The US food and beverage (F&B) industry is in the middle of a regulatory shake-up, and if you’re feeling déjà vu, you’re not alone. First, California sent shockwaves with its landmark food additive bans, and now states like Texas and West Virginia are hopping on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, at the federal level, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is turning up the heat with his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative, pushing for tighter scrutiny on ingredients that have been hiding in plain sight for decades.
For food manufacturers, this evolving landscape is equal parts headache and opportunity. Reformulating products to comply with shifting regulations isn’t just a compliance exercise—it’s a chance to align with growing consumer demand for cleaner labels and healthier options. As more states introduce their own restrictions, companies must rethink how they track regulations, reformulate recipes, and future-proof their portfolios. So, what’s changing, which additives are on the chopping block, and how can F&B brands adapt without missing a beat?
MAHA’s influence on food additive legislation
At the federal level, the MAHA initiative is already shaping regulatory policies. Secretary Kennedy has directed the FDA to reevaluate the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) rule, which allows companies to self-affirm the safety of food ingredients without FDA review. This move is expected to bring greater scrutiny to additives that have been permitted for decades but now face mounting scientific concerns.
Simultaneously, several states are advancing their own food safety legislation. California made headlines by passing a law banning four additives linked to health risks, including brominated vegetable oil and Red Dye No. 3. Following its lead, states like New York, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas are introducing similar measures. This growing state-level momentum suggests that F&B companies must prepare for a fragmented regulatory environment where compliance may vary by region.
Full scope of substances up for potential ban
The current wave of additive bans is just the beginning. If the full scope of ingredients being considered across multiple state bans is enacted, the impact on the F&B industry will be massive. Some of the most widely used food additives are under scrutiny, including artificial colors, stabilizers, preservatives, and even the common sweetener aspartame. Consider Oklahoma’s list of substances up for potential ban:
- Aspartame
- Azodicarbonamide (ADA)
- Blue dye 1
- Blue dye 2
- Brominated vegetable oil (BVO)
- Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)
- Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)
- Ethylene dichloride
- Green dye 3
- Methylene chloride
- Potassium bromate
- Propyl gallate
- Propylparaben
- Red dye 3
- Red dye 40
- Sodium benzoate
- Sodium nitrate
- Titanium dioxide
- Trichloroethylene
- Yellow dye 5
- Yellow dye 6
If even a portion of these ingredients are successfully banned at the state level, the ripple effects will be felt across nearly every corner of the food industry. The reformulation process will require companies to replace commonly used dyes, preservatives, and stabilizers with safer alternatives—some of which may be more expensive or difficult to source at scale.
A bipartisan shift in food safety policy
For years, states like California and New York led the charge in challenging federal inaction on food safety. But now, we’re witnessing a seismic shift: red and blue states are increasingly in lockstep when it comes to banning these controversial additives. With Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia joining the movement, the message to the F&B industry is crystal clear—consumer and regulatory sentiment is aligned, and there’s no reprieve in sight for brands that aren’t prepared to make changes.
This bipartisan push is a sharp wake-up call. Manufacturers must not only comply with existing bans but anticipate future regulatory shifts. Those failing to act risk product reformulations that lag behind evolving policies, potential product recalls, and damage to consumer trust.
How can the F&B industry adapt to these changes?
1. Navigating compliance and reformulation
As common ingredients become subject to state and federal bans, brands and manufacturers will be under pressure to move quickly on product reformulation. Product changes are always a cross-functional effort, and effective communication and collaboration between R&D, quality, compliance, operations and packaging teams will be an important capability. Teams with effective strategies for digital information exchange and effective cross-team workflows will likely have a significant advantage in bringing compliant products to market quickly. TraceGains’ NPD Suite helps teams iterate rapidly on recipe variations, even when complex sub-formulas and variants are involved, while ensuring that both ingredient and finished good specifications stay aligned.
2. Meeting consumer expectations
The broad support for increased regulation of food additives is supported by a strong consumer movement toward healthier and more natural food products, crossing political and regional boundaries. Transparency and accuracy in labeling will be an important consumer expectation moving forward. TraceGains’ Compliance Suite offers brands a strong set of solutions for ensuring that supplier documentation and data are current and correct, while reducing the time required to find, qualify and onboard new suppliers and ingredients.
3. Sourcing for rapid innovation
With a wide array of additives potentially being phased out, brands will need to find replacement ingredients, often requiring new supplier relationships. TraceGains Gather is the industry’s largest Networked Ingredients Marketplace, giving brands instant, one-click access to hundreds of thousands of ingredients from almost 90,000 supplier locations worldwide. With instant download access to millions of supporting documents and technical specifications, brands can take time and complexity out of the sourcing process, getting to solutions quickly and freeing innovation teams to create products that satisfy consumer and regulatory demands.
What’s next for F&B compliance?
The regulatory landscape for food additives is shifting rapidly, driven by both federal and state-level actions under the MAHA initiative. As more states move to ban potentially harmful substances, F&B companies must be proactive in reformulation efforts to ensure compliance and maintain consumer trust.
By leveraging digital solutions like TraceGains’ Supplier Compliance, companies can seamlessly track evolving regulations, while Formula Management helps accelerate reformulation with ingredient transparency and supply chain collaboration.
Stay ahead of regulatory changes and ensure your products meet the highest standards of safety and compliance. Request a demo to learn how TraceGains can help your business adapt today.
