Making Blue Skittles Is About to Get Way More Complicated

Food companies are pulling the plug on artificial dyes: Is this the end of taste the rainbow?

Mars Inc. says it will take five years to phase out the artificial food dyes5 Second Studio/Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Time to start hoarding your favorite vibrant green M&Ms and blue raspberry Skittles: Mars Inc., the company behind many popular candies, chewing gum flavors, and food products, announced earlier this month that it will begin phasing out artificial food dyes.

The decision came as a response to growing customer demand, said Mars Inc.’s president and CEO, Grant F. Reid, in a statement, estimating that it will take five years to phase out all artificial colors. Nestlé, General Mills, Kraft, and Kellogg‘s have also started eliminating artificial dyes from their products in response to demand for more natural ingredients.

You’ve probably already eaten something colored by an artificial dye today: Red 40 (the most common food dye) gives hue to your gummy daily vitamin and that bowl of instant strawberries-and-cream oatmeal, while Yellow 5 brightens your sandwich side of pickle spears or 2 p.m. chocolate caramel and pretzel fiber bar. The per capita production of artificial coloring approved for use in food has increased more than fivefold since the mid-1950s. According to a study of supermarket labels by the Center for Science in Public Interest, an estimated 90 percent of child-oriented candies, fruit snacks, drink mixes, and powders now contain artificial colors.

90 percent of child-oriented candies, fruit-snacks, drink mixes, and powders contain artificial colors.

While kids may treasure such colorful treats, many of their parents are concerned about what the colors might do to developing brains. Several studies have scrutinized dyes’ possible link to increased ADHD or examined their effects on children’s behavior. When a study by a group of British scientists suggested a link between the consumption of certain food dyes and hyperactivity in kids, Europe and the United Kingdom began requiring food with artificial dyes to carry warning labels. But the US Food and Drug Administration holds that there is still no causal relationship between color additives and hyperactivity in children, and it doesn’t require warning labels. Mars Inc. maintains that the colors don’t cause any known health risks.

The FDA does suggest maximum daily intakes of certain dyes. For children, they range from 75 mg of Red 3—used in oral medications, sausage casings and candies—to 360 mg of Blue 1, used in baked goods, cereals, dessert powders, and beverages. With a highly processed diet, the dyes can add up quickly: Laura J. Stevens and colleagues at Purdue University found that a simple breakfast of Apple Jacks and strawberry milk has 12 milligrams of dye, a pack of peanut butter crackers has 15, and a dinner of Hamburger Helper and salad with premade dressing along with Kool-Aid to wash it down has 52 milligrams, making a daily total of 93 milligrams of different artificial food dyes.

In a recent report, Seeing Red: Time for Action on Dyes, the Center for Science in Public Interest combined findings from eight studies and thousands of parents’ testimonials to try to convince the FDA to ban the dyes or have the agency require warning labels. “The harm to children and the costs to society from dyes are needless and preventable,” reads the report.

 

 

The FDA holds that there is still no casual relationship between color additives and hyperactivity in children. gosphotodesign/Shutterstock
 

 

Whether or not the artificial dyes pose a health risk, it’s clear major food companies are caving to parents’ concerns and removing fake colors from their snacks. So what will take their place?

Mars Inc. says it will work with suppliers “to find alternatives that not only meet its strict quality and safety standards but also maintain the vibrant, fun colors consumers have come to expect from the company’s beloved brands.”

But it may not be as easy as applying a new brand of paint. According to David Rigg, director of marketing at Sensient Technologies’s Color group, an international manufacturer of food colors, flavors, and other ingredients, companies are scrambling to find natural dyes that don’t change the flavor of their products.

Natural dyes typically cost “at least five times the cost of artificial colors,” said an industry expert.

For example, Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bars contain Red 40 and Blue 1 in the United States. But in Europe, the colors are created by beetroot extract, annatto (a dye derived from the achiote tree), and paprika. According to Rigg, although some of these natural dyes, such as paprika, are useful for coloring, they can often impart flavor to the food. Finding the perfect color—while maintaining the same taste—is a challenge.

Caramel coloring is another that could disappear from beverages’ ingredient lists, especially in light of the finding that a chemical used to make it, known as 4-Mel, might be carcinogenic. In one industry poll, more than 40 percent of consumers said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about caramel color in beverages. A blog post by Sensient Technologies explains how a combination of fruit and vegetable juices could serve as a replacement, though if the chemical balance is off, companies could end up with a “muddy yellow” rather than a “clean brown” color.

Not surprisingly, replacing artificial dyes with real ingredients isn’t cheap. Natural dyes typically cost “at least five times the cost of artificial (synthetic) colors,” Rigg told me in an email, adding that blues and greens are the most costly.

As for what Mars will be using to ensure those Christmas M&Ms keep their festive look or the lemon Sour Skittles still make our eyes pop as much as our mouths? “It’s too early to tell,” a spokesperson for the company told me. My guess is that if they’re going to remain as vibrant, your favorite rainbow-colored candies could soon carry a heftier price tag.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate