West Virginia Bans 7 Artificial Food Dyes, Citing Health Concerns

Great Article, Not Great Data.

Re: How Prevalent Are Dyes in Foods? Wall Street Journal 3-23-25

Bravo WSJ, your article highlights how our foods have been poisoned, and we at WISEcode are committed to helping consumers know what’s exactly in their food. 

But your analyses are off.

 It seems to us that you are using the USDA’s Branded Food database (from the FoodDataCentral website) which is limited in scope, out of date and relies on updates from Big Food. WISEdata™ has 745,663 foods analyzed through 32K+ ingredient terms, which is far more extensive compared to the 450,000 from USDA Branded Food database. 

But if we just stick to the dataset you analyzed, the actual data story is much worse than originally presented:

• Artificial colors are used in 17.8% (not your 13%) in the foods you evaluated (450,000 package goods, because you didn’t include pigments in your analysis.

  • So, you have left out some important ingredients including:

    • Carmine (a dye derived from insect shells)

    • Titanium Dioxide (a pigment also used in cosmetics and paints)

    • Lake pigments (often containing aluminum)

Some additional statistics about what to consider in your food:

• 31.4 % of our food uses at least one of artificial color, artificial flavor, artificial sweetener or artificial preservative (the four artificial lab-created fake ingredients).

• 29.0 % of our food uses emulsifiers (think glue for food)

• 29.4 % of our food are ultra-processed

How do we know? After a decade, WISEcode™, a leading foodtech company, has built the world’s best comprehensive nutrition data base with 15,000 attributes on each of the 650,000 foods in our WISEdata™. But while we are working with the world’s best nutrition research institutes to advance the world’s knowledge about what is truly in our foods, we’re also focused on empowering the everyday consumer trying to make a healthy choice.