They had replaced a lot of them already. Kraft's most iconic product (Mac & Cheese) replaced the artificial dyes years ago and this is only the last 10% of their products.
Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?
The fact that this is a legitimate question is very concerning. Some of these dyes are/were ubiquitous and there is very little research about them. IIRC a few have evidence of harm. Nothing should be this widely deployed without understanding them more.
If you were more questioning "Is natural actually better for people or just a nice sounding word" which could also be implied by your question, I agree with that, with the caveat that artificial stuff has more potential for surprises since it doesn't have the history of being used safely "natural" stuff does, and should have a higher bar of research.
People act like taking the food dye out of gushers is suddenly going to fix their problems. You need to avoid this food in the first place.
For example carmine is crushed up cactus parasite insects which a very small number of people are vulnerable to extreme allergic reactions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal
>much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our food
How much human testing of every agricultural product do you want?
My personal bugaboos are added sugar and generous use of weird preservatives. If your supermarket has 20 aisles, 16 of them are loaded with sugary sulfite-preserved stuff, removing choice and visibility to consumers. And breads fortified with folic acid.
They all went stale before the day was out. She compared the ingredients between what she had made and what came out of the box at the grocery store, and the ones that she didn't use? They were all preservatives.
Choose your battles wisely.
I will concede that the use of sweeteners in everything in the US is unhinged. It's hard to really understand until you've spent enough time out of the country to where you're buying groceries and looking at the ingredients. You come back to the states and everything tastes weirdly sweet. It was a real "fish don't know they're wet" moment for me, which mostly came about from marrying an Australian.
The problem is when the whole supermarket is full of highly preserved food, then this is normalized and health consequences are obscured. The deeper issue is that for perhaps 80% of people this is fine and profitable, but for let's say 20% it introduces weird, hard to trace health problems, which don't appear to come from the supermarket because all the normal foods are like this.
https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-pears-...
This also reminded me of a great post from a few years ago about why salt is fortified with iodine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38782954
I don't hope to resolve the debate, only to point out it should be possible to eat bread that is not fortified with folic acid, if for no reason than I'm not in the high risk group targeted by the FDA and there are potential benefits from reducing folic acid intake in the context of robust intake of folate from other sources.
Or, even simpler: why can't I buy bread without folic acid?
It would not surprise me that there are some places in the US that only have easy access to packaged industrial sandwich bread. It would surprise me very much if that was the norm for Americans.
After Mexico Implemented a Tax, Purchases of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Decreased and Water Increased: Difference by Place of Residence, Household Composition, and Income Level - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ | https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892
Building upon the sugar beverage tax in Mexico: a modelling study of tax alternatives to increase benefits - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227
USA Facts: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says - https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...
(~40 million acres of corn is used for inefficient ethanol biofuels as well, but I will reserve that rant for another thread)
Like there is probably some argument to be made about satiety, but I assure you, it is quite possible to consume excess calories in the form of pasta.
And then corn subsidies mostly benefit livestock and ethanol producers, processed food products are a small portion of the end use of field corn.
We tax alcohol and cigarettes similarly, and I don’t think it’s wild to consider processed sugars close to that same category from a health and reward center perspective.
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-chemical-safety/list-select-ch...
You are correct, but I find it alarming that anyone would deem this necessary to say out loud. These companies would happily watch us suffer an die from chronic illnesses en masse if it inched up their share value, as would any for-profit enterprise. The phrase "duh" comes to mind. The only thing stopping them is government regulation, though that approach is under perpetual attack by anti-government zealots, the most recent of which being Musk and his child assistants.
I don't think this was because people were putting pressure, otherwise the sheer numbers of those communities would have done something by now. It only required one person in power to say enough, fix this.
During the Obama administration, cherry picking some example:
* Food safety regulatory improvement bill: https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-dietar... * Improved labelling rules: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-labe... * EPA water safety rules made stricter, then rolled back by Trump: https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-to-revoke-obama-w....
It isn't correct to see these changes a singular improvement. These rules are constantly being fought over, sometimes becoming stricter, sometimes looser.
Another example, NYC has fought to reduce sugary drink serving sizes and to require labels on high sugar foods. (https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-sugar...)