It's hard to determine the total amount of food products that have titanium dioxide because federal regulations don't require all producers to list its use on ingredient labels, but the list of foods containing the substance certainly doesn't end with Skittles.

As of August 7, the use of titanium dioxide in food is banned in the European Union. Europe is taking a precautionary principle approach based on findings from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

In recent decades, concerns for the risks of titanium dioxide consumption have grown.

What titanium dioxide is really emblematic of ... is the failure of FDA to look back at these old decisions and ask whether its decisions that were made in this case ... 56 years ago (in the 1966 approval) still hold up, he said.

Titanium dioxide in sunscreen