Foods

Dyes in snack and granola bars

Bars are the least colored category on this site. The few that list dyes owe them to candy pieces or colored coatings.

Search labeled products by category and dye

Snack and granola bars: products whose label lists a tracked dye or additive

327 of 8,150

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USDA FoodData Central, Branded Foods, release of 2026-10-29. The label date is when the record was submitted: recipes change, so check the package in your hand.

Snack, energy and granola bars make 8,150 products in the USDA data, and only 4% list a tracked substance, one of the lowest rates of all the categories here, after dairy. Red 40 is on 2% of labels, Blue 1 on 2% and titanium dioxide on 1%. Almost all of them are bars with candy-coated chocolate pieces, sprinkles or a colored yogurt-style coating, whose sub-list of ingredients names the dyes. Plain granola, nut and protein bars rarely list any, and when they are colored, it is with cocoa, caramel or fruit. Bars are a common school snack and breakfast item, so the state rules that cover competitive food and school breakfast reach them from each start date, but in practice few bars sold to schools carry these dyes. The low figure is a useful contrast with candy and frosting.

How common is this ingredient in a food category?

Snack and granola bars whose label lists Red 40

2.3%

Products listing it189
Products in the category8,150

USDA FoodData Central, Branded Foods; labels were submitted over several years and recipes change.

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When a bar includes candy

A bar with candy pieces lists the candy's own ingredients in parentheses, and that is where the dyes appear. The checker reads them. The candy page shows how often those pieces carry dyes in general.

What the labels list, substance by substance

8,150 products, 8,146 with an ingredient list; USDA FoodData Central, Branded Foods, release of October 29, 2026.
SubstanceProductsShare of the category
Red 401892.3%
Red 3130.2%
Yellow 5921.1%
Yellow 6750.9%
Blue 11401.7%
Blue 2600.7%
Propylparaben20.0%
Titanium dioxide1091.3%
BHA10.0%

Questions people ask

How many snack and granola bars products were counted, and how recent are their labels?

8,150 products, one per barcode, from the USDA FoodData Central Branded Foods release of October 29, 2026. 327 of them list at least one of the 14 substances tracked here. Most labels in the data set were filed in 2021 to 2023, so recipes may have changed since.

Which dye is listed most often in snack and granola bars?

Red 40, on 189 labels or 2.3% of the category, followed by Blue 1 (140) and Titanium dioxide (109). A product often lists several at once, so the counts overlap. The table on this page gives every tracked substance. Counts come from the labels, not from tests of the products themselves.

Are snack and granola bars with these dyes legal to sell?

Yes, in stores, except for substances whose federal date has passed, such as BVO, or will pass, such as Red 3 on January 15, 2027, and from January 1, 2027 for the four substances of California's Food Safety Act in that state. School rules in several states limit what schools serve or sell, not what stores sell.

Check next

Foods with Red 40

Search US products whose label lists Red 40 or another tracked dye, by category, from USDA FoodData Central, with each label's date.

Ingredient list checker

Paste an ingredient list: every tracked dye or additive found, by FD&C name, lake, E or INS number, with its status in your state.

Dye laws by state

Pick a state and a dye or additive: the FDA rule, every state law that names it, and the date each one starts.

Natural food colors

The colors exempt from certification that replace synthetic dyes, the new ones the FDA approved since 2025, and two still on hold.

Laws and official pages behind this page

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Independent publisher of a state-by-state tracker of food dye and additive laws in the United States, with an ingredient-list checker built on USDA FoodData Central

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Food dye and additive rules 2026, read in each state law and in the Federal Register, last checked on