The food industry’s chemical fiesta is getting kicked out of school cafeterias – at least in Utah. Governor Spencer Cox signed a law banning a list of artificial additives from all public school meals.
Say goodbye to Red Dye No. 3, Yellow No. 5, Blue No. 1 & 2, and a bunch of other lab-concocted “ingredients” that have been staples of processed school food. Also on the blacklist: potassium bromate (a dough conditioner linked to cancer) and propylparaben (a preservative). In a sane world the FDA would have done this ages ago, but welcome to America, where states have to step up.
School nutrition officials admit this will make menu planning “difficult,” since so many mass-produced foods are loaded with these additives. (Perhaps that’s a clue about what we’ve been feeding kids.) Utah’s move follows several other states starting to clamp down on food dyes that Europe banned long ago.
It’s a small win for healthy eating and a big middle finger to the FDA/pharma/food complex that insisted all this garbage was “generally recognized as safe.”