Target Cuts Synthetic Colors From Beloved Breakfast Food

Authored by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell via The Daily Signal,

The Make America Healthy Again movement has made its mark on one of America’s largest retailers.

Target announced Friday that every cereal it sells, including national brands, must exclude synthetic colors by the end of May.

Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Daily Signal the move will “support healthier options for American families.”

“We’re encouraged to see companies listening to parents and taking voluntary steps to clean up ingredients in the foods they sell,” Nixon said. “Secretary Kennedy has been clear that families deserve transparency and the ability to make informed choices about what they’re feeding their children.”

Target is one of the first national retailers to remove synthetic colors across an entire grocery category. Food companies General Mills and Kraft Heinz have agreed to remove artificial colors from products in the United States by 2027, but Target has instituted a faster timeline.

“It’s great to see Target take the lead on the MAHA front with food dyes,” said Jay Richards, at the Heritage Foundation.

“This is a clear response to market signals from not only federal action but to consumers, who are waking up to the weird stuff in so much of our food. Let’s hope Target’s competitors get the message as well.”

This comes after the Food and Drug Administration came under fire for reportedly retreating from plans to ban artificial food dyes, a key goal of the MAHA movement.

The FDA announced in early February that food companies would be able to label their products as containing “no artificial colors” as long as they don’t use petroleum-based dyes.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary pushed back on the report as “amusing fake news.”

“The FDA is moving full steam ahead,” he said.(se

In an interview with The Daily Signal on Dec. 9, Makary said he has seen a “tremendous amount of support in the food industry for our action to call for the removal of all nine petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply.”

He said he’s saying an awareness about the dangers of food dyes that America has not seen before.

“We again have to listen to parents; we have to listen to the American people,” he said.

“And when they say that they have seen their kids engage in aggressive behavior or attention deficit disorder behavior, they remove all petroleum-based food dyes completely from that food supply and the kids’ behavior improves or changes, and then a year down the road they’re reintroduced to the petroleum-based food dyes and the behavior regresses—those are data points.”

“We’ve got a randomized controlled trial of artificial petroleum-based dyes, and it did not—it was not favorable,” Makary continued.

“It suggested that it’s involved in behavioral disorders in children, specifically ADHD. So we want to create awareness.”

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