I gave up artificial food dyes for a month. It was harder than I thought.
As I whirred my way through my fridge, pantry and medicine cabinet, I was alarmed by how many of my kids' go-tos — mostly treats, but also things like pickles and Tylenol — include synthetic additives like Red Dye No. 40 and Green Dye No. 3. What surprised me even more, though, was the flip side: There was a whole category of neon kid foods I had assumed I'd need to eliminate (mac and cheese, Goldfish crackers, etc.) that turned out to have no artificial food dyes at all thanks to naturally bright colorants like turmeric. Phew.
Why try to avoid or eliminate synthetic food dyes in the first place? Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would ban the dye known as Red No. 3, which is petroleum-based and found in common foods like frosting, fruit cocktail and gummies. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently took it a step further, announcing that the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services will eliminate all petroleum-based artificial food dyes from foods sold in the U.S.
The primary concern with these dyes is that consumption of them has been linked to behavioral problems in some children, according to analysis from the State of California. Then there's the issue that, while a dye like Red 40, for example, is not currently listed as a carcinogen itself, it does include benzene, which has been linked to increased cancer risk.
Plus, these dyes are derived from petroleum. In an era of omnipresent and often ingested microplastics, did I really want to be feeding my kids this stuff? Of course not, I thought. But I wasn't sure how feasible it would be to swap them all out.
Where to start? The Center for Science in the Public Interest shares a starter list of common foods that include synthetic dyes, so I stormed through my kitchen and bathroom in search of those and to read all the other labels I encountered. Then I set out for our local Kroger to find the necessary swaps and was only somewhat successful. Since dye-free alternatives weren't always readily available there, I also had to squeeze in a trip to the health food store.
Then there are all the difficulties of sourcing dye-free in the wild, like at the gas station next to my son's taekwondo class, where he often grabs a Gatorade. Most notably, our dye-free month coincided with a family trip to North Carolina, and travel definitely put the difficulty of finding alternatives into perspective. It also meant passing up this pretty (but dye-enhanced) sea glass candy.
Here are the main food dye culprits I discovered in my family's food rotation, and what I ended up replacing them with.
In my research, I discovered that most of the major pickle companies, including Mt. Olive, do offer a dye-free version, but only the Vlasic one was available at my Kroger. I was interested in figuring out whether the dye-free versions would all be more expensive, as NPR's recent reporting seems to indicate, but it was impossible to find an exact dye-free/with-dye comparison within the same brand at the same store. Among Target's wide variety of Vlasic options, price variations are only a matter of cents. So the main reason to skip the swap seems to be if you really, really want your pickles to be neon.
Surprise! Who knew my '90s favorite kid drink, Capri Sun, was actually dye-free? Whether we were headed to sports practice or the airport, juice-like drinks marketed to kids, from a rainbow of Gatorades to Sunny D (which includes Yellow 5 and Yellow 6), were items that kept popping up during this experiment. Luckily, my sons were not at all fazed by the (equally sugary, I'm sure) dye-free swap options. The Bubly Burst was a particular hit; it's colored with carrot juice concentrate and is compellingly bright pink.
In this mom's opinion, Lily's gummies, colored with vegetable dyes, taste better. The downsides were price (Lily's gummies were $2.50 for one measly pouch at Kroger, whereas Welch's cost $6 for 22 pouches) and availability: Welch's fruit snacks are my kids' favorites to grab at the airport to help their ears pop during takeoff and landing. Sadly, the likes of Lily's have not expanded to the national airport market (yet!). Lily's gummy bears also softened the blow of having to ditch our stash of Blue 1-enhanced Airheads.
We have been potty training my youngest, and M&Ms have been a hugely helpful tiny treat. My little one gets two M&Ms when he pees in the potty, three for a poop. I am not above a bribe that makes my life easier! He did not notice at ALL when I swapped his reward, and I'm now obsessed with these better-tasting (to me), off-brand, all-natural alternatives. They're colored using vegetables, and they even use real vanilla. But alas, this was a swap that required a trip to the natural foods store, and I couldn't find them at the airport.
The spicy El Yucateca was a stealth culprit; I was surprised to see 'Yellow 5 and Blue 1' listed in the ingredients list. Why is it necessary to dye green peppers green? Luckily, Marie Sharp's variation made for a tasty, dye-free substitute.
Ah, the problematic pièce de résistance of the food dye swap-out. My kids love grape Tylenol, but it's colored with Red 33 and Blue 1. When I got the dye-free kind and offered it to my son after a dental procedure, the prospect of sucking down non-purple medication elicited plenty of whines and a lot of pushback. Which led me to …
I know I'm not alone as a conscientious yet kinda lazy parent. And while this swap-out experiment was, for the most part, straightforward, the somewhat difficult parts of it (travel, Tylenol) left me asking: How worried do I really have to be about these food dyes? Do I have to keep pushing dye-free Tylenol if the bright purple version makes my life easier?
'It's not a deal breaker at all,' Jamie Alan, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Michigan State University, tells Yahoo Life. When it comes to synthetic food dyes, 'a small, limited dose will likely have no effects on the vast majority of children.'
The primary risk to watch for, Alan explains, is the one found in the California report: the fact that 'some food dyes have been linked to neurobehavioral issues and hyperactivity.' But that's only in some kids, and as always it's important to make decisions based on your own individual child's health and behavior (and in tandem with your child's medical care providers) rather than based on what might work best for another child — or worse, what you read on some blog.
Alan provides a few helpful suggestions for parents and other individuals who do want to reduce artificial food dyes in their kitchens, bathroom cabinets and lives overall. The first step? Actually reading what you're about to buy or consume. 'Checking the label is important,' Alan says. One smart hack is shopping imported (easier said than done during 2025 tariff days, we know), since 'many other countries have already banned some of these dyes," Alan notes. "Checking the aisles for imported products, like drinks and candies, might be useful."
Overall, your best bet is to pay attention to both the ingredients your family consumes and your child's behavior — something we parents should probably be doing anyway, food dyes or no food dyes. But don't stress too much about it. 'Not all children are sensitive to these dyes,' Alan reiterates, 'but there are some children who are very sensitive to these dyes when consumed.'
As for me, I'm 100% going to stick with the vast majority of the food swaps I stocked up on in my kitchen — all those treats and pickles taste just as good without the additives. But I'll likely go back to buying the purple Tylenol.
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