Four Dangerous Food Additives Banned in California

“This is a milestone in food safety, and California is once again leading the nation,” says Ken Cook, EWG president. “We applaud Gov. Newsom for signing this landmark bill and putting the health of Californians before the interests of industry. California is creating a healthier market for consumers.”

For now, these substances remain as additives in hundreds of common supermarket foods and drinks found throughout much of the U.S., according to the EWG’s Food Scores database. Examples include sports drinks and citrus-flavored sodas (BVO), packaged breads (potassium bromate), corn tortillas and baked goods (propyl paraben), and many types of artificially flavored and colored candy (Red Dye No. 3). 

Safety advocates have urged state lawmakers to ban these chemicals because, they say, the federal Food and Drug Administration does not adequately regulate food additives. “California has taken an important stand for food safety at a time when the FDA has been very slow to take action,” Ronholm says. 

The four substances in question have been used in food for decades, and opponents of the California legislation noted that most have been evaluated and approved for use by the FDA. But those approvals are now decades old, and new evidence has changed the scientific understanding of the additives, their health effects, and the ways that chemicals can affect human health over time. 

Sarah Gallo, vice president of product policy at the Consumer Brands Association, an industry group, told CR that the law “sets a dangerous precedent for circumventing our country’s science and risk-based reviews that prioritize consumer health and safety. Consumer Brands will continue advocating for oversight from qualified experts, scientists, and regulators to support public health, build consumer trust, and promote consumer choice.” And a spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association said that the “bill will undermine consumer confidence and create confusion around food safety,” adding that “this is a slippery slope that the FDA could prevent by engaging on this important topic.”

CR senior scientist Michael Hansen, PhD, says hundreds of peer-reviewed studies linking the banned additives to health risks have been published in recent decades, none of which were considered in the FDA’s previous reviews. The FDA’s European counterpart banned the four chemicals, among others, after conducting a comprehensive re-evaluation of the safety of all food additives. 

The FDA banned Red Dye No. 3 for use in cosmetics more than 30 years ago because it was found to cause cancer in lab animals, but still allows its use in food. 

Another of the chemicals, propyl paraben, entered the food system in 1972 through the GRAS loophole, short for “generally recognized as safe.” The FDA created the GRAS designation in 1958 so manufacturers could use common ingredients like vinegar and baking soda without submitting a formal food additive petition or triggering a rigorous premarket safety review. Since 1997, companies do not have to tell the FDA that they’ve self-determined their chemicals to be GRAS before putting them in food. A category created to be a narrow exception thus became the rule: Of all new chemicals added to the U.S. food supply since 2000, 756 out of 766 came in as GRAS, according to a 2022 study by the EWG. 

The bill initially included a fifth substance, titanium dioxide, but it was dropped from the bill during the legislative process, amid criticism that the law as initially drafted amounted to a ban of popular candy brands like Skittles, which contain the additive. 

In fact, backers of the law note, all the substances banned by the California Food Safety Act—as well as titanium dioxide—can be replaced with less risky alternatives that will not add significantly, if at all, to consumer prices. Many mainstream consumer brands stopped using these ingredients years ago. And some companies that still use these ingredients in the U.S. produce versions of the same products without them for European markets, where they’re banned. Pez candies sold in the U.S. and Canada contain Red Dye No. 3, for example, while those sold in Europe are colored with fruit and plant concentrates. 

“Safer versions of food products that are available in other countries should be made available to U.S. consumers, too,” says Ronholm.

Meanwhile, the best way to avoid these chemicals is to read the ingredient list of the foods you eat. If the chemicals are in the food, they must be listed. You can also look up ingredients of thousands of food products and search them by brand or category using the EWG’s Food Scores database. 

But looking up everything before you eat it can be challenging, so keep in mind the kinds of foods these additives are most often used in candy, sodas, sports drinks, packaged breads, tortillas, cookies and other baked goods, and shredded cheese, especially in generic store brands.