The Trump administration announced its intention to phase out synthetic dyes used to enhance color in common foods like candy and cereals.

At a press conference Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his agency is making the move as a first step to improve the nation’s food supply and address chronic disease.

“We are going to get rid of the dyes and then one by one, we’re going to get rid of every ingredient and additive in food that we can legally address,” he said.

The Food and Drug Administration will take several actions aimed at phasing out synthetic dyes. FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced that the agency will work with the industry to voluntarily eliminate six commonly used dyes by the end of next year. It will also start the process of banning two other colorants, Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B; and it’s asking food companies to speed up the timeline for removing the previously banned colorant Red No. 3.

“For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals,” said Makary, citing studies that have linked synthetic dyes with ADHD and other health conditions. “Taking petroleum-based food dyes out of the food supply is not a silver bullet that will instantly make America’s children healthy, but it is one important step,” he said.

There’s no mandate for the food industry to comply with the phase-out of the six synthetic colorants, but Kennedy said “the industry has voluntarily agreed.” He said that a number of states have passed laws banning some food ingredients, and food companies have told him they want national leadership in this area. “They want clear guidelines,” he said.

Melissa Hockstad, president and CEO of the Consumer Brands Association, which represents U.S. packaged food manufacturers, defended the industry’s current ingredients:

“The ingredients used in America’s food supply have been rigorously studied … and have been demonstrated to be safe,” she said in a statement.

She added that her group appreciates that federal health agencies have “reasserted their leadership in response to the myriad of state activity in the food regulation space.”

She did not specify whether the group’s members would comply with the administration’s new proposal, but she noted the industry is increasing use of alternatives to synthetic colorants.

Studies have linked food dyes to behavioral and cognitive problems in children. When California’s Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the body of research on synthetic dyes back in 2021, it found evidence that the dyes consumed in food can negatively impact children’s behavior.

The watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest has pushed for bans on synthetic dyes for years. Thomas Galligan, principal scientist at CSPI said he had hoped the FDA’s Tuesday announcement would be a ban on synthetic dyes, not a voluntary agreement to get the food industry to cooperate.

“The FDA has the authority to ban them outright if they wanted to,” he told NPR. “So it’s a bit of a strange announcement.”

Galligan warns voluntary agreements have fallen apart before. “It’s worth pointing out that food companies have made promises like this before. They’ve claimed they’re going to get rid of these food dyes or other additives within a certain timeframe, and then they have consistently reneged on those promises.”

He notes the two dyes that will be banned, Citrus Red 2 and Orange B, are “very, very rarely used. They’ve essentially been abandoned by the food industry.”

The FDA also announced it will authorize four new “natural color additives” in the coming weeks and partner with the National Institutes of Health on new research into food additives’ impact on children’s health.

The industry group, the International Association of Color Manufacturers, pushed back against the characterization that currently used dyes are unsafe.

“Color additives have been rigorously reviewed by global health authorities, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, with no safety concerns,” the group said in a statement.

The push to eliminate synthetic dyes is one of the Trump administration’s first health policy moves, since initiating several rounds of deep cuts to both staffing and funding for contracts at all the federal health agencies.

Kennedy cited rising rates of various childhood illnesses and chronic diseases that may be linked to how we eat: “This is existential for our country and we have to address it,” he said, adding, “industry is making money on keeping us sick.”

Many of his remarks were met by applause from an audience at the press event that included MAHA supporters. Some attendees carried signs reading, “Make America Healthy Again” and “MAHA Moms.”

Jay-Z
RAPE ACCUSER WANTS LAWSUIT AGAINST HER TOSSED

Published April 22, 2025 5:59 PM PDT

A true smorgasbord of options is on offer for readers this week, with flavors to suit a variety of palates.

Care for an inspirational memoir? Check. Reminders of mortality and the precarious position of civilization itself? Yep, that’s here. And if you want a head start on summer, there are a couple of books publishing this week that may fit that bill too. You’ll just have to decide first if your preferred page-turner features people falling in love — or dying in inventively grisly ways.

A difficult decision, to be sure. But don’t worry, the stakes are low: You really can’t go wrong with any of this week’s notable books.

Atavists, by Lydia Millet

“Is there a writer more profound and less pretentious than Lydia Millet?” That question leads NPR’s review of the author’s previous short story collection, Fight No More, and bears asking again now. After a spell that saw her publish a couple of novels and a work of nonfiction, the former Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist has returned to short fiction with her latest, a collection of 14 interconnected stories set in a Los Angeles that is teetering on the cusp of climate catastrophe. Careful though: As always with Millet, the writing here is spare, straightforward and often funny — but beware of its dark and perilous depths.

Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs, by José Andrés with Richard Wolffe

How should you introduce Andrés — with his work in the kitchen, which has earned him Michelin stars and TV appearances, or his humanitarian work in war zones and disaster areas? In this memoir, the Spanish-American chef connects the dots of his dovetailing passions. Expect plenty of recipes — both the metaphorical, life-lesson variety and the kind that you can actually follow to make dinner tonight. In a confusing, often painful world, “at least feeding people is what makes sense,” as Andrés told NPR in 2022.

Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry

Henry is on quite a run. For the better part of a decade now, the prolific young novelist has published a book each year that feels sunkissed by the promise of the coming summer. Heck, one of them was even named Beach Read. This year is no different. In Great Big Beautiful Life, the star-crossed leads in question are a pair of journalists who both have designs on an exclusive interview with an aging heiress, whose life story is an important thread woven throughout the novel. Let the competition — and inconvenient sexual tension — commence!

Notes to John, by Joan Didion

The notes collected here comprise the late writer’s private reflections after her sessions with a psychiatrist beginning in 1999, during a tumultuous time in her life. The “John” addressed in the title is her husband, John Gregory Dunne, but the journal really focuses on a broad swath of topics — from her own childhood and career anxieties to her complicated relationship with her adoptive daughter, whose death just a handful of years later would inspire Didion’s 2011 memoir Blue Nights. It’s unclear whether Didion — whose body of work features plenty of intimately personal writing — intended to publish these particular notes, which were found neatly arranged among her files after her death in 2021.

When the Wolf Comes Home, by Nat Cassidy

There will be blood. That much, at least, you can count on in Cassidy’s fourth novel, a relentlessly paced slice of horror. Jess, an actress down on her luck and reeling from a particularly terrible night, finds a young boy hiding in the bushes — and quickly realizes the night is about to get much, much worse. That boy is hiding for a very good reason, you see. Don’t go into this one expecting a slow burn. Cassidy himself commented on the book’s Goodreads page that this is his “homage to ’80s action horror paperbacks, the kind you might pick up in an airport or a grocery store.”