California lawmaker to introduce bill to remove artificial dyes from foods served in school

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 would make California the first in the nation to ban the additives from schools. It was introduced by Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel.

"This legislation will not ban any specific foods or products," Gabriel said Tuesday at a virtual news conference. "The goal here is to encourage companies to make minor modifications to products sold in California if they want their products to be sold in California public schools."

The necessary recipe tweaks would be as small as changing one ingredient, Gabriel told NBC News, adding that many products sold on grocery store shelves use natural substitutes such as turmeric, beet juice or pomegranate juice for coloring.

Synthetic dyes “are nonessential ingredients,” Gabriel said in a phone interview before introducing the bill. “These are chemicals that are added to food to make them appear more appealing. But for all of them, there are specific alternatives.”

In addition to titanium dioxide, the bill would ban Red 40, Green 3, Blue 1 and Blue 2, and Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 in foods served by schools.

The Food and Drug Administration has said it has not established a causal relationship between behavioral problems and synthetic dyes for children in the general population who haven’t been diagnosed with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But Gabriel said a comprehensive assessment from the state of California showed otherwise. The 2021 evaluation found an association even in some children without ADHD diagnoses.

“Overall, our review of human studies suggests that synthetic food dyes are associated with adverse neurobehavioral effects, such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and restlessness in sensitive children,” the authors of the assessment wrote. “The evidence supports a relationship between food dye exposure and adverse behavioral outcomes in children, both with and without pre-existing behavioral disorders.”

The bill comes as the number of ADHD diagnoses has risen nationally in recent years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gabriel, whose son has ADHD, said he found it baffling that schools would serve foods that could increase symptoms of the disorder.

“It just totally harms these kids and undermines our investment in helping them when we expose them to chemicals that we know are going to exacerbate their challenges,” he told NBC News.

AB 2316 would go into effect at the beginning of 2025 if it is signed into law this year.

The FDA had no immediate comment on the bill. The International Association of Color Manufacturers, a trade association, pointed to its past statements on food dyes, including one that rebutted the 2021 findings from California, in which it said that concluding that there may be an association between synthetic colors and negative health or behavior is “based on insufficient scientific evidence.”

The International Food Additives Council, another trade group, condemned state-level bans on ingredients that have been determined to be safe by the FDA.

‎“FDA is the federal agency charged with ‎safeguarding the food supply, and those ‎advocating for state bans are undermining FDA’s ‎authority and causing unnecessary consumer ‎confusion,“ the council’s executive director, Robert Rankin, said in a statement, adding that the council “stands ‎behind the FDA in its mission to uphold the highest standards of food safety.”‎

But Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy health organization that is co-sponsoring Gabriel’s bill, argued that the FDA is “asleep at the wheel.”

“California shouldn’t have to introduce this bill,” she said. “In an ideal world, we would have a credible federal regulator that would be taking aggressive action to make sure that the food chemicals that we are exposed to every day, and the foods that we eat, and the foods that we feed our family, are actually safe.”

An analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that if the bill passes, only a handful of items sold in California schools would be affected. Benesh said the group estimated that the additives that would be banned are only in about 4% of foods served in cafeteria lunch lines and less than 3% of items sold through à la carte lines. À la carte items are snacks and drinks that students can purchase separately from their school meals.

“There are some categories like cookies, chips, sugary breakfast cereals, that may be more likely to be tainted by these food chemicals and these colors,” Benesh said. “But even in those categories, there’s plenty of alternatives.”

The proposed legislation follows last year’s passage of the California Food Safety Act, which was also introduced by Gabriel and banned four food additives linked to potential health problems. The law was the first time that a state had outlawed chemicals allowed by the FDA and means that, beginning in 2027, California will prohibit red dye No. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil and propylparaben from being in any food sold in the state.

Other states have since followed suit. Bills attempting to ban certain food additives have been introduced in Illinois, Missouri, New York and Washington state, among other places.