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Snacks and candy, taken apart the same way as the drinks: all food ingredients in label order, what it’s for, what the evidence says, and a verdict at the end.

The snack aisle runs on a short list of additives. Most candy is sugar, corn syrup, two or three synthetic dyes, and a glazing agent. Most chips are oil, salt, flavor powders, and — for anything orange or red — the same dyes. Learn those ingredients once and the label on nearly any bag becomes readable. The explainers below cover the ones that do the most work; the breakdowns apply them to specific products.

Breakdowns

Products, line by line

  • Skittles — five synthetic dyes, two kinds of sugar, and the wax that makes them shine. The bag people ask about most, and a good first one to read because every dye on the label has its own explainer below.

Where to start: this section is newer and smaller than the drinks side of the site. It grows as we work through the aisle, one product at a time, with the label photographed and every claim sourced. If there’s a snack you want taken apart next, tell us.

The ingredients behind almost every snack

These five show up in most candy and a lot of chips. Each explainer covers what the ingredient is, the research behind the concern, and where regulators stand.

Explainers that apply to the whole aisle

  • Red 40 — the most-used dye in American food, the one being phased out, and the one with the best-documented effect on children’s behavior
  • Synthetic food dyes — all nine FD&C colors in one place: Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, the banned Red 3, and what’s replacing them
  • High fructose corn syrup — what it is, how it compares to sugar, and why the dose matters more than the name
  • Sucralose — the sweetener in most “sugar-free” candy and gum, and what the research since 2022 has found
  • Sodium benzoate — the preservative in sauces, pickles, and fruit snacks, and the one chemistry quirk worth knowing about

Or see every ingredient we’ve covered in the ingredients index →

How to read a snack label in ten seconds

  1. Sugar is usually the first or second ingredient. It may be listed as sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, or all three; they add up. That’s the number that matters most, and it’s on the nutrition panel as “Added Sugars.”
  2. Colors are at the end. Anything with a number — Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1 — is a synthetic dye. “Color added” with no name means there’s one in there too.
  3. The unpronounceable things in the middle are mostly texture. Emulsifiers, glazing agents, anti-caking agents. Unusual, rarely a concern at these amounts, and each one is covered in the explainers when it is.
  4. “Natural flavors” means plant- or animal-derived, not simple. It’s the one line on the label that tells you almost nothing.

Every breakdown on this site follows the same process: the label is photographed, each ingredient is checked against FDA and EFSA documents and the peer-reviewed research, and the sources are linked at the bottom of the post. How we research →