When the FDA launched a push to eliminate synthetic food dyes from the American food supply in 2025, the stated goal was healthier food products through the replacement of artificial colorants with natural alternatives. New research from one of the world's largest nutritional epidemiology studies has now complicated that narrative significantly: the natural food color additives being promoted as replacements carry their own documented associations with elevated risk of type 2 diabetes and cancer — in some cases, elevated risks exceeding 40%.
Research published in Diabetes Care and the European Journal of Epidemiology, led by investigators from INRAE, Inserm, EREN, and Cnam using data from the NutriNet-Santé cohort — one of the largest nutritional epidemiology studies in Europe, tracking more than 100,000 French participants over a decade — found that food coloring additives as a whole were associated with a 38% increase in type 2 diabetes risk among those with the highest consumption compared to those with the lowest. Among specific natural colorants, the risk associations were even higher.
