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How colorful do we really want our food to be? This question's on the agenda of major brands this year as more of them commit to phasing out chemical dyes from snacks and cereals in the U.S. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports that's been a debate for decades.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: The story that always comes up is about the cereal Trix.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: This morning, a big announcement from a cereal giant.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.
SELYUKH: Ten years ago, General Mills made a splash saying it would remove artificial dyes from cereal, and it released Trix colored naturally with fruits and vegetables. And many shoppers hated it. They complained on social media and the news that the new Trix looked sad and boring. And General Mills capitulated.
THOMAS GALLIGAN: They actually put the food dyes, the synthetic dyes, back into the Trix cereal formula.
SELYUKH: Thomas Galligan is with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. It advocates against synthetic dyes over health concerns, particularly in children.
GALLIGAN: And this is really a problem because General Mills framed this as a consumer demand issue - this is what consumers want.
SELYUKH: And it set the tone. So when Kellogg later dyed Froot Loops with spices and juices, it was for Canada but not the U.S. M&M's maker Mars phased out artificial colors in Europe but not the U.S. The all-American Kraft Mac & Cheese removed chemical dyes stealthily. It's still neon yellow but naturally, boasting in the ads...
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Moms didn't notice. Kids didn't notice. (Laughter) Neither did dogs.
SELYUKH: Kellogg and Mars would say, Americans really love bright colors, and data suggest it's true.
MARION NESTLE: People think food tastes better if it's brightly colored - period, end of story.
SELYUKH: Marion Nestle is a public health nutritionist who's tracked research on food dyes.
NESTLE: Brighter colors are perceived as tasting better, whether the taste changes or not.
SELYUKH: But is it our nature, or is it marketing? Think about your force of habit, especially for childhood snacks. Of course, children tend to love brighter colors, so they get advertised to.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Wow, blue Froot Loops.
SELYUKH: And when they grow up, it's hard to let go of that memory.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) We like them, Toucan Sam
SELYUKH: Food dyeing goes back centuries. Think dairy farmers adding spices to make cheese look more yellow. Food historian Ai Hisano says railroads made an impact. When Florida farmers had to compete with California farmers, they started dyeing their oranges to be more orange. Along came processed foods. When butter had to compete with margarine, it became a richer yellow. Over time, Hisano says colorful advertising and the modern supermarket trained us what to expect.
AI HISANO: Like, say, strawberry candies or strawberry drinks. They don't look like a real strawberry color, but people - we can learn to understand.
SELYUKH: And learn to recognize even science-fictiony flavors and colors, like blue raspberry.
Now we are at a new turning point. The Trump administration's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is pushing companies to get rid of synthetic dyes, and major brands are agreeing. Even M&M's is once again willing to try a naturally colored version. The irony is that without artificial color, many snacks and cereals look - well, obviously processed. And natural dyes can be finicky.
NICK SCHEIDLER: Color has been a challenge for us.
SELYUKH: Nick Scheidler leads product development at Walmart's Sam's Club, which in 2022 pledged that by the end of this year, it would remove dozens of ingredients from its private brand Member's Mark. That includes high-fructose corn syrup, some preservatives and artificial dyes. The latter proved the trickiest.
SCHEIDLER: Yeah. So some of the things we saw were the colors actually were muted, and they got continuously lighter over time.
SELYUKH: Some replacements are tried and true. Turmeric makes things yellow, beets red, a seed called annatto orange, and blue can come from spirulina, which is an algae. But then you add these savory dyes to sweets and you've got to find a way to mask their flavors.
SCHEIDLER: In some cases, too, it wasn't holding the color as long.
SELYUKH: Scheidler says the final frontiers for his team - one is sports drinks in colors to rival Gatorade. The other is icing for cupcakes and cookies - bright like crayons. And I kept wondering, why bother? Why can't cupcakes just be less vivid? Scheidler says Sam's Club kept asking its shoppers about this.
SCHEIDLER: The visual appearance is still something very important that they've told us.
SELYUKH: Nature or nurture, shoppers said they did not want a gray, murky soda or a dusty-looking sweet treat.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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