Just last week, Shany Qiu’s husband walked in the door of their Staten Island home with a box of Froot Loops he had just bought at the grocery store.
“The minute I saw it, I told him to throw it out — and to never buy it again,” Qiu, the mother of two daughters, ages 5 and 7, told The Post. “The girls love it, but I hate that it’s filled with artificial colors so I told him we can only buy Cheerios or Kix from now on.”
For Qiu, the news that the FDA is banning Red No. 3 from food products and ingested drugs feels like a step in the right direction.
“My younger daughter loves strawberry-flavored candy,” she said. “I told her Welch’s Fruit Snacks contain artificial dye and she was sad about it, but we’re no longer buying these anymore.”
For parents around the city, there’s a feeling of optimism about the ban on cherry-red dye as well as some disappointment that this ban won’t take effect until 2027 for food products and 2028 for ingested drugs.
“I’m frustrated that it’s going to take that long, but I’m also hopeful,” said Lesanna Beharry, a mother of three sons, ages 4, 9 and 12, who lives in Ozone Park, Queens. “At least this is now an important topic of conversation and people are becoming more aware of how many artificial ingredients are in the foods we’re giving our kids.”
This is especially true given how long of a list of popular foods contain the synthetic food coloring, derived from petroleum. Included on the list: Dole Diced Fruit Cup, Dubble Bubble Original Twist Bubble Gum and even MorningStar Farms Veggie Bacon Strips.
Melanie Laugier, a Staten Island mother of one son, Brayden, 10, was shocked when she learned that the dye was an ingredient in the strawberry-flavored PediaSure shakes she’s given Brayden since he was little.
“I used it for years as a supplement if he was sick or didn’t have an appetite,” she said. “I’m upset — and very surprised — that this was on the list.”
However, Abbott Nutrition, which owns PediaSure, noted that it will be removing the artificial coloring from products in 2024, Fox News reported.
Walking the aisles and label reading
The fact that parents must be “label detectives” at the grocery store is something that frustrates Laugier.
“If a product has been on the shelves for years, it’s upsetting to think it would be unsafe for our kids,” she said. “Coloring in foods is literally everywhere.”
Trips to the supermarket where brightly colored treats tempt kids makes the errand even more stressful, Qiu said.
“The kids are like ‘Mom I want to eat this,’ ‘I want to eat that,’” she said. “I have to tell them no we’re not going to get stuff with all that color in it.”
For Beharry, it has been helpful to download Yuka, an app that lets her scan bar codes on products and get a breakdown of the ingredients while she’s walking the aisles.
“It tells you why the product is risk-free or not,” she said. “I also make sure I read every single label of the foods I buy and, if I can’t pronounce the name of an ingredient, I won’t buy the item.”
When Chyna Haywood goes food shopping with her 4-year-old daughter, Eden, she seeks out fresh produce, organic brands and products that are free of high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors.
“I’m not surprised that there’s red dye in those premade fruit cups,” said Haywood, who lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. “I don’t like buying fruit in a cup and I don’t even like buying those pouches that you can’t see through. I want to see the food I’m feeding my daughter.”
Goodbye to brightly colored frosting
The foods kids eat at home are one thing, but parents admit that it’s the bake sales and birthday parties that are really problematic when it comes to access to dye-filled desserts.
“When my kids see a plate full of cupcakes with colored icing at a birthday party, they already know what to do,” Beharry said. “If they forget, I reiterate it and say ‘Hey, let’s maybe take the frosting off.’”
The goal is to help them stay as healthy as possible, she said.
“I know kids are kids and I don’t want them to feel like they can’t eat certain foods,” she said. “I also know it’s hard for them to control themselves when they’re around colorful snacks and sweets.”
As for Laugier, she’s already worried about the lure of bright red and pink Valentine’s Day temptations — and is contemplating how to remove the dye from the sprinkle-topped cake pops she loves to make.
For this family, colorful cupcakes may be a thing of the past.
“When I told Brayden our colorfully colored Valentine’s cupcakes will be on hold until the dyes are reformulated, he was definitely disappointed,” she said. “He was bummed.”
