Kennedy Touts Food Dye Crackdown As A Midterm Win, But Big Holdouts Remain

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is preparing to hit the road ahead of the midterms and tout the success of the most politically popular part of his MAHA agenda: getting artificial dyes out of food.

But the reality is far more complicated: Of the six companies that sell Americans the most products that contain artificial dyes, four of them — Mars, PepsiCo, Keurig Dr. Pepper and candymaker Ferrero — have not made a full commitment to get rid of synthetic colors. Just two — McKee Foods, which makes Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, and chocolatier Hershey — have committed to fully phasing them out.

Critics say that's because the administration has put no law or regulatory heft behind their effort.

“They have really leaned on voluntary commitments. They’ve leaned on consumer education. But they have not done anything that would actually force companies to phase out” the ingredients, said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an environmental health advocacy organization.

When Kennedy and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said last April that they wanted to “eliminate” the six remaining synthetic dyes used in food, Kennedy described the effort as an “understanding” with industry. No formal ban has followed.

Instead, Kennedy has leaned on the grassroots power of “Make America Healthy Again” advocates demanding cleaner ingredients, which has put pressure on companies to follow the consumer trends — and in some cases, been solidified by state laws.

“We are going to win this battle,” Kennedy said when he announced the initiative last year. “Four years from now, we're going to have most of these products off the market, or you will know about them when you go in the grocery store.”

Speaking last month at CPAC, a year into the effort, Kennedy said his agency had “gotten rid of” synthetic dyes.

The results are more mixed than that, though Kennedy’s efforts have undoubtedly spurred industry action: Twelve, or roughly half of the major food companies, have agreed to remove all synthetic dyes from their products, according to an analysis by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Only four of those companies will completely do so before Kennedy’s voluntary deadline of the end of this year, but an additional five companies that committed to phasing out all synthetic dyes will make progress with some of their products by then, most commonly via school foods.

There are also a handful of companies that have said they will take synthetic dyes out of their foods because of Kennedy’s push but haven’t committed to a timeline, including Danone, which makes yogurts, and McCormick, which makes Frank’s RedHot.

“There's definitely movement and progress, but I think it's slow and I think it's not anywhere near complete in terms of getting the biggest offenders to change,” said Meghan Maroney, who focuses on child nutrition programs for Center for Science in the Public Interest and has closely monitored companies’ commitments.

Some early adopters of Kennedy’s push were lighter users of food dyes to begin with. Tyson Foods, which removed artificial food dyes from all of its products in May 2025, had used dyes in only 2 percent of its foods, according to a 2020 CSPI report.

The biggest users of food dyes have been slower to move. Mars, which uses artificial dyes in more than half of its products, including Skittles and M&M’s, has said it will start selling versions of its products that don’t have synthetic colors, but will still sell its current versions, too.

“Mars is dipping their toe in but they need to go ahead & rip the bandaid. #MAHA won’t stand for anything less!” Vani Hari, one of the most vocal MAHA influencers advocating for a ban on synthetic dyes, wrote on X.

In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon defended Kennedy and his agency’s efforts as “more progress on removing synthetic dyes in a short period of time than we’ve ever seen, with major companies already committing to reformulate products and respond to the demand from American families for better food options.”

Nixon pointed to FDA’s own tracker, which includes other commitments from smaller companies such as Utz, which makes chips and pretzels. Nixon also pointed to new approvals of six natural dyes, an effort designed to give companies a safer alternative.

There is a long history of food companies pledging to change their ingredients in response to consumer trends and then pulling back on their decision if the financial tides turn. In 2016, Mars said it would remove synthetic dyes from its food, but thenkept them in its U.S.-sold candy.Kellogg, which makes Froot Loops cereal, and General Mills, which makes Lucky Charms cereal and Trix yogurt, made similar pledges in 2015 that also were never carried out. 

“It is worrisome that if there’s no regulatory teeth, they might just not do it,” Maroney said.

Some of those same companies that didn’t follow through on past commitments have made new pledges — and in some cases made more concrete progress. General Mills removed synthetic dyes from products sold in schools in March and says it is on track to remove them from the rest of its products by the end of 2027. Kellogg has made a similar commitment.

The effort also recently got a boost from retailers. In February, Target announced that all of the cereals sold on its shelves would need to be made without artificial colors by the end of May. Sam’s Clubremoved all synthetic dyes from its own brand products in January and Walmart committed to removing artificial dyes plus 30 other ingredients from its brand products by January 2027.

Industry groups like the Consumer Brands Association, which represents dozens of major companies, has encouragedits members to phase out synthetic dyes by 2027, while the the International Dairy Foods Association said in July that dozens of ice cream companies, representing more than 90 percent of ice cream volume sold in the U.S., would eliminate artificial colors by 2028.

Even some MAHA-aligned healthy food advocates say while the progress is exciting, it’s still incomplete.

“I've seen more momentum in the last year-and-a-half than I've ever seen in the last 15 years from any other administration,” said Courtney Swan, an integrative nutritionist who attended a MAHA event at the White House in April.

At the same time, Swan said, “The government moves at a snail's pace, and it's incredibly frustrating, because many of us are like, this could happen overnight.”

Swan also acknowledged the small impact removing synthetic dyes is likely to have on the overarching fight against childhood obesity and chronic disease and said it shouldn’t take priority over other issues in the food system.

“Is it top priority No. 1? No, but I do still think that [artificial dyes] just should have never been there in the first place, right? So getting them out is a win,” Swan said.

A recent POLITICO poll found broad support for removing artificial dyes from food. But just 8 percent of respondents identified dyes as one of the main drivers of poor health in the United States — the lowest-ranked concern among the options given, which included a lack of physical exercise, the cost of health insurance and an inability to access nutritious food.

Some studies have linked artificial food dyes to behavioral changes in children and to cancer in animals, though experts say more research is needed.

Kennedy has called his administration’s efforts so far a “major victory.”

Maroney said the picture is more complicated. She argued that major cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children undercut the administration’s broader claims about improving Americans’ health.

“This would be a positive change, if industry complies with this request to get rid of synthetic dyes, whether that's prompted, in their eyes, by FDA or by the state laws,” Maroney said.

“But it's not everything, and it's being touted as something that's going to be revolutionary when it's not.”