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Comment by smallerize | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Froot Loops ever used red 3. They use red 40.

It's more of a commentary about how food in the US is overly colored for no other reason than it looks cool, sometimes at the detriment of the health of the consumer.

> food in the US is overly colored for no other reason than it looks cool

My understanding is that a lot of food is colored to look "natural" for uniformity. A good example of this is applesauce.

Another item is sprayed for coloring is ORANGES (Citrus Red No. 2 is the color)

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...

Neither color of Fruit Loops is natural. American food is colored to look cool, because cool sells better with Americans. Canadian food is colored to look dull, because dull sells better with Canadians.

Is that your guess or were you in the marketing research department at Kellogs?

It's just how cereal is made. Before fruit loops are loops, they are grain mash. That grain mash is mostly uniform in color and brown-ish. In order to have a bowl filled with loops where some of the loops are yellow and others are green and others are blue, they add different colors of dye. It's the same whether it's neon green or organic green - the dye is added at the end for appeal to the consumer.

Why would they not just use less dye to reduce the colors in Canada then? Surely its more effective to produce them in one way instead of two.

Are you sure that Canadian version is less detrimental to the health of the consumer? It too looks artificial color-loaded to me.

I wouldn't consider Froot Loops a health food, but the Canadian version have all natural flavour and colour-

"Concentrated carrot juice (for colour), Anthocyanin, Annatto, Turmeric, Natural flavour, Concentrated watermelon juice (for colour), Concentrated blueberry juice (for colour), Concentrated huito juice (for colour)" etc

From their ingredients.

It's colored so some set of people can make more money.

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