Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 1: name is Jorge Champ, and today we are answering the
Speaker 1: question is food coloring really bad for you? The Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration, or FDA here in the US recently
Speaker 1: said it's going to try to take out all artificial
Speaker 1: coloring from the foods we eat. But what are these
Speaker 1: food colorants? How bad are they? And does that mean
Speaker 1: we've been poisoning ourselves for decades. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: to several experts, including a psychologist of food, a biomedical
Speaker 1: cancer researcher, and an epidemiologist whose work was cited in
Speaker 1: the FDA announcement. So put down those brightly colored Cheetos,
Speaker 1: spit out that fluorescent Gatoray you just drank, and join
Speaker 1: us as we answer the question is food coloring really
Speaker 1: bad for you? Welcome to Sign Stuff. Hey, everyone, So
Speaker 1: the FDA just made that announcement about food dies and
Speaker 1: I'm hoping this episode will be a guide for you
Speaker 1: to understand what it all means. We'll start with the basics,
Speaker 1: and that is the idea that we put color into
Speaker 1: our foods. Why do we do that? Where did this
Speaker 1: idea come from? And how does color affect how we
Speaker 1: taste food. To answer this, I reached out to a
Speaker 1: psychologist of food. Doctor Charles Spence is a professor of
Speaker 1: psychology at Oxford University, and he's an expert on how
Speaker 1: our senses mixed together to give us the experience of eating.
Speaker 1: I asked them to give us a rundown on the
Speaker 1: history of food coloring. Here's what he said.
Speaker 2: So it goes back a long way. Certainly. Maybe the
Speaker 2: first recorded use is in wine making, using the skins
Speaker 2: to color the wine. That maybe goes back several thousand years.
Speaker 2: Then over the last century or two. And also he
Speaker 2: finds the use of saffron urmeric as well. And here
Speaker 2: in the UK there's lots of use of coloring pasley
Speaker 2: to turn things green. So that's clearly a lot of
Speaker 2: interest for a long time. Color is an important part
Speaker 2: of the experience.
Speaker 1: Can you step us through a little bit of the
Speaker 1: psychology of food coloring? How does color effect how we
Speaker 1: experience the food?
Speaker 2: So one of the primary factors when we go shopping
Speaker 2: is the use of color more than maybe any other cue.
Speaker 2: As soon as we see products, then our brain is
Speaker 2: immediately predicting what it's going to taste like, what's the flavor?
Speaker 2: And that can be from the product to the thing itself.
Speaker 2: Maybe that the yellowness on a banana will tell you
Speaker 2: something about how sweet it's going to taste, through to
Speaker 2: the color on a packet of potato chips. If I
Speaker 2: see a pink crisp packet, it's going to be prawn cocktail.
Speaker 2: If it's blue and white, it'll be cheese, onion, or
Speaker 2: maybe salt and vinegar, depending on the brand. Our brain automatically,
Speaker 2: within the blink of an eye predicts do we like it,
Speaker 2: how energy dense is it? What flavor is it going
Speaker 2: to have?
Speaker 1: So we color food to catch our attention. The ancient
Speaker 1: Romans apparently use mulberry juice to color their foods red,
Speaker 1: and the Egyptians are said to have used saffron to
Speaker 1: dye their foods yellow and gold. But food coloring can
Speaker 1: also change what do you think a food tastes like?
Speaker 1: And this has been shown in several scientific studies where
Speaker 1: people are giving a between see white yogurt and yogurt
Speaker 1: would pink dye in it. Here's how Professor Spence describes it.
Speaker 2: The very first studies will done in like nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: and thirties, often by chemists confused about how good adding
Speaker 2: coloring to a jelly or a candy, or a yogurt
Speaker 2: or a cake change the taste. But now in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five there are probably four or five hundred published
Speaker 2: research studies looking at the impact of color. Formally, in
Speaker 2: the lab, we will just give people maybe three pots
Speaker 2: of yogurt, one just playing yogurt, the other two samples
Speaker 2: a little bit of sugar added to make them a
Speaker 2: bit of sweetness. One of those two samples with the
Speaker 2: sugar will also color pink, and then give people the
Speaker 2: three samples in a random order and ask them to
Speaker 2: say which one is sweetest, or they will the same yes, no, okay,
Speaker 2: which one is sweetest, which one is less sweet People
Speaker 2: be convinced that the pink one is sweeter, ten percent
Speaker 2: sweeter or fifteen percent sweeter just through the use of color.
Speaker 2: So in some cases you can have this really strong
Speaker 2: reaction that we really do taste what we see.
Speaker 1: So coloring is basically used to trick people. If I
Speaker 1: gave you three cups of yogurt, one with white yogurt,
Speaker 1: another one with white yogurt, with sugar and another one
Speaker 1: with white yogurt, sugar and a little bit of food
Speaker 1: dye to make it look pink. You're gonna think the
Speaker 1: pink one is the sweetest. Food dyes can hould your
Speaker 1: brain into thinking something is more ripe, or sweeter, or
Speaker 1: more full of flavor then it really is. But, as
Speaker 1: Professor Spence says, food coloring can also be fun. In
Speaker 1: another set of experiments, scientists tested how the colors of
Speaker 1: M and M's affected how much kids eat them.
Speaker 2: The question why M and M's, or in England Europe, Smarties,
Speaker 2: these sugar colored chocolate candies. Why do they come in
Speaker 2: a variety of colors? It's not for your good health,
Speaker 2: but the reason is from research done last century. Way,
Speaker 2: if you ask people do you have a favorite color
Speaker 2: of M and M's or Smarties? And kids will say yes,
Speaker 2: I love the orange ones because it takets orange, or
Speaker 2: the red ones because they're sweeter. And if you then
Speaker 2: give the little kid a bottle full of their favorite
Speaker 2: colored sweet versus a bowl of a mixture of colors,
Speaker 2: they'll actually eat more of the mixed colors than of
Speaker 2: their favorite color. Because our brain kind of satyates or
Speaker 2: gets bored of the same thing over and over again,
Speaker 2: saying it's my favorite color. I'll get bored of it sooner.
Speaker 2: Whereas by having color variety you can encourage children to
Speaker 2: consume more.
Speaker 1: Candies that is fascinating. So a big part of why
Speaker 1: we color foods is just to keep our brains entertained.
Speaker 2: For violin, for contrastant, because we can.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, Because we can.
Speaker 2: It just adds interest to what we eat and what
Speaker 2: we drink. It's not part of the flavor, but I
Speaker 2: think it does contribute to our enjoyment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, coloring foods is fun, and for most of history
Speaker 1: this coloring was done with natural ingredients, mostly herbs and
Speaker 1: spices like partsley and turmeric. There are also non plant
Speaker 1: based food dyes like carmine red, which comes from crushing
Speaker 1: the bodies of a cactus eating insect called Dectylopius cocus.
Speaker 1: But then in the eighteen hundreds, people got really good
Speaker 1: at chemistry, and that's where we started to get into trouble.
Speaker 1: To pick up this thread, I reached out to doctor
Speaker 1: Lorne Hoffsith, a professor and Associated Dean for Research at
Speaker 1: the College of Pharmacy in the University of South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Who has a keen interest in artificial food dice. Here's
Speaker 1: how he describes what happened next.
Speaker 3: The adulteration started around the eighteen hundreds, where they were
Speaker 3: throwing arsenic chalk into food to make it look more white.
Speaker 3: And so in eighteen fifty six, guy named Sir William
Speaker 3: Perkin discovered as a chemist he was looking at a
Speaker 3: chemical that might work on malaria, and this chemical was
Speaker 3: purple and he called it mauvine. And that was the
Speaker 3: first synthetic food dye that then led to they discovered
Speaker 3: they've consynthesized food colors. They have these without getting too nerdy,
Speaker 3: aromatic hydrocarbons on their structure that create a color.
Speaker 1: Okay. So, starting in the mid eighteen fifties, there was
Speaker 1: an explosion of many different kinds of artificial or synthetic
Speaker 1: food dies made from chemicals like coal, tar, or petroleum.
Speaker 1: But then people started getting sick. Some of these dyes
Speaker 1: had harmful chemicals like lead, arsenic, and mercury. Because of that,
Speaker 1: between nineteen oh six and nineteen thirty eight, a series
Speaker 1: of laws in the US started to regulate what people
Speaker 1: could and could not put in foods, and it gave
Speaker 1: the power to enforce these laws to the Food and
Speaker 1: Drug Administration or FDA. The FDA would review these chemicals
Speaker 1: and approve which ones they thought were safe for people
Speaker 1: to eat. These dyes were giving names like red number
Speaker 1: forty or blue number one. Here's how doctor Hoffseeth describes them.
Speaker 3: At that point, there was round fifteen to twenty artificial
Speaker 3: food dyes that were in our food. And then in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty eight eat a very important, very important law
Speaker 3: came into place called the Delaney Clause. This clause was
Speaker 3: added to the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act, and the
Speaker 3: clause was saying, any food additive that causes cancer in
Speaker 3: humans or animals can't be used in our food.
Speaker 1: Okay, this part is important. In nineteen fifty eight, there
Speaker 1: was an amendment to the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act
Speaker 1: that included a special clause named after James Delaney, the
Speaker 1: chair of the committee looking into food safety at the time.
Speaker 1: This clause says that while the FDA has the authority
Speaker 1: to say which chemicals are safe to eat, it can't
Speaker 1: approve quote any chemical additive found to induce cancer in
Speaker 1: man or after tests found to induce cancer in animals
Speaker 1: end quote. In other words, if anyone finds that a
Speaker 1: chemical causes cancer in for example, rats or mice, then
Speaker 1: the FDA has to ban it. We'll get to how
Speaker 1: that played a role recent fd announcement a little later,
Speaker 1: but back in the fifties it had a big impact.
Speaker 3: So allowing scientists to do research on synthetic food dies.
Speaker 3: That knocked off around half of them, and so there's
Speaker 3: nine remaining, and now there's eight because Red three was
Speaker 3: recently knocked out on January fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Since about nineteen sixty to essentially today, there have been
Speaker 1: only nine artificial food dyes approved for use in the
Speaker 1: United States. They have names like red number forty, Blue
Speaker 1: number one, Yellow five, Yellow six. Basically every single food
Speaker 1: in the US that is artificially colored, and that is
Speaker 1: most brightly colored foods you find in a typical supermarket,
Speaker 1: from cheetos to sodas to gatorade, salad dressings with sabi, yogurts,
Speaker 1: M and MS, candies, even pickles and some fruits like oranges,
Speaker 1: uses one or more of these nine specific dyes. So
Speaker 1: if you grew or have been living in the US
Speaker 1: in the last sixty five years, you've probably consumed a
Speaker 1: lot of these food dies. Okay, So now the question
Speaker 1: is are these artificial food dyes dangerous? How bad are
Speaker 1: they for us? When we come back, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the link these food dies have to cancer and children's
Speaker 1: neuro behavior. Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Okay. We talked about why we put coloring
Speaker 1: in our foods and about the history of food dies
Speaker 1: and the FDA in this country. There are currently nine
Speaker 1: artificial food colorings that are approved to be used in
Speaker 1: the US. That's green number three, red number forty, yellow
Speaker 1: number five and six, blue number one, blue two, citrus,
Speaker 1: red two, and orange b although the FDA just announced
Speaker 1: they're going to ban those last two. Next we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about whether these food dyes are are bad
Speaker 1: for us. Now, doctor Hasseth is a cancer researcher, and
Speaker 1: his concern is about what these food dyes are doing
Speaker 1: to your DNA.
Speaker 3: So these are chemically synthesized from the foundational component being petroleum. Well,
Speaker 3: the foremost popular are red forty, yellow six, yellow five,
Speaker 3: and blue one. Red forty, yellow five and yellow six
Speaker 3: are called Azo dyes. So AZO dyes have what's called
Speaker 3: an azo bond that azobond being there means it can
Speaker 3: be metabolized. So imagine red forty coming into your body
Speaker 3: through juicy juice or through doritos and gets into your gut,
Speaker 3: and your gut has a lot of bacteria. Some of
Speaker 3: these have an enzyme called azo reduct dases. Azo reduct
Speaker 3: dases they go after the azo bonds and they split
Speaker 3: that molecule into two molecules, one called crescidine sulfonic acid
Speaker 3: and the other one is the acronym is answa A NSA,
Speaker 3: but the essays stands for sulfonic acid too. So we're asking, well,
Speaker 3: what are those molecules doing, and they seem to have
Speaker 3: a structure that likes DNA and maybe will damage it.
Speaker 3: We've done the experiments to ask them why the red
Speaker 3: forty damages DNA. We've sprinkled it onto cells and the
Speaker 3: answer is yes. We've given it to mice for nine
Speaker 3: months for half their lives, and the question we were
Speaker 3: asking does it cause colon cancer? But the answer was no,
Speaker 3: it didn't. But what we did discover was there was
Speaker 3: this long term inflammation and DNA damage that was occurring
Speaker 3: in the mice that we're consuming it. So you can
Speaker 3: envision if you're consuming doritos which has red forty and
Speaker 3: probably yellow five and probably yellow six. Just look at
Speaker 3: the pack and all of these molecules that you're consuming
Speaker 3: for day after day after day after day, year after
Speaker 3: year after year after year, is causing a low grade inflammation.
Speaker 3: Why Because these are synthetic. They're foreign to your body,
Speaker 3: just like cigarette smoke is, just like other chemicals are.
Speaker 3: They're going to stimulate inflammation. Inflammation is intimately linked to cancer,
Speaker 3: and any piece of tissue that has chronic inflammation in
Speaker 3: it will have a high risk of cancer. So going
Speaker 3: back to the door ETOs that have the red forty
Speaker 3: in it, you consume it, it's synthetic, it's going to
Speaker 3: stimulate this stealthy inflammation in your gut, in your body
Speaker 3: that will probably increase your risk of chronic diseases like cancer.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 3: So that's how they're linked.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hasset has done experiments with the most commonly used
Speaker 1: of the dyes, red forty, and while he didn't find
Speaker 1: that it caused cancer in he reported it cause inflammation,
Speaker 1: which if it happens for a long time, is linked
Speaker 1: to cancer. Now there are some more direct connections to
Speaker 1: cancer for some of these other dyes, but sometimes that's
Speaker 1: not enough. For example, Red number three, another artificial dyet
Speaker 1: that's been in use in the US for over sixty years,
Speaker 1: was found to cause thyroid tumors in rats back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, but the FDA banned it only a
Speaker 1: few months ago, with an effective band aid of January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven. That means it took forty years after
Speaker 1: Red number three technically triggered the Delaney clause, the clause
Speaker 1: that says a chemical has to be banned if it
Speaker 1: is found to cause cancer in animals before it will
Speaker 1: actually be taken out of foods in the US. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about how the FDA approves or doesn't approve something
Speaker 1: is safe a little later in the program, but just
Speaker 1: to be clear, the link between cancer and artificial food
Speaker 1: dyes is not a slam dunk. According to the Center
Speaker 1: for Science and the Public Interests, a nonprofit that at
Speaker 1: tracks food and safety, some of the approved food dies
Speaker 1: show a possible connection to tumors and some don't. But
Speaker 1: what has given a lot of energy to the movement
Speaker 1: to ban artificial food dies in recent years is their
Speaker 1: connection to children's neuro behavior. In particular, the FDA cited
Speaker 1: a study commissioned by the California Office of Environmental Health
Speaker 1: and Hazard Assessment titled Potential Impacts of Synthetic food dies
Speaker 1: on Activity and Attention in Children. A Review of the
Speaker 1: human and animal evidence. To learn more about this study,
Speaker 1: I talked to one of the authors of that study,
Speaker 1: Professor Asa Bradman. Thank you, doctor Bradman for joining us.
Speaker 4: I'm thrilled to be here. So my name is Asa Bradman,
Speaker 4: and I'm a professor of public health at the University
Speaker 4: of californiumer said, in the public Health department, and the
Speaker 4: focus of my work is environmental health and children. So
Speaker 4: I work on a range of issues, looking at environmental
Speaker 4: exposures like pesticides, air pollution, and also dietary exposures.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you about that study that you published
Speaker 1: put on by the California Office of Environmental Health.
Speaker 4: Yes, So, there was a member of the legislature in
Speaker 4: California that asked the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
Speaker 4: to conduct this study, and they came to me and
Speaker 4: teamed up with my group to develop exposure assessments and
Speaker 4: other information about what people are actually being exposed to.
Speaker 4: Our major conclusion was that many studies show a relationship
Speaker 4: between kids who, when consuming artificial food coloring, had behavioral
Speaker 4: or other changes that could put them, for example, in
Speaker 4: the category that you might describe as attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder,
Speaker 4: or trouble settling down.
Speaker 1: Okay, what doctor Bradman and the team of researchers did
Speaker 1: was a comprehensive review of different studies related to artificial
Speaker 1: food dies and they found two things. One in animals,
Speaker 1: high doses of artificial food dice affect their brains and
Speaker 1: their ability to remember and learn. And two in kids,
Speaker 1: eating artificial food dice affected their behavior and their ability
Speaker 1: to focus and pay attention. Here's how doctor Bradman describes
Speaker 1: these results. So how did these experiments usually work? Like
Speaker 1: you would give some rats a lot of food dye
Speaker 1: and some you wouldn't.
Speaker 4: An ideal study and you would have a series of
Speaker 4: doses at different levels, and then you would examine the
Speaker 4: animals for effects from those doses. For example, you know
Speaker 4: there's a lot of standardized rodent studies to look at
Speaker 4: how well they can get through a maze. We know
Speaker 4: when you have miser rats in your house or in
Speaker 4: your basement or in your garage. They're pretty smart animals
Speaker 4: and they can find ways to get in or solve problems.
Speaker 4: Whilst the same thing with these tests. If you find,
Speaker 4: for example, that the ones are exposed don't do as
Speaker 4: well in learning to address a challenge you're remembering where
Speaker 4: the food might be, then you can make some conclusions
Speaker 4: about the impact on the animals. Right, the animal studies
Speaker 4: indicate synthetic food dies effect activity, memory and learning, cause
Speaker 4: changes in the chemicals that carry signals from one nerve
Speaker 4: to the next in the brain, and can cause microscopic
Speaker 4: changes in brain structure.
Speaker 1: And then what did the studies find for kids?
Speaker 4: So there have been some studies where psychologists have provided
Speaker 4: a drink or beverage to a group of kids and
Speaker 4: they don't tell them whether there's an artificial color or
Speaker 4: some other color in the food or beverage. And of
Speaker 4: course this kind of study has to go through an
Speaker 4: ethics review and be approved and there has to be
Speaker 4: consent form. But they're not consuming anything different than if
Speaker 4: they had, say, gone to the store and bought some
Speaker 4: candy or a juice beverage that had red number forty.
Speaker 4: So you can give them the artificial food coloring and
Speaker 4: then record using standardized methods any changes in behavior.
Speaker 1: So you found that kids who consumed these artificial dies
Speaker 1: seemed to have more problems with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Yes.
Speaker 4: And settling down. We have symptoms that we would considered
Speaker 4: to be like attention deficit disorder or ADHD attention deficit
Speaker 4: hyperactivity disorder. But just to make it clear that it
Speaker 4: seemed to me that some kids were more vulnerable than others,
Speaker 4: and that we're not talking about necessarily a chronic induction
Speaker 4: of ADHD, but rather an episodic, transient effect.
Speaker 1: In other words, the studies found that when kids drank
Speaker 1: or ate regular amounts of artificial food coloring, they seemed
Speaker 1: to behave as since they had ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
Speaker 1: they would have trouble settling down and focusing, at least temporarily.
Speaker 1: So in the studies you found the effect was more transient.
Speaker 4: I mean, the analogy would be like if you drank
Speaker 4: some alcohol, you might be a little drunk or tipsy
Speaker 4: fair period of time, but you're not permanently in that state.
Speaker 4: So the idea here is that these kids were given
Speaker 4: a beverage, usually with the synthetic dies in them, and
Speaker 4: there seem to be a demonstrable result. But on the
Speaker 4: next day, when they were given a challenge that did
Speaker 4: not have any of the artificial food dies, those changes
Speaker 4: in behavior were not seen. So that's what I mean
Speaker 4: by transient.
Speaker 1: The effect is temporary. But as doctor Brettman says, the
Speaker 1: concern is what these artificial dies are doing to kids
Speaker 1: in the long term.
Speaker 4: When you think about you don't want to give kids
Speaker 4: alcohol every day, and I'm sure the canyons who's going
Speaker 4: to go after me for say something like this, But
Speaker 4: younger children are more vulnerable to environmental exposures than older
Speaker 4: kids or than adults. You can imagine that if you
Speaker 4: take a very young child that's not yet developed, if
Speaker 4: there are neurotoxic insults that can disrupt that development. So
Speaker 4: one concern about these is that young children may be
Speaker 4: getting exposed on a regular basis and could have long
Speaker 4: term impacts.
Speaker 1: Okay, to recap some of the artificial food dyes have
Speaker 1: some possible connection to cancer, and in experiments they also
Speaker 1: seem to affect kids' behavior and possibly their development. So
Speaker 1: now the question is how much of these food dyes
Speaker 1: are we consuming? Is there even an acceptable amount? When
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll ask our experts this question, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the most recent plan by the FDA
Speaker 1: to try to get rid of artificial coloring in general.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, we'll be right back and we're back. Okay,
Speaker 1: we talked about what artificial food coloring can do to
Speaker 1: the human body. Now the question is how much of
Speaker 1: it are we swallowing? What do we know about how
Speaker 1: much kids are consuming these food dies well.
Speaker 4: As part of the work with the state of California,
Speaker 4: we looked at concentration of these dyes in many different foods,
Speaker 4: and then we looked at a set of data from
Speaker 4: something called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on
Speaker 4: what people eat. So what we did is we estimated
Speaker 4: the intake in what's called milligrams per kilogram of body
Speaker 4: weight actually published in the study, with a relationship of
Speaker 4: that intake to what are called the acceptable daily intakes.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is worth getting into. When the FDA approves
Speaker 1: something like an artificial food dye, they do it as
Speaker 1: an acceptable daily intake or ADI, which is how much
Speaker 1: of something the FDA thinks is safe to eat or
Speaker 1: your weight so if you're bigger and you weigh more,
Speaker 1: the FDA thinks you can eat more of it. Here's
Speaker 1: how doctor Halseth explains how the FDA sets that number.
Speaker 3: So what happens is an organization called the Joint Food
Speaker 3: and Agriculture Organization JEKFA. They put out a report every
Speaker 3: year looking at the science behind any food additive. So
Speaker 3: the acceptable daily intake, let's look at Red forty for
Speaker 3: an example, is seven miligrounds per kilogram per day.
Speaker 2: It's quite a bit.
Speaker 1: How did they come to that number.
Speaker 3: Because in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the government actually
Speaker 3: does do these experiments. They do maximum tolerable doses, and
Speaker 3: the mice or rats didn't have any significant pathologies at
Speaker 3: seven milligrounds per kilogram per.
Speaker 1: Day and below.
Speaker 3: They said, okay, based on these old studies that showed
Speaker 3: that they've fed read forty at different doses to mice,
Speaker 3: they looked and said, it doesn't seem any pathology is happening,
Speaker 3: not even inflammation is happening anything below seven milligrounds per
Speaker 3: kilogram per day.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: The way this works is somebody does an experiment where
Speaker 1: they see what's the most do they read, or a
Speaker 1: mouse will tolerate of a chemical without anything seeming to
Speaker 1: happen to it, and then you scale that up for
Speaker 1: larger humans. Plus, according to doctor Bratman, a safety factor.
Speaker 4: So the way it works is that when we look
Speaker 4: at the very lowest dose that would have very little
Speaker 4: effect or almost no effect in a rat or mouse,
Speaker 4: and then we take that number and we put on
Speaker 4: safety factors and usually put on a factor of ten
Speaker 4: or a factor of one hundred.
Speaker 1: The FDA does base their decisions on science, and they
Speaker 1: add huge safety factors. So the recommended amount is ten
Speaker 1: or sometimes one hundred the amount that's been found to
Speaker 1: be safe for test animals. So what did the California
Speaker 1: study find? Are we actually consuming more or less than
Speaker 1: the FDA acceptable value?
Speaker 4: In general, the ratio of what kids or a pregnant
Speaker 4: women we're eating relatively to the acceptable daily intakes was
Speaker 4: below one. If it's below one, it means they're getting
Speaker 4: exposed at a level that's less than the acceptable daily intake,
Speaker 4: although there were some instances where especially younger children could
Speaker 4: be eating foods and have exposures that are at or
Speaker 4: slightly above the acceptable daily intake.
Speaker 1: In other words, For the most part, people are not
Speaker 1: consuming these artificial food dyes above the acceptable daily intake,
Speaker 1: and since there's a safety factor, we are consuming them
Speaker 1: way below what the FDA thinks is actually a dangerous amount.
Speaker 1: And yet the studies say even consuming off the shelf
Speaker 1: drinks can give kids attention deficit problems. So what's going on?
Speaker 4: So when we look at those studies and we look
Speaker 4: at the doses that they were exposed to, we realize
Speaker 4: that the absceptual daily intakes that were developed for the
Speaker 4: Food and Drug Administration are based on studies that are
Speaker 4: very all thirty five to seventy years old even and
Speaker 4: they were designed to look at the kind of behavioral
Speaker 4: outcomes that were concerned about. So we would make an
Speaker 4: argument that the acceptable daily intakes developed by FDA were
Speaker 4: appropriate at the time. But as we've gained more information
Speaker 4: about the potential health concerns related to these exposures, they
Speaker 4: don't offer an adequate margin of safety for consumption of
Speaker 4: these foods.
Speaker 1: They're too high. They're too high, all right, tareikap. Again,
Speaker 1: if you've been eating cheetos and red soda and food
Speaker 1: with lots of artificial colorance, then you have possibly increased
Speaker 1: at least a little bit, your chances of getting cancer,
Speaker 1: and if you're a kid, it may be giving you
Speaker 1: attention problems which might affect your development. What does this
Speaker 1: all mean, Well, it may not matter, because here's the shocker.
Speaker 1: As we were editing this episode, the Food and Drug
Speaker 1: Administration or FDA made the announcement that they're going to
Speaker 1: try to quote phase out petroleum based synthetic dies in
Speaker 1: the nation food supply end quote. To make sense of this,
Speaker 1: I called doctor Bryman again, who, because of the announcement,
Speaker 1: has been inundated with calls from reporters. So after he
Speaker 1: hung up with The New York Times, he took my call.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks doctor Breman for coming back.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: What did they announce?
Speaker 4: I was really amazed. The FDA commissioner spoke about his
Speaker 4: department's concerns about artificial food collery and that as part
Speaker 4: of a new initiative, they were moving to ban all
Speaker 4: of the artificial food colors.
Speaker 1: Now, what are they actually planning it, because it seemed
Speaker 1: like they're not actually banning them yet, but they wanted
Speaker 1: the food industry to do it voluntarily.
Speaker 4: You're right, it's not totally clear how they're going to
Speaker 4: move ahead with this initiative. Health and Human Services Secretary
Speaker 4: Robert F. Kennedy also spoke about how they want to
Speaker 4: work together with the food industry to phase out these materials,
Speaker 4: and the timeframe they were looking at was pretty short,
Speaker 4: you know, like a couple of years to accomplish it,
Speaker 4: which is short. Having some experience in the food processing
Speaker 4: world and understanding what it takes to source ingredients and
Speaker 4: put together a recipe you can produce on a mass scale,
Speaker 4: it will be challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine there's probably a lot of Twinkies on
Speaker 1: shelves out there that could have stayed there forever.
Speaker 4: That would be a good point that there's going to
Speaker 4: be a process of looking at current inventory. Also, surprisingly,
Speaker 4: Commissioner MacRae also talked about alternatives and from any of
Speaker 4: these colors. There are alternatives that are from plants that
Speaker 4: we normally eat we know are healthy, like blueberries or
Speaker 4: beets or other sources. And he even held up a
Speaker 4: cup of beeches as an example of a natural color
Speaker 4: that is not petroleum derived, comes from a food we
Speaker 4: know as healthy.
Speaker 1: I guess my question is why didn't they just outride
Speaker 1: bandies who dies? Why make it this kind of voluntary,
Speaker 1: fuzzy process.
Speaker 4: They suspect that to actually go through a regulatory process
Speaker 4: and develop rules and to revoke the approvals for these
Speaker 4: would be a slow and bureaucratic process. But I think
Speaker 4: they're using the bully pulpit to raise concerns about these substances,
Speaker 4: and hopefully, I think they're trying to engage the good
Speaker 4: will of the American food industry to work together with
Speaker 4: them and perhaps implement these changes in a way so
Speaker 4: that regulatory steps are not necessary or needed.
Speaker 1: So just giving notice to food companies that you better
Speaker 1: start moving away from these artificial dies.
Speaker 4: Yes, having observed the food industry much of my career,
Speaker 4: often these kinds of voluntary things are not successful. You know,
Speaker 4: it'll be interesting to see how they work together and
Speaker 4: what they can accomplish.
Speaker 1: What do you think for the average consumer? We get
Speaker 1: bombarded by so many things in our feeds, our Facebook
Speaker 1: feeds or Instagram feeds. So many it's a little bit
Speaker 1: hard to know what to believe. Whether this is good
Speaker 1: for you, bet, this is bad for you. What advice
Speaker 1: you have for the average consumer about what we can
Speaker 1: trust and what we can trust.
Speaker 4: I think what you can trust is encouragement to make
Speaker 4: choices to choose you know, whole foods and do your
Speaker 4: own cooking. And my whole foods I don't mean the market.
Speaker 4: I need you know, buying vegetables, fruits and grains, breads
Speaker 4: and meats, dairy products that you know don't fit into
Speaker 4: the category of ultra process and take some time to
Speaker 4: think about and prepare your meals. If the ingredients of
Speaker 4: the food you're looking at are difficult to pronounce and
Speaker 4: you don't know what they are, I think that's an
Speaker 4: indication that you might want to stick to products that
Speaker 4: you can understand and hopefully prepare yourself.
Speaker 1: That's great. Oh wait for I might check from Whole
Speaker 1: Foods now. All right, well, thank you so much chick
Speaker 1: to Bradman for that perspective.
Speaker 4: Okay, thanks again for reaching out, and I look forward
Speaker 4: to hearing the podcast.
Speaker 1: All Right, his artificial food coloring really bad for you.
Speaker 1: The science says it's not great for you. The only
Speaker 1: reason we've been using it is to give us a
Speaker 1: bit of cheap fun. So maybe the answer is to
Speaker 1: make eating non artificial foods more fun. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: See you next time you've been listening to Science Stuff.
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