Fans of President-elect Donald Trump are feeling vindicated on social media after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would ban the use of an artificial coloring dye amid concerns that it can cause cancer in lab animals.
The FDA announced the ban on Red Dye No. 3 on Wednesday, which gives food and beverages their bright cherry-red color, according to media reports.
These concerns are not new, with calls to stop the usage of the synthetic dye dating to at least three decades ago, according to the Associated Press. The FDA banned its use in cosmetics in 1990 because of cancer concerns in lab animals, too, but the ingredient was still allowed in food.
While health experts praised the move, many Trump’s fans took this as a vindication for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who they claim has been warning about the artificial dye all along.
“The FDA is banning Red Dye 3, citing cancer concerns. RFK effect,” tweeted an account to its 3.4 million followers on X. The tweet included a TikTok video of RFK warning about harmful ingredients that go into popular foods like cereals, although the post was talking about Yellow Dye No. 5, not Red Dye No. 3.
Yellow Dye No. 5 was not part of the new FDA ban.
“Better late than never, but RFK’s been right all along,” said another user.
“RFK effect for sure! He’s been after these for decades! Great to see the government finally ban these dangerous ingredient[s]!” said one user.
Removing artificial dyes is not necessarily a partisan issue. It’s already been a liberal cause for some time.
California’s ban on Red Dye No. 3 will take effect in January 2027, following a 2023 law targeting food additives. It was the first U.S. state to do so. Last year, it also announced a ban on other additives in public schools, including Yellow Dye No. 5, which RFK flagged in his video.
While some supporters may see this as a vindication for a controversial public figure, RFK Jr. has often been criticized for promoting false medical claims, including a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was engineered to target certain ethnicities, which he raised during a press event in New York in 2023.
“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy reportedly said, according to the New York Post.
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
This, however, is not true, as pointed out by epidemiologist Eleanor Murray in Scientific American. “As with Kennedy’s nonsensical assertion about Jewish and Chinese people, these claims have been refuted by the data. COVID cases and deaths reveal that the likely drivers of differential susceptibility during the pandemic were poverty and having a job that made one more exposed to the COVID-causing virus.”
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