Why You (Still) Don't Need to Fear Red Food Dye #3
No new science, plenty of overblown rhetoric. Who's behind it? Plus: the links.
Welcome to another installment of the Rethinking Wellness link roundup! Here I’m offering a small collection of links from around the internet that are relevant to the conversations we have here, along with some quick takes and occasional deeper dives for paid subscribers.
This time the take/dive is about the FDA’s decision last week to ban Red #3 dye from the food supply, which I know has been on many people’s minds.
Links
Here are some pieces that got me thinking in the past few weeks. I found value in all of these, but links are not endorsements of every single detail in the piece or everything the writer ever wrote.
Book Report: Ultra Processed People (
)Does It Matter if an AI Chatbot Cites Its Sources? (
)Questions for RFK Jr.’s Senate Confirmation: Part III (
)Related: Kennedy Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout and Kennedy Would Keep Stake in H.P.V. Vaccine Suit if Confirmed (NYT)
The appeal to nature fallacy is not a viable healthcare strategy (
) I’d cut the weight-stigmatizing parenthetical about soda and body size, which relies on the flawed assumption that higher weight equals poor health—but it’s also interesting that one of the few things RFK is widely considered to get “right” is related to diet culture.And the Award Goes to … Ozempic (
)In Case You Missed It
Can Zinc Really Help Fight Colds and Covid?
Is Magnesium a Miracle Mineral, or Just Another Wellness Fad?
Wellness Culture, Chronic Illness, and Digestive Issues with Jonathan Vatner
Take/Dive: Why You (Still) Don’t Need to Fear Red Food Dye #3
What do you think about the FDA’s decision to ban Red #3 food dye? Do we need to worry about the Red 3 still in the food supply until the ban takes effect in 2027? It seems concerning that the FDA waited so long to ban the dye (since the 1980s?) and now they’re waiting even longer to fully remove it.
FYI: my answers here are for educational and informational purposes only, aren’t a substitute for medical or mental-health advice, and don’t constitute a provider-patient relationship. Also, I’m not affiliated in any way with the food, beverage, or coloring/flavoring industry. No special‐interest group is paying me to write this piece (or any piece), and opinions here are always my own.
Last Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the use of Red #3 coloring in food and ingested drugs. Food manufacturers who currently use the dye (also known as FD&C Red No. 3 or erythrosine) will have two years to reformulate their products, and drugmakers will get three years. Though other countries still allow some uses of erythrosine, all food imports to the U.S. will need to comply with the ban.
The discourse around this decision has been predictably terrible. To read the media reports and social-media responses to the ban, you’d think the FDA is finally doing the right thing after years of shirking its responsibility. “US bans popular red dye from foods — 35 years after it was banned in cosmetics,” one headline said. “FDA bans red dye No. 3 in foods, decades after additive found to cause cancer in rats,” said another. Functional-medicine doctor and frequent wellness-misinformation spreader Mark Hyman tweeted, “why has it taken so long to prioritize public health over profits?”
But that framing is incredibly misleading, obscuring the real story here. There was (and, frankly, still is) good reason for the FDA to continue allowing use of the dye in food for all those years. The ban isn’t based on any new science—or any good science. So how did it come to pass? And who’s behind the talking points?