As pressure grows to get artificial colors out of the U.S. food supply, the shift may well start at Abby Tampow’s laboratory desk.
Tampow is part of the team at Sensient Technologies Corp., one of the world’s largest dyemakers, that is rushing to help the salad dressing manufacturer — along with thousands of other American businesses — meet demands to overhaul colors used to brighten products from cereals to sports drinks.
“Most of our customers have decided that this is finally the time when they’re going to make that switch to a natural color,” said Dave Gebhardt, Sensient’s senior technical director. He joined a recent tour of the Sensient Colors factory in a north St. Louis neighborhood.
Last week, U.S. health officials announced plans to persuade food companies to voluntarily eliminate petroleum-based artificial dyes by the end of 2026.
I’m good with the bug juice instead of petroleum. Eating that has never killed anyone (that I know of) vs drinking some tar sands’ slop.
Adding bugs into food products purposefully creates issues with large numbers of people who follow religious diets. Jains, Buddhists, Muslim and Jews all have religious restrictions on which bugs, if any, are fit for consumption.
While I agree moving away from fossil fuels is important, I think it’s important to make accommodations for people’s cultures and try to take actions that wouldn’t alienate them. One doesn’t have to share another’s cultural beliefs to understand they should be considered and respected. This isn’t to say we should continue using petroleum based dyes, but that the search for alternatives shouldn’t end at insects just because it could be a cheaper option for the business owners, which, I’m sure we know, is the real reason that any large industry will shift to an alternative dye.
Go ahead and produce a dye for them, nobody is stopping you.
How about neither, lol. They’ll come up with some healthy synthetic dye fast enough if enough money is on the line.
The dyes we already have are safe and banning them is unnecessary in the first place.