Petroleum waste turned billion dollar industry - a history of synthetic food dyes
Last week I chatted with some retired oil men about the 1960s in the oil and gas industry in Calgary. One of the men reminded me that at that time, there was no shortage of oil but there was a shortage of uses for it. He said that entire departments were created to find new ways to use oil in our society, to turn their waste into profit. This idea converged with another topic that I find endlessly fascinating, the history of synthetic food dyes. Most people don't realize food dye is made from crude oil, and now we know how that came to be. So I set out to find out more about the history of the creation of food dye, and its birth surprised me as it was political right from the very start. The great transformation of our food supply began in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., at a moment when a handful of powerful oil companies were quietly looking for new ways to profit. Behind the scenes, major oil companies—flush with crude but facing a nagging glut of gasoline and slo...
