On Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published a video to his X account exposing the food industry for one of its 100s of toxic additives: the yellow dye tartrazine.

Tartrazine has been found to cause tumors, asthma, developmental delays, neurological damage, ADD/ADHD, hormone disruption, gene damage, anxiety, depression, and intestinal injuries.

Kennedy opened the video with, "This is what Americans inccocently put into their bodies, and most alarmingly, their children's.

It's not coincidence that Americans die earlier than Canadians, or Germans, or Italians, or Japanese, or Koreans, or Australians, or any comparable country."

"It wasn't always that way—until the early 1990s, our life expectancy was the same or better than other developed countries."

"Then suddenly, more and more Americans began suffering from chronic diseases: from obesity, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and all kinds of autoimmune diseases."

Kennedy continued, "Our maternal mortality rate soared to the highest of any developed country on earth. Same with infant mortality. Like the frog in the slowly boiling water, we really didn't notice as we got sicker and sicker."

"We've grown now to accept chronic disease conditions as normal. But now in 2024 we're finally waking up to the cataclysm, and we're asking ourselves, "How in the world did this happen?"

"A big part of it is our diet. Restaurants that serve contaminated food are fined or shut down. But when it's the government that approves the poisons in our food, a few people get very, very rich, and the toxins end up in every supermarket aisle."

"Let me show you what I mean. Doritos, Cheez-Its, Cap'n Crunch, gummy bears. Everyone knows that these are junk foods, so maybe you wouldn't be too surprised to see that the ingredients include a lot of poisons, including a harmful yellow dye called tartrazine, or yellow dye #5."

"What you may not know is that tartrazine was originally made out of the sludge that's left over when you turn coal into coke for blast furnaces. It's called coal tar and I've actually sued many big industries for legacy contamination of coal tar all around the country because it's so toxic and so harmful to the environment and human beings."

"A century ago, it was just an obnoxious industrial byproduct that everyone was figuring out ways to get rid of. One of the ways they did that was by paving roads. But then, a British chemist figured out that coal tar could be used to derive fabric dye; and if fabric dye, why not food?"

"Food manufacturers began using tartrazine to cover up the discoloration of low quality foods that they wanted to pass off on unsuspecting consumers." 

"They didn't know back then that this yellow dye causes tumors, asthma, developmental delays, neurological damage, ADD/ADHD, hormone disruption, gene damage, anxiety, depression, and intestinal injuries."

"Well, we know it now—we've known this for decades. That's why tartrazine is heavily restricted in other countries, and in some countries, foods that contain tartrazine have a warning label that it may cause ADHD in children."

"Today, it's made from petroleum, not coal tar. Either way it's crazy to add this to your kids' favorite foods. It doesn't even change the flavor."

"This yellow dye isn't just in junk food. It's in the foods that we consider healthy. It's in everyday kids' snacks like popcorn, mac and cheese, fruit snacks. It's in sports drinks like Gatorade, and so-called Vitamin Water. It's even added to chicken broth, corn, pickles, mustard, and yogurt. And so, of course, our kids get sick."

"And we lovingly feed them chewable vitamins which have—surprise—tartrazine."

"And so the cycles continue until the coughs and asthma kick in. At which point, you go to pick up some cough syrup. And yeah, you guessed it, tartrazine."