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 con­tinue reading…