August 21, 2025 • 17 mins
The Trump Administration wants to “make America healthy again” and one of its top priorities is removing artificial dyes from food. The company behind Welch’s Fruit Snacks has spent the past ten years doing just that.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Will Kubzansky takes us inside the Welch’s Fruit Snacks factory and explores the challenges America’s other food and drink companies could face as they try to meet the MAHA moment and make a similar change under a much faster timeline.
Read more: Making Fruit Snacks Without Synthetic Dye
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. The other day, our
producer Julia Press pulled me into the studio with a
sweeter than usual assignment.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I have treats brought back from my tour of the
Welchi's Fruit Snacks factory. I brought two types of fruit
snacks for you to try. This old type that they're
phasing out and the new type that they're rolling out.
And there's one key difference. The old type included a
little bit of artificial dyes added in for color. The
(00:38):
new type only gets their dies from natural sources fruits
and vegetables.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This switch has been a long time in the making.
Welch's has been on a decade long odyssey to swap
out artificial flavors for natural ones. But it's now something
the Trump administration wants all companies to do as part
of its crusade to quote make America healthy again.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, dump them out. How did they look to you?
So they look exactly the same, you think? Okay, let's
do a side by side comparison. Let's start with raspberry.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All right, old kind, a little more clear, a little
more vibrant. New kind, firmer, skinnier, and a little more muted,
but only slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
They do look pretty much identical.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
They look pretty much identical.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Okay, let's do a taste test. Close your eyes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Number one, I'm really getting taken back to middle school here.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
You look blissed out.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It tastes so good.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Number two, spoiler alert, I couldn't tell the difference. Well,
I just had two delicious fruit snacks that tasted exactly
the same. Really, if you had to guess, was the
first one the old kind and the second one the
new kind?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, the opposit.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Making a near replica of this popular product was time consuming, costly,
and complicated, and as other companies try to pull this off,
Welch's case study could reveal a lot about the challenges
that lie ahead for the American food industry. I'm Sarah Holder,
and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today.
(02:18):
On the show, as the Trump Administration's MAHA movement encourages
more and more food and drink companies to rework their formulas,
we visit one company that's done it to see what
it takes. What's the first thing you think of when
(02:39):
you think of Welch's fruit snacks.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I think of vending machines like soccer practice, where like
you're you know, deciding.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
You know, how you're going to spend your two dollars
and fifty cents that you've scrowned up.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, they were in my middle school vending machine too.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, yeah, and we would.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Like get them during lunch and kind of like swap
colors and things like that.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, personally avoiding the orange one.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's Bloomberg reporter Will Kobzanski. He recently went with our
producer Julia to tour A. Welch's Fruits next production plant
in New Jersey because.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
They have begun rolling out products without any synthetic food dies.
So that's you know, Red forty blue number one, and
you know, they had just started making this transition on
its flagship product, the mixed fruit variety.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Food dyes are in the headlines a lot these days.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Four years from now, we're going to have most of
these products off the market, or you will know about
them when.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You They've been thrust into the spotlight by Trump's Secretary
of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. We
have them on the run now and we are going
to win this battle. That battle he's talking about is
the war on ultra processed foods, specifically the artificial dyes
that are often in those ultra processed foods, like petroleum
(03:54):
based red forty. So far, it's been more of a
pressure campaign than an all out war. The FDA hasn't
banned these dies outright, but RFK has encouraged companies to
drop them by the end of next year.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
There's lots of other things he cares about, seed oils,
He talks a lot about ultra processed foods. Synthetic dies, though,
are the area where we've seen the most change, the fastest,
and the most response from companies that are subject to
his regulations.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
What does the research say, What kind of health effects
do synthetic dies and artificial dies actually have on consumers?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So there's no like slam dunk piece of evidence that
sort of says one way or the other synthetic food
dies are really good or really bad. The FDA considers
them safe, and the FDA has not revoked the regulation
authorizing the use of synthetic food dies. If you want to,
you could still put red forty in your product right now.
There's some state laws you'd have to navigate in the
late two thousands, there is a UK study that showed
(04:52):
that there's some association with hyperactivity in children from synthetic dies.
In twenty ten, the EU said we're going to put
a warning label on anything that has a synthetic food
die in it. In twenty eleven, the USFDA did a
similar review. They said, we don't see any causal effect
between adverse behaviors and food dies. We don't see the
(05:14):
need to put a warning label on Although that was
like a little more closely contested. About a decade later,
California reviewed the evidence and said, actually, we do think
there's a link, and that evidence sort of got passed
along the chain, and a couple of years later, Gavin
Newsom signed a bill that prohibits the use of synthetic
food dies in schools. Beginning in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
About a fifth of products on American grocery store shelves
contain synthetic food dies in twenty twenty. That's according to
a study published by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
this year.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
That number's probably gone down since twenty twenty because companies
have like sort of started to since where the wind
is blowing and they've been trying to get rid of
them in their new products. But where they found them
most often sugary beverages, sugary treats, things often marketed at kids.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You can do the math right.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
If something looks good, if something looks bright and exciting
and colorful, you're going to be more likely to want
to eat it, especially if you're like, you know, a
six year old at the Walmart with your dad looking
at the cereal aisle.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That brings us back to Welches. Since two thousand and one,
a company called pim Brands has been making these fruit
snacks and licensing the Welsh name from the juice and
jelly maker. Historically, the company's formula contains some artificial dyes
in addition to the natural color that comes from the
fruit purese inside, but in twenty fifteen it started experimenting
(06:33):
with reducing its dependency on synthetic dies, and last month
it announced they'd be fully phased out of all its
fruit snack products by early twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
We are outside the pim Brands factory in Somerset, New Jersey,
where they make Welsish fruit snacks.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
We have nearly a million square feet dedicated to manufacturing, packaging,
and distributing Welsis fruit snacks, which go across North America.
Actually from this facility we also saw.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
That's Michael Rosenberg, Pinbrands CEO who showed Will and Julia around.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
It felt closer to like the Model T production line
than it did Willy Wonka. It's one of these office
parks that's sort of like you wouldn't know it exists
unless you had a reason to go to it. And
you walk into this factory, it just sort of smells
like warm fruit. It smells like a.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Fruit snack in here.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Isn't like a like a pie, like a fruit pie.
Like I'm trying to figure out what this reminds me of.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Well, so, because of the number of fruits in our product,
you don't smell any particular fruit. You just get this
incredibly fruit smelling aroma.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Just like a remarkable amount of movement in the factory.
I found. The fruit snacks themselves are going into the molds,
they're being shaken out, they're being transported across the factory
and like a conveyor belt set up. You know, massive
facility people you know, wearing their safety equipment, fruit snacks
going on all kinds of conveyor else enough little fruit
snack elevators and machines doling out packages and pouches. How much,
(08:08):
generally speaking does it cost to build a facility like this?
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Each production line costs between fifteen and twenty million dollars.
We have six production lines, and then of course you
have all the packaging part. So there's a fortune in
this building.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
The factory can turn out over ten billion pouches of
fruit snacks a year. Will and Julia sat down with
the team responsible for Welch's fruit snacks pivot to natural
dies and they told them it's been a long road.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
So this process, according to them, started in twenty fifteen,
so a decade ago. They're chief officer of R and D.
She won noticed the products are made with real fruit.
So you know, part of the Welchi's fruit snacks, like
the stick is you know, a strawberry fruit snack is
made with real strawberry pure So there's already a little
color from those fruits in there.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
It inheritently comes with some natural color. And we were
adding so many school amounts, so I was thinking, if
he can introduce that, why not.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Bavna Romani that R and D director also noticed that
synthetic dyes were starting to lose favor internationally, so Bavna
and her team started tinkering. They took it one color
at a time. First up yellow, the low hanging fruit,
so to speak. She said, yellow was easier to swap
out because there are lots of natural sources of the
(09:31):
color and enough supply of those substitutes in the market.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
They're replaced some with turmeric and anato, and it was
a relatively easy switch. Kraft mac and Cheese made a
very similar switch around that time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Nato is a yellow coloring made from a tree seed,
but other colors were harder to match. Here's Bavna.
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Unfortunately, there was no true replacement for the blue because
there are not too many blue fruits for vegetable, because
all natural colors are derived from real fruits and vegetable
and in reality, if you go to the supermarket, it's
not too many choices.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Don't replace that.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
It's not just can we match the exact shade, it's
can the shade last over time? Is the pH imbalance
between the dye and the fruit period that's already in there.
Is that going to make the fruit snack turned brown
over time.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
For the blue color, they settled on spirillina, a type
of algae, and a fruit called tueto found in South
and Central America. Getting a new raspberry gummy to look
and taste just like the old gummy so that unsuspecting
eaters like me can't tell the difference took the R
and D team close to fifty different trials to replace
red forty. They used ingredients like purple carrot and red grape,
(10:45):
and once they figured out the right combination of ingredients,
they had to find a way to make the colors consistent.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
Fruit grow in North America versus South America, it has
a different taste, different color.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
They needed to find the suppliers natural eyes work with
the suppliers to make sure that when the food die
is transported, like it's not getting any adverse impacts from
temperature changes in the supply chain. They needed to work
with them to stabilize the acidity of the food dies
because it was interacting with the fruit that was in
their fruit snacks, and like, you need to make sure
(11:18):
it doesn't just turn round in like three months, six months,
nine months, a year over the course of the full
shelf life.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Of the product.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
You have to do R and D, you have to
find the right people, you need to do the testing.
Things that cost money, and.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
It comes with risk, not just financial risk, but the
risk of alienating customers. We get into that and how
other companies are trying to make similar changes after the break.
(11:52):
When it comes to swapping out synthetic dyes with natural dyes,
wel Jess Fruit Snacks was a little earlier to the party,
but now many other companies are starting to follow suit.
PepsiCo is the latest company to jump on the Maha bandwagon,
announcing plans to remove artificial colors and flavors. Craft is
announcing they will no longer be launching any products that
(12:14):
have artificial die in the general mills, announcing it will
remove artificial colors from its US cereals n K through
twelfth school Foods by next summer.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A lot of what we've seen so far are commitments
to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Let's talk about some of those commitments. How quickly are
these companies saying that they'll do this.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So the timeline that most companies have given is by
the end of twenty twenty seven beginning of twenty twenty eight.
That's a specific date because beginning on January first, twenty
twenty eight, if you want to sell your product in
West Virginia, you can't have synthetic dies in it. There
are similar laws going into affecting the California schools Texas.
(12:54):
The feasibility is another question.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Remember, for Welch's the changeover took a decade. It took
a full year just to test that the new colors
wouldn't fade over the course of the product's shelf life.
But does that mean it will take a decade for
everyone else to do it too. Maybe not Welches.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
They have a more complex product than like a Scale
or a Starburst. There's the fruit in there, vitamins and
minerals and things like that. And also, you know, compared
to Mars or Hershey or Mandalize or a smaller company. Right,
no one is explicitly said as much to me, but
like they don't have the same leverage that you know,
a massive multinational might have to secure these food dies.
(13:34):
On the other hand, they've been working on this for
ten years, they've been thinking about it for a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The question is matching the shades.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Customers, you know, when they open a box of Welch's
fruit snacks or a box of M and ms or
you know, their cereal. They want to recognize the product
that they know.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
There's a lot at stake when you start tinkering with
a classic recipe. General Mills learn that the hard way
when it tried this with Trick Cereal back in twenty sixteen, and.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Then the American consumer was appalled.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
The tricks did not look like the tricks that they
had grown to love, and they very quickly made the switchback.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Ten years later, the American consumer might be more comfortable
with this kind of change, and if they aren't already,
they could just get used to it.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
I talked with someone who runs one of these natural
eye companies, and something funny he said was Europeans when
they see that like bright synthetic red forty shade, they're like,
oh my god, there must be like something wrong with it.
It looks like it was made in a chemical plant.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
There are other reasons a larger corporation could have an
easier time than PIM did. Those companies may operate in
countries where they're already asked to put warning labels on
duyed products, or were they're not allowed to use synthetic dyes,
so they may have a head start on the replacement process.
How much of the motivation of these companies to rework
(14:53):
these formulas is part of kind of making the current
administration happy versus these broader globe forces.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
It's a good question putting aside RFK, MAHA and sort
of the cultural lane it tapped into, Like there are
people who are interested in this, there are people who
don't want their kids to consume synthetic dies. What I
would say is that RFK is making a lot of
other asks right. There are seed oils, which are you know,
canola sun flower seed oil, things like that. He wants
(15:22):
those removed from the food supply. He would like things
to the effect of limits on how much sugar we
consume and the ultra process foods we consume. I can't
read the mind of these CEOs and the folks who
are doing their public affairs. But objectively changing one or
two ingredients where there's an existing replacement and in fact
it's already used internationally feels like a lighter lift than
(15:46):
making these more fundamental changes to how you fry your product,
how you consider your product process or ultra process, to
the amount of sugar in there right.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well, that brings us to sort of a broader final question,
which is that the stated goal of these changes per
R is to make Americans healthier. Is there a significant
health benefit here or are these mostly aesthetic changes that
are easier to achieve.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
It's a question I don't have a complete answer.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Yeah too, Yeah, there's some discourse on this because RFKS
took something of a victory lap when Kellogg's cut its.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Synthetic food dies.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Anytime a company cuts its synthetic food dies, he'll put
out a tweet and he'll say it's a MAHA win.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And the Kellogg's wone got picked up and.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
It kind of sparked this broader conversation about you know,
if you're eating the French fries but they're made with
beef tallow instead of being friend to seed oil, and
you're having the fruit loop still and they're still full
of sugar, but like they don't have the red forty
in them, the question sort of becomes like how much
of an impact is this happening versus like how much
does this just sort of Maha being able to take
the win. The administration would contend that this is the
(16:50):
first change of many to come. They want to fundamentally
change the way we eat in this country. They're going
to try and make some pretty big changes to the
dietary guidelines that are coming out later this summer. Where
the alternative take is the companies saw an easy place
to score some points, and we'll see what happens with
the rest of the changes.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. The other day, our
producer Julia Press pulled me into the studio with a
sweeter than usual assignment.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I have treats brought back from my tour of the
Welchi's Fruit Snacks factory. I brought two types of fruit
snacks for you to try. This old type that they're
phasing out and the new type that they're rolling out.
And there's one key difference. The old type included a
little bit of artificial dyes added in for color. The
(00:38):
new type only gets their dies from natural sources fruits
and vegetables.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This switch has been a long time in the making.
Welch's has been on a decade long odyssey to swap
out artificial flavors for natural ones. But it's now something
the Trump administration wants all companies to do as part
of its crusade to quote make America healthy again.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, dump them out. How did they look to you?
So they look exactly the same, you think? Okay, let's
do a side by side comparison. Let's start with raspberry.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All right, old kind, a little more clear, a little
more vibrant. New kind, firmer, skinnier, and a little more muted,
but only slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
They do look pretty much identical.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
They look pretty much identical.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Okay, let's do a taste test. Close your eyes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Number one, I'm really getting taken back to middle school here.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
You look blissed out.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It tastes so good.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Number two, spoiler alert, I couldn't tell the difference. Well,
I just had two delicious fruit snacks that tasted exactly
the same. Really, if you had to guess, was the
first one the old kind and the second one the
new kind?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, the opposit.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Making a near replica of this popular product was time consuming, costly,
and complicated, and as other companies try to pull this off,
Welch's case study could reveal a lot about the challenges
that lie ahead for the American food industry. I'm Sarah Holder,
and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today.
(02:18):
On the show, as the Trump Administration's MAHA movement encourages
more and more food and drink companies to rework their formulas,
we visit one company that's done it to see what
it takes. What's the first thing you think of when
(02:39):
you think of Welch's fruit snacks.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I think of vending machines like soccer practice, where like
you're you know, deciding.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
You know, how you're going to spend your two dollars
and fifty cents that you've scrowned up.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, they were in my middle school vending machine too.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, yeah, and we would.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Like get them during lunch and kind of like swap
colors and things like that.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, personally avoiding the orange one.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's Bloomberg reporter Will Kobzanski. He recently went with our
producer Julia to tour A. Welch's Fruits next production plant
in New Jersey because.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
They have begun rolling out products without any synthetic food dies.
So that's you know, Red forty blue number one, and
you know, they had just started making this transition on
its flagship product, the mixed fruit variety.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Food dyes are in the headlines a lot these days.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Four years from now, we're going to have most of
these products off the market, or you will know about
them when.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You They've been thrust into the spotlight by Trump's Secretary
of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. We
have them on the run now and we are going
to win this battle. That battle he's talking about is
the war on ultra processed foods, specifically the artificial dyes
that are often in those ultra processed foods, like petroleum
(03:54):
based red forty. So far, it's been more of a
pressure campaign than an all out war. The FDA hasn't
banned these dies outright, but RFK has encouraged companies to
drop them by the end of next year.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
There's lots of other things he cares about, seed oils,
He talks a lot about ultra processed foods. Synthetic dies, though,
are the area where we've seen the most change, the fastest,
and the most response from companies that are subject to
his regulations.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
What does the research say, What kind of health effects
do synthetic dies and artificial dies actually have on consumers?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So there's no like slam dunk piece of evidence that
sort of says one way or the other synthetic food
dies are really good or really bad. The FDA considers
them safe, and the FDA has not revoked the regulation
authorizing the use of synthetic food dies. If you want to,
you could still put red forty in your product right now.
There's some state laws you'd have to navigate in the
late two thousands, there is a UK study that showed
(04:52):
that there's some association with hyperactivity in children from synthetic dies.
In twenty ten, the EU said we're going to put
a warning label on anything that has a synthetic food
die in it. In twenty eleven, the USFDA did a
similar review. They said, we don't see any causal effect
between adverse behaviors and food dies. We don't see the
(05:14):
need to put a warning label on Although that was
like a little more closely contested. About a decade later,
California reviewed the evidence and said, actually, we do think
there's a link, and that evidence sort of got passed
along the chain, and a couple of years later, Gavin
Newsom signed a bill that prohibits the use of synthetic
food dies in schools. Beginning in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
About a fifth of products on American grocery store shelves
contain synthetic food dies in twenty twenty. That's according to
a study published by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
this year.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
That number's probably gone down since twenty twenty because companies
have like sort of started to since where the wind
is blowing and they've been trying to get rid of
them in their new products. But where they found them
most often sugary beverages, sugary treats, things often marketed at kids.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You can do the math right.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
If something looks good, if something looks bright and exciting
and colorful, you're going to be more likely to want
to eat it, especially if you're like, you know, a
six year old at the Walmart with your dad looking
at the cereal aisle.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That brings us back to Welches. Since two thousand and one,
a company called pim Brands has been making these fruit
snacks and licensing the Welsh name from the juice and
jelly maker. Historically, the company's formula contains some artificial dyes
in addition to the natural color that comes from the
fruit purese inside, but in twenty fifteen it started experimenting
(06:33):
with reducing its dependency on synthetic dies, and last month
it announced they'd be fully phased out of all its
fruit snack products by early twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
We are outside the pim Brands factory in Somerset, New Jersey,
where they make Welsish fruit snacks.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
We have nearly a million square feet dedicated to manufacturing, packaging,
and distributing Welsis fruit snacks, which go across North America.
Actually from this facility we also saw.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
That's Michael Rosenberg, Pinbrands CEO who showed Will and Julia around.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
It felt closer to like the Model T production line
than it did Willy Wonka. It's one of these office
parks that's sort of like you wouldn't know it exists
unless you had a reason to go to it. And
you walk into this factory, it just sort of smells
like warm fruit. It smells like a.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Fruit snack in here.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Isn't like a like a pie, like a fruit pie.
Like I'm trying to figure out what this reminds me of.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Well, so, because of the number of fruits in our product,
you don't smell any particular fruit. You just get this
incredibly fruit smelling aroma.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Just like a remarkable amount of movement in the factory.
I found. The fruit snacks themselves are going into the molds,
they're being shaken out, they're being transported across the factory
and like a conveyor belt set up. You know, massive
facility people you know, wearing their safety equipment, fruit snacks
going on all kinds of conveyor else enough little fruit
snack elevators and machines doling out packages and pouches. How much,
(08:08):
generally speaking does it cost to build a facility like this?
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Each production line costs between fifteen and twenty million dollars.
We have six production lines, and then of course you
have all the packaging part. So there's a fortune in
this building.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
The factory can turn out over ten billion pouches of
fruit snacks a year. Will and Julia sat down with
the team responsible for Welch's fruit snacks pivot to natural
dies and they told them it's been a long road.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
So this process, according to them, started in twenty fifteen,
so a decade ago. They're chief officer of R and D.
She won noticed the products are made with real fruit.
So you know, part of the Welchi's fruit snacks, like
the stick is you know, a strawberry fruit snack is
made with real strawberry pure So there's already a little
color from those fruits in there.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
It inheritently comes with some natural color. And we were
adding so many school amounts, so I was thinking, if
he can introduce that, why not.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Bavna Romani that R and D director also noticed that
synthetic dyes were starting to lose favor internationally, so Bavna
and her team started tinkering. They took it one color
at a time. First up yellow, the low hanging fruit,
so to speak. She said, yellow was easier to swap
out because there are lots of natural sources of the
(09:31):
color and enough supply of those substitutes in the market.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
They're replaced some with turmeric and anato, and it was
a relatively easy switch. Kraft mac and Cheese made a
very similar switch around that time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Nato is a yellow coloring made from a tree seed,
but other colors were harder to match. Here's Bavna.
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Unfortunately, there was no true replacement for the blue because
there are not too many blue fruits for vegetable, because
all natural colors are derived from real fruits and vegetable
and in reality, if you go to the supermarket, it's
not too many choices.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Don't replace that.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
It's not just can we match the exact shade, it's
can the shade last over time? Is the pH imbalance
between the dye and the fruit period that's already in there.
Is that going to make the fruit snack turned brown
over time.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
For the blue color, they settled on spirillina, a type
of algae, and a fruit called tueto found in South
and Central America. Getting a new raspberry gummy to look
and taste just like the old gummy so that unsuspecting
eaters like me can't tell the difference took the R
and D team close to fifty different trials to replace
red forty. They used ingredients like purple carrot and red grape,
(10:45):
and once they figured out the right combination of ingredients,
they had to find a way to make the colors consistent.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
Fruit grow in North America versus South America, it has
a different taste, different color.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
They needed to find the suppliers natural eyes work with
the suppliers to make sure that when the food die
is transported, like it's not getting any adverse impacts from
temperature changes in the supply chain. They needed to work
with them to stabilize the acidity of the food dies
because it was interacting with the fruit that was in
their fruit snacks, and like, you need to make sure
(11:18):
it doesn't just turn round in like three months, six months,
nine months, a year over the course of the full
shelf life.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Of the product.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
You have to do R and D, you have to
find the right people, you need to do the testing.
Things that cost money, and.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
It comes with risk, not just financial risk, but the
risk of alienating customers. We get into that and how
other companies are trying to make similar changes after the break.
(11:52):
When it comes to swapping out synthetic dyes with natural dyes,
wel Jess Fruit Snacks was a little earlier to the party,
but now many other companies are starting to follow suit.
PepsiCo is the latest company to jump on the Maha bandwagon,
announcing plans to remove artificial colors and flavors. Craft is
announcing they will no longer be launching any products that
(12:14):
have artificial die in the general mills, announcing it will
remove artificial colors from its US cereals n K through
twelfth school Foods by next summer.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A lot of what we've seen so far are commitments
to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Let's talk about some of those commitments. How quickly are
these companies saying that they'll do this.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So the timeline that most companies have given is by
the end of twenty twenty seven beginning of twenty twenty eight.
That's a specific date because beginning on January first, twenty
twenty eight, if you want to sell your product in
West Virginia, you can't have synthetic dies in it. There
are similar laws going into affecting the California schools Texas.
(12:54):
The feasibility is another question.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Remember, for Welch's the changeover took a decade. It took
a full year just to test that the new colors
wouldn't fade over the course of the product's shelf life.
But does that mean it will take a decade for
everyone else to do it too. Maybe not Welches.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
They have a more complex product than like a Scale
or a Starburst. There's the fruit in there, vitamins and
minerals and things like that. And also, you know, compared
to Mars or Hershey or Mandalize or a smaller company. Right,
no one is explicitly said as much to me, but
like they don't have the same leverage that you know,
a massive multinational might have to secure these food dies.
(13:34):
On the other hand, they've been working on this for
ten years, they've been thinking about it for a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The question is matching the shades.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Customers, you know, when they open a box of Welch's
fruit snacks or a box of M and ms or
you know, their cereal. They want to recognize the product
that they know.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
There's a lot at stake when you start tinkering with
a classic recipe. General Mills learn that the hard way
when it tried this with Trick Cereal back in twenty sixteen, and.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Then the American consumer was appalled.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
The tricks did not look like the tricks that they
had grown to love, and they very quickly made the switchback.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Ten years later, the American consumer might be more comfortable
with this kind of change, and if they aren't already,
they could just get used to it.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
I talked with someone who runs one of these natural
eye companies, and something funny he said was Europeans when
they see that like bright synthetic red forty shade, they're like,
oh my god, there must be like something wrong with it.
It looks like it was made in a chemical plant.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
There are other reasons a larger corporation could have an
easier time than PIM did. Those companies may operate in
countries where they're already asked to put warning labels on
duyed products, or were they're not allowed to use synthetic dyes,
so they may have a head start on the replacement process.
How much of the motivation of these companies to rework
(14:53):
these formulas is part of kind of making the current
administration happy versus these broader globe forces.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
It's a good question putting aside RFK, MAHA and sort
of the cultural lane it tapped into, Like there are
people who are interested in this, there are people who
don't want their kids to consume synthetic dies. What I
would say is that RFK is making a lot of
other asks right. There are seed oils, which are you know,
canola sun flower seed oil, things like that. He wants
(15:22):
those removed from the food supply. He would like things
to the effect of limits on how much sugar we
consume and the ultra process foods we consume. I can't
read the mind of these CEOs and the folks who
are doing their public affairs. But objectively changing one or
two ingredients where there's an existing replacement and in fact
it's already used internationally feels like a lighter lift than
(15:46):
making these more fundamental changes to how you fry your product,
how you consider your product process or ultra process, to
the amount of sugar in there right.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well, that brings us to sort of a broader final question,
which is that the stated goal of these changes per
R is to make Americans healthier. Is there a significant
health benefit here or are these mostly aesthetic changes that
are easier to achieve.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
It's a question I don't have a complete answer.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Yeah too, Yeah, there's some discourse on this because RFKS
took something of a victory lap when Kellogg's cut its.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Synthetic food dies.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Anytime a company cuts its synthetic food dies, he'll put
out a tweet and he'll say it's a MAHA win.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And the Kellogg's wone got picked up and.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
It kind of sparked this broader conversation about you know,
if you're eating the French fries but they're made with
beef tallow instead of being friend to seed oil, and
you're having the fruit loop still and they're still full
of sugar, but like they don't have the red forty
in them, the question sort of becomes like how much
of an impact is this happening versus like how much
does this just sort of Maha being able to take
the win. The administration would contend that this is the
(16:50):
first change of many to come. They want to fundamentally
change the way we eat in this country. They're going
to try and make some pretty big changes to the
dietary guidelines that are coming out later this summer. Where
the alternative take is the companies saw an easy place
to score some points, and we'll see what happens with
the rest of the changes.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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