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Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

corporate.walmart.com

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Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#91

Post by hollerith »

rootusrootus wrote: post #51
pfexec wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in awe at the number of people that will go to bat for things like artificial dyes in food, only because the policy is coming from the present administration. It's just common sense. We don't need to be ingesting this shit. It's cosmetic and not needed for nutrition. Why are you feeding your child Fruit Loops and not Cheerios? I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial…

> I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial dyes Yeah, my mom was the same way when she had food with MSG in it. But only when she knew there was MSG in it.

When your mom eats something that is bad for her and her brain can tell it is bad for her, then if that experience is repeated a lot, then every time it encounters that thing or even thinks about that thing, her brain will tend to cause a defensive reaction, which itself is unpleasant and can affect your mom's behavior. None of this need be conscious or deliberate.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#92

Post by colpabar »

pfexec wrote: post #37
fabian2k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many artificial food dyes have been actually banned? I mean in the time where we actually had some regulations, the old days were quite wild in terms of safety in all areas, so I don't think that would be a useful comparison.

I'm in awe at the number of people that will go to bat for things like artificial dyes in food, only because the policy is coming from the present administration. It's just common sense. We don't need to be ingesting this shit. It's cosmetic and not needed for nutrition. Why are you feeding your child Fruit Loops and not Cheerios? I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial…

Not wanting multi-billion dollar conglomerates putting poison in everyone's food is a far-right position now, didn't you get the memo?

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#93

Post by hollerith »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #54
themafia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes sense to evaluate the health effects of individual dyes I wonder if changing the color of food is actually that important.

I was looking at this paper which seems to have a bunch of citations. Different colors are associated with different flavors in certain countries. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13411-015-0031-3#... But yes I think the food color is ultimately important to succeeding in the marketplace and we aren't going to be getting rid of food dyes in manufactured food anytime soon.

>the food color is ultimately important to succeeding in the marketplace

The decision-makers at Walmart seem to believe artificial colors are no longer important to succeeding with Walmart's customers and prospective customers.

And clearly they're not important to succeeding at Whole Foods, where all artificial colors have been disallowed for many years.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#94

Post by Clamchop »

ethersteeds wrote: post #81
pfexec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I know this feels cut and dry to you, but what you're kicking is a fundamental pillar of the industrial food system. Many food products emerge from processing a dull or unappetizing color. Food needs to last as long as possible and still look like food. It's tempting to say that food should all be made with love in home kitchens, but that's untenable for feeding 8 billion people. My favorite example of this is orange…

Calling it "the perfume industry" is a half truth. It's the flavoring industry, but it so happens that there's a lot of overlap between perfume and flavoring in terms of raw materials.

However, flavoring is a distinct profession. Besides that, very few novel compounds are allowed in food compared to fragrance. If any flavoring is synthetic in origin (which is not the same thing as novel, to be clear) then the product must be labeled as artificially flavored. If they call the product 100% juice and added flavoring is used, then that flavoring in turn has to have been sourced from the fruit.

In other words, they're using extracts from real oranges to reconstitute the flavor lost during pasteurization. They can further adjust which parts of the extract they use (called fractions and isolates) to dial in a particular flavor.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#95

Post by ethersteeds »

Clamchop wrote: post #94
ethersteeds wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this feels cut and dry to you, but what you're kicking is a fundamental pillar of the industrial food system. Many food products emerge from processing a dull or unappetizing color. Food needs to last as long as possible and still look like food. It's tempting to say that food should all be made with love in home kitchens, but that's untenable for feeding 8 billion people. My favorite example of this is orange…

Calling it "the perfume industry" is a half truth. It's the flavoring industry, but it so happens that there's a lot of overlap between perfume and flavoring in terms of raw materials. However, flavoring is a distinct profession. Besides that, very few novel compounds are allowed in food compared to fragrance. If any flavoring is synthetic in origin (which is not the same thing as novel, to be clear) then the product…

I appreciate the nuance! My intention was to show that there's a surprising amount of correction for flavor and taste necessary even for one-ingredient "natural" foods.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#96

Post by pixl97 »

tayo42 wrote: post #77
pfexec wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in awe at the number of people that will go to bat for things like artificial dyes in food, only because the policy is coming from the present administration. It's just common sense. We don't need to be ingesting this shit. It's cosmetic and not needed for nutrition. Why are you feeding your child Fruit Loops and not Cheerios? I personally have known people who develop migraines after eating food with artificial…

If I want to eat fruit loops, why are you getting involved? We have options and can make our own decisions about what to eat.

1. Because you'll feed them to your kids who do not make their own decisions, other than if they'll pay to remove cancers off their anus or die at home at 25.

2. Because a massive food industry would gladly lie about how unsafe their product is just like tobacco companies and they have far more money than you to befuddle the research.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#97

Post by pixl97 »

TheFreim wrote: post #50
vel0city wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, there are many chemicals which are safe to drink in reasonable amounts, and many chemicals that are not safe to drink in any amount. People deciding not to eat something because "it has chemicals in it" is a pretty ignorant take.

> People deciding not to eat something because "it has chemicals in it" is a pretty ignorant take. 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 l…

Right, just like the town that banned dihydrogen monoxide.

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#98

Post by beart »

colechristensen wrote: post #62
hermannj314 wrote: post #36

If China stops buying our soybeans, we can start planting other things. Aren't natural food dyes just a great way to encourage diversity in domestic agriculture? I am not an expert in synthetic vs. natural, but I feel like this decision isn't actually about health (I don't see any reason to believe why Wal-Mart cares at all about the health of Americans) but rather some larger macroeconomic reality.

Ugh. THE SAME NUMBER OF SOYBEANS ARE GETTING CONSUMED. If China is buying South American soybeans instead of US soybeans than whoever was buying from South America is going to buy from the US because it's not like 8 million tons of soybeans per month are magically getting created in Brazil. It's not that there will be no market effect but it's pretty close to a zero sum game because the global production and consumpt…

Why are farmers asking for a bailout, claiming no one is buying their soy beans?

Re: Walmart U.S. moves to eliminate synthetic dyes across all private brand foods

#100

Post by eYrKEC2 »

sensen wrote: post #13
robotnikman wrote: post #4

Good, there is a reason why just about every other country outlaws these.

Can you clearly state what that reason is? The only reason stated in the article is that this move "is in line with evolving customer preferences and in support of a more transparent food system".

Some dyes _have_ been found to be carcinogenic and outlawed in the USA, even prior to this administration.

From there, you then apply the "precautionary principle" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle .

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