Walmart is the latest company to take a step back from synthetic dyes in consumer products, facing pressure from the federal government.
WASHINGTON — Walmart, one of the largest retailers in the U.S., announced Wednesday that its in-house brands, including the popular “Great Value” brand, would phase out synthetic dyes and other artificial ingredients soon.
In an emailed statement, a Walmart spokesperson said more than 30 ingredients would be phased out, but didn’t lay out a definitive timeline for when those ingredients would be dropped from the manufacturing process.
Walmart said that all private brand food items sold by the company, under the Great Value, Marketside, Freshness Guaranteed and bettergoods brands, would be affected by the change.
Great Value products and other similar brands sold by Walmart are often bought by consumers as cheaper “generic” versions of name-brand products.
Most of the company’s products — about 90% — are already made without synthetic dyes. Walmart said the remaining products would be reformulated, with some of the new recipes hitting store shelves in the next few months.
Walmart is the latest company to take a step back from synthetic dyes.
In August, WK Kellogg Co., the company behind Froot Loops and Apple Jacks, said they would phase out artificial dyes within the next two and a half years. Kellogg faced pressure from Texas regulators, who were investigating whether the company was violating state consumer safety protection laws by using blue, red, yellow, green and orange artificial dyes.
A month earlier, M&M’s maker Mars announced plans to offer naturally colored options for four of its most iconic candies.
Mars Inc. quietly announced the move in July, saying the products would be made available online across the United States. It comes nearly a decade after the company first said it would remove all artificial colors from its products, before reversing course after getting additional consumer feedback.
The move away from artificial dyes comes at the behest of the U.S. government. Health officials, spearheaded by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been pushing for months to get companies to make pledges to remove artificial, petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply.
This effort, part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” plan, has appeared to have early success.
Both Kellogg and General Mills, another major U.S. cereal maker, said they would drop artificial dyes from cereals. General Mills later joined Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Smuckers and some other food manufacturers in announcing target dates for making all their products without artificial dyes.