As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. navigates Capitol Hill this week to meet with senators about his nomination to head up the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, there will be a lot of conversation about ways to “make America healthy again.” Unfortunately, people should brace for a flurry of articles using the language “linked to” to imply a direct connection between certain foods, additives, and dyes and poor health outcomes. It’s a common form of misdirection media love to use to stoke fear and limit people’s choices.
In 2023, there was a period of several weeks dedicated by the media to the supposed dangers of aspartame, based on a classification by an affiliate of the World Health Organization that declared aspartame “possibly carcinogenic.” The report kickstarted a frenzy to ban the common artificial sweetener deemed safe for consumption by the United States, Canada, and the European Union that would terrify any casual consumer of diet sodas.
It shouldn’t. The research on aspartame’s “link” to cancer hinges on an individual consumer weighing 132 pounds and drinking 12 to 36 cans of diet soda in one day to reach the threshold for meaningful risk.
You have to be voluntarily consuming far more than the reasonable or recommended serving. When studies such as this are done, the obvious media subtitle is going to be “aspartame linked to cancer.”
Such is the case for red dye No. 3, which has long faced the same genre of media coverage.
Consider USA Today, which reported on “concerns that the food dye is linked to cancer and behavioral problems in children.” Only later in the report does the reader learn that cancers only appeared in rats who were given abnormally high doses of the additive as part of FDA-required testing.
In 2022, the Center For Science in the Public Interest issued a press release titled “FDA says it causes cancer. Yet it’s in hundreds of candies” about red dye No. 3 before specifying that no cancer was found in human beings — only animals.
The other popular claim recycled throughout the media about red dye No. 3 is that it causes hyperactivity and ADHD in children. Click into USA Today’s source for the “link” to “hyperactivity” and it’s a story about Fast & Furious actress Eva Mendes expressing dismay over food dyes being banned in Europe and not in the U.S. That same story adds, “Scientists can’t say for sure that there is a proven link, but food dye opponents often point to concurrent rises in artificial coloring consumption and rising ADHD diagnostic rates among children.”
“Linked” is shorthand for a study somewhere in the world concluding, whether accurately or inaccurately, a relationship between an ingredient and a health condition.
On its face, the claim is simply strange. Are health advocates really asserting that American youth are somehow more frazzled and high-energy than Canadian or German children? It used to be more in vogue to argue that ADHD is overdiagnosed as a result of shifting societal expectations of children to be less childlike. The New York Times regularly reported on the “medicalization” of normal childhood and the rapid rise of ADHD being a byproduct of drug companies marketing new drugs to tired parents and annoyed school administrators.
It seems red dye No. 3 is about as harmful as aspartame, which is to say not much at all when utilized at FDA-approved levels to make food more visually appealing.
Activists are not wrong about its intended purpose, though. Red dye No. 40 is part of why most hot dogs aren’t an off-putting gray color when you grab one at the lunch cart near your office.
You can make principled arguments about the downsides of encouraging food consumption using additives to make food more appealing, but the counterargument in favor of a colorful world with vibrant plates of food is equally compelling to many consumers.
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The media distortion of public discussion on additives drives real-world policymaking. But it’s important to remember that in this past election, people voted for more freedom and less regulation.
America is not as healthy as it could or should be. The “make America healthy again” movement in the Trump administration, as well as its reluctant Democratic allies, has a target-rich environment for policy change that could incentivize or enable more people to get healthy. But no one should be under any illusions that a sensationalist push to make cereal and cakes less colorful will do anything other than make the world a little less fun.
Stephen Kent is the media director for the Consumer Choice Center.