NIH to Work with Food Companies to Get Harmful Synthetic Food Dyes, Approved for Decades, Out of US Grocery Stores

April 24, 2025 journo

A variety of sugary cereals that contain or once contained one or more food colorings – credit, unsplash

The US National Institute of Health has announced it will work with food industry giants to eliminate 6 synthetic food dyes from their products as fast as possible.

To be led by the FDA, the work will target Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Blue 2, Citrus Red 2, and Orange B, which have been linked in children to hyperactivity and mood disruption, diabetes and obesity, and even cancer.

FDA has set a deadline for the end of 2026, and the agency has added that it will also ask the industry to eliminate Red 3 by the same date, a year earlier than an order passed under the Biden Administration.

Under a new White House mandate to address the root causes of America’s obesity and chronic disease epidemic, the NIH is starting with synthetic food dyes, which for years have been targeted by consumer safety organizations and advocates as one of the best and simplest things the US could do to improve the health of the nation’s children.

In Europe, natural dyes like turmeric (yellow) spirulina (blue/green) and carotenoids (orange/red) are used to provide the color for food products. Turmeric is a veritable superfood, while spirulina is rich in iron and one of the most-studied dietary chelators.

By contrast, synthetic dyes add no nutritional value and are simply there to make ultra-processed food products like Kellogg’s Froot Loops (which contains 4 of the 6 synthetic dyes) more visually bright and appealing.

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The FDA said it would be quick to authorize the use of these natural dyes, including a strong blue and purple coloring from butterfly pea flower—contained in herbal teas in China for millennia.

Though commonly called synthetic ‘food’ dyes, these compounds are also found in certain children’s medicine, such as multi-vitamins, toothpaste, and cough syrup.

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