Were Skittles Banned In California?

Various media outlets such as the Daily Mail are claiming that last October, California approved an historic ‘Skittles ban’ that outlawed certain food additives linked to cancer and fertility issues.¹ While the California government did recently propose a ban on certain food chemicals, this ban would affect a large number of food products.

Origin of the Skittles Ban Claim

One of the food additives proposed for the ban was titanium dioxide. Skittles contain titanium dioxide and so would be subject to such a ban. However, many other products contain this ingredient. Since Skittles is a very well-known and popular candy, it became the “poster child” for this ban, leading to media stories of a fictional Skittles ban in California.

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Now, however, the final version of the law doesn’t even include titanium dioxide, meaning that presumably, Skittles is off the hook. Skittles does use two food colors that are often listed in proposed bans, Red 40 and Yellow 6. Neither of these are on California’s list. In other words, there is no Skittle ban in California.

The California Food Safety Act

The law in discussion is the California Food Safety Act, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 7, 2023. The law prohibits any person from manufacturing, selling, delivering, distributing, holding, or offering for sale, in commerce a food product for human consumption that contains any of the following substances:

1. Brominated vegetable oil (BVO)
2. Potassium bromate
3. Propylparaben
4. Red dye 3

Skittles does not contain any of these ingredients, but many other products could be affected.

To be clear, California is not trying to ban any product from the state. Instead, the law is designed to force food and beverage manufacturers to reformulate their products. While the law has been signed, it doesn’t go into effect until 2027, giving food companies more than enough time to reformulate.

Since Europe has already banned some of these same additives, major food manufacturers have already changed their ingredients for the versions of their products sold there.

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Although this ban is in California, it will affect the product in the entire nation. A candy maker or other food maker cannot have a different formula just for one state, so the action of one state, in effect, becomes a ban for the entire nation. Usually, this is the job of the FDA, not individual states, so the National Confectioners Association is very much not in favor of the California law, stating that it leads to inconsistent laws and confusion among consumers:

This law replaces a uniform national food safety system with a patchwork of inconsistent state requirements…We should be relying on the scientific rigor of the FDA in terms of evaluating the safety of food ingredients and additives.

Of course, the FDA is painfully slow in changing the approval status of a food additive, even when such a change has been proposed, while individual states act much more quickly through legislative acts. ¹,²

Snack Foods Being Banned In Several States

Since the new California law was enacted, several other states have proposed their own copycat bans on certain food additives, including New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, and Missouri. This has led to sensational headlines proclaiming that your favorite snack foods, including M&Ms, Doritos, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and others are being banned in several states.

Again, these are not food bans, but specific food additive bans, none of which have been officially adopted.

These proposed bans include 13 food additives, many of which have already been banned in Europe. However, each state’s list includes different additives. As far as I can tell, all of these proposals are still in committee in their prospective states and have not been advanced to the full legislatures.

Some of the food additives on the bans include

Brominated Vegetable Oil
Potassium Bromate
Propylparaben
Azodicarbonamide
Butylated hydroxyanisole
Titanium Dioxide
Red No. 3
Red No. 40
Yellow No. 5 and 6

The New York bill, which is still in the Agriculture Committee, lists brominated vegetable oil (BVO), potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye 3, azodicarbonamide, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), and titanium dioxide. However, dairy products containing titanium dioxide are excepted.

Currently, the bill is supposed to take effect immediately upon passage and singing, which would give manufacturers no time to adjust their formulas. Presumably, this effective date would be changed by the time the bill is approved (if approved).

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Are These Additives Dangerous?

The actual scientific evidence linking these additives to health concerns is mixed. Most of the loudest advocates are ‘consumer organizations’ that don’t necessarily pay attention to lack of evidence but instead overreact to scant evidence or inconsistent evidence. Still, some of the additives are concerning. Brominated vegetable oil is under review by the FDA, which has proposed revoking the approval status for this additive.

Next, I will look at some of the specific food additives on these lists. Are they dangerous to human health? What is the scientific evidence? It’s important to ask these questions. Again, media outlets have begun reporting about ‘snack food bans’ and are leaving consumers with vague information that only serves to cause fear and anger, conspiracy theories, and various questions about why ‘they’ don’t do something about it.

Meanwhile, the average consumer doesn’t know which food additives can be found in which products, and, more importantly, whether the evidence of their danger is real.

The truth is, a report could name random chemicals and everyone would have the same reaction. If you say something is bad, everyone assumes that it is bad and asks no questions about the research or evidence. If you say something is good, people balk and want evidence. We should always ask for evidence.

Again, while some of these have convincing evidence in humans (brominated vegetable oil or BVO), others do not. And no, “they banned it in Europe” is not itself scientific evidence. People also store their eggs at room temperature in Europe despite the scientific evidence that eggs go bad 7 times faster at room temperature.

The more you learn about our food supply, the less fearful you will become.

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Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO)

The FDA has proposed revoking approval for BVO due to convincing evidence that it causes thyroid issues at levels typically experienced in foods (there’s a hint there).

Do you know what kinds of foods BVO is used in so you can avoid them? This is a good place to start. Food additives have specific properties and are used for specific effects, often in only one type of product or class of products. For example, there would be no need to use BVO in snack chips.

BVO is used in beverages, in very small amounts, to keep citrus flavoring from coming out of solution and, basically, floating to the top.

Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew have already stopped using BVO in their formulas. This includes Gatorade, owned by Pepsi.

The additive must be declared on food labels either as BVO or brominated vegetable oil. Sometimes, the specific oil that was brominated is listed such as ‘brominated soybean oil.’ You can check the ingredient listings of soft drinks, sports drinks, etc.

As far as I can tell, most major brands have already removed BVO from their products or are in the process. Generic brands, however, are the ones to look out for, especially store-brand soft drinks with a citrus flavor. Sun Drop, the cirtus-flavored soda owned by Keurig Dr Pepper is one soft drink that still contains it. Here is a partial list of sodas (soft drinks) that contain brominated vegetable oil:

Sun Drop
Stars & Stripes Orange Soda (Dollar Tree)
Mountain Lightning (Walmart)
Orangette (Walmart)
Clover Valley Orange (Dollar General)
Mountain Lion (Food Lion)

BVO is not used as often in non-carbonated drinks like juices.

Why Do They Put Colors In Foods?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed to revoke the regulation authorizing the use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food on November 2, 2023. The FDA concluded that the intended use of BVO in food is no longer considered safe after the results of studies done in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. Specifically, a study called Toxicological evaluation of brominated vegetable oil in Sprague Dawley Rats found that BVO caused a buildup of bromide in the thyroid of
Sprague Dawly rates, which, at higher doses, caused thyroid follicular cell hypertrophy. This potential for thyroid toxicity expanded on earlier findings that in pigs and rates, “oral exposure to BVO is associated with increased tissue levels of inorganic and organic bromine, and that the thyroid is a potential target organ of toxicity.” ¹

The FDA had already removed the GRAS status of BVO in 1970 and since then, most major beverage makers reformulated their products, as previously mentioned.

You shouldn’t have any problem avoiding this potentially dangerous additive. Just check the ingredient listings of the beverages you buy, especially citrus-flavored carbonated beverages.

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Potassium Bromate

Potassium bromate is a food additive subject to overwrought and exaggerated claims of danger to human health. Imagine if you mixed one teaspoon of baking powder into 800 cups of flour. What effect would the baking powder have? Would you be concerned about the aluminum in the baking powder? This is approximately the amount of potassium bromate that is allowed to be used in baked goods.

Potassium bromate is used in baking doughs as an oxidizing agent. Oxidation helps dough develop strong gluten bonds which in turn helps the dough rise properly and have the right texture. This ingredient helps improve the quality of bread and other baked goods.

The FDA allows 0.0075 parts potassium bromate per every 100 parts flower, or 75 mg per one kilogram of flour.¹

When it is used properly in baked goods, it converts to potassium bromide in amounts that are too small to be harmful to humans. The residual amount of potassium bromate left depends on the oven temperature, the duration of exposure, and the quantity of potassium bromate used. ²

There have been no adverse effects found in rodents fed bread-based diets made from flour treated with potassium bromate. Carcinogenic effects have been found in rats given the chemical orally in huge doses that far exceed any exposure expected through the diet. The bigger danger to humans are when workers are exposed to high levels of the substance when working in commercial bread-making facilities.

Bakery workers in Bamenda, North West Region of Cameroon were exposed to high levels of potassium bromate and experienced painful eyes, cough, diarrhea, and sore throat. The levels of potassium bromate found was 48.5 mg/kg to 10148.5 mg/kg, which exceeds the FDA acceptable limits by 9 to 203 times. ³

In 1999, the International Agency for Research On Cancer proclaimed potassium bromate to be a possible human carcinogen. ⁴ It is banned already as a food additive in the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and the European Union. When rodents were given large amounts orally, it increased the incidence of tumors, some malignant, in the thyroid and peritoneum. ⁵,⁶

It bears repeating that there has never been any danger found from eating bread using this product, only in animals being given huge oral doses of potassium bromate and when bakery workers were exposed to many times the acceptable level of the additive. While this is not meant to be a complete overview of all the research concerning potassium bromate, reports of its danger are both overstated and understandable. While safer alternatives should probably be found, there is no reason to be particularly worried about the use of this food additive in the amounts commonly permitted for use.

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Azodicarbonamide

I’ve already written about azodicarbonamide, a food additive made famous by Van Hari aka The Food Babe when she proclaimed it a ‘yoga matt toxin used in bread.’

The EFSA, the European regulatory agency responsible for the authorization of food additives, routinely bans additives even when they themselves find weak evidence of any danger to humans. this happened with Azodicarbonamide, having to do with it being used in the plastic gasket on the underside of baby food jar lids.

When heated, a chemical called SEM was released. The EFSA found very little risk to consumers. However, the banned the use of azodicarbonamide in products coming into contact with foods and also banned its use in foods.

Azodicarbonamide is used as a dough conditioner. When azodicarbonamide reacts with flour, it is rapidly converted to biurea, which is used to make the compound. Biurea is rapidly eliminated from the body through excretion. There has been NO danger found to humans.

Yet, it’s banned in Europe, just in case. Whether or not you think this is a good idea, I hope you can see that ‘they banned it in Europe’ isn’t very meaningful in terms of convincing evidence of danger.

While I have only summarized three of the food additives on the lists, I hope that it helps you make decisions about the food your purchase. It is not my purpose to give you advice about what to eat and what not to eat. It is up to you to do your own research and make your own health decisions.