Trump's administration moves to scrap artificial food dyes

President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday announced plans to remove synthetic dyes from the US food supply, marking a rare point of bipartisan convergence in an otherwise sharply divided political climate.

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Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. has vowed to overhaul America’s food system under the banner of his "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) agenda, and the push would phase out the eight approved artificial food dyes by the end of 2026.

It builds upon a prohibition on Red Dye 3 by the government of former president Joe Biden but accelerates the timeline and also calls on the National Institutes of Health to carry out comprehensive research on how additives impact children’s development. "For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals," Food and Drug Administration commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference, surrounded by young families and MAHA supporters.

He cited studies linking synthetic dyes to conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), diabetes, cancer, genomic disruption, gastrointestinal issues and more.

Kennedy, for his part, called the issue of dyes and additives more generally an "existential" threat.