Foods

Dyes and additives in chewing gum and mints

Gum and mints have the highest share of tracked substances of any category here, because both their colors and their coatings are listed.

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Chewing gum and mints: products whose label lists a tracked dye or additive

1,241 of 1,669

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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.

Chewing gum and mints form a small category in the USDA data, 1,669 products, but the one with the highest share of labels naming a tracked substance: 74%. The order differs from candy. Blue 1 comes first, on 39% of the labels, because of mint and blue raspberry flavors, followed by Red 40 at 33% and Yellow 5 at 28%. Titanium dioxide, used to whiten pellet gum and coated mints, is on 25%, the highest rate of any category. BHA appears on a handful of gum labels, where it can be part of the gum base. School rules that cover food sold on campus, such as Arizona's or Utah's, would reach gum sold by a school store; rules limited to meals would not.

How common is this ingredient in a food category?

Chewing gum and mints whose label lists Red 40

33%

Products listing it547
Products in the category1,669

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

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Coatings and bases

A gum label lists the colors of the coating and the gum together, and a "gum base" may carry its own antioxidant. The checker reads each named substance, but cannot see inside a term such as "gum base" when the list does not break it down. Sugar-free gum is no different from other gum on this point: sweeteners and colors are separate questions, and only Louisiana's school law touches sweeteners.

The list of dyes explains each name.

What the labels list, substance by substance

1,669 products, 1,669 with an ingredient list; USDA FoodData Central, Branded Foods, release of October 29, 2026.
SubstanceProductsShare of the category
Red 4054732.8%
Red 317310.4%
Yellow 547228.3%
Yellow 626315.8%
Blue 165439.2%
Blue 2865.2%
Titanium dioxide41524.9%
BHA90.5%

Questions people ask

How many chewing gum and mints products were counted, and how recent are their labels?

1,669 products, one per barcode, from the USDA FoodData Central Branded Foods release of October 29, 2026. 1,241 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 chewing gum and mints?

Blue 1, on 654 labels or 39.2% of the category, followed by Red 40 (547) and Yellow 5 (472). 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 chewing gum and mints 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