How Will Food Dye Bans Make America Healthy Again?
The newsletter offering you free tickets to "Public Health and Food Safety Theater"!
The United States is making big moves in public health! West Virginia is our great nation’s first state to ban “unsafe food additives” in a Bill that passed its state Senate by an overwhelming majority of 31-2. As of August 1st of this year, products that contain the dyes Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, and Green 3 along with preservatives butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and propylparaben will no longer be allowed to be sold within West Virginia or served in the state’s school nutrition programs. Thankfully there’s, “an exception to the ban for school fundraisers”.
Supporters are claiming that this is the most important piece of legislation in their careers and “will make available food healthier for families and children.” Those who voted against the bill brought up the oh-so-minor fact that there is a lack of evidence demonstrating how the dyes are unsafe. Plus, it’s just bad business. The National Confectioners Association—a trade group representing the interests of companies that make chocolate, candy, gum, and mints—is already reported to have said the Bill will make food “significantly more expensive for and significantly less accessible to people in West Virginia in the current environment.”
It’s incredible that amidst all of the recent political chaos in the US, legislators across the country remain steadfast in their commitment to promoting public health. Food dyes and “chemical additives” have been hot topics all over the news, and political spectrum, this year with the FDA revoking the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs and California Governor Newsom issuing an executive order to, “crack down on ultra-processed foods” and continue investigating the health impacts of synthetic food dyes and identifying potential new standards for “healthy school meals.” There are 11 other states where similar legislation is being considered. All of these are important milestones on the path to Make America Healthy Again, aren’t they?
Not quite.
I would call this legislative anti-food dye wave “public health and food safety theater”. This builds on the concept of “security theater” coined by Bruce Schneier in 2003 which criticizes, “security countermeasures intended to provide feelings of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve the reality of security.” About 5 years ago we all got tickets to a limited run of “hygiene theater,” coined on March 6, 2020, by Bob Cooney, referring to visible cleanliness and hygiene practices employed through the early era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these practices—like wiping down high-contact surfaces (and our grocery bags) and temperature checks at events—aren’t harmful but their biggest benefit may have been the psychological comfort they brought to the many of us who were (rightfully) anxious about being in public during the pandemic. These hygiene practices and their enforcement varied widely and their impact on reducing COVID spread pales in comparison to proper masking protocols, handwashing, air filtration systems for enclosed spaces, required testing before and at events, etc.
Why do I consider food dye bans public health and food safety theater? Because it’s performative as fuck to have elected officials patting themselves on the back for banning food dyes while the USDA cuts over $1 billion in funding for food banks and schools. The changes the GOP budget reconciliation package proposes to school meal programs are estimated to take free meals away from 12 million students. All of these cuts to vital programs are occurring as the Trump Administration continues to destroy federal health agencies and back policies deregulating our food and agricultural industries. Are we really that proud of our elected officials for working to ban food dyes while the Administration is simultaneously gutting institutions working on scientific research, food safety, public health, and food security?
Who exactly are we making healthy with these bans, and how? I want specifics as to how removing a couple of artificial preservatives or dyes in some foods on shelves will improve the health outcomes for people in West Virginia, a state where 1 in 7 people face hunger. What ingredients will companies add to replace those that are banned and who determines the safety of the new formulations? What benefits can people reliant on local food charity operations supplied by food banks, which are quite likely to be even more underfunded and overstretched, to feed their families expect to see? By when? What good is it to take away Red 40 if we’re also taking away access to SNAP and Medicaid? Removing food additives from ultra-processed foods isn’t going to magically improve the health and well-being of entire populations if every other health-promoting program supporting these populations is under threat if not already eliminated.
As
said in a recent Instagram video, “How can we Make America Healthy Again if we don’t have rules or regulations to go by to make sure the foods are ok for us to eat?” I’m not saying that ensuring the safety of food additives isn’t important and I’m also not saying I’m a staunch proponent of leaving food dyes untouched (though I really do love sour gummy candies that are loaded with the stuff). I just think we need to seriously reevaluate our priorities and put our critical thinking skills to work. Let’s focus on making sure people have consistent access to nutrient-dense foods and comprehensive, affordable healthcare before we turn our attention to taking ingredients—whose safety has been studied for decades but may have a small chance of harming us when consumed in excess long-term—out of our food supply.
Health does not trickle down. MAHA’s accomplishments might make woo-woo wellness influencers and lobbyists happy, but what about the health of the rest of America? How many more children will fall victim to the measles outbreak before RFK Jr. directs his attention and resources to them instead of fast food restaurants switching from using vegetable oil to beef tallow for their fries? How many more ingredients, that RFK Jr. can’t pronounce, do we need to ban before we start seeing the positive health benefits and healthier food supply we were promised? How many more USDA programs do we need to cut? How many more people need to go hungry? Who else will we sacrifice before closing the curtains on this run of public health and food safety theater?
The concept of theater also feels related to ‘wishcycling’ where people throw stuff into the recycle bin hoping it will actually get turned into something else, and then if done incorrectly it can ruin a whole batch that could have otherwise been recycled. Thank you for sharing this 🙌🏻
I can’t fully articulate how ironic it is to know the trade group representing sugar & candy is serving as the voice of reason here. We know it’s bad for business, they know it’s bad for business, and yet at the end of the day, public health policy should not be more beholden to business over the health & safety of the citizenry