California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday.
The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 — potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group.
The legislation was popularly known as the “Skittles ban” because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance.
The FDA banned the use of Red Dye #3 in cosmetics over 30 years ago because it causes cancer in animal models. But it was never banned in food. That is either beholden to big business, downright stupid, or both. More info here: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-additives/red-dye-3-banned-in-cosmetics-but-still-allowed-in-food-a3467381365/
If yoyu want an even more blatant example of this, look into the history of stevia and the FDA. Which includes fun stuff like the FDA burning crates of herbal tea because that tea contained stevia, declaring it an unsafe food additive seemingly entirely because NutraSweet wanted them to, and not that much later creating rules that allowed it to be sold to any one in any quantity for any reason as an “herbal dietary supplement”, but only so long as you didn’t mention that it had a flavor. Mentioning that it was sweet tasting transformed it from an herbal dietary supplement that’s basically harmless into a dangerous unsafe food additive.
Thanks!