Magazine cites CSPI’s work on Red 3, food labels

TIME magazine has named Dr. Peter G. Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, to the 2025 TIME100 Health, a list recognizing the 100 most influential individuals in health. The full list appears in the May 26, 2025 issue of TIME, available on newsstands on Friday, May 16, and now at time.com/time100health.  

TIME selected Lurie in part because of his long history with the food dye Red 3, and for leading CSPI’s efforts on food labeling. The FDA banned Red 3 from foods in January; its use in cosmetics and topical medicines had been banned since the 1990s.

“Whether as a physician, academic researcher, or federal official, his work has often focused on ridding the food supply of toxic chemicals,” TIME’s Matt Fuchs wrote. “After four decades, Lurie was ‘thrilled’ when the FDA finally passed a federal ban. Just weeks later, his team successfully helped pressure the agency to define ‘healthy’ food labels, so that they better align with nutrition science.”

Other leaders named to the TIME100 Health include World Health Organization director general Tedros Ghebreyesus, science proponent Bill Nye, vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, philanthropist Melinda French Gates, and American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown.

“Most people believe the government is protecting them, but it often isn’t,” Lurie told TIME. “That’s where we step in.”

Lurie has led CSPI since 2017. Previously, Lurie was the Associate Commissioner at the FDA, where he worked on antimicrobial resistance, transparency, caffeinated beverages, arsenic in rice, fish consumption by pregnant and nursing people, expanded access to investigational drugs, and prescription drug abuse.  

Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, where he addressed drug and device issues, coauthored the organization’s Worst Pills, Best Pills consumer guide to medications, and led efforts to reduce worker exposure to hexavalent chromium and beryllium. Earlier, as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Michigan, he studied needle exchange programs, ethical aspects of mother-to-infant HIV transmission studies, and other HIV policy issues domestically and abroad. 

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