What We Eat May Never Look the Same

During Biden’s final week in office, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that Americans have consumed for nearly a century, would be banned starting in 2027. It cited studies showing that large quantities of the coloring caused cancer in rats. (According to a 1960 law, no food additive that’s carcinogenic in animals can be authorized by the F.D.A.) Three months later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, went further, calling synthetic dyes “poisonous compounds” that “offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development.” He said at a press conference that he’d reached an “understanding” with manufacturers: artificial food colorings would be phased out as early as ne