Latest / The Monégasque Table / Are Food Dyes Being Phased Out? Reading Your Labels
Transcript
- Margaux: 6 dyes, 2 more in a different process entirely, and 1 that was dealt with separately a year before any of it. And the single word almost everybody is using to describe all 9 of them is the wrong word. Dana: I got the email version of this from a customer last week. Subject line was 3 words and a question mark, and I did not have an answer. Margaux: Welcome to The Monégasque Table. Today: are synthetic food dyes being phased out, what was actually announced, and what a person who buys baking supplies for a business should read on a label. Dana: Start with the wrong word, because I think I used it in my reply. Margaux: Here's the answer up front. The word is "banned," and for most of what people are talking about, it isn't accurate. In April 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration announced a series of measures to phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the nation's food supply. Inside that announcement there are 3 different mechanisms, and they are not the same thing. 2 colorings — Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B — had a process initiated to revoke their authorization. 6 others are described as the agency working with industry to eliminate them from the food supply by the end of the following year. And 1, FD&C Red No. 3, was handled separately and earlier, with an actual revocation order. Revoking an authorization, working with industry toward a target, and asking companies to move faster are 3 different legal animals, and if you are the person answering a customer, that distinction is the answer. Dana: So when a customer writes to me and says "I heard red dye is banned," the true answer is — Margaux: "One of them was, and it isn't the one you're thinking of." That's the whole email. Dana: Give me the announcement properly. What did it actually list? Margaux: 6 actions, and I'll take them in order because the order is the story. First, establishing a national standard and a timeline for the food industry to transition from petrochemical-based dyes to natural alternatives. Second, initiating the process to revoke authorization for 2 synthetic food colorings — that's Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B. Third, and this is the one that gets misreported, working with industry to eliminate 6 remaining synthetic dyes from the food supply by the end of next year, counted from that April 2025 release, which puts the target at the end of 2026. Fourth, authorizing 4 new natural color additives. Fifth, partnering with the National Institutes of Health on research. And sixth, requesting that companies remove FD&C Red No. 3 sooner than the deadlines already required. Dana: Which 6 dyes. Margaux: Named in the release: FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 2. Dana: Those are on half the shelf. Margaux: They are on a great deal of the shelf, which is exactly why the mechanism matters rather than the headline. Dana: Then here's my first round, and I want you to fight me on it, because I think you're splitting hairs. If the government tells industry to get rid of 6 dyes by the end of next year, and industry gets rid of them, then functionally they are banned. The label ends up the same. Who cares what you call it? Margaux: That's a fair challenge and I'll concede the practical half of it: if every manufacturer reformulates, the shelf looks identical either way. But you are the person who has to write back to a customer, and the 2 sentences are not interchangeable. "This ingredient is illegal" is a statement about the law, and if it's wrong you have said something false about a product you sell. "The agency has asked industry to move away from this ingredient on this timeline" is a statement about a programme, and it's true. One of those you can put in writing. The other one you cannot. And there's a second reason: a revocation has a date on it that the law enforces, and a work-with-industry target does not. If you're planning inventory around it, those are different plans. Dana: Fine. That's my round conceded, and I want it noted that I conceded it in the first 6 minutes. Margaux: Noted, and I'll give you one back later. Dana: Red No. 3. Do that one properly, because that's the one everybody has actually heard of. Margaux: This is the separate one, and it is a genuine revocation. The FDA's own page says the agency will no longer allow the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs, and it issued the order to revoke those authorizations on January 15, 2025. The reformulation deadlines that came with it: food manufacturers have until January 15, 2027, and ingested drugs until January 18, 2028. Product made before the effective date can still be sitting on shelves after it, which is why you will keep seeing it for a while and that is not a violation. Dana: And the legal reason. Margaux: The Delaney Clause. It was enacted in 1960 as part of the Color Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and it prohibits the FDA from authorizing a food additive or color additive if it has been found to induce cancer in humans or animals. Note the shape of that: it's a prohibition on the agency's authorization, triggered by a finding. It is not a finding about your cupcake. Dana: Okay, but be honest with me. It's in there because it causes cancer. Margaux: This is the part that gets garbled everywhere, so I'm going to read it rather than paraphrase it. The FDA's own words: the dye "causes cancer in male laboratory rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No. 3 because of a hormonal mechanism that occurs in male rats. Studies in other animals or in humans did not show the same effect and there is no evidence showing FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in humans." Dana: So the agency's own page says there's no evidence it causes cancer in people, and the same agency revoked it. Margaux: Both of those are true at once, and that is not a contradiction — it's how the Delaney Clause is written. The finding in the rats is enough to remove the authorization regardless of what the human evidence shows. That is the mechanism working as designed. And it means the honest sentence for a customer is: this was removed under a rule about animal findings, and the agency itself says there is no evidence it causes cancer in humans. If you say anything stronger than that, you have gone past the source. Dana: That is genuinely not how I would have described it 10 minutes ago. Dana: What are the replacements? Because "natural alternative" is a phrase people use to mean more or less anything. Margaux: 4 were named as being fast-tracked in that announcement: calcium phosphate, Galdieria extract blue, gardenia blue, and butterfly pea flower extract. That's the list. I'd be careful with the word "natural" around them, though — it isn't a regulatory grade, and a color additive still has to be authorized before it can be used regardless of where it came from. The system doesn't have a natural lane and a synthetic lane. It has a listed lane and an unlisted one. Dana: Which brings us to the thing I've never understood. Certified colors. Every supplier email I get says "certified," and I have no idea whether that means "good" or just "paperwork." Margaux: Sparkle Lab, and this is the most useful 3 minutes in the episode for anyone buying supplies. The color-additive regulations are split into 2 parts, and the parts are named after certification status. Part 73 is titled "Listing of Color Additives Exempt from Certification." Part 74 is titled "Listing of Color Additives Subject to Certification." That's it. That is what the word means. All 4 of the FD&C dyes people talk about most sit in part 74 — the certified half — and so did Red No. 3 before the revocation. Dana: And part 73 is the uncertified, less-regulated half. Margaux: That's the intuition and it's wrong, and it's worth 30 seconds because a supplier can sell you a story on it. Exempt from certification is not exempt from regulation. It's a different control point. Take the listing our own category lives in — section 350, mica-based pearlescent pigments. That listing writes its purity limits into the regulation itself: lead not more than 4 parts per million, arsenic not more than 3, mercury not more than 1. Those aren't a supplier's promise, they're in the text of the law. So one half of the system controls at the batch and the other half writes the limits into the listing. Neither is a quality ranking, and anyone who tells you certified means better is telling you something the regulation doesn't say. Dana: What about the mechanics of certification itself? How does a batch get certified? Margaux: I don't know, and I'm not going to improvise it. I read the titles of the 2 parts and the list of what sits in each. The procedure is a different document and I haven't read it. That's the whole answer. Dana: Real scenario. I run a small bakery. A regular customer emails: "I've read food dyes are being banned — are the cakes you sold me last month a problem?" What do I actually send back? Margaux: 4 sentences, and none of them require you to be a regulator. Sentence 1: one specific dye, FD&C Red No. 3, had its authorization revoked in January 2025, with a reformulation deadline for food of January 15, 2027. Sentence 2: a separate April 2025 announcement described the agency working with industry to move away from 6 other synthetic dyes on a timeline; that is a transition programme, not a prohibition. Sentence 3: nothing in either action is a statement that food already sold was unlawful. Sentence 4 is the one that actually satisfies people: here is the ingredient list for the product you bought, and here is where the color additives appear on it. Dana: And if I don't have sentence 4? Margaux: Then sentence 4 is your homework, and it's the only part of this episode that is genuinely urgent for a business. Whatever happens with any dye on any timeline, the request that lands in your inbox is always the same request: what is in it. In this category that gap is enormous — when buyers leave a negative review about ingredients, more than 66.6% of the time the complaint is not that the ingredients are frightening. It's that the label doesn't say. A supplier who cannot hand you a declaration on a normal Tuesday is not going to become able to during a regulatory news cycle. Dana: Right. Second round, and this is the one you knew was coming. Your own jars. You've just read out 6 dye names. Are the products this show is attached to affected or not? Margaux: I'm not going to answer that, and I want to say why out loud rather than change the subject. Our labels declare their color additives, the way a food label has to — the ingredient list is printed on the jar and it names what's in it, and I'll happily tell anyone to go and read it. What I will not do is stand here and grade our own product against a regulatory action, in either direction. "Ours is fine" and "ours is affected" are both verdicts, and a verdict about a specific product's regulatory status is not something a podcast gets to hand out. Not about a competitor's jar, and not about ours. Dana: That is a very convenient position for a show funded by the jar. Margaux: It would be, if the convenient answer weren't the flattering one. The convenient thing here would be to say "ours is unaffected" and move on — that's the version that sells. Refusing is the expensive option. I'd rather be the show that won't grade its own homework than the show you can't check. Dana: Then the follow-up, and I want it on the record. What's the company going to do about any of this? Margaux: Also not mine to say. Anything about reformulation, sourcing, or timelines is a company announcement, and a company announcement gets made by the company, in writing, where people can hold it to account — not by 2 hosts on a Thursday. If that changes, you'll read it somewhere you can quote. Dana: That's the round I win, then, and I'm taking it: you can't answer the only question my customer actually asked. Margaux: That's the round you win, and it's a real one. What I can give you is the reading method, which is the part that survives whatever any timeline does. Dana: Give me the method. Margaux: 4 checks, in order, on any jar in this category. One: is there an ingredient list at all? That is the first screening check and it fails more products than anything else here. Two: are the colorants named specifically — a color additive by its actual name — rather than described as "color"? Three: does the product say plainly that it is edible, and name what it goes on? The FDA's advice to bakers is to avoid glitter and dust products on food unless they're specifically manufactured to be edible, and it lists the names these products hide behind: luster dust, disco dust, twinkle dust, sparkle dust, highlighter, shimmer powder, pearl dust, petal dust. Four: if the label leans on "non-toxic" or "for decorative purposes only" and there is no ingredient list, the agency's own guidance is that it should not be used on food. Dana: And the check that isn't on the list. Margaux: "FDA-approved," which is the phrase half the buying guides in this category tell people to look for, and it cannot be true of a finished product. The FDA lists and authorizes color additives. It does not approve edible glitter, or icing, or cake. If a jar says it is FDA-approved, that claim is doing something other than describing a regulatory status. Dana: Who should skip this whole episode's worry? Margaux: 3 groups. If you sell to consumers and you already publish your ingredient declarations, this news changes your paperwork and not your practice — carry on. If you're a home baker with 3 jars in a cupboard, none of this is an instruction to throw anything away; there is no recall here and I want to be plain about that. And if you're waiting for me to tell you which brands to avoid, skip it entirely — I don't have lab results on anybody's jar including ours, and a category-wide news story is not evidence about a specific product. Dana: Dana's Scorecard. I came in about to send a customer an email with the word "banned" in it. Where I landed. One: 3 different mechanisms, not one. Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B in a revocation process; 6 more in a work-with-industry phase-out targeted at the end of 2026; Red No. 3 revoked separately in January 2025 with a food deadline of January 15, 2027. Two: the Delaney Clause is a rule about the agency's authorization, triggered by an animal finding — and the FDA's own page says there is no evidence Red No. 3 causes cancer in humans, so I will not say more than that. Three: certified means the listing sits in part 74, and exempt means it sits in part 73 with its limits written into the listing — it is not a quality ranking. Four: the 4 fast-tracked natural additives are calcium phosphate, Galdieria extract blue, gardenia blue and butterfly pea flower extract. My caveat, and I'm keeping it in bold: I asked twice which jars are affected and got refused twice, and I still think that's the right refusal. Margaux: Kept, and thank you for pushing on it — the pushing is what makes the refusal worth anything. The footnote: the MONÉGASQUE 15 gram luster dusts are on Amazon at $14.99, which is about $1.00 a gram, and the ingredient list is printed on the jar. Read it. That is the entire recommendation. Dana: 2 teases, because this one ran long. Next time: how do you tell the difference between a pearlescent finish and a metallic one, and which jar are you actually paying for? Margaux: And the week after, the one that decides more cakes than anything in this episode: can you put edible glitter on macarons before they go in the oven? Before we go — this show is produced by the team at Monégasque, with AI-crafted hosts, and every number you heard was checked by humans against the documents. See you at the table.