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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, everybody, it's Mariel.

When you see desserts or candy or medications that are bright cherry red, they often contain

some sort of synthetic food dye.

One of those dyes, red dye number three, has been found to cause cancer in rats,

and the Food and Drug Administration is now banning it in food and ingested drugs.

Our friends at NPR's science podcast Shortwave dove into the science behind the ban and talked about other food dyes too, like Red 40.

So we've got that episode for you

today. I'll turn it over to Shortwave co-host, Emily Kwong.

Hey, shortwaters, Emily Kwong here with the lovely Maria Godoy, senior editor and correspondent with the

NPR Science Desk. Hey, Maria. Hey, Emily. You are here to walk me through an announcement from the Food and Drug Administration.

That's like a pretty big deal. Yeah. So they announced that they're banning the food die red number three or in FDA terms. That's revoking authorization.

Very official. Red dye number three, of course, is a very widely used food dye. It's been authorized for decades.

For half a century, actually, and it's in thousands of products. It's a petroleum-based dye that's in everything from candy to all sorts of snack foods, and so does, too, because it gives products this very bright, cherry red color.

And in 2002, a petition was filed with the FDA to ban the dye.

So the FDA has been reviewing the petition and the evidence ever since in an effort to comply with a provision from a 1958 law known as the Delaney Clause.

What is the Delaney Clause?

So it's part of a series of laws that

...