American Food Will Never Look Natural Again

Health concerns keep shrinking the roster of approved artificial dyes. But Americans still can’t seem to go cold turkey on ultra-colorful foods.

In 1856, an amateur chemist named William Henry Perkin mixed a batch of chemicals that he hoped, in vain, would yield the malaria drug quinine. When Perkin’s failed experiment turned purple, a hue so vivid that it could stain silks without fading, he realized he’d stumbled upon a different marvel of modernity: a commercially viable synthetic dye, the first of a new generation of chemicals that would revolutionize the way humans colored their clothes and, soon after, their food.

The edible versions of the chemicals, in particular, were a revelation, offering food manufacturers ”cheap and convenient” alternatives to pigments squeezed painstakingly from natural sources such as plants, says Ai Hisano, a historian and the author of Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat. Dyes could keep peas verdant after canning and sausages pink after cooking; they could turn too-green oranges more orange and light up corner-shop candy displays.