#food-policy

#food-policy

The big box retailer is the latest company to join a slew of others to cut back on additives under White House pressure. Walmart will remove synthetic dyes from its private-label foods in the United States, including the Great Value and Bettergoods brands, by January 2027. The big box retailer's decision, announced on Wednesday, is the latest in a slew made by several other companies amid pressure from President Donald Trump's administration to drop dyes from food products.

Parents are worried not just about getting food on the table, but whether that food is good for their kids. That's partly why Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again campaign resonates with so many people: If the American food supply can be purged of its unhealthiest elements, surely it will be easier for parents to feel good about feeding their children. But instead, MAHA may be piling on the stress.

From traditional borek pastries to soups of all sorts, sausages and pasta, to slices of melon and rich puddings anybody who's ever been to Turkey on vacation is well acquainted with the many and varied delights of the typical breakfast buffet, particularly those found in Turkish tourist hot spots. Turkish hotels understand the allure of the buffet and will often decorate their websites with pictures of this kind of culinary offering.

Earlier this month, the wellness entrepreneur Calley Means delivered opening remarks at a symposium called "The Future of Farming: Exploring a Pro-Health, Pro-Farmer Agenda," held in Washington, D.C., at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. Means is prominent in Make America Healthy Again, the clean-eating, vaccine-skeptical movement that opposes corruption in the food, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries. He is also a top adviser to MAHA's patron saint, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

"I don't know how the list of chemicals was constructed. Warnings have to be accurate in order to be legal," said Thomas Galligan, emphasizing the importance of truthful labeling in the new law.

"Malnutrition can stunt growth and lead to obesity," she said, pointing to a 2022 study by the Turkish Statistical Institute showing that 62.4% of children in Turkey predominantly eat bread and pasta.

"Nothing that we're asking for is impossible or out of the ordinary at all," said Natasha Nicholes, founder and executive director of the We Sow We Grow Project, an urban farm in Chicago's West Pullman neighborhood.

The difference in Froot Loops' colors in the U.S. and Canada highlights a potential shift in consumer preferences, with growing pressure for natural alternatives.