'Peeps are a food chemical success story’: experts sound off on MAHA’s push to end dyes in Easter candy—and how states are hopping to it

Peeps in yellow dye on a conveyor belt (Credit: Mike Mergen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

For years every Easter and spring season, Americans stuff their baskets with Peeps, these little neon marshmallow chicks (and sometimes bunnies) coated in petroleum-based synthetic dyes that the FDA has not formally reviewed for safety since (depending on the color) the 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s. For Scott Faber, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, that makes the humble Peep something unexpected: a symbol of progress.

“Peeps are a food chemical success story,” Faber told Fortune while trying to stifle a chuckle, before adding: “I’m sure no one has said those words before.”