
Nestle to remove artificial dyes from US foods by 2026
NEW YORK, June 26, (AP): Nestle said Wednesday it will eliminate artificial colors from its US food and beverages by the middle of 2026.
It's the latest big food company making that pledge. Last week, Kraft Heinz and General Mills said they would remove artificial dyes from their US products by 2027. General Mills also said it plans to remove artificial dyes from its US cereals and from all foods served in K-12 schools by the middle of 2026.
The move has broad support. About two-thirds of Americans favor restricting or reformulating processed foods to remove ingredients like added sugar or dyes, according to an AP-NORC poll. Both California and West Virginia have recently banned artificial dyes in foods served in schools.
On Sunday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a bill requiring foods made with artificial dyes or additives to contain a new safety label starting in 2027. The label would say they contain ingredients "not recommended for human consumption' in Australia, Canada, the European Union or the UK.
The federal government is also stepping up its scrutiny of artificial colors. In January, days before President Donald Trump took office, the US regulators banned the dye called Red 3 from the nation's food supply, nearly 35 years after it was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk.
In April, Trump's Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the agency would take steps to eliminate synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, largely by relying on voluntary efforts from the food industry.
Nestle has pledged to remove artificial dyes before. Early in 2015, the company said it would remove artificial flavors and colors from its products by the end of that year. But the promise didn't hold.
Nestle said Wednesday it's been removing synthetic dyes from its products over the last decade, and 90% of its US portfolio doesn't contain them. Among those that do is Nesquik Banana Strawberry milk, which is made with Red 3.
Nestle said Wednesday it wants to evolve with its U.S. customers' changing nutritional needs and preferences.
"Serving and delighting people is at the heart of everything we do and every decision that we make,' Nestle's U.S. CEO Marty Thompson said in a statement.
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Kuwait Times
6 hours ago
- Kuwait Times
War highlights Mideast declining influence on oil prices
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Prices then fell to below pre-war levels at $67 on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump announced that Zionist entity and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire. The doomsday scenario for energy markets – Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 20 percent of the world's oil and gas supplies pass – did not occur. In fact, there was almost no disruption to flows out of the Middle East throughout the duration of the conflict. So, for the time being, it looks like markets were right not to panic. Shrinking risk premium The moderate 15 percent low-to-high swing during this conflict suggests oil traders and investors have slashed the risk premium for geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Consider the impact on prices of previous tensions in the region. The 1973 Arab oil embargo led to a near quadrupling of oil prices. Disruption to Iranian oil output following the 1979 revolution led to a doubling of spot prices. Iraq's invasion of neighboring Kuwait in August 1990 caused the price of Brent crude to double to $40 a barrel by mid-October. And the start of the second Gulf war in 2003 led to a 46 percent surge in prices. While many of these supply disruptions – with the exception of the oil embargo – ended up being brief, markets reacted violently. One, of course, needs to be careful when comparing conflicts because each is unique, but the oil market's response to major disruptions in the Middle East has – in percentage terms, at least – progressively diminished in recent decades. Sense and sensibility There are multiple potential explanations for this change in the perceived value of the Middle East risk premium. First, markets may simply be more rational than in the past given access to better news, data and technology. Investors have become extremely savvy in keeping tabs on near-live energy market conditions. Using satellite ship tracking and aerial images of oilfields, ports and refineries, traders can monitor oil and gas production and transportation, enabling them to better understand supply and demand balances than was possible in previous decades. In this latest conflict, markets certainly responded rationally. The risk of a supply disruption increased, so prices did as well, but not excessively because there were significant doubts about Iran's actual ability or willingness to disrupt maritime activity over a long period of time. Another explanation for the limited price moves could be that producers in the region – again, rational actors – learned from previous conflicts and responded in kind by building alternative export routes and storage to limit the impact of any disruption in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, producing around 9 million bpd, nearly a tenth of global demand, now has a crude pipeline running from the Gulf coast to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu in the west, which would have allowed it to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline has capacity of 5 million bpd and could probably be expanded by another 2 million bpd. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates, another major OPEC and regional producer, with output of around 3.3 million bpd of crude, has a 1.5 million bpd pipeline linking its onshore oilfields to the Fujairah oil terminal that is east of the Strait of Hormuz. Both countries, as well as Kuwait and Iran, also have significant storage facilities in Asia and Europe that would allow them to continue supplying customers even through brief disruptions. Shifting fundamentals Perhaps the most important reason for the world's diminishing concern over Mideast oil supply disruptions is the simple fact that a smaller percentage of the world's energy supplies now comes from the Middle East. In recent decades, oil production has surged in new basins such as the United States, Brazil, Guyana, Canada and even China. OPEC's share of global oil supply declined from over 50 percent in the 1970s to 37 percent in 2010 and further to 33 percent in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, largely because of surge in shale oil production in the United States, the world's largest energy consumer. To be sure, the global oil market was well supplied going into the latest conflict, further alleviating concerns. Ultimately, therefore, the Zionist-Iran war is further evidence that the link between Middle East politics and energy prices has loosened, perhaps permanently. So geopolitical risk may keep rising, but don't expect energy prices to follow suit. — Reuters


Arab Times
14 hours ago
- Arab Times
US stocks close at an all-time high just months after plunging on tariff fears
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Arab Times
2 days ago
- Arab Times
Nestle to remove artificial dyes from US foods by 2026
NEW YORK, June 26, (AP): Nestle said Wednesday it will eliminate artificial colors from its US food and beverages by the middle of 2026. It's the latest big food company making that pledge. Last week, Kraft Heinz and General Mills said they would remove artificial dyes from their US products by 2027. General Mills also said it plans to remove artificial dyes from its US cereals and from all foods served in K-12 schools by the middle of 2026. The move has broad support. About two-thirds of Americans favor restricting or reformulating processed foods to remove ingredients like added sugar or dyes, according to an AP-NORC poll. Both California and West Virginia have recently banned artificial dyes in foods served in schools. On Sunday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a bill requiring foods made with artificial dyes or additives to contain a new safety label starting in 2027. The label would say they contain ingredients "not recommended for human consumption' in Australia, Canada, the European Union or the UK. The federal government is also stepping up its scrutiny of artificial colors. In January, days before President Donald Trump took office, the US regulators banned the dye called Red 3 from the nation's food supply, nearly 35 years after it was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk. In April, Trump's Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the agency would take steps to eliminate synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, largely by relying on voluntary efforts from the food industry. Nestle has pledged to remove artificial dyes before. Early in 2015, the company said it would remove artificial flavors and colors from its products by the end of that year. But the promise didn't hold. Nestle said Wednesday it's been removing synthetic dyes from its products over the last decade, and 90% of its US portfolio doesn't contain them. Among those that do is Nesquik Banana Strawberry milk, which is made with Red 3. Nestle said Wednesday it wants to evolve with its U.S. customers' changing nutritional needs and preferences. "Serving and delighting people is at the heart of everything we do and every decision that we make,' Nestle's U.S. CEO Marty Thompson said in a statement.