California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday.
The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 — potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group.
The legislation was popularly known as the “Skittles ban” because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance.
The FDA was created to enforce standards of sanitation and prevent false advertising in medicine (e.g. snake oil). The whole, “banning toxic additives” came later after science started understanding physiological dependence and addictive substances (e.g. actual coke in Coca-Cola).
Really, the FDA is an evolution of a lot of preceding government bodies and there’s a lot of history involved that they don’t cover in school 🤷