JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Trump administration hopes to eliminate potentially harmful synthetic dyes used to give foods, drinks and medicines vivid color. At a recent press event, Food and Drug Administration head Marty Makary held up a glass of pink liquid, telling the food industry that switching to all-natural alternatives should be easy.
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MARTY MAKARY: Try watermelon juice.
SUMMERS: But is it that simple? NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Mark Oliverio packs a lot of pickled peppers and Italian sauces. He owns Oliverio Peppers and its football field-size factory in Clarksburg, West Virginia, churning out 18,000 jars a day.
MARK OLIVERIO: My father started it in 1972.
NOGUCHI: Five years ago, his grocery chain customers pointed to demand for more all-natural products. They asked Oliverio if he could remove the yellow dye No. 5 he'd used in his bright yellow banana peppers. So Oliverio ran kitchen experiments. First, he used powdered turmeric root, the spice that makes curry so easily stain clothes.
OLIVERIO: It took me a little while to get the color exact because within six to eight weeks in the jar, it would start lightening up. So the first year, we had a little bit of a tough time. And it was mainly 'cause we were using the powdered form, which didn't hold its color as long.
NOGUCHI: He then found a liquid turmeric dye that was pricier and required more quantity but worked perfectly.
OLIVERIO: It is a little bit more expensive to use the turmeric, but we were able to take the yellow dye No. 5 off our label.
NOGUCHI: Doing so five years ago put Oliverio ahead of the curve. Europe and Canada since adopted stricter food dye rules. The U.S. banned red dye No. 3 in January, and now the Trump administration says it wants food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries to voluntarily eliminate all petroleum-based dyes by the end of next year. The FDA recently approved three new all-natural dyes for manufacturers to use instead. But switching isn't necessarily simple. Melissa Wright is a food safety expert at Virginia Tech University. She says extracting large volumes of color from natural sources is far more complex than mixing chemical dyes.
MELISSA WRIGHT: You're using, you know, red cabbage extract in place of red 40. You're going to have to plant and harvest and extract raw material to get to that naturally derived color alternative, right? So first of all, you have to be able to source it.
NOGUCHI: Wright says, some colors, like yellow, have lots of common natural analogs like turmeric, paprika and annatto - not so with blue.
WRIGHT: Blues are going to be the really hard one. Blue, there's not a lot of naturally sourced supply. It's going to be limited, and that's going to make a difference as to what the cost is to reformulation.
NOGUCHI: It's the same for green because it's a mix of blue and yellow. Cooking is another challenge.
WRIGHT: These naturally derived colors tend to not be as stable, especially with heat or acid. So if you're adding them to acidic sodas or you're adding them to products that you have to heat, it's going to become a problem because they're just not going to be as vivid as the customer's used to seeing.
NOGUCHI: Loyal consumers can vocally revolt when cherry flavors suddenly turn dull purple or cheese snacks appear more rust-colored than safety-tape yellow.
WRIGHT: When I eat Doritos and Cheetos, I have that orange dust on my fingers, right? And if you don't have that, is it really a Doritos-eating experience, you know?
NOGUCHI: Mark Oliverio sees that preference for color with pickles too. The cauliflower he dyes bright yellow with turmeric sells far better than his vegetable mixed with no dye at all.
OLIVERIO: But I will tell you that my cauliflower sells way more. So people like that. They like that color. Ninety percent of the people eat with their eyes, and I think 90% of the people don't read and don't care what's in that jar.
NOGUCHI: Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
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