FDA's Marty Makary muddles the evidence on food dyes

He points to anecdotes and makes misleading reference to trial data

The “Health Nerd” Substack - published by epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz - addressed the obsession that RFK Jr. of HHS and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary have with warnings about food dyes. His headline:

He included the following quote from Makary who appeared on Fox News recently: - a quote that Aaron Rupar captured on LinkedIn:

So Makary points to anecdotes as “a lot of data.”

There’s an old line - “the plural of anecdote is not data” - which Steve Usdin on LinkedIn applied to Makary’s TV moment:

But it wasn’t just family anecdotes that Makary pointed to as evidence for harms from food dye. Perhaps realizing that leaning on anecdotes wouldn’t fly with those who are more astute in his Fox News audience, he made a quick, vague reference to “randomized control trial data in The Lancet.”

The Health Nerd jumped all over that claim, saying that:

“…can only be a reference to this famous 2007 randomized trial conducted in the UK. The study looked at whether various food additives caused children to be more hyperactive compared to a placebo.

The problem is that the data in this trial doesn’t really support the arguments that Dr. Makary is making. If anything, the study shows that artificial food additives probably have no impact on hyperactivity at all.”

For full details on what the study showed and didn’t show, you should read his entire Substack piece. And you’ll see why Makary’s mention was quick and vague. Is this an example of the Gold Standard Science promised in the recent Presidential Executive Order?

Meyerowitz-Katz ended his piece this way:

I don’t think banning food colours is a huge issue either way, but it is worth talking about because it’s yet another example of bad science being used by the Trump administration. Every rational scientific assessment has come to the conclusion that there’s no need to ban these dyes. The top piece of evidence cited by the FDA Commissioner as a reason to ban them has been independently reviewed by dozens of regulatory agencies globally and none of them have ever thought it shows a link between hyperactivity and the dyes.

It’s not a problem if everyone’s frosting becomes a little less vibrant. People will barely notice. But it is a problem that the people making decisions for the United States are doing so on the basis of obviously bad science.

Also this week, Matthew Herper of STAT News published this piece:

Makary has dodged a lot of the scrutiny and criticism leveled at his boss, RFK Jr. But if he keeps this up, he’ll be placing himself under the microscope even more for what he says and does.

Addendum: see Dr Jen Gunter’s piece, Marty Makary’s Many Blind Spots about Menopause Hormone Therapy in advance of today’s FDA panel on MHT,

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