"How Raspberries Turned Blue"

"How Raspberries Turned Blue" 

"After five years, the FDA finally caved under pressure from consumer advocates and banned Red No. 2, and the ensuing PR shitstorm against red food dye was so pervasive that Mars Inc. completely eliminated red M&Ms from its mix even though they’d never used Red No. 2. It was a decade before Mars deemed the red threat sufficiently over and red M&Ms came back into rotation in 1987.

Cherry, strawberry, and even watermelon safely secured their spots in the lineup of red or reddish flavors with the addition of Allura Red AC (aka Red 40, introduced in 1971), leaving sanguine raspberry as odd flavor out. The only other red colorant that approximated raspberry’s depth or vibrancy was Red No. 10 (carmoisine, also known as azorubine), but even that had been outlawed in the 1960s. And because colorants are typically altered by changes in temperature and acidity, as well as exposure to light, swapping out an old red for a new one isn’t always a straightforward solution.

Fortunately, raspberry had a wild relative on its side, a country cousin, Rubus leucodermis. Street name: Blue Raspberry, a rangy bramble native to the Pacific Northwest... 

soon came a jarring array of products with blue raspberry flavor: Jic Jac soda, Pop-Tarts, Peeps, the creme in a very special Twinkie. There’s blue raspberry weight gain powder for getting swole, and to the opposite but strangely appropriate end, an entire range of blue raspberry vape juice."

https://www.tastecooking.com/raspberries-turned-blue/?ref=PRH17564EA86B&utm_source=Crown&utm_medium=Advertising&utm_campaign=Taste_Keywee&kwp_0=717300&kwp_4=2535000&kwp_1=1074341

FB: "as the fear over red dye continued, candy companies began to replace it increasingly with Brilliant Blue FCF (also known as Blue #1 Lake), a food dye that’s been in rotation since 1929 in a range of other foods and drinks that had no business being blue: orange-flavored curaçao, Nehi and Frostie brands of cream soda, and Jones bubblegum soda. Giving the flavor a new color allowed it to drop its carcinogenic affiliation and change its image altogether."