California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday.

The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 — potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group.

The legislation was popularly known as the “Skittles ban” because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance.

  • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Ahhh but I don’t have enough cancer yet :( On a serious note, sometimes people shit talk California but they have a massive economy and when they do things like this it has a huge positive benefit for the entire country. Most companies will just reformulate instead of having California specific products so everyone benefits.

    • PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      To me this is amazing news, I am allergic to Red Dye #3. If I eat something that has it, within seconds my throat closes and I can barely breathe. The worst part is that there is no need to use it. Sweet Tarts for example uses beets to get the red coloring in their candy.

      • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Well that’s terrifying. If you don’t live in California you’ll still have to watch for it after the law takes affect but it should be used a lot less.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Most brands will reformulate and all their products will be compliant rather than making a California only version and a rest of the us version. They aren’t going to just stop serving California either, it’s the largest economy in the nation and if it was on its own it would be roughly equivalent to Germany gdp wise

        • PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I started to to compare ingredient lists from packages of candy and it was the only thing that was on all of them.

          • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            Those can be kind of hit & miss for food allergies. They prick your back with them, but if your allergic reactions happen in, say, your throat, there’s a good chance you won’t show as allergic. I found the pollen/dander prick test to be a lot more accurate than the food test.

            According to the one I took, I’m allergic to both pineapple and mushrooms, which I’m not. Also according to the test, I’m not allergic to any tree nuts at all, which eating those make my lips/mouth/throat swell and itch, in addition to making it hurt/difficult to breathe.

            So yeah, ymmv.

      • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Yep! I had problems with one of those red dyes as a kid. Made me go ape shit mode and I was violent every single time I had a candy with it. Then all the other time I was hyperactive but harmless.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Do these cause cancer in the usage and quantity they are consumed in?

      Or is this more California “everything causes cancer” BS?

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          That is either beholden to big business, downright stupid, or both.

          If yoyu want an even more blatant example of this, look into the history of stevia and the FDA. Which includes fun stuff like the FDA burning crates of herbal tea because that tea contained stevia, declaring it an unsafe food additive seemingly entirely because NutraSweet wanted them to, and not that much later creating rules that allowed it to be sold to any one in any quantity for any reason as an “herbal dietary supplement”, but only so long as you didn’t mention that it had a flavor. Mentioning that it was sweet tasting transformed it from an herbal dietary supplement that’s basically harmless into a dangerous unsafe food additive.

      • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Do these have strong safety studies backing them or is this just more FDA accepting corporate bribes bs again?