Walmart U.s. Moves to Eliminate Synthetic Dyes Across All Private Brand Foods

I wonder if changing the color of food is actually that important.

If there where significant value that might be different, but there isn’t a great argument for experimenting on millions of people here.

There isn't. The US's FDA allows fewer of them than the EU's EFSA.

A small number of people get anaphylaxis from carmine.

I'm allergic to Yellow #5 (Tartrazine), but not to Tumeric which seems to do just as good as job of making things yellow/orange.

Ban 'em all. If it isn't already in the foods we eat, it doesn't belong.

"Synthetic" dyes being the result of a long chain of steps and intermediate molecules which are usually ultimately sourced from things like air, petroleum, and seawater.

Science literacy is bad so people have problems articulating the issue of concern which is "it is fair to have concerns about novel chemicals making their way into the food supply which evolution has not had a chance to address", not that something not found in nature is automatically bad but that such things need to be introduced carefully.

People don't know science though so everything is turning into "if it's not found in nature it is a monster and unclean", which to be honest is fair to a degree for people who don't know being forced to accept things blindly and asked to trust that everything is fine from people who would gladly disregard dangers in exchange for a fraction of a cent in profit margin.

That doesn't mean they're making good decisions just that their fear is justified.

I'm sure I'm simplifying things, but I think this ban is common practice at this point in most of the EU, Canada.

Where else is hypercouloring cereal common?

THE SAME NUMBER OF SOYBEANS ARE GETTING CONSUMED.

If China is buying South American soybeans instead of US soybeans than whoever was buying from South America is going to buy from the US because it's not like 8 million tons of soybeans per month are magically getting created in Brazil.

It's not that there will be no market effect but it's pretty close to a zero sum game because the global production and consumption of soy really isn't changing that much.

> china

China imports only 21% of it's soy from america. Down from 40% 5y back.

America consistently exports only half of its soy output. The other half is all used domestically.

To be clear, almost all soy in the world is used for animal feed, not for humans to consume. My exact knowledge of poultry is limited, but I believe broiler chickens are made possible (3kg in 50 days) only because of a diet consisting of a certain kind of corn and certain kind of soy.

> We can start planting other things

American farms and the entire supply chain is pretty hardwired to corn and soy, for the same reasons punjab/haryana farms are hardwired to rice (even tho it's arid land, rice isn't even native, thus uses up groundwater too fast).

Government-set/subsidized price floors, insurance, storage programs specifically for 4 program crops, of which one was corn, and to which soy was a later addition. India has the same thing for rice etc.

Soy/corn rotation also caused extreme lock-in, since soy leaves a lot of nitrogen in the soil after harvest, and corn needs a lot of nitrogen.

There are many other factors, but essentially, the entire farm supply chain is locked in to corn/soy in most American farmland similar to how most punjab/haryana supply chain is stuck in rice/wheat alternation and resulting farmland/aquifer overuse.

In america too corn soy are not native. And the excess nitrogen goes down the rivers and causes hypoxia in the gulf of (mexico|america). Very symmetric problem.

It's extremely expensive to get them to grow anything different. For starters, removing the price floors and such is electoral suicide. Most of the farmers (that remain) depend on these things heavily. You can complete the rest...

More random stats: 40% of us corn goes to animal feed, 40% goes to ethanol (for blending with petrol among other things), and the rest is other stuff.

Even more: 70% of soy goes to animal feed, primarily broiler chicken, 15% goes to oil. Margarine, processed crap, lots of fried goods, all use this. I think you can even make plastic with it. I forgot what the other 15% was... And the people actually eating tofu, soy milk, etc are a tiny percentage and don't even register.

Not against removing unnecessary stuff from food, but lets be real about the effects.

Also, everything is a chemical.

A subset of both natural and artificial chemicals cause cancer, we should identify those carcinogens and not eat those. At least not too much.