Kennedy told the executives he hopes to remove food dyes “before he leaves office,” a memo from the Consumer Brands Association’s Chief Executive Officer Melissa Hockstad said, Bloomberg reported. The memo also said Kennedy “made clear his intention to take action unless the industry is willing to be proactive with solutions.”

Studies have linked certain artificial food dyes with behavioral and attention issues in children as well as cancer, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Many European food manufacturers have already eliminated dyes such as Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6 and Red No. 40 from their food products due to regulations. Food containing these dyes must have a label warning customers about their impact on children’s “activity and attention.”

Kennedy has been outspoken against the using food dyes and additives in American ultra-processed foods.

“If you buy Froot Loops in our country, they’re loaded with food dyes, with yellow dye, red dye, blue dye and many other ingredients. The same company makes the same product with different ingredients for Canada and Europe,” Kennedy said in his confirmation hearing in January.

“We don’t have good science on all these things and that is deliberate. That’s a deliberate choice not to study the things that are truly making us sick, that are not only contributing to chronic disease but to mortalities from infectious disease,” he continued.

Kennedy instructed the FDA commissioner to revise its Substances Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) Final Rule to “enhance the FDA’s oversight of ingredients considered to be GRAS and bring transparency to American consumers,” according to a Monday HHS press release

“For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the U.S. food supply without notification to the @FDA or the public,” Kennedy posted on X. “Eliminating this loophole will provide transparency to consumers, help get our nation’s food supply back on track by ensuring that ingredients being introduced into foods are safe, and ultimately Make America Healthy Again.”

Fox News’ Sean Hannity interviewed Kennedy at a Steak ‘n Shake over the nation’s obesity and mental health epidemics Monday night.

“There are studies coming out at Stanford and Harvard that show a lot of mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression are related to food, and that changing your diet — food is medicine — by changing your diet you can lose some of those diagnoses,” Kennedy told Hannity.