But this is likely also an attempt to market to people who think things like "but I don't want to be exposed to chemicals" while not realizing water is a chemical.
When people -- myself included -- say they have a problem with chemicals in food, they of course mean artificial chemicals: that is, compounds, preservatives, dyes, and flavors that are non-naturally present for that particular food item and were added for their shelf life, taste, aesthetic, or addictive properties.
Next time you visit your grocery store, go read the ingredients list of a few different boxed and frozen items. It's not uncommon to see three- or four- dozen ingredients on items that should have less than 10.
While all of these compounds may have FDA approval and studies verifying their safety for ingestion, please keep several things in mind:
1. Studies use large, population-based sample sizes and their effects are based on their statistical significance on these populations. In other words, "side effects" are a population-level phenomenon, not an individual phenomenon. It is plausible that individual side effects are hidden as statistical noise. This is a problem with pharmacological studies as well and there is no easy solution to it AFAIK.
2. We have a massive obesity crisis in this country (and increasingly globally). Sedentary lifestyles and increased caloric intake is no doubt part of this, but it is blindingly obvious (to me, at least) that the meat of the problem is environmental, primarily diets, and these compounds are wreaking havoc on the endocrine systems of the population causing a massive uptick in obesity and diabetes.
4. Interactions are even harder to establish, since the possible different cocktails and biologies combinatorially explode. This is the primary reason for a precautionary principle in introducing new compounds into our diets.
I don't get it, are you trying to imply there might be 0.0001% of people with negative side effects, they're not getting picked up, and for that reason those substances should have never been approved? If so what does that say about allergens? If the Colombian exchange happened today, should we ban peanuts on the basis that a few percent of people get side effects?
>but it is blindingly obvious (to me, at least) that the meat of the problem is environmental, primarily diets, and these compounds are wreaking havoc on the endocrine systems of the population causing a massive uptick in obesity and diabetes.
How is it "blindingly obvious" that it's caused by artificial colors specifically though? Otherwise it's a leap to go from "there must be something in the food" to "we should ban artificial colors".
Peanuts have very clear evidence of harm (at least to those who are allergic), and it's unclear what "benefits" it has besides "it tastes good". Why allow it?
When people say this they are obviously not referring the the definition of "chemical" that a chemist would use. Pretending otherwise is exactly the "nerd-snark" mentioned above which makes people distrust experts because they clearly aren't intending to use the term "chemical" in a sense that would include substances like water.
Know what else is artificial? Insulin and penicillin.
The answer to the above question is not a scientific one. It has to do with how we want to operate as a society, it’s a political or social issue.
Even if they may have side effects/allergies, we tolerate them because they provide extremely large benefits to the population. You can't compare that to a chemical we use to make the colors of candies pop more.
No one is dying or getting seriously ill because their Fruit Loops had bland and unsaturated colors.
Maybe they're smarter than you with money. The same box of cereal that costs less than $2 at Walmart is almost $6 at Whole Foods.