The proposed legislation would prohibit school cafeterias from serving foods with Red 40 and six other chemicals associated with potential health and behavioral issues.
A state legislator introduced a first-of-its-kind bill Tuesday that would ban seven additives from the foods that are served in California’s public schools.
Assembly Bill 2316 would prohibit school cafeterias from offering foods containing six artificial food dyes that have been linked to hyperactivity and behavioral issues in some children. It would also outlaw titanium dioxide, a whitening agent used in candies and other products that is banned by the European Union because of concerns that it is potentially genotoxic, meaning it may damage DNA and cause cancer.
The bill, which was first shared with NBC News, would affect certain cereals, condiments and baked goods, among other foods, and it would make California the first state to ban the additives from schools. It was introduced by Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel.
Just remove the notion that “it’s just a dye” from the argument and change it to “unnecessary substance added to food for aesthetic purposes” which may potentially have unintended impacts on the body.
I don’t care for the pseudoscience of it but the idea that we ought to remove fillers and shit from food we feed kids isn’t terrible on that merit alone.
That said we just had a huge issue over lead in cinnamon from a product used to add color, so right there is a perfect example of a scenario where a food colorant could lead to permanent cognitive impairment.
This is the equivalent of banning spinach because of a salmonella outbreak (which kills more ppl). This seems more like an overreaction from those ppl fearful of any compound that isn’t “natural” or substance they can’t pronounce.