Red dye number 3 has been banned.
My first thought upon hearing the news was, “What the heck is that?” My second, after a quick Google, was whether I should stockpile in my basement a stash of maraschino cherries, double bubble gum, Brach’s jelly beans, candy conversation hearts, Fruit Loops and — be still, my heart! — as many bags of candy corn as I could find.
After filling my entire car up with these precious reserves at Costco, I got to thinking — is this stuff really that bad for you? Let’s take a look at the real numbers behind this ban.
The official line is that the Food and Drug Administration banned red dye number 3 due to the Delaney clause, which says that the FDA cannot allow a food additive if it has been found to cause cancer in animals or humans. However, the FDA is a little late to the game. It’s been 30 years since a study found that the additive caused cancer in rats.
But let’s take a look at that study, which was done on animals, not people.
In the 1980s, a tiny study involving just 70 rats showed that if Red dye number 3 comprised 4 percent of their diet — which is a lot of candy corn — then about 20 percent of them would develop (mostly benign) thyroid tumors.
For comparison, Ozempic has the same issue, and nobody’s banning that magical elixir.
Does this, statistically speaking, convince me that my morning Fruit Loops, afternoon Brach’s jellybeans and occasional Shirley temple are going to cause me to have thyroid cancer? Not in the least. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that I would have to eat 100 cups of candy corn every day for red dye number 3 to be 4 percent of my diet. If I were to do that, I would surely die long before thyroid cancer became an issue for me.
But what about red dye number 3 causing hyperactivity in children? In 2023, California banned it after reviewing of studies suggesting such a connection. But many of these studies only looked at children who had previously been diagnosed as hyperactive. In those studies, there was no statistically significant finding between hyperactivity and ingestion of the dye — which is to say, the dye doesn’t make any difference if you already have ADD or ADHD.
More interestingly, in all of the studies that did show a correlation between children having a worsening attention issue and ingestion of red dye number 3, it was based on subjective parent and teacher evaluations. On aggregate, teachers saw no statistically significant change, whereas some parents saw a slight change.
Look, I get it. They’re your kids, and you think you know them best. But do you really? The teacher spends seven to nine hours a day with them, whereas most of the time you are getting them ready for school for an hour and putting them to bed a few hours after they get home. So I have to hand it to the teachers on this one.
So overall, statistically speaking, I don’t really see a good argument for red dye number 3 causing attention issues for children.
Now, if they can make my candy corn taste the same without red dye number 3, then sure — more power to them. But that gets me thinking: Are there things we really should be worried about?
And the answer is yes, but no one is talking about them. In fact, a lot of people are making fun of them.
I mentioned Ozempic before. For every pound of excess body fat you gain annually, you increase your cancer risk by 38 percent. So if you gain just one pound per year over 15 years, your risk of cancer becomes 125 times greater.
Red dye number 3 ain’t got nothing on that — its not even in the same stratosphere.
Is the FDA way too slow and probably too corrupt to protect you from danger? Perhaps. But do you really need to be worried about red dye number 3? Not really.
What is the single largest contributing factor to bad health that you really truly should be worried about? Gaining excess weight.
So, whatever you need to do — diet, exercise and Ozempic — get on it and get on it fast. Your health does actually depend on this one. Or let’s make it easy: Take Ozempic, eat what you want, and die happy.
Liberty Vittert is a professor of data science at Washington University in St. Louis and the resident on-air statistician for NewsNation, a sister company of The Hill.
