In-N-Out is getting ahead of the FDA's 2026 dye ban

Ahead of a federal deadline that doesn't hit for another year and a half, In-N-Out already rewrote part of its ingredient list. Not a press tour, not a rebrand — a straightforward swap of some of the same petroleum-based dyes the government told the entire food industry to phase out by the end of 2026.

The FDA order behind the timing

On April 22, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA announced a plan to eliminate petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the U.S. food supply. Two lesser-used dyes, Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B, are being revoked outright. The other six, the ones that actually show up in fast food, got a longer runway: FD&C Green No. 3, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1, and Blue No. 2 are supposed to be gone from the food supply by the end of 2026, and companies are being asked to pull Red No. 3 on the same timeline.

Worth saying plainly: the phase-out runs on voluntary compliance. Nothing in the announcement is a binding rule with a penalty attached. It's an understanding with the food industry, dressed up as a deadline.

Most chains are waiting to see if anyone enforces it. In-N-Out didn't wait.

What actually changed

In-N-Out confirmed the specifics to reporters in May 2025, more than a year before most competitors said anything. Per Restaurant Business and Good Morning America:

• Red No. 40 is out of the Strawberry Shake and Signature Pink Lemonade, replaced with beta carotene and vegetable juice for color.
• Yellow No. 5 is out of the chilies, pickles, and spread, replaced with turmeric.
• High-fructose corn syrup is out of the shake mix, strawberry syrup, spread, and Pink Lemonade, replaced with real sugar. The ketchup is mid-transition to a real-sugar formula, in the company's own words: "we're also in the process of transitioning to an upgraded ketchup, which is made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup."
• Calcium propionate, a mold-inhibiting preservative, has been dropped.
• Sucralose and saccharin sweetener packets are off the condiment counter, replaced by a non-dairy oat milk creamer option.

That's a specific, checkable list, not a marketing paragraph. It's also the kind of change a lot of billion-dollar chains haven't made to a menu that hasn't fundamentally changed since 1948.

What the science actually says about Red 40

This is where it's easy to overstate the case, so here's the honest version.

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment spent roughly two years on a formal risk assessment and concluded that synthetic food dyes are associated with inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and restlessness in some children, not all of them. Red No. 40 is the most heavily consumed of the group, so it draws the most attention. EWG's summary of the report notes the effect shows up in kids both with and without a prior behavioral diagnosis.

The FDA's own position is more cautious. In its dye phase-out announcement, the agency stated that a causal relationship between color additives and hyperactivity "has not been established" for the general population. Both things are true at once: California's regulator sees enough signal to formally warn about it, and the federal regulator isn't calling it settled science. Read the In-N-Out swap as a company getting ahead of a real, unresolved debate — not as fixing something already proven dangerous.

What didn't change

The dye swap is real, and it's also narrower than the headlines about it suggest. In-N-Out's own 2020 allergen and ingredient chart lists the fries as fried in 100% sunflower oil, and the Spread — the sauce on nearly every burger — still runs on soybean and/or canola oil as its base, alongside corn syrup, xanthan gum, polysorbate 80, and calcium disodium EDTA. Seed oils were never part of this announcement, and nothing about them has moved.

That's not a knock on what the company did do. Pulling three additives and a preservative from a menu this static is a bigger swing than most large chains have taken this year. It's just not a full reformulation, and In-N-Out hasn't claimed it is.

How to order at In-N-Out right now

1. Shakes and Pink Lemonade are the clearest win: real sugar, no Red 40, colored with beta carotene and vegetable juice instead.
2. The chilies and pickles are already reformulated with turmeric in place of Yellow 5.
3. The Spread is still seed oil. If you're avoiding soybean and canola oil, ask for mustard or ketchup instead, or order it "protein style" without the extras.
4. Fries run on sunflower oil, not the worst seed oil on a fryer, but still a seed oil, not the beef tallow older-generation fast food chains used decades ago.
5. Check the ketchup. It's mid-transition, so the packet on your tray might still be the high-fructose corn syrup version depending on when your location restocked.

Tallow tracks reformulations like this as chains report them, so you can see what's actually changed versus what's still running on the old recipe before you order. Check In-N-Out and everywhere else on the Tallow app.

Ingredient details in this post come from In-N-Out's own public statements to reporters and its published allergen chart, and can change without notice as reformulations roll out location by location. This is not medical advice.