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Key Takeaways
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PepsiCo plans to speed up a move away from artificial dyes in its US food business, its CEO said Thursday.
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The American food and beverage corporation said brands like Lay's and Tostitos will be free of artificial colors by the end of the year.
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The government earlier this week said it plans to eliminate petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the U.S. food supply.
PepsiCo plans to speed up a move away from artificial dyes in its US food business, its CEO said, amid a presidential effort to “Make America Healthy Again.”
The food and beverage giant early Thursday said that 60% of that business is already free of artificial colors, with some brands—including chip names Tostitos and Lay's—on track to be entirely free of them by year's end, according to a transcript of its first-quarter earnings call provided by AlphaSense.
PepsiCo (PEP) CEO Ramon Laguarta on the call said consumers have “nothing to worry about” with their products as they are now, “But we understand that there's going to be, probably, a consumer demand for more natural ingredients, and we're going to be accelerating that transition," he said.
Laguarta's comments come days after Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday announced plans to phrase out "all petroleum-based synthetic dyes" from the US food supply. (Investopedia recently explored the "MAHA" movement from another angle: the rising interest in beef tallow.)
The announcement included revoking the authorization to use two synthetic food colorings (Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B) in the coming months, and eliminating six other synthetic dyes from foods and beverages by the end of next year.
"These poisonous compounds offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday.
PepsiCo company’s stock fell more than than 4% Thursday after it announced a cut to its earnings forecast amid tariff concerns.
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