For years each Easter and spring season, Individuals stuff their baskets with Peeps, these little neon marshmallow chicks (and typically bunnies) coated in petroleum-based artificial dyes that the FDA has not formally reviewed for security since (relying on the colour) the Nineteen Sixties, ’70s, or ’80s. For Scott Faber, senior vp on the Environmental Working Group, that makes the common-or-garden Peep one thing surprising: an emblem of progress.
“Peeps are a food chemical success story,” Faber instructed Fortune whereas making an attempt to stifle a chuckle, earlier than including: “I’m sure no one has said those words before.”
However he meant it significantly. When California handed Meeting Invoice 418 in 2023—the regulation that opponents incorrectly dubbed the “Skittles bill”—Simply Born, the maker of Peeps (which didn’t reply to Fortune’s requests for remark), was one of many first sweet firms to decide to eradicating Crimson Dye No. 3, an artificial coloration linked to most cancers. “They moved faster than any other company,” Faber mentioned, “and showed that companies can quickly reformulate when they’re required to do so.”
Required. That phrase is doing numerous work within the meals dye debate proper now, and it sits on the heart of a serious argument over whether or not MAHA’s method to cleansing up the American meals provide is working.
The Peeps paradox
The sweet on the heart of this coverage struggle is, by nearly any goal measure, controversial by itself, earlier than anybody mentions a single dye.
New Curion analysis performed in February 2026 and drawn from three separate polls totaling greater than 19,000 U.S. shoppers reveals the “Peeps paradox.” Almost half the nation (comprising 24.2% who love them and 23.3% who like them) maintain optimistic emotions towards the sweet. The opposite facet is equally dedicated: 17.4% don’t like them; 8.1% actively hate them. Nevertheless, when Curion surveyed greater than 8,000 shoppers on why they buy Peeps, private style barely made the record. Almost one-third (32.9%) cited vacation custom as their main motivation. One other 28.4% purchase them as basket fillers or items. Nostalgia drove 23.4% of purchases, and 25.2% purchase them for relations who take pleasure in them. Briefly, Peeps are much less a snack than a seasonal obligation, bought out of formality by individuals who could not eat a single one.
However it was the coloration, not the feel or style, that first made Peeps a public well being goal. In April 2023, Shopper Stories alerted shoppers that pink and purple Peeps contained Crimson Dye No. 3, an artificial coloration it described as a identified carcinogen, one which had been banned from cosmetics since 1990 due to most cancers results noticed in rats, but remained permitted in meals. By 2024, Simply Born had eliminated Crimson Dye No. 3 from its formulation. The yellow Peep nonetheless incorporates Yellow No. 5. The blue ones nonetheless include Blue No. 1. The neon palette that defines the model, and the custom, and the ritual, and the hate, stays largely intact, for now, and that’s as a result of nothing is required to vary.
The FDA is making it voluntary
The Make America Wholesome Once more motion, led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has known as petroleum-based artificial dyes a public well being disaster. However Faber is blunt about what MAHA has truly completed on the federal degree: nothing. “So far, and I’m underlining so far, the FDA has not banned a single chemical from any of our food,” he mentioned. “It’s been the states that have been leading the way.”
That isn’t fully a criticism of MAHA. Faber acknowledges that state legal guidelines in California, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas have created one thing the meals business privately welcomes: some pointers. “Food industry leaders are celebrating because someone has finally established a floor,” he mentioned. “Companies aren’t 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.” With no flooring, he argued, it’s a race to the underside. Kellogg’s received’t voluntarily drop artificial colours so long as Basic Mills nonetheless makes use of them, for instance.
The deeper drawback, in Faber’s view, is structural. “The FDA has been asleep at the switch for many decades,” he mentioned. “They’ve 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’re already eating.” Individuals eat hundreds of chemical substances that can’t be added to meals in different international locations, Faber mentioned, not as a result of the science cleared them, however as a result of nobody checked.
At odds with what’s truly protected
Sean McBride, founding father of DSM Strategic Communications and former government vp of the Grocery Producers Affiliation, sees the identical hole however attracts the alternative conclusion. If RFK Jr. believes these dyes are poisoning youngsters, McBride argued, the regulation requires him to behave prefer it.
“If 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,” McBride instructed Fortune. “But 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’ve done is created anarchy.”
The contradiction he retains returning to: The FDA has deemed these dyes protected, and Kennedy is overriding his personal company’s standing steerage with out altering a single rule. “Your agency says they’re safe. You’re saying they’re not. What is a person to do?”
His reply to why MAHA received’t pursue formal rule-making is as a result of they’ll’t win. “The reason you’re 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’re trying to do,” McBride mentioned. He referenced the post-Chevron period when the Supreme Court docket now not defers to company experience in regulatory disputes, that means any formal dye ban may very well be instantly challenged and sure struck down. The courts, he famous, have already put momentary injunctions on each West Virginia’s dye ban and Texas’s ultra-processed meals labeling invoice, with rulings harsh sufficient that probably imply neither regulation will survive.
The states are transferring anyway
Jennifer Pomeranz, a public well being regulation professor at NYU, splits the distinction between Faber and McBride, saying MAHA’s voluntary method is definitely working, not regardless of the chaos, however by means of it.
“Kennedy has just proposed voluntary changes, and the states are the ones actually implementing bans,” she instructed Fortune. “It’s kind of great, because it’s bipartisan and it’s already happened in many states, so that might make the change nationally.” The historic parallel she reaches for is trans fats: Firms have been eradicating it from merchandise nicely earlier than any federal mandate, as a result of public strain and state motion created sufficient market momentum. The identical dynamic is unfolding now.
Not like McBride, her concern is just not that MAHA is transferring too aggressively, however that the federal authorities may finally preempt state dye bans after which fail to behave. “That would be contrary to MAHA but consistent with MAGA,” she mentioned. “It’s hard to know what’s going to happen.”
The SNAP drawback
This weekend, a SNAP recipient in 22 states can’t use their advantages to purchase the identical Peeps a non-SNAP shopper can seize off the shelf beside them. For Faber, that reveals MAHA’s true priorities. “If Republicans were really interested in helping poor people build healthy diets, they would have increased the SNAP benefit, not cut it,” he mentioned. “Congressional Republicans are much more interested in punishing poor people than helping make sure they can afford healthy foods.” Eliminating SNAP Ed, the diet training funding, whereas limiting what advantages should purchase, he argues, removes the instruments individuals want whereas additionally narrowing their selections.
McBride focuses on the sensible failure. Retailers in waiver states are going “crazy,” he mentioned; they’ll’t tag merchandise, can’t decide what counts as a soda or a sweet, and a few state legislatures are actually scrambling to write down new payments simply to outline phrases. “What possible good does banning these items actually do? It’s a shift at checkout. A SNAP recipient just moves them out of the EBT part and pays for them with cash.” He factors to Chile, the place a decade of junk-food taxes and black-label warnings modified the market basket. Shoppers purchased 8% much less of focused merchandise, however childhood weight problems went up 30% anyway. “You’ve proven you can change a market basket,” he mentioned. “But you haven’t changed public health. So what are we doing?”
“People are forgetting history,” Pomeranz mentioned. “Initially, 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’s disingenuous for public health to now be up in arms about what was being proposed by public health people not that long ago.” She drew a line at sweet and sugary drinks: “There’s no association of health benefits with any of those products,” however says that increasing restrictions additional, into snacks or ready meals, crosses into completely different territory. “I think a kid deserves a birthday cake.”
Whether or not it’s dye bans, SNAP restrictions, or labeling mandates, the actual query isn’t which lever to tug, it’s whether or not any lever truly improves well being outcomes. General, and all three consultants agree, the present meals security framework is damaged.
“No one is saying, ‘I want more cancer with my candy,’” Faber mentioned. “This is a question of whether things that should be safe are safe, 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.”
