- It is not banned in Europe, and that is the most repeated thing about it that is wrong. Europe authorises Red 40 but makes the pack carry a printed warning about children's activity and attention. Most European manufacturers took the dye out rather than print that sentence, which is why it looks banned on a French shelf and is not.
- The warning is a precaution, not proof that your child is over the limit. Reviewing the same colours, Europe's own food safety authority said the data did not substantiate a causal link, and when it redid the intake sums in 2015 with better usage data, no group came out above the safety limit. The label was a legislative choice to be careful, which is a different thing from a finding.
- We still weight it for young children, and this is why we built Sito. Red 40 is one of the few additives where regulators wrote children into the rule itself. We class it moderate risk for a school-age child and high risk under six. One score for everyone cannot make that call, because it does not know how old your child is.
Red 40 is approved for food in the United States and in the European Union, so nobody is breaking a rule by putting it in your child's cereal. The disagreement is about the amount a small body gets, and on that point the regulators do not say the same thing as each other.
Europe makes any food containing it carry a printed sentence: may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children. The United States requires no such sentence. Same dye, same evidence, two different answers, which is why parents keep searching for this one.
The label requirement is also why the myth exists. Faced with printing a warning about children on a packet of sweets, most European manufacturers reformulated with carmine or anthocyanins instead. The dye is legal there and has largely left the shelves anyway, which looks identical to a ban from the aisle.
- What it is
- Allura Red AC
E129, FD&C Red No. 40 - Our class
- Moderate risk
- Under six
- Counts as high risk
- Banned?
- No, in either market
What the regulators actually found
The European Food Safety Authority keeps an acceptable daily intake of 7 mg per kilogram of body weight, and that limit scales with body weight, so a four-year-old reaches it on roughly a quarter of what an adult can have. In its 2009 review the authority found that at maximum reported use levels intake estimates are generally below the limit, though for children aged 1 to 10 the ninety-fifth percentile could sit slightly above it at the upper end of the range. When it recalculated in 2015 with better usage data, none of the estimates exceeded the limit in any population.
So where does the warning label come from? Not from a safety finding. Reviewing the same six colours, the authority said the data available, including the 2007 Southampton study itself, did not substantiate a causal link between the individual colours and behavioural effects. The label is a precaution the European legislature chose to require anyway, and we think parents deserve to know that rather than be told Europe proved something.
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment reviewed synthetic dyes in 2021 and was careful with its words too. Its conclusion is that synthetic food dyes can impact neurobehaviour in some children, that human studies suggest an association with inattentiveness, hyperactivity and restlessness in sensitive children, and that some children are likely to be more affected than others. It also said current acceptable daily intakes may not provide adequate protection from neurobehavioural impacts in children.
In the United States nothing has been revoked. Red 40 is permanently listed with batch certification required, and the April 2025 federal announcement is a voluntary industry phase-out with no rule behind it, whose target has already slipped to the end of 2027. California will bar it from public school food from the end of 2027.
Why it costs more points for a younger child
We score food out of 100 for the age of the child in front of you, and Red 40 is one of the additives where that age changes the answer. We class it moderate risk for a school-age child, and for a child under six we promote it to high risk.
We want to be exact about the reason, because it is not the one you might expect. It is not that we think your child is over the safety limit. It is that Red 40 is one of the few additives where a regulator wrote children into the rule itself, and where a second assessment found that sensitive children are affected differently from everyone else. When the evidence is specifically about young children, the score should be too.
This is not a rule we invented for one dye. Across our catalogue, 116,081 products out of 1,057,618 come out with a different score for a child under six, and the average difference is five points.
The honest limit of what we can tell you: we score the product, not your child's day. We do not know how many red things they ate before this one, and neither does any other scanner.
Now go and check your own cupboard
Everything above is one dye. Your child eats a week of labels, and no parent has time to read them all. Sito scans a barcode and gives you the score for your own child's age, with the dye, the sugar and the processing broken out so you can see which one is actually costing the points. Free to download.
What Red 40 does not do
It does not cause ADHD, and no regulator has said it does. The FDA's own framing is worth reading in full, because the half of it that gets quoted online is the alarming half. For certain susceptible children with ADHD and other problem behaviours, the agency wrote, the data suggest their condition may be exacerbated by exposure to a number of substances in food, including but not limited to synthetic colour additives, and the effects appear to be due to a unique intolerance to those substances rather than to any inherent neurotoxic property. Cut that quote at the word exacerbated, as most articles do, and the FDA appears to single out food colouring. It did not.
It is also not the dye that got banned. That was Red 3, which the FDA revoked in January 2025 under the Delaney Clause, with food reformulation due by January 2027. Red 3 and Red 40 are different molecules with different histories, and headlines about one keep getting attached to the other. Red 3 has its own row in our table, with the revocation notice and the California statute.
One study worth naming honestly: a 2022 paper found that long-term dietary-level Allura Red made mice more susceptible to experimental colitis, through an effect on intestinal serotonin. That is a mouse result at this stage, and we treat it as a signal rather than a finding about children.
Our sources
- EFSA 2009 Acceptable daily intake held at 7 mg/kg body weight per day. At maximum reported use levels, refined intake estimates are generally below the intake, although in children aged 1 to 10 the ninety-fifth percentile of exposure can be slightly higher than it at the upper end of the range. Reviewing the six colours together, the authority stated that the data available, including the Southampton study itself, did not substantiate a causal link between the individual colours and possible behavioural effects.
- EFSA 2015 Refined exposure assessment with new usage data: none of the exposure estimates exceeded the acceptable daily intake of 7 mg/kg body weight per day in any population.
- EU law Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Article 24 and Annex V, in force since 20 July 2010. Foods containing E129 must carry the words may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children. Beverages above 1.2% alcohol and certain meat and eggshell markings are exempt.
- OEHHA Health Effects Assessment: Potential Neurobehavioral Effects of Synthetic Food Dyes in Children (16 April 2021), covering seven dyes including Red 40. The scientific literature indicates that synthetic food dyes can impact neurobehaviour in some children; human studies suggest an association with inattentiveness, hyperactivity and restlessness in sensitive children; some children are likely to be more adversely affected than others; and current acceptable daily intakes may not provide adequate protection from neurobehavioural impacts in children.
- FDA Permanently listed for food with batch certification required (21 CFR 74.340). No revocation and no deadline as of September 2026. The April 2025 federal phase-out of petroleum-based dyes is a voluntary industry programme, target end of 2027.
- State law California AB 2316, the School Food Safety Act, bars Red 40 from food served or sold in California public schools from 31 December 2027.
- Peer reviewed Chronic dietary-level Allura Red AC promotes susceptibility to experimental colitis via intestinal serotonin, in mice.
Every additive we score has a row like this one, with its class, its child flag and its citations. The full table is here, all 253 of them, and you can download it as CSV or JSON.