Food dye ban prompts southern ice cream joint's radical menu change

A shop that makes homemade ice cream is implementing a major change in the way it serves scoops.

Stella's Homemade Ice Cream in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, recently announced it will be phasing out artificial food dyes. 

Haley King, owner of Stella's Homemade Ice Cream, told Fox News Digital the decision stemmed from inspiration from a family member.

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"When we first opened Stella's Homemade Ice Cream, my niece was a few months old and my sister was trying to keep dyes out of her diet," King said. 

"We learned from her and started doing our research then about dyes in our diets."

King said Stella's has "been trying to use dyes sparingly" since opening in 2022.

"Most of our flavors — around 150 out of our 200 flavors — are dye-free," King said.

She said most ice cream brands at the grocery store do use dyes and that can be seen on the back of the label.

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"Luckily, we make all of our ice cream in-house and have the ability to manipulate how much dye we use, if we use any," King said.

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban on petroleum-based synthetic dyes last week, with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commissioner Martin Makary leading the charge.

Artificial food colorings were originally manufactured from coal tar; today, most synthetic food dyes are made from petroleum, or crude oil, according to the American Chemical Society (ACS) website.

The dyes commonly found in breakfast cereals, candy, snacks, beverages, vitamins and "other products [that are] aimed at children are colored with dyes," according to an article entitled "The Artificial Food Dye Blues," as shared by the National Library of Medicine. 

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"Of the 50ish flavors that do have dye, some of that is out of our control because of other products that we use – for example, cereal flavors like Froot Loops or Fruity Pebbles or flavors that use cosmic brownies," King said.

King said the shop has been experimenting with natural dyes such as blue spirulina, turmeric extract and purple carrot juice to color its ice creams. 

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"We actually just made our first run of mint chocolate chip ice cream using the natural dyes," King said.

She said that switching to natural dyes over artificial food coloring does cost more.

"However, there is no taste change in the ice cream, and we think it's a pretty great switch," King said.

She said she's hopeful that "with the recent ban, bigger products like M&Ms and cereals [will] make the switch so that it can trickle down to us mom-and-pop shops."