Red 40: Gen Z’s Next Dietary Villain?
By: Sam Tabeart, Contributor
Food dyes are a uniquely American controversy. Every decade, a new group pipes up, citing singular studies linking food dyes to child behavioral issues, then fade away into the neurotic American media cycle. We’re riding the next artificially-pigmented wave now. The target? Red 40.
Millions have seen the TikToks and Reels: overeager gym bros scanning grocery stores, gleefully “exposing” all the products with Red 40; jittery podcasters touting the benefits of taking their kids off red food dyes while sipping Celsius cans; the viral Cheeto-hogging golden retriever, snarling as his owner tries to take away his precious bag. Commenters watch on in dismay, claiming “That Red 40 got everyone crazy!!” or that they cured their son’s ADHD by taking away his sports drinks. I’m skeptical; I myself must admit to being a frequent Red 40 enjoyer. I want to think the anti-Red 40 movement is just the next forgettable public health conspiracy theory, somewhere between contrails and estrogenized water. It’s an issue of the past, invariably resurfaced by some bored, understimulated fringe. Most of the videos I’ve found are from obsessive parents or supplement-hocking fitness influencers. At their worst, they devolve into incel-posting about traditional living. But after diving down the crimson well of Red 40-related content, part of me wonders if they’re onto something. Red 40 is in a lot of what we consume on and off campus: the fridges of canned drinks in DeCafé, the many soda fountains in Stevie – you might even find it in your shower gel. If some are to be believed about the pressing danger of Red 40, schools like Oberlin might as well replace vending machines with cigarette dispensers. But just how bad is this maligned food dye? Can anyone prove the host of side effects attributed to it? Above all, should any of us even care?
The concern over food dyes is not new. People have been linking them to ADHD since the mid-1970s. The FDA has slowly responded, making it their policy to not comment on topics under review. Conveniently, this gives time for manufacturers to respond with new dye formulas. This leaves NGOs and state regulatory boards to investigate these new dyes, but these reports take years to collect evidence; food studies require dietary restrictions and extended observation, not to mention endless revision and repetition. And without these studies, the federal government won’t act against corporate interests.
In 2023, California passed a bill banning Red 3 in food products. It’s still the only state to do so. This came 33 years after the FDA banned Red 3 in cosmetics, having linked it to cancer and childhood hyperactivity – that’s three decades of a known carcinogen being allowed in food products. It’s hoped this recent bill will spark federal bans against artificial food dyes, although precedent says this is unlikely. Food manufacturers have long been aware of this, implementing Red 40 as the replacement for Red 3. While Red 40 contains benzidine, also a carcinogen, it’s still considered low risk by the FDA. The real concern over Red 40, as I’ve been hinting at, is its connection to hyperactivity in children.
The 2023 California bill was catalyzed by a report from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard. After examining 27 studies, the report found “substantial… evidence that consumption of synthetic food dyes is associated with adverse neurobehavioral outcomes in children.” The same study found that children between the ages of 5-18 tend to consume more of these dyes in their diets. Alarmingly, they reported that kids from low-income families – especially those from low-income, non-Hispanic Black families – consume these dyes at the highest rate. This is the first major report to analyze multiple studies, and was quickly followed up by an assenting report from Environmental Health concluding that “the current [FDA] acceptable daily intakes are based on older studies that were not designed to assess the types of behavioral effects observed in children.” In other words, we’re consuming dyes like Red 40 faster than the FDA can measure.
This raised concern 10 years ago, when a Purdue University study found that the amount of food dyes certified by the FDA had “increased more than 5-fold” between 1950 and 2021. Another study, from 2008, reported that dye availability in food had increased “at more than three times the rate of calorie availability” between 1975 and 2005. Simply put, we consume more dyes now than ever before, and at a much higher concentration. The FDA lags behind the current research, and still hasn’t acted on research that broke ground in the late ‘90s and ‘00s. American consumption of food dyes will continue to rise while the FDA scrambles to find a coherent stance against artificial food dyes.
But for a student body hooked on lattes and cigarettes, who are we to care? Sure, your Watermelon Red Bull has Red 40. It also has enough caffeine to hospitalize a 10 year old. The modern American diet is awash with questionable additives: preservatives, chemical flavoring, nitrite, benzidine, corn syrup, and every shade of artificial food dye. Over the course of a day, we consume chemicals known to cause lung cancer, stomach cancer, intestinal ulcers, diabetes, and IBS. No doubt your life would be improved by cutting out food additives. Why not take it a step further and raise your own livestock? The truth is, for the many students forced to rely on prepared meals, there’s no reasonable way around it. Of course, I speak as part of the careless majority – the people who lack the wherewithal to check every ingredients list for artificial dyes. The other sort of person – the sort of person who can afford to take these things seriously – probably doesn’t eat Red 40 anyway.
So if you’re desperately seeking a self-help cause to latch onto, try going without Red 40. Maybe you’ll find yourself brimming with testosterone or rekindling some agro-spiritual center. Maybe you’ll realize all us ADD-ridden college students are the lost generation of artificial food-dye victims. I, for one, can’t see the point. Maybe I’ll go make a TikTok about it.