How are you guys remedying Red 3 from your products?

Hey all,

I am curious to know how you guys are planning on elimination of Red 3 from your products? If you are using ingredients that are made with Red 3, what are your actions? 

If your customers inquire about your plans, what is your response? Have you been able to source an alternative yet? 

Share your thoughts! 

It depends on the product use. E127 as it's known in the UK is barely used apart from in glace or cocktail cherries.

Most other colourings have even moved away from other alternatives such as Allura red (E129) and are moving as far as possible to natural colours like Beetroot extract or Carmine (which is derived from insects which might not be palatable to some of your consumers but has been used in UK confectionery for decades so it's widely accepted here.)  So for example, I think US M&Ms use Allura Red, UK M&Ms use Carmine.

Not a lot of need for reformulations in my fruit and veg business, but most of our finished products are packaged under retailer private labels.  Just wanted to share that nearly every one of those retailers have communicated a requirement to us for Red 3 and the host of other synthetics to be removed from their products.  Suffice to say if anyone selling retail in the US isn't moving on this, you are behind the curve already.

Daft idea, but legally under the Food Information Regulation for consumers, the ingredients listing has to be online for UK products for distance selling, e.g. through Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons etc. so if you want to, you can look up a similar product to yours in the UK and see what colours are used. It's a myth to say we've got rid of all artificial colours in the UK or banned them, that's not true but some have to carry warnings (e.g. the "Southampton colours" which have to carry a warning so tend to be avoided by manufacturers) and other products have been reformulated through consumer pressure.

So if you look up a similar product over here, you will probably find the manufacturer here is already using a different colour. Just google the "E-number(s)" to find out what the equivalent name is in the US.

But do be warned, it took a long time for consumer expectations to change. Our food used to be like the US when I was growing up, and now if you put an American product next to a British one by the same brand, they do look different. Fanta is the classic example:

Isn't this fascinating?

From a US food website selling in the UK (so they have to list the ingredients because of the FIR law.) US Fanta doesn't actually contain any fruit juice.  Mind blown...  I can't post the image here nor copy the text but they have to have a warning on it due to the fact it uses Sunset Yellow and Allura Red (both Southampton colours).

UK product listing: