Why Jolly Ranchers Are Banned in the UK but Not the US

On June 11, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued an alert declaring several candies manufactured by The Hershey Company “unsafe to eat.” Four products from the flagship Jolly Rancher brand—Hard Candy, “Misfits” Gummies, Hard Candy Fruity 2 in 1, and Berry Gummies—contain mineral oil hydrocarbons, banned from food in the UK.

The offending substances are mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) and mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH). Both are derived from crude oil and are often used in confectionery to reduce stickiness and enhance the candy’s shine. “Consuming mineral oil regularly and over time could pose a risk to your health,” says Tina Potter, head of incidents at the FSA. “If you’ve eaten them, there is no need for concern, but don’t eat any more.”

Nevertheless, the FSA has branded the consumption of these sweets a “toxicological concern.” MOSH have been found to accumulate in the tissue of certain species of lab rat, causing adverse effects in the liver. But MOAH are more concerning—the UK’s FSA, alongside the European Union, considers some of these compounds to be genotoxic carcinogens—substances that can cause cancer by altering cells’ genetic material.

The FSA is now working with local authorities around the UK to remove the errant Jolly Rancher bags from shelves. While Hershey began recalling these products from UK markets in 2024, many remain on sale through unofficial channels: the slew of online retailers and brick-and-mortar US candy shops that have proliferated across Britain.

Some of these stores cater to Britons’ sweet tooths. But many have been implicated with money-laundering scams and tax evasion, particularly on London’s famous retail hub Oxford Street. More than three weeks on from the FSA’s alert, all four noncompliant candies are available for purchase in the UK from online importers. On a visit to a sweet shop in Yorkshire, northern England, on June 19, Jolly Rancher Hard Candy was sold out—staff were unaware of the product ban and said it was the retailer’s most popular item.

Enforcement will likely take time. But in the US, MOAH remain permitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The key takeaway from all of this is [that] mineral oil is allowed and deemed safe for use in food in the US,” says Todd Scott, senior manager of communications at The Hershey Company. “Mineral oil is not an ingredient in the recipe. We use it as a processing aid to keep the candy from sticking to the mold.”

MOAH are just one of a number of chemical compounds banned by the UK and EU that are deemed safe for Americans. Much of the discrepancy lies in the FDA’s “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole. In the US, any new food additive is subject to premarket review and approval by the FDA—unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.

These assessments, however, are often completed in private labs and sometimes even by the manufacturer of the chemicals themselves—and manufacturers aren’t required by law to submit their GRAS determination or supporting data to the FDA. The assessments don’t require third-party experts, either. In a 2023 study of 403 GRAS notices filed by the FDA between 2015 and 2020, an average of 30 percent relied on the opinion of a manufacturer’s in-house employee.

Adopted in 1958, the GRAS exemption was intended to cover the use of commonplace ingredients, explains Jensen Jose, regulatory counsel for the nonprofit watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, DC. “It was so you wouldn’t require a new piece of legislation every time you added salt to a sandwich.”

However, as the food industry’s appetite for additives grew over the following decades, the GRAS rule came to cover a widening array of ingredients—with the manufacturers of these additives left effectively to govern themselves. “The hope is that they conduct scientific studies of their own,” says Jennifer Pomeranz, a public health lawyer and associate professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “But legally speaking, no one’s checking.” In theory, Pomeranz says, “a company can add a new ingredient and not even list its chemical compound on the packet.”

The result is that a host of additives, recognized as safe under FDA regulations, are banned by other governments over safety fears. “Compounds are added to food for shelf life, aesthetics, and convenience,” says Lindsay Malone, a registered dietitian nutritionist and instructor in the Department of Nutrition at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. “Even down to how easily food comes out of the plastic container.”

Compounds that carry health risks line the shelves of US grocery stores, consumed by Americans every day. Take butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), for example, a preservative that has been linked to hormone disruption. It’s often found in cereals, dried snacks, and packaged cake mixes. Meanwhile a packet of chewing gum, potato chips, or processed meat may include butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a probable carcinogen. Both are exempt from FDA regulations through the GRAS loophole.

In isolation, compounds like BHT, BHA, and MOAH aren’t necessarily dangerous. Public health advocates are more concerned about their cumulative effect—a lifetime of eating common, addictive, harmful compounds. Malone says a diet heavily consisting of ultra-processed foods—most likely to contain additives—can impact gut health. A disrupted microbiome is hypothesized to lead to increased gut permeability (also known as “leaky gut”), a proposed though unproven condition where pathogens and toxins are thought to leak into the bloodstream.

There has been some regulatory momentum in the US against harmful additives. In January, the FDA announced a nationwide ban on Red 3, the petroleum-derived food dye that turns candy scarlet—studies from the 1980s and 1990s showed it can cause cancer in lab rats. In 2024, it also outlawed brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a stabilizer for artificial flavors that can cause bromine toxicity, banned by the UK in 1970.

The FDA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED.

Both additives, however, were first outlawed by California, in 2023—Jose says it’s more effective banning compounds through state legislatures than the FDA. “We got California to introduce a bill, pass it, sign a law, and get Red 3 banned before the FDA even responded to our 2022 petition. If a company can’t sell something in California or New York, they may as well reformulate their product for the whole country.”

Another movement against these additives is also gaining traction: “Make America Healthy Again”—the public health platform of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “Secretary Kennedy has brought MAHA priorities—like food safety, medical transparency, and the chronic disease epidemic—into national focus, delivering early, measurable progress for the American people,” says Emily Hilliard, press secretary for HHS. “Under his leadership, the FDA is eliminating synthetic food dyes, reforming outdated GRAS rules, and fast-tracking safer ingredient alternatives.” An HHS press release on March 10 said that the department would be looking to end the ability of companies to self-declare compounds as GRAS.

While such rhetoric has been welcomed by some public health advocates, Jose remains skeptical of the government’s commitment to this reform. He cites a joint April announcement from HHS and the FDA that six more petroleum-based dyes will be removed from the food supply—the ban was initially led by West Virginia state lawmakers. “The HHS and FDA shouldn’t be relying on states to make changes—they should be declared illegal at the federal level,” adds Jose. “My worry is RFK is just targeting low-hanging fruit, and nothing will actually be done to tackle the GRAS loophole.”

Compared to UK and EU law, where the burden of proof is to show an additive is safe, in the US compounds are generally permitted as safe to eat until proven otherwise. Getting to the point of a ban can be a decades-long struggle, despite strong evidence of harm, as was the case with Red 3. Banning potential carcinogens like MOAH to fall in line with other jurisdictions therefore feels distant.

It means potentially harmful substances remain for sale in the US, eaten by millions of Americans every day. And that creates unknown, untold health costs. “The GRAS loophole means the FDA doesn’t have the data—we simply don’t know the long-term health effects,” says Jose.