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For years every Easter and spring season, Americans stuff their baskets with Peeps, these little neon marshmallow chicks (and sometimes bunnies) coated in petroleum-based synthetic dyes that the FDA has not formally reviewed for safety since (depending on the color) the 1960s, \u201970s, or \u201980s. For Scott Faber, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, that makes the humble Peep something unexpected: a symbol of progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeeps are a food chemical success story,\u201d Faber told Fortune while trying to stifle a chuckle, before adding: \u201cI\u2019m sure no one has said those words before.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he meant it seriously. When California passed Assembly Bill 418 in 2023\u2014the law that opponents incorrectly dubbed the \u201cSkittles bill\u201d\u2014Just Born, the maker of Peeps (which did not respond to Fortune\u2019s requests for comment), was one of the first candy companies to commit to removing Red Dye No. 3, a synthetic color linked to cancer. \u201cThey moved faster than any other company,\u201d Faber said, \u201cand showed that companies can quickly reformulate when they\u2019re required to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Required. That word is doing a lot of work in the food dye debate right now, and it sits at the center of a major argument over whether MAHA\u2019s approach to cleaning up the American food supply is working.<\/p>\n
The Peeps paradox<\/p>\n
The candy at the center of this policy fight is, by almost any objective measure, controversial on its own, before anyone mentions a single dye.<\/p>\n
New Curion research conducted in February 2026 and drawn from three separate polls totaling more than 19,000 U.S. consumers shows the \u201cPeeps paradox.\u201d Nearly half the country (comprising 24.2% who\u00a0love\u00a0them and 23.3% who\u00a0like\u00a0them) hold positive feelings toward the candy. The other side is equally committed: 17.4% don\u2019t like them; 8.1% actively hate them. However, when Curion surveyed more than 8,000 consumers on\u00a0why\u00a0they purchase Peeps, personal taste barely made the list. Nearly one-third (32.9%) cited holiday tradition as their primary motivation. Another 28.4% buy them as basket fillers or gifts. Nostalgia drove 23.4% of purchases, and 25.2% buy them for family members who enjoy them. In short, Peeps are less a snack than a seasonal obligation, purchased out of ritual by people who may not eat a single one.<\/p>\n
But it was the\u00a0color, not the texture or taste, that first made Peeps a public health target. In April 2023, Consumer Reports alerted consumers that pink and purple Peeps contained Red Dye No. 3, a synthetic color it described as a known carcinogen, one that had been banned from cosmetics since 1990 because of cancer effects observed in rats, yet remained permitted in food. By 2024, Just Born had removed Red Dye No. 3 from its formulas. The yellow Peep still contains Yellow No. 5. The blue ones still contain Blue No. 1. The neon palette that defines the brand, and the tradition, and the ritual, and the hate, remains largely intact, for now, and that\u2019s because nothing is required to change.<\/p>\n
The FDA is making it voluntary<\/p>\n
The Make America Healthy Again movement, led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called petroleum-based synthetic dyes a public health crisis. But Faber is blunt about what MAHA has actually accomplished at the federal level: nothing. \u201cSo far, and I\u2019m underlining\u00a0so far, the FDA has not banned a single chemical from any of our food,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been the states that have been leading the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t entirely a criticism of MAHA. Faber acknowledges that state laws in California, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas have created something the food industry privately welcomes: some guidelines. \u201cFood industry leaders are celebrating because someone has finally established a floor,\u201d he said. \u201cCompanies aren\u2019t going to create two versions of their food: one for West Virginia and one for the rest of us. In part because other states are starting to follow suit.\u201d Without a floor, he argued, it\u2019s a race to the bottom. Kellogg\u2019s won\u2019t voluntarily drop synthetic colors as long as General Mills still uses them, for example.<\/p>\n
The deeper problem, in Faber\u2019s view, is structural. \u201cThe FDA has been asleep at the switch for many decades,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve allowed the vast majority of new food chemicals to enter commerce without being reviewed for safety, and they rarely, if ever, review the chemicals we\u2019re already eating.\u201d Americans eat thousands of chemicals that cannot be added to food in other countries, Faber said, not because the science cleared them, but because no one checked.<\/p>\n
At odds with what\u2019s actually safe<\/p>\n
Sean McBride, founder of DSM Strategic Communications and former executive vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, sees the same gap but draws the opposite conclusion. If RFK Jr. believes these dyes are poisoning children, McBride argued, the law requires him to act like it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you determine that a certain food ingredient is poison or is poisoning people, you would be obligated to move heaven and earth to somehow take care of that issue,\u201d McBride told Fortune. \u201cBut instead, we have this terrible strategy where you essentially beg food companies to do things voluntarily, scare the heck out of consumers, go to a handful of states and say take matters into your own hands, and what you\u2019ve done is created anarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contradiction he keeps returning to: The FDA has deemed these dyes safe, and Kennedy is overriding his own agency\u2019s standing guidance without changing a single rule. \u201cYour agency says they\u2019re safe. You\u2019re saying they\u2019re not. What is a person to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
His answer to why MAHA won\u2019t pursue formal rule-making is because they can\u2019t win. \u201cThe reason you\u2019re begging or bullying companies to drop these ingredients is because you know that if you actually put them through the rigor of the federal rule-making process, the science will not support what you\u2019re trying to do,\u201d McBride said. He referenced the post-Chevron era when the Supreme Court no longer defers to agency expertise in regulatory disputes, meaning any formal dye ban could be immediately challenged and likely struck down. The courts, he noted, have already put temporary injunctions on both West Virginia\u2019s dye ban and Texas\u2019s ultra-processed food labeling bill, with rulings harsh enough that likely mean neither law will survive.<\/p>\n
The states are moving anyway<\/p>\n
Jennifer Pomeranz, a public health law professor at NYU, splits the difference between Faber and McBride, saying MAHA\u2019s voluntary approach is actually working, not despite the chaos, but through it.<\/p>\n
\u201cKennedy has just proposed voluntary changes, and the states are the ones actually implementing bans,\u201d she told Fortune. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of great, because it\u2019s bipartisan and it\u2019s already happened in many states, so that might make the change nationally.\u201d The historical parallel she reaches for is trans fat: Companies were removing it from products well before any federal mandate, because public pressure and state action created enough market momentum. The same dynamic is unfolding now.<\/p>\n
Unlike McBride, her concern is not that MAHA is moving too aggressively, but that the federal government might ultimately preempt state dye bans and then fail to act. \u201cThat would be contrary to MAHA but consistent with MAGA,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to know what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SNAP problem<\/p>\n
This weekend, a SNAP recipient in 22 states cannot use their benefits to buy the same Peeps a non-SNAP shopper can grab off the shelf beside them. For Faber, that reveals MAHA\u2019s true priorities. \u201cIf Republicans were really interested in helping poor people build healthy diets, they would have\u00a0increased\u00a0the SNAP benefit, not cut it,\u201d he said. \u201cCongressional Republicans are much more interested in punishing poor people than helping make sure they can afford healthy foods.\u201d Eliminating SNAP Ed, the nutrition education funding, while restricting what benefits can buy, he argues, removes the tools people need while also narrowing their choices.<\/p>\n
McBride focuses on the practical failure. Retailers in waiver states are going \u201ccrazy,\u201d he said; they can\u2019t tag products, can\u2019t determine what counts as a soda or a candy, and some state legislatures are now scrambling to write new bills just to define terms. \u201cWhat possible good does banning these items actually do? It\u2019s a shift at checkout.\u00a0A SNAP recipient just moves them out of the EBT part and pays for them with cash.\u201d He points to Chile, where a decade of junk-food taxes and black-label warnings changed the market basket. Consumers bought 8% less of targeted products, but childhood obesity went up 30% anyway. \u201cYou\u2019ve proven you can change a market basket,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you haven\u2019t changed public health. So what are we doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are forgetting history,\u201d Pomeranz said. \u201cInitially, Democrats used to propose these kinds of SNAP restrictions, and there were both Republican and Democratic states that proposed them, all rejected by USDA under both Republican and Democratic presidents. It\u2019s disingenuous for public health to now be up in arms about what was being proposed by public health people not that long ago.\u201d She drew a line at candy and sugary beverages: \u201cThere\u2019s no association of health benefits with any of those products,\u201d but says that expanding restrictions further, into snacks or prepared foods, crosses into different territory. \u201cI think a kid deserves a birthday cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s dye bans, SNAP restrictions, or labeling mandates, the real question isn\u2019t which lever to pull, it\u2019s whether any lever actually improves health outcomes. Overall, and all three experts agree, the current food safety framework is broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is saying, \u2018I want more cancer with my candy,\u2019\u201d Faber said. \u201cThis is a question of whether things that should be safe\u00a0are\u00a0safe, and unfortunately, many of the chemicals that we eat are either unsafe or have never been reviewed for safety by someone we can all trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Peeps #food #chemical #success #story #experts #question #MAHAs #push #dyes #Easter #candy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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