:
> LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a doctor and transplant surgeon and invented drugs to fight pancreatic and other forms of cancer. He ACTUALLY talked to RFK Jr. and after listening to him talk and what he had to say instead of relying on mainstream media propaganda, he changed his opinion on him.
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Dr Oz is a licensed doctor as well. You need to do better than "but but the mainstream media!!!!1"
Whataboutism isn't an actual defense. I don't know who Dr. Oz is and it has nothing to do with the issue above.
Yeah we are not talking about Dr Oz, he has nothing to do with the conversation about food dyes or RFK's policy ideas.
They’re all talking rubbish. Trump said he will finish the war in UA within 24 hours. They are just talking stuff angry people swallow like pelicans.
You have elected a bunch of ego driven loonies. Just accept it and hopefully you still get to vote in four years time. What a great time for this planet.
> LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
Billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong who prevented the LA Times staff from publishing their endorsement of Kamala Harris?
I agree, the news coverage of what he says vs what he actually says in interviews is very different.
Someone can be a nutcase but be right about some things.
Also, seeing photo of him slurping up McDonald’s on the plane, guess healthy food isn’t the highest priority for him? Just the one he’s loudest about
Moderation matters. If you eat mostly whole, nutritious foods, it’s totally fine to eat processed food occasionally.
No food is inherently unhealthy or bad, so I don’t think there’s any issue with him eating McDonalds on a plane. Maybe he was in a hurry, or just wanted to be social and stopped there with someone else who wanted it.
What is unhealthy is when the majority of your food is not nutritious, which is currently the case for most Americans. So why not try to make common American foods more nutritious by default, as they are in most other wealthy countries?
It was awesome living in a European country for a couple of years as an American. You learn that ingredient lists at the grocery store really are shorter in ways you don’t expect. It’s easy to buy a fruit yogurt that is just yogurt and fruit, for example. Not “yogurt, sugar, artificial and natural flavors” as you’ll find in many popular foods in the US. It was noticeable with a lot of different food choices.
Also, whenever we would come back to visit the US, after living there for a year or so, we would always have mild digestion issues and stomach cramps for a week or so. This was common among many expats that we talked to. We visited over a dozen countries while we lived there, and the US was the only one that had that issue.
Every time I see this, I don't get it.
It only make sense as a "gotcha" if you believe in absolutist purity tests. He looks fit and healthy.
Is there a video somewhere of him swearing on a bible that he will die before eating McDonalds?
Instead there are many videos of him talking about that McDonalds incident and how terrible Trump’s food choices are and he had nothing else to eat!
Also there are memes from that picture of him grimacing and how frustrated he was.
A broken clock is right once a day. RFK Jr. is not the nutcase we're told he is, he's a very slight different kind of nutcase that's just as bad because he mixes legitimate concerns with his absolutely insane point of view, and uses the same spurious arguments for both, muddying the water for everyone.
What is insane?
His belief that vaccines cause autism.
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It's been throughly studied and debunked. Are you aware that there are countries other than the US where they have researched those claims?
Are you against the FDA releasing all the data from the pharmaceutical companies so that others can conduct their own studies from full data? Right now every single head of the HHS, FDA and CDC want to protect pharma companies and let them hide all their data. RFK Jr. is the first candidate that isn't looking for a job in industry afterwards and wants to actually free the data for the sake of the American people. For that alone I think he should be head of HHS.
As far as I've seen the only debunking has been done on single vaccines like MMR, not on the full schedule of vaccines. And it's a lie to say that they have been thoroughly debunked. Studies have shown that some vaccines can cause allergic reactions. Autistic children have over a 3X rate of food allergies or neurotypical children. Doesn't that warrant studying that maybe adjuvants are causing an immune response and the immune response causes autism?
My money is on the neurological development of autism involving some form of hyper-connectedness which also expresses itself in the gut in over-sensitivity, causing the allergies.
That, and perhaps the reason there are so many forms of autism is that the actual development of the brain is impacted so much by environment. If the children are given healthy, constructive environments to learn to interface with the world on their own terms, they'll have a better chance of benefiting others than if they're treated poorly and allowed to practice maladaptive patterns.
The covid vaccine nearly killed my father (which means covid itself probably would have) due to activating previously undiagnosed sarcoidosis, but subsequent vaccinations mediated by immunological awareness were safe and effective for him as with others.
Anyway, don't expect net positives out of RFK. He might be "independent" but you need many independent experts to reach a good understanding. Trump's administration isn't going to end corruption, it's just going to streamline it.
I respect your speculation and I think that by studying with the full data we can get closer to a real answer, rather than everyone throwing their hands up and saying "there's nothing we can do!"
If all we get from RFK Jr. is releasing of all the data that the FDA and CDC have, that is a win for society. Autism is a huge problem and no one is talking about it. The autistic kids from the 90s and 2000s are still being supported by their parents, but what's going to happen in another 20 years when their parents are dead? Will we have millions of autistic homeless people on the streets? It's going to be overwhelming and we need to fully study this. One in 34 kids in the US have autism, what are we going to do in 50-60 years?
I mean, he's still a nutcase. He can be right about some things for the wrong reasons.
If you hit upon a scientifically accurate conclusion through an unrigorous process, basically by pure chance, this doesn't make you a good scientist.
Except he isn’t a nutcase. They twist his words incredibly.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/01/14/los_angel...
So many people who opposed him and then take the time to understand what is actually saying, not what they have been told he is saying, come to realize he is completely sane. Bernie Sanders is on that list fwiw.
The proof here seems to be an interview with someone (owner of the LA Times) who talked with RFK for a few hours came away believing he knows more than doctors. Is that right?
Yes, the owner of the LA times is an actual doctor and transplant surgeon.
Ben Carson was a respected neurosurgeon before he publicly stated that, quote, "Joseph built the pyramids to store grain."
You can be brilliant in one field and an idiot in everything else.
I was talking about Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong not Dr. Ben Carson. Care to show any evidence that Soon-Shiong is an idiot?
Just because one doctor is stupid doesn't invalidate all doctors, does it? In that case, Dr. Ben Carson would be proof that Dr. Fauci is also an idiot.
Of course not, but it highlights the risk of Appeal to Authority: one's expertise in a specific field does not make them experts in others, even ones adjacent to their own. For a more local example, I have a lot of experience writing Python. Someone outside the field might mistakenly think my opinions on, say, Java, are equally informed. They're not.
Dr. Soon-Shiong was responsible for developing oncology drugs. Does that give him enough authority for him to evaluate RFK Jr's stance on drug safety?
You haven't researched him at all, have you?
Of course not. That would make him an expert on developing oncology drugs, not on the ethics of drug safety and especially not on communicable disease control.
If chemotherapy meds had the incredibly low adverse reaction rates of common vaccines with the same typically high effectiveness, I bet his general opinions on the subject would be different. No, of course we shouldn't require school children to get preventative chemotherapy because the risk-reward ratio would be awful. And of course we should vaccinate them against polio because there's trivial risk in the prevention compared to the life-altering effects of the illness.
Also an expert on drug safety and how to get drugs approved because he would need to go through the FDA to get it approved for chemotherapy.
That doesn't make him an idiot, it just means he watched some TV.
A lot of people think the Jews in Egypt built the pyramids, but they didn't.
This doesn't make them idiots.
(For anyone who doesn't know, the pyramids were there before Josef arrived.)
People aren't required to know everything, and when they don't that doesn't make them idiots.
Not knowing something isn't what makes them idiots. Spouting off about it as though they do is what ruins their credibility. At the very least it demonstrates that they're bad at vetting their sources.
Speaking without knowing something also doesn't make you an idiot. (If that was the rule the entire planet is nothing but idiots.)
The general issue is that people don't realize when they don't know something correctly, and it's impossible to vet every single thing you hear.
You can call him an idiot if he was corrected, and despite evidence he refuses to change his position. Has he done that?
He filed to get the FDA to revoke the polio vaccine. He’s rabidly anti-vax, routinely spewing lies that have been debunked repeatedly. He is absolutely a nut case that happens to have some points of view that many could agree with.
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My wife's a doctor, and had patients begging her for leftover Vioxx samples after Merck pulled it from the market, preferring to take their chances with heart issues rather than living in agonizing pain that Vioxx was especially good at treating.
Turns out medicine's complicated, who knew?
Just because a drug works well doesn't mean that it's moral to release a drug that knowingly kills tens of thousands of people a year and then hide that data.
I agree. In my opinion, hiding the risk was the sin, not releasing the drug. Many, many people with chronic pain conditions would gladly accept the risk.
It's kind of the same with any treatment: chemotherapy may make you incredibly sick before it saves you. Willow tree bark may fix your headache but cause you to bleed profusely. Homeopathy may make you die of whatever you were sick with before it cures your dehydration. Everything has its tradeoffs.
We need to the full information in order to make our own choices. Right now pharma companies hide a lot of the information, including from clinical trials from drugs. All the data should be released and not hidden so that people can make their own choices on what medications they take and if they want to risk taking it, that's fine because they have all the information and they can make their own risk/reward judgement.
Looks like you, me and RFK Jr. are perfectly aligned.
It is possible for there to be both dishonest unethical pharma corps and for RFK to be a lunatic unworthy of attention.
You're not winning over anyone here. No one is buying your falsehoods, even if you genuinely believe them yourself.
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RFK Jr. is very wrong about some very important things and those already make him a dangerous nutcase.
As an oatmeal connoisseur, I'd be remiss not to point out that the two oatmeal products being compared there are not the same. The American product is specifically "Strawberries and Cream," which looks like it was deliberately picked because it adds a few extra scary-looking ingredients from the creaming agent; whereas the UK product is just "Heaps of Fruit," sans cream.
The UK product contains freeze dried strawberries and raspberries. The USA market "strawberries and cream" contains no strawberry, instead it has freeze dried apple dyed red with added strawberry flavor.
I don't believe natural is inherently good nor artificial inherently bad but the USA product is objectively lower quality. IMHO it is cheaply made crap to fool people that do not read the ingredients.
Here's the American version of "heaps of fruit," "fruit fusion."
https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/quaker-oats-instant-oatmea...
Ingredients
Whole grain oats,sugar,dried raspberries,dried strawberries,natural flavor,tricalcium phosphate,salt,beet juice concentrate (color),iron,vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol).
The American version is identical to the UK version until "natural flavor." The US version then adds some vitamins plus tricalcium phosphate, salt, and beet juice concentrate. The only "scary" ingredient is tricalcium phosphate, which appears to be an anti-caking agent.
Edit: on Quaker's website
https://www.quakeroats.com/products/hot-cereals/instant-oatm...
It says "Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of phosphorus that also provides the essential mineral calcium." Which is actually what I suspected, it's another added vitamin that has the benefit of also being an anti caking agent.
Protip: neither of those are oats.
I find this particularly interesting because it is due to market conditions, not legislation, that many Canadian foods have switched to colors from natural ingredients.
These companies appear to believe that Canadians prefer fewer artificial ingredients, and that Americans don't seem to care. Very curious.
I don't think Froot Loops ever used red 3. They use red 40.
It's more of a commentary about how food in the US is overly colored for no other reason than it looks cool, sometimes at the detriment of the health of the consumer.
> food in the US is overly colored for no other reason than it looks cool
My understanding is that a lot of food is colored to look "natural" for uniformity. A good example of this is applesauce.
Another item is sprayed for coloring is ORANGES (Citrus Red No. 2 is the color)
https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
Are you sure that Canadian version is less detrimental to the health of the consumer? It too looks artificial color-loaded to me.
I wouldn't consider Froot Loops a health food, but the Canadian version have all natural flavour and colour-
"Concentrated carrot juice (for colour), Anthocyanin, Annatto, Turmeric, Natural flavour, Concentrated watermelon juice (for colour), Concentrated blueberry juice (for colour), Concentrated huito juice (for colour)" etc
From their ingredients.
It's colored so some set of people can make more money.
Neither color of Fruit Loops is natural. American food is colored to look cool, because cool sells better with Americans. Canadian food is colored to look dull, because dull sells better with Canadians.
Is that your guess or were you in the marketing research department at Kellogs?
It's just how cereal is made. Before fruit loops are loops, they are grain mash. That grain mash is mostly uniform in color and brown-ish. In order to have a bowl filled with loops where some of the loops are yellow and others are green and others are blue, they add different colors of dye. It's the same whether it's neon green or organic green - the dye is added at the end for appeal to the consumer.
Why would they not just use less dye to reduce the colors in Canada then? Surely its more effective to produce them in one way instead of two.
The Canadian cereal was the same colour as in the US until a few years ago. I'm not sure what prompted the change.
Those companies ought to be sued. They know that their die is cancer-linked and they still use it in the US even though they don't do it in Canada/EU.
We, as humanity, should sue all this big companies (nestle, coca-cola, etc.) for poisoning our lives for profit.
I looked into it, and from what I can tell the only link to cancer they've found so far is in male rats exposed to high levels of it, but they haven't found evidence that it causes cancer in humans or other animals.
What's odd to me is that it's still fine to sell food like bacon, where the link to cancer in humans appears to be much, much stronger.
…or cigarettes, which are available for sale everywhere.
If unhealthy foods are to be banned, we must also ban cigarettes and alcohol. If we are to let people be bodybuilders, or body destroyers, then all of these things should be available for purchase.
Ultimately it is a special kind of arrogance to tell people what they are or are not allowed to do to the one thing they unambiguously own and control: their own body.
the difference is that you are aware and are told about tobaco (which I would ban) and alcohol, food you are not told.
Keep in mind that the negative effects (beyond the coughing and diminished lung capacity) of cigarettes have only been publicly admitted to and explicitly taught only very recently in the history of tobacco.
The tobacco industry fought tooth and nail against any suggestion that tobacco products are linked to cancer and even advertised cigarettes as healthy.
I agree with you in principle. I would caution against taking for granted what we know today to be very clearly unhealthy and cancer-causing. It is often an up-hill decades long battle against incredibly wealthy interests to get to the truth.
Ok, well then, I’m sure no Americans are eating high levels of foods that contain dyes. So, surely there are long term 20 year plus studies on cumulative effects, right?
The only rats that developed cancer more than baseline in the study had a diet that was 4% red #3. Pretty sure no Americans are approaching that lol
Depends on the definition of high level. Was the amount given to the rats equivalent of 5x fruit loop bowls, or 5,000,000x?
in the US, priority #1 is fiduciary duty to shareholders. if customers are buying, and we make it more expensive to make, then shareholders will be mad!
Not causing cancer falls under fiduciary duty.
Relevant news story from a few years ago in the UK, where a bakery was using US sprinkles on cakes, that aren't legal to use in the UK, due to Red #3 :
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046348573/sprinklegate-sinks...
"British sprinkles just aren't the same, they're totally s*** and I hate them."
"I am extremely passionate about sprinkles."
Honestly hilarious. I feel his pain.
The credibility of the food industry is so low that I think people would support bans on most additives on general principle. We look back at things like putting lead and radium in paint or using asbestos in insulation and say "they should have known better, how could they be so stupid". Well, good additives have a lengthy history of containing harmful additives and I think future generations will say the same about many of these currently in use. What's interesting is that from our current time we can see just how easily it happens, even with the amount of information available to average person.
Labeling is the big one imo.
What gets tracked gets improved. I think we need to update the ingredient requirements for food (wtf is seasoning) but also update the fields on Nutritional Facts.
Having a drink like Oreo Coca-Cola read 0’s down the board is illustrative of my point. There’s lots of crap in our food but it’s been selected specifically for its ability to not be captured in the dozen or so categories deemed important back when legislation passed on food transparency.
Pretty wild how far the US is behind in banning these sort of things compared to other countries.
Source? The last time I checked the FDA bans more food dyes than most other countries.
Go to Italy or France, or any EU state. The food is better and often cheaper in almost every case.
Even a McDonald's hamburger is good, and not dominated by the fake chemical garlic substitute. In the US, McDonald's french fries contain: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients.
In Italy, the ingredients are: Potato, Oil, Salt.
I hate to break it to you, but a lot of that difference comes down to labeling and disclosure requirements. If the Italian fries don't even have to disclose what type of oil they use, they probably also don't have to disclose the oil stabilizers and seasonings they use.
Let's not forget that Europe had massive epidemic of horse meat being snuck into the supply chain with no one catching on.
I hate to break this news to you but there are countries outside of the EU.
The FDA also bans more food dyes than the EU.
I didn't say there was no world beyond the EU. I'm not personally acquainted with every nation's food regulatory regime. I was just struck by the obvious qualitative difference between even the lowest quality food.
Feel free to regail someone who cares about the food regulations of the world.
The FDA factoid is cool -- they just didn't ban the dye that causes cancer.
> difference between even the lowest quality food
Have you been to a farmer's market in the US? Potatoes are potatoes. In fact, potatoes are native to this continent and we have more potato cultivars to choose from. You can get very high quality meat there.
Saying all US food is lower quality is kind of a wild opinion.
> Feel free to regail someone who cares about the food regulations of the world.
You're the one that responded to my comment about comparing the US to the rest of the world by saying I needed to compare it to the EU. I didn't hop into your comment chain with random factoids.
> I'm not personally acquainted with every nation's food regulatory regime.
Didn't stop you from providing uninformed commentary tho.
Not to be “that guy” but you did reply to someone saying “most other countries” with a counter argument citing three, then waved away the fact you’re unaware of most other countries. That’s where the pushback is coming from. The US tends to be a little more progressive than the middle of the pack in this space and set the global standard for food safety regulation where none existed before. The cherry picking of a few examples when discussing global comparisons is fraught and the US always exists in this world where whatever topic there’s always some other place doing better on some metric used as some argument the US is a steaming pile of refuse with wandering zombies laden with cancer and illiteracy. It’s not intellectually honest or particularly helpful in discussion of the actual problems. Anyway - that’s where the pushback came from, not that these three countries regulate food dye additives better or not.
I think your cultural palate is showing. The marketing of a few simple ingredients sounds good except it's not like American McDonalds is putting them in for no reason. You can make the case that fillers are used to cut cost but for french fries all that stuff costs extra. To Americans that shit tastes great.
* The beef flavor is mimicking frying in beef tallow. If you use Marmite in your brown gravy you're using the same trick.
* Americans, being flushed with corn and corn syrup which is sweeter than granulated sugar, developed a sweeter tooth than other places which is why the dextrose.
* Potatoes once cut and exposed to air get that gross dark color. Most home cooks usually solve that by keeping them submerged in water until frying but Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate works the same.
Not sure on food dyes but my understanding is the FDA is leagues behind the EU on regulation when it comes to food.
My experience in Italy with foods that normally cause some issues (dairy/cheese) really opened my eyes to that. My sister who doesn’t eat cheese/dairy at all here in the US was able to eat it there without issue because of how they process dairy over there or something.
It is more complicated than this, the US has much more rigorous food safety standards in a number of dimensions.
For example, the US has much stricter standards for preventing bacterial contamination than Europe, outside of the Nordics which share similar food safety regulations as the US. The US prohibits a lot of food importation from Europe because of lower food safety standards related to contamination.
Europe makes a lot of food safety exceptions on the basis of a process being "traditional" in some sense, nominally preserving culture. The US is a bit more technocratic less prone to the naturalistic fallacy; the FDA doesn't care that something is cultural or traditional, if there is scientific evidence of material risk then it will be banned.
If I had to summarize their food safety perspectives, the EU tends to focus more on allowable ingredients, the US tends to focus more on the uncontaminated and sterile handling of the food supply chain.
Similar thing with my wife and bread. In the US she developed/discovered/exposed a gluten intolerance, to the point that she removed it from her diet entirely, but bread in France is ok for her.
In that case it's not a gluten intolerance; there is gluten in bread in France. Might be a sugar thing? Bread in the US is more likely to contain added sugar and/or HFCS than in most countries.
That just means that her gluten intolerance is stress related, rather than there being any difference in the gluten in France.
So it might not have anything to do with regulation at all?
Possibly, but dairy processing is heavily regulated.
Most other countries, maybe, now compared to the EU...
Sure the US is ahead of the EU. The EU allows 11 [1] synthetic food dyes while the US only allows 9 [2]
[1] https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/food-colours
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/color-additives-information-consume...
Good thing only the numbers are important and not the health effects!
You are the one that asked for the comparison. Didn't get the numbers you thought you would?
Why don’t you do the comparison?
Because people have done it before and we have something named the internet
https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations...
https://eatwell.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2024-08/foods-us...
Source?
At least one proposed solution I’ve seen is to split the FDA, because regulating food is almost nothing like regulating drugs in 2025.
We already have the FDA (most foods and drugs), the USDA (produce, animal products besides milk), and TTB (alcohol). Each one sets its own safety and labeling standards, which is why, for example, mixed drinks containing alcohol don't have to list allergens(!). Another level of fragmentation would be a disaster IMO. We could split the FDA, but we'd need to merge the food regulator half into one of those other existing agencies.
To be honest, I could see an argument for separating the handling of raw agricultural product from the rest of the food system. The health effects of Oreos vs. making sure our eggs don’t have bird flu are quite different regulatory concerns.
> behind
Is it really a competition to see who can ban the most things? What's the prize if you win?
The prize to win is public health. There is absolutely no benefit in putting all this crap into food. Maybe some things are harmful and others are not but they are absolutely useless.
Unless you sell that crap.
Things like Veggie Libel Laws are very much against the public interest but farm owners have managed to somehow be both rich and adored by the populace so here we are
If they're competing to ban dangerous things in our food supply then the "prize" is a longer healthier life for everyone who lives in any nation that engages in such competition? :shrug:
Less cancer, mostly.
So the US is winning considering they allow less food dyes?
Well, we might be winning when it comes to food dyes but I don't think it's a clear victory overall.
Average life span there is a bit longer overall than the USA, but much like the USA it can vary quite a bit from region to region
Bans add a lot of overhead to both the agencies responsible for enforcing them and industry. Those agencies are only so large and are spread thin, sometimes there are 'bigger fish' they need to focus on.
I can understand waiting until there's sufficient evidence before starting that process.
Enforcing bans strikes me as a revenue generator, no?
Other countries manage to do this just fine.
A lot of other countries do not have the shear mass of industries and services that the US does.
Why would they have less? They produce food for their people.
This trope tends to be wrong.
Does that mean the US is "ahead" for not allowing bemotrizinol in sunscreen?
Only if they actually cause cancer. The FDA's statement (https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-...) says:
> The way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans. Relevant exposure levels to FD&C Red No. 3 for humans are typically much lower than those that cause the effects shown in male rats. Studies in other animals and in humans did not show these effects; claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information.
if "these sort of things" aren't actually harmful, and what we see in Europe is mostly governments reacting to unscientific panic among their citizens, then I'd say it's other countries that are wild, not the United States.
The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume. This is a much better heuristic than "we haven't found any adverse effects yet, so call it GRAS". Science is great at determining the presence of specific effects. It's not so good at finding an absence of effect.
> The European approach is: if it doesn't look on your plate the way it looked on the hoof or on the plant, it's probably not good to consume.
I mean, that's just not true. Fruit Loops are sold in Europe as well (albeit with slightly different colors), and there's no hoof or plant that produces anything that looks like Fruit Loops. Food coloring is a worldwide phenomenon.
The fruit loops in Europe have natural food coloring which isn't known to cause cancer like red #3 (for instance)
I think I care about more than cancer. What if I cared about genetic defects, ADHD, mental health, water contamination, obesity…
Maybe if the dye served ANY purpose besides getting people to eat more of it, I could find a bit of care to not remove it from foods.
Should all things that have only benefits that you don't care about and which aren't proven to have no downsides you care about be banned?
Cancer is a genetic defect.
Well, if you read the quote in my comment (or clicked on the source link I included), you would see that the FDA evaluated it for health risks all-up, not just cancer.
Your comment violates the following hacker news guideline:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for the full set.
this is merely a money grab by moneyd interests to ban dyes that are not patented and to force us onto something that is patented.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-00830.pdf
Related:
FDA weighing ban on red dye No. 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42542951 - Dec 2024
FDA may ban artificial red dye from beverages, candy and other foods - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42382676 - Dec 2024
US Food and Drug Administration moves to ban red food dye - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352983 - Dec 2024
The data and puzzling history behind California's new red food dye ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857175 - Oct 2023
California becomes first US state to ban 4 potentially harmful chemicals in food - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37838521 - Oct 2023
I remember the concern about and ban of Red No. 2 when I was a kid. I've always been a little suspicous of colored food since then.
Great. Hopefully in 50 years we'll have banned most of today's children's cereals.
Cancer is a very wide category, I assume that it may induce a sub-group of all cancers. I believe the article mentions Thyroid cancer specifically.
It's specifically a type of cancer in rats with no human equivalent. But the FDA rules state they can ban an ingredient if it causes cancer in humans or animals.
Admittedly to a fault, I tend to be quick to trust institutions and don't tend to be quick to believe conspiracies (not claiming that this is). With most of the additives to products that people seem to be worried about, I default to thinking it's not the most important thing I need to be concerned with in my daily life.
But the FDA making this ruling is validating for my friends who seem to go way out of their way to find product ingredients to be afraid of. I know people have been claiming for years that Red3 being allowed in the US is crazy.
I'm genuinely here to listen: how would someone who believes that the US allows far too many dangerous ingredients in consumer goods and believes the consumer needs to actively screen and research what is in their products convince me that I need to be more serious about screening the products I use for dangerous ingredients?
We don’t need to convince you of anything. If you care, you’ll look and do your own research about the ingredients. If you think you’re safe, then you’ll eat them,.
Now for the important question: which children's cereals will be changing color?
I assume all the really colorful ones, including froot loops. None / less of the organic ones.
Why don't all parents just buy the organic ones to start with? Lack of information?
They’re considerably more expensive and their kids prefer the others?
Look, there are plenty of things in our diets that won’t cause harm in small amounts just because a large amount causes harm to a rat. Some people (somewhat rationally) extended that to food dyes and additives.
If you or I want to choose differently that’s great, but denigrating people who don’t make the same choices you do is condescending and unhelpful.
My kids won't eat the healthy cereal so for me the number one reason is taste. The organic ones also cost more so price conscious people have a second reason.
> My kids won't eat the healthy cereal so for me the number one reason is taste.
This is one of those things where "taste" is basically sweetness. I used to love cereal. Ate bowls of it all the time. I've been on a basic oatmeal with blueberries kick for the last couple years, though, and whenever I try cereals I used to like again I'm disgusted by how sweet they are. You really can only taste sweetness. Kids love that sweetness, though, and brands are extremely focused on marketing candy to children as "healthy" breakfast staples. Lots of kids think stuff tastes bad because it doesn't taste like candy.
The price of "organic" cereals is an issue though.
more likely lack of money
$$$
Drastically more expensive. This adds up way too high for most people who make average income. I do think its also lack of information.
Edit:
The only people I've ever heard of whining about cereals having bad ingredients are the people everyone calls conspiracy nuts, this is my issue with calling things "conspiracy theories" and dismissing people, when someone brings forth valid information, you miss out because you're blindly dismissing them based on bias not fact.
Great, now ban Red 40 and the other synthetic dyes. You can't avoid them in anything marketed toward children. I have children and I know others who also have children that are highly sensitive to these dyes, causing major behavioral issues that last for 5-7 days after ingesting food/medicine/drinks that contain these dyes.
That's been proven in double blinded studies, I assume.
What other things does the US need to ban to catch up with Europe? Who is "right vs wrong" here? Is Europe wrong for having too many things banned, is US wrong for not having parity with what is banned in Europe?
Is Europe being overly cautious, is America being unsafe?
According to Google:
>Red 3 dye has been banned in the European Union for food use since 1994
Seems pretty reasonable to me.
What about Red 40?
The Biden admin is trying to take the few sane things the incoming Trump administration wants to do and do them first which has been funny to watch.
I think that Trump doesn't care one way or another about food coloring or Americans getting cancer, and as such his administration will likely leave such things alone and untouched for the most part unless the food lobby asks him to cancel or defund the FDA for campaign contributions or similar.
Harris blatantly copying the No Tax on Tips was particularly funny this election season. You could see on her face that she didn’t believe in it at all.
I don’t think she really has beliefs other than her career.
that is 99% of all politicians though. Her policies were generally much better aligned with the health and well being of the average American vs the average billionaire.
Do libertarians support this kind of move?
No libertarians feel that people will likely get sick or die from bad products, and will sue the company/quit buying the product; aka let the market and survival of the fittest decide what people put in their bodies.
Getting it out of the way before RFK can do it, huh?
Might as well get some credit for the one or two good ideas he has before the antivaccine rhetoric begins and measles/mumps/whooping cough kills a few tens of thousands of people and the GQP goes "oops" and fires him and puts the old policies back in place.
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Removing dyes and healthier food in general is one of RFK's stated goals so they'd call this a win. You need better news sources.
It’s not always easy to keep up with the Republicans’ evolving positions.
For the past century, they told everyone that it was none of the government’s business what people choose to eat. Now it suddenly is.
It does have a whiff of trying to mold the citizenry towards a physical ideal. Fitter, happier, more masculine energy.
My favorite is the matrix-like maneuvering about taxes. Now excise taxes and tariffs are cool. But "death tax", income tax, social security tax -- that's communist.
This is the old "at least Hitler made the trains run on time" thing again.
I'm all for removing dyes from food, but if the tradeoff is bringing back polio, no thanks.
Wasn't that said of Benito Mussolini?
Maybe? I wouldn't think that changes the point much.
RFK is absolutely right on a few things, but that doesn't make him an automatic force for good.
>bringing back polio
How, exactly, are they causing that to come about? I find this is just a scaremongering tactic that everyone with some ties or ideological adherence to institutional science resorts to, on the other hand, with no sound argument whatsoever. It's just a mindless knee-jerk reaction.
> How, exactly, are they causing that to come about?
By spreading rumours and falsehoods about vacines. Which reduce vacination rates and leaves an opening for diseases like polio to spread.
Which part of that are you having trouble believing? Just so we can chat about those parts.
People affiliated with RFK's orbit are advocating for removing approval for the polio vaccine because it wasn't validated with double-blind studies. There's some obvious reasons why that is problematic.
It's really obvious how poorly this stuff plays out, you look at New York. When you read a news story about polio/measles/whopping cough etc, from New York, it will say "it was detected in New York City (or Brooklyn), Orange, Rockland and Sullivan counties".
That's often indiciative of a specific sect of orthodox Jewish communities whose charismatic leader is against vaccination. It's a tight-knit community that tends to live in densely populated environments. (So more viral spread than similar relgious sects like the Amish) People tend to follow the guidance and don't vaccinate. Fortunately, while polio virus has been detected in samples, as far as I know there are not any cases. Measles and whopping cough cases are fairly common.
This isn't a "left" and "right" issue. It's an authoritarian issue where seeding mistrust of institutions is important. Polio hasn't been eradicated to the point that eliminating vaccination is smart. Smallpox was -- and we don't vaccinate the general public anymore. (We do vaccinate soliders as the Soviets/Russians/USA weaponized it)
While the US uses an inactivated polio vaccine, many countries still use a polio vaccine created using an attenuated virus. This virus can revert to a dangerous form. This happens if you have a partially vaccinated population.
This means that unvaccinated people can be infected with a strain of polio that can cause paralysis. This is extremely rare in the US (there was one case of one affected person in 2022).
Currently, the polio vaccine is recommended in the US, and vaccination rates in different US States are between 86% (Idaho) and 99% (Mississippi). If the vaccination rate decreases, it is possible that polio cases will become more common, or even that polio might become endemic again.
RFK has said conflicting things about the polio vaccine. Aaron Siri, a lawyer affiliated with Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke polio vaccine's approval, but RFK said that he supports the polio vaccine in response. I think it's fair to be skeptical, though, given his general position on vaccines.
If RFK's actions cause polio vaccination rates to fall, there is a real reason to be concerned. I don't think this is scaremongering, this is a plausible possibility based on what we know about polio, and about RFK's position on vaccination.
It’ll come back like whooping cough has.
Don't forget measles, which is back after being declared eliminated from the United States in 2000.
RFK is anti-vaccine. It's a pretty short, straight line. No conspiracies needed, no mental hoops to jump through.
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https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-vaccines-trump-r...
> Kennedy has insisted that he is not anti-vaccine, saying he only wants vaccines to be rigorously tested, but he also has shown opposition to a wide range of immunizations. Kennedy said in a 2023 podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told Fox News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.
> “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy said.
> That same year, in a video promoting an anti-vaccine sticker campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen next to one sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”
"There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective."
RFK on Lex Fridman's podcast.
We do have long-term studies on vaccines. Vaccines are some of the best-studied medical intervention. There is plenty of data about their efficacy and side-effects. Implying that we "need more studies" before we can be sure about vaccines is, in my opinion, dishonest and misleading.
It seems the group that is 'all about science' doesn't want to investigate big pharma. It's a strange world.
see: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/7190377...
I read about this right before covid in Wired magazine. Now, they lick the assholes of all the big pharma companies and anyone wanting more science are 'deniers', turning it into a relgion.
It seems like the Philippine government and WHO are at fault here, rather than Sanofi
No it's not - the topic is healthier food. If someone said "I bet Hitler[0] will reverse this thing that makes trains run on time" and someone said "actually Hitler loves trains running on time", that would be a fair response.
This is the old "the person my news sources repeatedly tell me to dislike is like Hitler".
[0] Mussolini, no?
> No it's not - the topic is healthier food.
The topic is also RFK and his views, which include quite prominent anti-vaccine activism.
I don't see that in the comment chain.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42712142
> Removing dyes and healthier food in general is one of RFK's stated goals
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9577438/
> On July 21, 2022, the USA witnessed the first case of poliomyelitis after 3 decades of its eradication.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/health/polio-vaccine-outb...
> Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who may become the secretary of health and human services, has said the idea that vaccination has nearly eradicated polio is “a mythology.”
> The virus that paralyzed the young man had been circulating for months, and it was later detected in the sewage of multiple New York counties with vaccination rates hovering around 60 percent, prompting the state to declare an emergency.
My apologies, I didn't realize RFK was enacting policy in 2022.
RFK has been a prominent voice in the anti-vax world for many years.
Including helping worsen a measles outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak
Not the sort of person you want to promote to policy decisions, where he can do more damage.
If they get cancer they will probably die earlier and save us more money on not having to distribute social security checks.
Maybe the FDA will get sued by the health insurance companies due to impacting their profits...
Between all the snarkyness (is that a word? I'm not a native speaker :-D) I think there's a point here. With all the regulations the EU has put up, and the bureaucracy that came with them, I'm really happy that we got food and its ingredients pretty tightly under control and locked down. Glad to see that other countries are prioritizing consumer safety, too.
But Musk, RFK Jr. and others were precisely the kind of people that were advocating for this kind of regulation to take place. Remember the thing about replacing seed oils (eugh) with beef tallow? I really don't think they are against this kind of regulation--on the contrary.
A quick search shows RFK is in favor of replacing seed oils with beef tallow? Is that supposed to be a good thing? What am I missing?
Just do some research on what seed oils where used for just some decades ago, and the extreme processes they go through to make them somewhat edible and not too unpalatable. It's just a byproduct of corporations trying to reduce costs at the expense of our health. They'd do it with literal shit if they could find the way.
There is enough research linking saturated fat (beef tallow has a lot) to heart disease. Not saying seed oils are better. But claiming beef tallow is better doesn't cut it.
The previous administration were the one who started Operation Warp Speed to reduce other regulatory hurdles, so maybe they will.
Why’s there no avenue for receiving risk appropriate compensation funds for having increased personal risk of death by consuming something a reasonable expert in the industry could consider dangerous?
If I skirt the law on technicalities to cause harm to an employer for example, such as knowingly implementing trivial security encryption on critical transactions, I feel I could be liable for damages. Why is this a game of spot the problem and then get off with a warning before going to the next preplanned technicality workaround that usually also causes cancer but will buy them a few years until the process repeats?
Shouldn’t mass risk of life be considered a terror level charge? Or rather, instead of saying no to that question because it didn’t appear to meet X criteria, why aren’t we finding ways it could meet that criteria? For example if it needs a political reason, we should ask how this could be a politically motivated decision rather than saying this doesn’t appear to meet any political agenda. That’s how the laws are always completely one sided abused against normal people anyway in a more extreme stretch than my example. I think it’s reasonable to do a reasonable-amount of application back.
Because the people en masse have not successfully come together to demand this.
What makes companies more powerful than the people is not that companies actually have more power. They don't. It's that they concentrate the power they do have into the hands of a small group of decision-makers, which allows it to be deployed effectively. By comparison, the people are divided, disjointed, disorganized, and distracted, and as such typically fail to come together to demand specific changes they agree on.
Idk I think there is a ton of overlap between industry and the highest levels of government. They wouldn’t want pesky things like human well-being to get in the way of profit so they get their hands on some of the levers of power and mitigate their liability one way or the other. It’d probably take a class action lawsuit in the kind of case you describe to be brought to justice.
Most people wont like this, but the answer is because courts care about if the harm actually occurred in fact, not if there is risk that harm might occur.
You cant sue another driver because they risked crashing into your car.
It would set a precedent that is unpalatable to people who sell this stuff.
According to Claude w/ regard to all the “food-grade” artificial dyes: > These base chemicals are all derived from the fractional distillation of crude oil, where different hydrocarbons are separated based on their boiling points. The relevant fractions are then further processed through various chemical reactions to create the needed starting materials for dye synthesis. It blows my mind that more people don’t talk about this instead of just jumping to conclusions based on which studies have been done. Studies can and are manipulated by entities that stand to gain the most from their conclusions, but a sprinkle of logic could tell you that constantly eating things that the body isn’t intended to process, that no humans in history have ever eaten is a bad bad bad idea. And it isn’t just chemical-processed coal tar. That’s a drop in the bucket. We’ve been systematically betrayed on every front by our government agencies, media, and institutions to believe that actually it’s okay, the reason we’re so much sicker than we were 50 years ago is because we don’t exercise enough. I anticipate more and more of the general public are going to start peeling back the curtain, and what they find is going to appall them. These people are ignorant at best and intentionally trying to kill us at worst (remember all that population control talk?) - once you realize that you realize that the grocery store, the doctors office, etc. are de facto hostile places where you can’t take anything for granted. Our grandparents may have had the luxury of letting their guard down and happily putting something in their cart or taking the doctor’s advice without understanding it, we don’t.
FD&C Red 40 (Allura Red AC): Linked to hyperactivity in children in some studies, although evidence is mixed. Theoretical concerns regarding disruption of cell membrane integrity, potentially leading to increased permeability and toxicity.
FD&C Yellow 5 (Tartrazine): Some in vitro studies suggest potential neurotoxic effects, though human evidence is lacking. Theoretical concerns regarding modulation of neurotransmitters, potentially leading to behavioral changes.
FD&C Yellow 6 (Sunset Yellow FCF): Similar to Yellow 5, some in vitro studies raise concerns, but human evidence is limited. Theoretical concerns regarding binding to DNA, potentially leading to mutagenic effects.
FD&C Blue 1 (Brilliant Blue FCF): Theoretical concerns regarding exacerbation of respiratory conditions like asthma. Theoretical concerns regarding increased cell membrane permeability, potentially leading to toxicity.
FD&C Blue 2 (Indigo Carmine): Limited human studies, but some animal research suggests potential neurological impacts. Theoretical concerns regarding triggering or exacerbating immunological reactions.
Read food labels.
"according to claude" makes it hard for my mind to give much credence to the post in a way very different from "according to Wikipedia" with a link. I intend this politely, but if I wanted to know what claude would output I would ask it myself, during the phase of the moon when the way I've chosen to word the prompt has the best chance of working.
It'd be great if people stopped just copy-pasting stuff from LLMs and then responding to that instead of other real human people.
It's not a foregone conclusion that just because people haven't ingested things before doesn't inherently mean that ingesting them is bad. Saying it is is itself a pretty obvious logical fallacy. Now I'm not saying at all that ingesting oil, even byproducts after multiple rounds of synthesis, is a good idea. But it's not impossible to synthesize something edible out of something inedible, so the fact that oil is inedible doesn't mean that all oil derivatives are as well.
You have some valid points, but this mostly reads as exasperated defeatism that doesn't offer any actionable solutions.
