I recently read the results of a study that was con­ducted to deter­mine the pos­si­ble health effects of the com­mon every day food dye referred to as Red #40. Like so many of the count­less reports pro­duced to scare us into some type of mass pho­bia about the foods we eat, this one is no dif­fer­ent. This study, in which rats were fed a diet con­sist­ing of up to 10% Red 40 for two weeks, concluded

Red-40 sig­nif­i­cantly reduced repro­duc­tive suc­cess, parental and off­spring weight, brain weight, sur­vival, and female vagi­nal patency devel­op­ment. Behav­iorally, R40 pro­duced sub­stan­tially decreased run­ning wheel activ­ity, and slightly increased post­wean­ing open-field rear­ing activ­ity. Over­all, R40 pro­duced evi­dence of both phys­i­cal and behav­ioral tox­i­c­ity in devel­op­ing rats at doses of up to 10% of the diet.

Once again it seems we are fed infor­ma­tion from a half baked study from some fly by night orga­ni­za­tion called the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, in an effort to scare us. We have been eat­ing this stuff for years. For that mat­ter I am sure many peo­ple con­sume more than the pre­scribed 10% noted in the study with rats. I have per­son­ally been con­sum­ing foods with things like red 40 since I was a kid and I am still breath­ing.  Big deal, so what if it is red. Besides I am not a rat!

That, was the old me talk­ing. The “me” that existed less than a decade ago. The one that often let reports about things like food dyes, go in one ear and out the other. It was the per­son who held on to a blind and fool­ish faith in com­pa­nies that don’t have my own best inter­ests at heart. Now, I find myself try­ing to re trace my steps back to that frame of mind in an effort to help oth­ers. Why was I so cal­lous and uncon­cerned about things like this? How is it that now I am almost evan­gel­i­cal in my desires to tell oth­ers the very same things that I once rolled my eyes at? If can fig­ure out why, per­haps it will help me to help oth­ers see things in a new light too. I have posted on red food dyes in the past but some very close friends recently learned of their sons sen­si­tiv­ity to food dyes and this is always a sub­ject wor­thy of greater atten­tion than it gets.

The Mar­ket­ing Use & His­tory of Colors

Dyes are used in foods exclu­sively to make them more attrac­tive. We are nat­u­rally attracted to pri­mary col­ors. Mar­ket­ing experts around the world know this and use it to their advan­tage every­day. I don’t know about you, but I would rather my food be healthy and taste good than look pretty. If some­thing looks too per­fect or col­or­ful, chances are it has been altered. My wife and I actu­ally look for the less attrac­tive fruits and veg­eta­bles in the store as a quick way to spot organ­ics. The next time you are at the store, pick up a bag of the pret­ti­est oranges or grape­fruits you can find and read the ingre­di­ents. Yes, even pro­duce isn’t immune to the use of food dyes to make them more attrac­tive these days. Ocean Spray is noto­ri­ous for this. Doesn’t it seem odd that pro­duce like oranges would even have an ingre­di­ents list to start with?

Food dyes have had a long and seedy his­tory over the last 100 or so years in com­mer­cially made prod­ucts and food.  For an inter­est­ing and enlight­en­ing look at the his­tory of Red 40 check out:  The His­tory of Dyes.  The site is ded­i­cated exclu­sively to Red 40. Why do we need a web­site ded­i­cated to noth­ing but Red 40? I will let you decide.

Ret­ro­spec­tive

I am sure that sev­eral gen­er­a­tions from now peo­ple will look back on the foods we ate in much in the same way we now look back on things like smok­ing. Of course now we know that smok­ing causes things like can­cer and heart dis­ease but in the first half of the last cen­tury when smok­ing was gain­ing wide pop­u­lar­ity no one knew these things. Smok­ing was con­sid­ered to be good for you because it helped with stress. Dur­ing World War I & II cig­a­rettes were actu­ally given as rations to troops (yet another les­son in why you can’t rely on the gov­ern­ment to know what’s best for you). At the time it was held by the gov­ern­ment experts that cig­a­rettes gave you courage. I won­der how many of the sol­diers of that era devel­oped emphy­sema or lung can­cer and later made the con­nec­tion back to their gov­ern­ment pro­vided cig­a­rettes?  In the decades to come, I believe things like Red 40 will be viewed with the same 20/20 hind sight that we now have about cig­a­rettes. Our grand­chil­dren will look back in won­der how we so read­ily con­sumed things like that FD & C Red 40, vanillin, & Aspartame.

It is some­times dif­fi­cult to con­cede that we were wrong or fool­ish about some­thing. No one likes to do this. This feel­ing is how­ever unavoid­able when you finally real­ize that you have been eat­ing some­thing derived from the wings of bugs, coal, and petro­leum since you were a child. Who wants to admit that to them­selves? Yes you read that right; these are the sources for the most com­monly used red food dyes includ­ing Red 40. They are okay to eat, right?

It is always inter­est­ing for me to look back at the signs. Hind­sight is always 20/20. With Red 40 my wife and I could read­ily cor­re­late its con­sump­tion by our son to some behav­ioral tip­ping point that we had with him. The same was true of Gluten. When­ever he would irra­tionally over react to a sit­u­a­tion, we could always seem to trace it back to some­thing he con­sumed through the day. Nearly every time it was trace­able back to either Red 40, gluten, or some­times even the fla­vor­ing called “vanillin”.  Most often it was a result of treats given out at school that day like cup­cakes or candy.  Need­less to say we responded accord­ingly and found alter­na­tive for him to take those days. We worked closely with the school much in the same way the par­ents of chil­dren with deadly peanut aller­gies do.

Its not Just For Kids

The con­nec­tion between Red 40 and chil­dren has been known for years. Reac­tions  include tem­per tantrums, hyper­ac­tiv­ity, aggres­sive behav­ior, uncon­trol­lable cry­ing and scream­ing, kick­ing, ner­vous­ness, dizzi­ness, an inabil­ity to con­cen­trate and sit still, to name just a few.

The effects on every­one else have been less widely doc­u­mented but this study is a start. We so read­ily dis­miss warn­ings about things like food dyes because we don’t have a prob­lem with it. It only affects hyper­ac­tive chil­dren or peo­ple who are aller­gic to Red 40. Don’t sell your­self short. You may not react to red 40 in the same vis­i­ble ways that oth­ers do, but rest assured it is hav­ing some type of effect on your body. The prob­lem is that when it does finally man­i­fest itself in some way, you will likely never be able to trace it back to Red 40.

The Tick­ing Clock

Let’s just say you devel­oped lym­phoma as an exam­ple. I am not say­ing red 40 causes this, so we are just talk­ing in “what ifs” here.  Would you ever stop to con­sider some­thing like food dye as the poten­tial cause? What about other seem­ingly minor things like Nitrates or preser­v­a­tives?  Things you have been eat­ing for years with­out any appar­ent ill effects. At the point at which you are diag­nosed you might find study after study link­ing lym­phoma to some every­day thing like food dyes or preser­v­a­tives. The ques­tion is, are you will­ing to wait that long? Why do we have to develop some­thing like can­cer before we stop and pay atten­tion to stud­ies like the one done on Red 40? This is where I am lucky. I took pause after a sim­ple but lengthy bout with eczema and then a staph infec­tion. Thanks to the changes in my diet I was able to swiftly resolve both issues. It is no coin­ci­dence that I did this, and began my research for what is now helo­fuud, by look­ing into the diets that many can­cer patients often fol­low after being diagnosed.

How Long Will it Take?

The half baked study I men­tioned at the top of this piece was of course any­thing but half baked. It was pub­lished in con­junc­tion with the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Med­i­cine. One of the most widely respected med­ical infor­ma­tion sources in the world.

What trou­bles me the most is that this study so clearly shows the effects of Red 40 yet it is still being used. It comes from one of the most rep­utable sources in the med­ical world, and the results of the study are indis­putable. Red 40 is listed on the Food and Drug Administration’s web­site as an accept­able food dye for com­mer­cial use. How is it that this study hasn’t been rec­og­nized by the FDA? How is it that the results of this study aren’t rock­ing the news sta­tions across the coun­try for that mat­ter? Maybe it has. Maybe it is just one of many stud­ies that have been lost to the mud­died waters of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion. Maybe, we have sim­ply become too de-sensitized to pay atten­tion any­more. Maybe the FDA will react accord­ingly and change the reg­u­la­tions about Red 40. I won­der how long that will take. Again, are you will­ing to wait for them to tell you it’s bad for you?

Every­one Else Knows..

In Europe, Red 40 is banned in Den­mark, Bel­gium, France, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Swe­den, and Aus­tria. It is impor­tant to point out that Red dyes are not exclu­sively lim­ited to foods. Cos­metic prod­ucts includ­ing sham­poo, deodor­ant, and the like also often con­tain it. Even things that don’t appear red in color often con­tain it. There are plenty of prod­ucts to choose from that don’t have it. The trick is, find­ing them.

For some addi­tional read­ing check out these links:

Why women should avoid red food dye.

Allura Red @ 3Dchem.com

Are you really gonna eat that?

Here is a brief list of a few com­mon and even unsus­pect­ing foods and prod­ucts with Red 40 in them. Do you use or eat any of these?

Dori­tos

Eggo Waf­fles

Betty Crocker Dis­ney Princess Fruit Snacks

Betty Crocker Fruit Gushers

Pills­bury Toaster Strudel – Rasp­berry & Strawberry

Go-Gurt

Gold­fish — rain­bow variety

Ham­burger Helper — Lasagne

Hershey’s Syrup –Strawberry

Hershey’s Lite Syrup –Chocolate

Host­ess Twinkies Snack cakes

Kel­loggs Nutri-Grain cereal bars — mixed berry, rasp­berry strawberry

Pop-Tarts — choco­late chip, frosted blue­berry, frosted smores, strawberry

Jello — nearly any vari­ety that is red in color

Jello Instant Pud­ding – Chocolate

New­tons fat free cook­ies – Rasp­berry, Strawberry

Planters Cheez Balls

Com­bos Pret­zel Snacks — Pizze­ria Pretzel

M&M’s

Lit­tle Deb­bie — Fudge Brown­ies, Swiss Cake Rolls

Motts Frut­sa­tion Apple­sauce — Strawberry

Quaker Frosted Fruit Oat­meal Bar — raspberry

Quak­er­Fruit & Oat­meal Bars – straw­berry, straw­berry cheesecake

Chewy Gra­nola Bars — fla­vor vari­ety pack

Over the Counter Drugs

Bayer Children’s chew­able Aspirin — cherry

Excedrin Migraine — Geltabs

Excedrin Extra Strength Aspirin Free – geltabs,  caplets

Children’s Motrin Liquid

Children’s Tylenol Liquid

Infant’s Motrin Con­cen­trated Drops — berry flavor

Infant’s Tylenol Con­cen­trated Drops — cherry flavor

St Joseph’s Adult Low Strength Aspirin

Tylenol Extra Strength – caplets, gelcaps

Advil

Drinks

V8 Splash

Dr. Pep­per

Gatorade

Coun­try Time -  Pink Lemon­ade mix

Crys­tal Light

Lip­ton Brisk Iced Tea — what the heck?

Moun­tain Dew Code Red

Nes­tle Quick — Strawberry

Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grape­fruit Juice

Orange Crush

Remem­ber, this was a brief list and I left out the really obvi­ous ones like Fruit Loops, Fruity Peb­bles, and Skit­tles.  For more things with Red 40 in them check out this link:

Red Dye #40 in your diet