You may no longer be able to “taste the rainbow” in California.
One of the state’s lawmakers is proposing a ban on additives used in several candies — including Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Pez and jelly beans — as they are linked to cancer, organ damage, and can be harmful to DNA, the Daily Mail reported.
Additionally, Trident sugar-free gum is at risk along with more savory items like Campbell’s Soup and small bread brands.
“Californians shouldn’t have to worry that the food they buy in their neighborhood grocery store might be full of dangerous additives or toxic chemicals,” Los Angeles-based Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who proposed the ban in a bill, said in a statement.
Gabriel’s legislation specifically targets five substances: propylparaben, Red dye 3, brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate and titanium dioxide. The latter three have already been banned within the European Union.
Not only would this law prevent their sale, but also would ban food products being manufactured with those ingredients throughout the Golden State.
“This bill will correct for a concerning lack of federal oversight and help protect our kids, public health, and the safety of our food supply,” Gabriel added.
“The idea here is for [companies] to change their recipes,” he told the outlet, adding that he speculates a uniform recipe change for the sweets and foods rather than Cali-custom batches.
Last year, Skittles’ maker Mars had been sued by a consumer over the use of titanium dioxide — a color-enhancing ingredient. Although the suit was tossed, experts have found concerns from the dioxide.
In 2015, researches — published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature — found that titanium dioxide had potential to accumulate in a person’s bloodstream, liver, spleen and kidneys.
As for Red dye 3, 2012 research links the ingredient to DNA damaging genotoxicity, In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that children who consumed the dye were more likely to be hyperactive and inattentive.
The Mail reported that brominated vegetable oil was also recently removed from Mountain Dew by parent company Pepsi in 2020.
The EU, along with Canada and Brazil banned potassium bromate because of links to both thyroid and kidney cancers.