For thirty-five years it was illegal to put a particular red dye in your lipstick, because it caused cancer in laboratory animals. It stayed perfectly legal to put the same dye in sweets aimed at children.
The dye is Red 3, the bright cherry colouring known in the trade as erythrosine. In 1990 the American regulator banned it from cosmetics and skin creams, having accepted that it caused thyroid cancer in rats. There is a law, the Delaney Clause, that is meant to be simple. If an additive causes cancer in people or animals, it should not be in the food supply.
So it came out of the lipstick.
It stayed in the food. Sweets, cakes, frostings, some medicines, the cheerful red things pointed straight at children. For more than three decades the very same substance was judged too dangerous to wear on your lips and perfectly fine to feed to a five-year-old.
It took until January 2025, after a campaign group filed a formal petition, for the regulator to finally pull it from food as well. Manufacturers have until 2027 to take it out.
For thirty-five years the system held two positions at once. Too risky for your face. Acceptable for your child's mouth. And it took an outside group, not the regulator, to finally force the contradiction shut.
These are the people whose judgement you are told to trust completely on butter, beef and salt.
Bear that in mind.