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>You wouldn’t eat something you don’t know if it’s edible just because it has a nice color

Easy for you to say while writing a HN comment, but people would certainly be turned off by gray yolks[1] for instance, even if theoretically they were safe to eat.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/12/201501977/he...






While it's easy to fake a healthy golden yolk, in my experience raising chickens, pale yolks are usually from a troubled hen.

And?

Just because people don’t like grey yolk doesn’t mean we should put an untested color in it.


These colors are all extensively tested, precisely because people were scarred of them being "unnatural".

The "natural" colors HAVE NOT been tested so extensively.

So do you want to put "Natural" but utterly untested chemicals in our food or "unnatural" but extensively tested chemicals?

Because unless you ban food coloring outright, companies are going to color your food. They have the data that in the American market, (fake) bright yellow yolks sell more and for more profit than natural yolk colors.

Your assumption of "artificial dye" == "Untested" is currently wrong. The US requires almost no testing for pretty much anything put in our food right now, due to "Generally recognized as safe" bullshit. There are hundreds of chemical additives that have not really been tested that you can just put in food legally.

US food law does not distinguish between "artificial" chemicals and "natural" chemicals except in labeling. You can source a chemical from oranges, turn it into a completely different chemical, put that in your food product, and call it "natural". The only difference from a chemistry standpoint is that you sourced your chemical feedstock from some sort of plant or animal instead of taking simple hydrocarbons and building up your chemical.

Salicylic acid does the exact same thing in your body whether you process it from willow bark or build it up from Phenol, and both versions are simultaneously a horrible birth defect inducing toxin, as well as an utterly essential and safe modern medicine.

This change does nothing to make us safer.


Where did I say natural dyes should be used?

The subject was artificial dyes and parent found it illogical banning them without proper proof of harm.

My point is, at least for food, there should be proof of no harm.

I said nothing about natural dyes. Why do so many people read A is bad as not-A is good?

And if all is tested so well why was red 3 banned so late?




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