{"id":1186,"date":"2025-06-23T14:42:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T14:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2025-06-25T13:32:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T13:32:02","slug":"abbott-signs-maha-measure-requiring-food-warning-labels-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/23\/abbott-signs-maha-measure-requiring-food-warning-labels-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Abbott signs MAHA measure requiring food warning labels in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A far-reaching Texas\u00a0bill<\/a>\u00a0signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Sunday will force manufacturers of processed foods and drinks to put warning labels on any products containing 44 different food additives or dyes believed to be toxic to human health.<\/p>\n

While the law, which aligns with the “Make America Healthy Again” goals of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is limited to Texas, the state’s hefty population of more than 31 million gives it significant sway in the food industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s official! Make Texas Healthy Again has been signed!\u201d state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R)\u00a0posted\u00a0Sunday night<\/a> on the social platform X, adding that the measure would ensure \u201cconsumers are informed and can make better choices for their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The health law has other pillars: It mandates physical education and recess in schools and protects access to exercise even for kids in detention, and it requires that students in Texas premed programs and medical schools be taught about nutrition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Curriculum for that program and K-12 health classes would be developed by a new Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee, from which anyone working in the processed food business \u2014 or their relatives \u2014 would be excluded.<\/p>\n

But from a national perspective, the food labeling guidelines are the most significant, because any company that wants to sell in Texas will\u00a0have to either remove those compounds or post a warning label.<\/p>\n

The law contains one big exception: Food manufacturers will not have to disclose the presence of pesticides, which may cause\u00a0as big a risk for cancer<\/a>\u00a0as smoking cigarettes.<\/p>\n

But included among the chemicals are suspected cancer-causing chemicals such as\u00a0potassium bromate<\/a>, a common additive to bread products; titanium dioxide, a dye banned in the European Union that is used to whiten soups and baked goods; the preservative BHA, which\u00a0disrupts the all-encompassing endocrine system<\/a>; and several synthetic food dyes such as Red 40 and Yellow 5 and 6 that are\u00a0found to cause hyperactivity<\/a>\u00a0in children.<\/p>\n

In 1986, Californians passed Proposition 65, which required companies to label consumer products that contained chemicals that could cause cancer, reproductive or developmental harm \u2014 leading many companies to\u00a0reformulate their supply chains to avoid those products<\/a>, one study found.<\/p>\n

But this didn\u2019t necessarily make consumer products safer, researchers noted. Because material science advances far faster than the research into the harms caused by novel chemicals \u2014 let alone their regulation \u2014 in the aftermath of Proposition 65, many manufacturers reformulated products to remove harmful chemicals, \u201conly to replace them with an unlisted chemical that might also be harmful but doesn\u2019t require a warning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of these will be hard for manufacturers to swap out for reasons related to their potential health impacts. Petroleum-based synthetic dyes like Red 40 and Yellow 6, for example, are used in candies and children\u2019s breakfast cereals because their stable chemical structure keeps colors bright in food that may sit on shelves for months.<\/p>\n

And endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as BHA \u2014 despite the way they may play havoc on all the body\u2019s systems \u2014 are nonetheless more effective at keeping foods from rotting, despite their health impacts to consumers.<\/p>\n

Two main food manufacturers \u2014 Kraft and General Mills \u2014 have\u00a0announced plans<\/a>\u00a0to phase out food dyes this decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A far-reaching Texas\u00a0bill\u00a0signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Sunday will force manufacturers of processed foods and drinks to put warning labels on any products containing 44 different food additives or dyes believed to be toxic to human health. While the law, which aligns with the “Make America Healthy Again” goals of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is limited to Texas, the state’s hefty population of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}