A Perilous Palette for the Palate
Products and Drinks with Synthetic food dyes
Synthetic food dyes beautify our food, but at what price to our health?
“I do not like green eggs and ham! I do not like them, Sam I am!”
With those lyrical, rhyming words, Dr. Seuss gave us one of our first lessons in the incredible power that food’s color holds over us. What we didn’t know at the time was that it’s a cautionary tale.
Countless studies have proven Dr. Seuss’ point. In many ways, we eat with our eyes. Color affects our perceptions of food’s quality and flavor. If it doesn’t look like we expect it should, we reject it. The brighter and more vibrant the color, the fresher and tastier we assume it will be.
However, sometimes our eyes may deceive us, as do the many food manufacturers that capitalize on these assumptions to enhance their bottom lines. Lots of these products are treated with artificial food colors to create a tantalizing illusion.
And illusion it is. The most commonly used food colors are synthetic petroleum-derived chemicals that add no taste, nutrition, or preservation to the food. Their sole purpose is to make the product look more attractive.
And worse yet, emerging scientific evidence strongly suggests these synthetic additives may cause long-overlooked or misdiagnosed health consequences, including hyperactivity, anxiety, aggression, depression, and possibly even cancer or DNA damage.
By the Numbers
The Food and Drug Administration has approved 28 natural and eight synthetic food dyes (a ninth, Red 3, was recently banned). The concern is that most of the synthetic dyes were tested and approved 35 to 70 years ago, when standards were far less stringent than today, and none were designed to detect behavioral anomalies in children. Also, the amount of synthetic dyes we consume per capita has increased more than fivefold since 1955, prompting the need to reformulate safe consumption levels, especially for children.
The three most frequently used FDA-approved dyes, comprising 90 percent of all food dyes used in the United States, are Red 40 (used in more than 36,000 American food products!), Yellow 5, and Yellow 6. The products most often containing these dyes are beverages, candies, baked goods, gelatins, cereals, gummies, snack foods, and even vitamins … you get the idea.
Guess who loves most of these products? Children are the group most significantly affected by potential damage from these chemicals. They’re also the most targeted recipients. A study in Clinical Pediatrics found that of 810 foods marketed for children, a whopping 43 percent contained artificial dyes — mostly Red 40.
A Cautionary Tale
Rebecca Bevans is a superstar in the fight against the perils of synthetic dyes. She’s a psychology professor at Western Nevada College in Carson City and has earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a master’s degree in child development. But her educational background isn’t what brought her to this battle. It was her own son.
Alex was a joyful bundle of energy as a toddler. It wasn’t until kindergarten that it appeared to be a problem. His teacher said he sometimes exhibited signs indicative of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But not all the time. That didn’t make sense to Alex’s science-savvy mom. You either have ADHD or you don’t, Bevans says. It’s not a sometimes condition.
She nixed ADHD medications, hoping her bright child was just bored and needed more intellectual stimulation. However, Alex’s hyperactivity continued to increase. By age seven, he had difficulty concentrating and complained that his brain “buzzed.”
Dusting off her research skills, Bevans discovered studies linking hyperactivity to Red 40 food dye. When she read about a 16-year-old who complained that her brain “buzzed” after consuming food containing Red 40, Bevans knew she was onto something. She removed anything with Red 40 from Alex’s diet. His behavior improved, the brain buzzing stopped, and he was calmer and better able to concentrate.
But a few months later, he started having meltdowns, scratching his arms and tearing at his clothes. It finally reached the point where he begged her to bring him a knife so he could kill himself.
“He was suicidal at seven,” Bevans says, blinking back tears. “And if we didn’t figure it out, he probably would have killed himself by the time he was a teenager because he was just so overwhelmed.”
A family trip to Hawaii provided the final clue. Alex’s overindulgence of pineapple shaved ice, enhanced by yellow dye, resulted in a deluge of meltdowns. Bevans then eliminated all synthetic dyes from Alex’s diet. In a matter of days, his emotional fits stopped. He was a changed boy and has remained so. Today, Alex is a happy, well-adjusted 19-year-old college student, halfway through his bachelor’s degree at WNC.
Getting Synthetic Dyes Out of Your Child’s Life (and Yours)
- Bevans suggests starting with food products you already have in your home.
- Read all labels and ingredient lists. Manufacturers must list any artificial dyes. Remove any containing Red 40, Green 3, Blue 1 or 2, and Yellow 5 or 6. Red 3 is banned but can be used until 2027-28.
- Replace those items, as needed, with brands and products that are dye-free or use only natural dyes. Natural dyes are made from plants, minerals, and animals, so they’re nontoxic. Just read the labels, as there are now many more dye-free choices in supermarkets, Bevans says.
- Introduce more unprocessed snacks, such as fresh fruits and veggies, into your diet.
- Check personal hygiene and toiletry product labels, including toothpastes, mouthwashes, lotions, and lip glosses. Replace with dye-free items as needed.
- Check over-the-counter medicines, and ask your pharmacist about any dyes in your prescription medicines. Ironically, even many ADHD meds contain artificial dyes.
- It’s almost impossible to know the contents of school cafeteria lunches. Be prepared to send a tasty, dye-free, homemade lunch to school with your child each day.
- Send a note to school informing your child’s teacher that they are not allowed to eat any foods containing artificial food dyes.
- Inform extended family members that your child is to receive no foods containing artificial food dyes.
- If your child is dye reactive, you should see behavioral improvement within two weeks of going dye-free.
Making a Difference
Bevans soon realized that this problem also touched many other families. In 2016, she made the difficult decision to share her experience in a powerful, emotional TEDx Talk, “The Effects of Artificial Food Dyes.” That video has gone viral, with an estimated seven to 10 million views on various internet venues, including YouTube and TikTok.
“I’m an educator at heart,” Bevans says. “I couldn’t sit on the knowledge we had while knowing that other kids were suffering.”
Bevans and Alex are prominently featured in a documentary, To Dye For, available on many streaming services. She also has a newly published book, Everything You Need to Know About Synthetic Food Dyes, coauthored with Lorne Hofseth, PhD, associate dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Pharmacy.
Her work also has inspired some of her WNC students to take up the cause. A group of them has researched the prevalence of synthetic dyes in hydration drinks, personal hygiene products, and children’s over-the-counter medicines. They hope to submit their results for scientific publication, and they even presented their research at a Western Psychological Association conference in Las Vegas this spring.
Worthy of note, Bevans’ TEDx Talk has been credited with helping to implement legislation around the nation. To date, California, Virginia, Utah, and New York City have banned the use of all synthetic food dyes from their public schools. West Virginia has gone further, banning their use in products sold throughout the state. At least a dozen other states are considering legislation banning synthetic dyes in schools or from all foods sold in the state. Unfortunately, Nevada is not yet one of them.
Where Do We Go From Here?
There are nearly 40 excellent studies that have established credible connections between synthetic dyes and various health problems. The questions beg to be asked: If we know this, why do manufacturers keep using these unnecessary chemicals? Why has Europe either banned or required warning labels on all of them and not us? Why do U.S. companies make one product for us with synthetic dyes and the same product for Canada and Europe using natural dyes? Recently, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services announced an initiative to ban the dyes. Unfortunately, that’s an overstatement. Red 3 was previously banned and is being phased out. Two others are already obsolete. For the six remaining dyes, FDA and HHS are asking companies to voluntarily remove them from their products. Will a request really be enough?
“For the last 50 years, we have been running one of the largest uncontrolled scientific experiments in the world on our nation’s children, without their consent,” says FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary recently.
Let’s hope we now can actually do something about that.
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