>Know what else is artificial? Insulin and penicillin.

Even if they may have side effects/allergies, we tolerate them because they provide extremely large benefits to the population. You can't compare that to a chemical we use to make the colors of candies pop more.

No one is dying or getting seriously ill because their Fruit Loops had bland and unsaturated colors.

It’s not. The one who controls the null hypothesis rules the world.. Should a new dye be banned until it is proven safe, or should a new dye be banned only when it has been proven unsafe?

The answer to the above question is not a scientific one. It has to do with how we want to operate as a society, it’s a political or social issue.

> People deciding not to eat something because "it has chemicals in it" is a pretty ignorant take.

When people say this they are obviously not referring the the definition of "chemical" that a chemist would use. Pretending otherwise is exactly the "nerd-snark" mentioned above which makes people distrust experts because they clearly aren't intending to use the term "chemical" in a sense that would include substances like water.

There are too many food (and personal care and clothing etc) chemical additives for the average person to remotely be able to keep up with the details of each, especially given not all products even need to disclose them–the charitable, or simply non snarky, reading of that kind of comment is more like "I don't want to eat food with unnecessary/under-studied additives in it."