WEBVTT - Is Food Coloring Really Bad for You? 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.880 Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My 0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:06.360 name is Jorge Champ, and today we are answering the 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:10.520 question is food coloring really bad for you? The Food 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:14.280 and Drug Administration, or FDA here in the US recently 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.040 said it's going to try to take out all artificial 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:20.119 coloring from the foods we eat. But what are these 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.000 food colorants? How bad are they? And does that mean 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.720 we've been poisoning ourselves for decades. We're going to talk 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:31.080 to several experts, including a psychologist of food, a biomedical 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:35.400 cancer researcher, and an epidemiologist whose work was cited in 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.320 the FDA announcement. So put down those brightly colored Cheetos, 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.680 spit out that fluorescent Gatoray you just drank, and join 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.280 us as we answer the question is food coloring really 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:53.120 bad for you? Welcome to Sign Stuff. Hey, everyone, So 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.040 the FDA just made that announcement about food dies and 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:58.600 I'm hoping this episode will be a guide for you 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.720 to understand what it all means. We'll start with the basics, 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.800 and that is the idea that we put color into 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.160 our foods. Why do we do that? Where did this 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.240 idea come from? And how does color affect how we 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.920 taste food. To answer this, I reached out to a 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.360 psychologist of food. Doctor Charles Spence is a professor of 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.560 psychology at Oxford University, and he's an expert on how 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.280 our senses mixed together to give us the experience of eating. 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.399 I asked them to give us a rundown on the 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:29.160 history of food coloring. Here's what he said. 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.120 So it goes back a long way. Certainly. Maybe the 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.280 first recorded use is in wine making, using the skins 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.800 to color the wine. That maybe goes back several thousand years. 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:43.760 Then over the last century or two. And also he 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.960 finds the use of saffron urmeric as well. And here 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.920 in the UK there's lots of use of coloring pasley 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.400 to turn things green. So that's clearly a lot of 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:55.800 interest for a long time. Color is an important part 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:56.800 of the experience. 0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:58.440 Can you step us through a little bit of the 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.480 psychology of food coloring? How does color effect how we 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:02.400 experience the food? 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.760 So one of the primary factors when we go shopping 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.840 is the use of color more than maybe any other cue. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.520 As soon as we see products, then our brain is 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.360 immediately predicting what it's going to taste like, what's the flavor? 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:16.959 And that can be from the product to the thing itself. 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.200 Maybe that the yellowness on a banana will tell you 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.520 something about how sweet it's going to taste, through to 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:23.840 the color on a packet of potato chips. If I 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:26.800 see a pink crisp packet, it's going to be prawn cocktail. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:29.799 If it's blue and white, it'll be cheese, onion, or 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:32.919 maybe salt and vinegar, depending on the brand. Our brain automatically, 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.400 within the blink of an eye predicts do we like it, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:37.880 how energy dense is it? What flavor is it going 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:38.120 to have? 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.000 So we color food to catch our attention. The ancient 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.680 Romans apparently use mulberry juice to color their foods red, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.400 and the Egyptians are said to have used saffron to 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.680 dye their foods yellow and gold. But food coloring can 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.920 also change what do you think a food tastes like? 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.079 And this has been shown in several scientific studies where 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.240 people are giving a between see white yogurt and yogurt 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.560 would pink dye in it. Here's how Professor Spence describes it. 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.160 The very first studies will done in like nineteen twenties 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.200 and thirties, often by chemists confused about how good adding 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.120 coloring to a jelly or a candy, or a yogurt 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:18.959 or a cake change the taste. But now in twenty 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.160 twenty five there are probably four or five hundred published 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.360 research studies looking at the impact of color. Formally, in 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.800 the lab, we will just give people maybe three pots 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.000 of yogurt, one just playing yogurt, the other two samples 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:32.600 a little bit of sugar added to make them a 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:34.480 bit of sweetness. One of those two samples with the 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.840 sugar will also color pink, and then give people the 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:39.800 three samples in a random order and ask them to 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.680 say which one is sweetest, or they will the same yes, no, okay, 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.040 which one is sweetest, which one is less sweet People 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.120 be convinced that the pink one is sweeter, ten percent 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:53.040 sweeter or fifteen percent sweeter just through the use of color. 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:55.480 So in some cases you can have this really strong 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.240 reaction that we really do taste what we see. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.920 So coloring is basically used to trick people. If I 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.760 gave you three cups of yogurt, one with white yogurt, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.720 another one with white yogurt, with sugar and another one 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.360 with white yogurt, sugar and a little bit of food 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:13.640 dye to make it look pink. You're gonna think the 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.920 pink one is the sweetest. Food dyes can hould your 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.520 brain into thinking something is more ripe, or sweeter, or 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.600 more full of flavor then it really is. But, as 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:27.520 Professor Spence says, food coloring can also be fun. In 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.599 another set of experiments, scientists tested how the colors of 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.320 M and M's affected how much kids eat them. 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.920 The question why M and M's, or in England Europe, Smarties, 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.920 these sugar colored chocolate candies. Why do they come in 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.599 a variety of colors? It's not for your good health, 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.839 but the reason is from research done last century. Way, 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:50.800 if you ask people do you have a favorite color 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.479 of M and M's or Smarties? And kids will say yes, 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:55.839 I love the orange ones because it takets orange, or 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:57.880 the red ones because they're sweeter. And if you then 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.800 give the little kid a bottle full of their favorite 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.120 colored sweet versus a bowl of a mixture of colors, 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.240 they'll actually eat more of the mixed colors than of 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.840 their favorite color. Because our brain kind of satyates or 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.520 gets bored of the same thing over and over again, 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.080 saying it's my favorite color. I'll get bored of it sooner. 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.719 Whereas by having color variety you can encourage children to 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:20.679 consume more. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:25.440 Candies that is fascinating. So a big part of why 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.359 we color foods is just to keep our brains entertained. 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.039 For violin, for contrastant, because we can. 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:33.400 What do you mean, Because we can. 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.000 It just adds interest to what we eat and what 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.440 we drink. It's not part of the flavor, but I 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:40.200 think it does contribute to our enjoyment. 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:45.400 Yeah, coloring foods is fun, and for most of history 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.560 this coloring was done with natural ingredients, mostly herbs and 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:53.599 spices like partsley and turmeric. There are also non plant 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.480 based food dyes like carmine red, which comes from crushing 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:02.440 the bodies of a cactus eating insect called Dectylopius cocus. 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.559 But then in the eighteen hundreds, people got really good 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.000 at chemistry, and that's where we started to get into trouble. 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.600 To pick up this thread, I reached out to doctor 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:15.080 Lorne Hoffsith, a professor and Associated Dean for Research at 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.799 the College of Pharmacy in the University of South Carolina. 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:21.400 Who has a keen interest in artificial food dice. Here's 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.719 how he describes what happened next. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.280 The adulteration started around the eighteen hundreds, where they were 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:34.040 throwing arsenic chalk into food to make it look more white. 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.680 And so in eighteen fifty six, guy named Sir William 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:41.680 Perkin discovered as a chemist he was looking at a 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:46.240 chemical that might work on malaria, and this chemical was 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:48.719 purple and he called it mauvine. And that was the 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.520 first synthetic food dye that then led to they discovered 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:57.960 they've consynthesized food colors. They have these without getting too nerdy, 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:02.280 aromatic hydrocarbons on their structure that create a color. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.680 Okay. So, starting in the mid eighteen fifties, there was 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.720 an explosion of many different kinds of artificial or synthetic 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:15.120 food dies made from chemicals like coal, tar, or petroleum. 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.680 But then people started getting sick. Some of these dyes 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:23.480 had harmful chemicals like lead, arsenic, and mercury. Because of that, 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:26.720 between nineteen oh six and nineteen thirty eight, a series 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.000 of laws in the US started to regulate what people 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:32.920 could and could not put in foods, and it gave 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.520 the power to enforce these laws to the Food and 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:40.480 Drug Administration or FDA. The FDA would review these chemicals 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.160 and approve which ones they thought were safe for people 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.880 to eat. These dyes were giving names like red number 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:51.760 forty or blue number one. Here's how doctor Hoffseeth describes them. 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.840 At that point, there was round fifteen to twenty artificial 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.680 food dyes that were in our food. And then in 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:03.280 nineteen fifty eight eat a very important, very important law 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.200 came into place called the Delaney Clause. This clause was 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.440 added to the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act, and the 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:15.240 clause was saying, any food additive that causes cancer in 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:19.280 humans or animals can't be used in our food. 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.080 Okay, this part is important. In nineteen fifty eight, there 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:25.880 was an amendment to the Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.160 that included a special clause named after James Delaney, the 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:33.480 chair of the committee looking into food safety at the time. 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:36.800 This clause says that while the FDA has the authority 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:39.680 to say which chemicals are safe to eat, it can't 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:44.040 approve quote any chemical additive found to induce cancer in 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:48.719 man or after tests found to induce cancer in animals 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:51.920 end quote. In other words, if anyone finds that a 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.880 chemical causes cancer in for example, rats or mice, then 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:59.080 the FDA has to ban it. We'll get to how 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.200 that played a role recent fd announcement a little later, 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.160 but back in the fifties it had a big impact. 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:11.480 So allowing scientists to do research on synthetic food dies. 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:14.480 That knocked off around half of them, and so there's 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.120 nine remaining, and now there's eight because Red three was 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.439 recently knocked out on January fifteenth, twenty twenty five. 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.080 Since about nineteen sixty to essentially today, there have been 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:30.800 only nine artificial food dyes approved for use in the 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.000 United States. They have names like red number forty, Blue 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:38.160 number one, Yellow five, Yellow six. Basically every single food 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.240 in the US that is artificially colored, and that is 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.559 most brightly colored foods you find in a typical supermarket, 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:50.160 from cheetos to sodas to gatorade, salad dressings with sabi, yogurts, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.559 M and MS, candies, even pickles and some fruits like oranges, 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:59.200 uses one or more of these nine specific dyes. So 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:01.840 if you grew or have been living in the US 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.760 in the last sixty five years, you've probably consumed a 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.800 lot of these food dies. Okay, So now the question 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:12.960 is are these artificial food dyes dangerous? How bad are 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:15.920 they for us? When we come back, we'll talk about 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.760 the link these food dies have to cancer and children's 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:24.360 neuro behavior. Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff. 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:34.160 Welcome back. Okay. We talked about why we put coloring 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:36.559 in our foods and about the history of food dies 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.120 and the FDA in this country. There are currently nine 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.040 artificial food colorings that are approved to be used in 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.680 the US. That's green number three, red number forty, yellow 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.760 number five and six, blue number one, blue two, citrus, 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.959 red two, and orange b although the FDA just announced 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.840 they're going to ban those last two. Next we're going 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:00.800 to talk about whether these food dyes are are bad 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.000 for us. Now, doctor Hasseth is a cancer researcher, and 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.000 his concern is about what these food dyes are doing 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:08.280 to your DNA. 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:17.280 So these are chemically synthesized from the foundational component being petroleum. Well, 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.800 the foremost popular are red forty, yellow six, yellow five, 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.760 and blue one. Red forty, yellow five and yellow six 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:31.400 are called Azo dyes. So AZO dyes have what's called 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:35.280 an azo bond that azobond being there means it can 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:39.040 be metabolized. So imagine red forty coming into your body 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:44.800 through juicy juice or through doritos and gets into your gut, 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.120 and your gut has a lot of bacteria. Some of 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:53.200 these have an enzyme called azo reduct dases. Azo reduct 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.680 dases they go after the azo bonds and they split 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:03.600 that molecule into two molecules, one called crescidine sulfonic acid 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:08.440 and the other one is the acronym is answa A NSA, 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:13.160 but the essays stands for sulfonic acid too. So we're asking, well, 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.800 what are those molecules doing, and they seem to have 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.880 a structure that likes DNA and maybe will damage it. 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.120 We've done the experiments to ask them why the red 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.880 forty damages DNA. We've sprinkled it onto cells and the 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:31.319 answer is yes. We've given it to mice for nine 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:35.120 months for half their lives, and the question we were 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.960 asking does it cause colon cancer? But the answer was no, 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.200 it didn't. But what we did discover was there was 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:48.800 this long term inflammation and DNA damage that was occurring 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.800 in the mice that we're consuming it. So you can 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.440 envision if you're consuming doritos which has red forty and 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.600 probably yellow five and probably yellow six. Just look at 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:04.440 the pack and all of these molecules that you're consuming 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.440 for day after day after day after day, year after 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.439 year after year after year, is causing a low grade inflammation. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.040 Why Because these are synthetic. They're foreign to your body, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.800 just like cigarette smoke is, just like other chemicals are. 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:26.280 They're going to stimulate inflammation. Inflammation is intimately linked to cancer, 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.360 and any piece of tissue that has chronic inflammation in 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.040 it will have a high risk of cancer. So going 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.559 back to the door ETOs that have the red forty 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.920 in it, you consume it, it's synthetic, it's going to 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.280 stimulate this stealthy inflammation in your gut, in your body 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.880 that will probably increase your risk of chronic diseases like cancer. 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:48.840 I see. 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:50.360 So that's how they're linked. 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.120 Doctor Hasset has done experiments with the most commonly used 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.400 of the dyes, red forty, and while he didn't find 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.600 that it caused cancer in he reported it cause inflammation, 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.319 which if it happens for a long time, is linked 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.840 to cancer. Now there are some more direct connections to 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.280 cancer for some of these other dyes, but sometimes that's 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.440 not enough. For example, Red number three, another artificial dyet 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.360 that's been in use in the US for over sixty years, 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.480 was found to cause thyroid tumors in rats back in 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.960 nineteen eighty seven, but the FDA banned it only a 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.239 few months ago, with an effective band aid of January 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.880 twenty twenty seven. That means it took forty years after 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:38.160 Red number three technically triggered the Delaney clause, the clause 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.240 that says a chemical has to be banned if it 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.480 is found to cause cancer in animals before it will 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:47.080 actually be taken out of foods in the US. We'll 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.640 talk about how the FDA approves or doesn't approve something 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.280 is safe a little later in the program, but just 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:56.560 to be clear, the link between cancer and artificial food 0:14:56.640 --> 0:15:00.400 dyes is not a slam dunk. According to the Center 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.120 for Science and the Public Interests, a nonprofit that at 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.360 tracks food and safety, some of the approved food dies 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:10.960 show a possible connection to tumors and some don't. But 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.320 what has given a lot of energy to the movement 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:16.640 to ban artificial food dies in recent years is their 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:22.200 connection to children's neuro behavior. In particular, the FDA cited 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:26.160 a study commissioned by the California Office of Environmental Health 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:30.800 and Hazard Assessment titled Potential Impacts of Synthetic food dies 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.080 on Activity and Attention in Children. A Review of the 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.360 human and animal evidence. To learn more about this study, 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:39.760 I talked to one of the authors of that study, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:44.480 Professor Asa Bradman. Thank you, doctor Bradman for joining us. 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.680 I'm thrilled to be here. So my name is Asa Bradman, 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.400 and I'm a professor of public health at the University 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.480 of californiumer said, in the public Health department, and the 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.680 focus of my work is environmental health and children. So 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.160 I work on a range of issues, looking at environmental 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:06.600 exposures like pesticides, air pollution, and also dietary exposures. 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:09.400 Can I ask you about that study that you published 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.520 put on by the California Office of Environmental Health. 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.240 Yes, So, there was a member of the legislature in 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:19.920 California that asked the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:24.240 to conduct this study, and they came to me and 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.800 teamed up with my group to develop exposure assessments and 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.840 other information about what people are actually being exposed to. 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.480 Our major conclusion was that many studies show a relationship 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:41.840 between kids who, when consuming artificial food coloring, had behavioral 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.000 or other changes that could put them, for example, in 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.360 the category that you might describe as attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:51.520 or trouble settling down. 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.520 Okay, what doctor Bradman and the team of researchers did 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.200 was a comprehensive review of different studies related to artificial 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:03.200 food dies and they found two things. One in animals, 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:07.159 high doses of artificial food dice affect their brains and 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:11.240 their ability to remember and learn. And two in kids, 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:15.080 eating artificial food dice affected their behavior and their ability 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:19.600 to focus and pay attention. Here's how doctor Bradman describes 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.240 these results. So how did these experiments usually work? Like 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:25.800 you would give some rats a lot of food dye 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:26.840 and some you wouldn't. 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.560 An ideal study and you would have a series of 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:33.280 doses at different levels, and then you would examine the 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.600 animals for effects from those doses. For example, you know 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.560 there's a lot of standardized rodent studies to look at 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.000 how well they can get through a maze. We know 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.320 when you have miser rats in your house or in 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.879 your basement or in your garage. They're pretty smart animals 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:52.000 and they can find ways to get in or solve problems. 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.840 Whilst the same thing with these tests. If you find, 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.400 for example, that the ones are exposed don't do as 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.160 well in learning to address a challenge you're remembering where 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.760 the food might be, then you can make some conclusions 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:09.600 about the impact on the animals. Right, the animal studies 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:14.440 indicate synthetic food dies effect activity, memory and learning, cause 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:17.639 changes in the chemicals that carry signals from one nerve 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.480 to the next in the brain, and can cause microscopic 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:22.120 changes in brain structure. 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:25.280 And then what did the studies find for kids? 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:29.639 So there have been some studies where psychologists have provided 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.880 a drink or beverage to a group of kids and 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.240 they don't tell them whether there's an artificial color or 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:39.840 some other color in the food or beverage. And of 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:42.040 course this kind of study has to go through an 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.879 ethics review and be approved and there has to be 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.400 consent form. But they're not consuming anything different than if 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:50.399 they had, say, gone to the store and bought some 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.679 candy or a juice beverage that had red number forty. 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:56.760 So you can give them the artificial food coloring and 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:01.280 then record using standardized methods any changes in behavior. 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.719 So you found that kids who consumed these artificial dies 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:10.040 seemed to have more problems with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Yes. 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.880 And settling down. We have symptoms that we would considered 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.200 to be like attention deficit disorder or ADHD attention deficit 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.560 hyperactivity disorder. But just to make it clear that it 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.479 seemed to me that some kids were more vulnerable than others, 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.640 and that we're not talking about necessarily a chronic induction 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:33.439 of ADHD, but rather an episodic, transient effect. 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.480 In other words, the studies found that when kids drank 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:41.119 or ate regular amounts of artificial food coloring, they seemed 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:46.960 to behave as since they had ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:51.800 they would have trouble settling down and focusing, at least temporarily. 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.840 So in the studies you found the effect was more transient. 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:57.960 I mean, the analogy would be like if you drank 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:00.840 some alcohol, you might be a little drunk or tipsy 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:03.800 fair period of time, but you're not permanently in that state. 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.080 So the idea here is that these kids were given 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.520 a beverage, usually with the synthetic dies in them, and 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:14.080 there seem to be a demonstrable result. But on the 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:17.120 next day, when they were given a challenge that did 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.479 not have any of the artificial food dies, those changes 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:22.800 in behavior were not seen. So that's what I mean 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:23.600 by transient. 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.960 The effect is temporary. But as doctor Brettman says, the 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.479 concern is what these artificial dies are doing to kids 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:33.040 in the long term. 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:35.680 When you think about you don't want to give kids 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.439 alcohol every day, and I'm sure the canyons who's going 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:41.960 to go after me for say something like this, But 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:46.840 younger children are more vulnerable to environmental exposures than older 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:49.520 kids or than adults. You can imagine that if you 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.080 take a very young child that's not yet developed, if 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:58.000 there are neurotoxic insults that can disrupt that development. So 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.520 one concern about these is that young children may be 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.200 getting exposed on a regular basis and could have long 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:06.200 term impacts. 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.520 Okay, to recap some of the artificial food dyes have 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.720 some possible connection to cancer, and in experiments they also 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:19.119 seem to affect kids' behavior and possibly their development. So 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.640 now the question is how much of these food dyes 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:26.200 are we consuming? Is there even an acceptable amount? When 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:28.960 we come back, we'll ask our experts this question, and 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:31.680 we'll talk about the most recent plan by the FDA 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.360 to try to get rid of artificial coloring in general. 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:45.520 Stay with us, we'll be right back and we're back. Okay, 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.359 we talked about what artificial food coloring can do to 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.199 the human body. Now the question is how much of 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:55.040 it are we swallowing? What do we know about how 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.919 much kids are consuming these food dies well. 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.840 As part of the work with the state of California, 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:05.760 we looked at concentration of these dyes in many different foods, 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.240 and then we looked at a set of data from 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:12.480 something called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.720 what people eat. So what we did is we estimated 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:19.119 the intake in what's called milligrams per kilogram of body 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.679 weight actually published in the study, with a relationship of 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:27.119 that intake to what are called the acceptable daily intakes. 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.800 Okay, this is worth getting into. When the FDA approves 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:34.640 something like an artificial food dye, they do it as 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:39.080 an acceptable daily intake or ADI, which is how much 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:42.080 of something the FDA thinks is safe to eat or 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.760 your weight so if you're bigger and you weigh more, 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.120 the FDA thinks you can eat more of it. Here's 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:52.280 how doctor Halseth explains how the FDA sets that number. 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:58.560 So what happens is an organization called the Joint Food 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:05.440 and Agriculture Organization JEKFA. They put out a report every 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:09.959 year looking at the science behind any food additive. So 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:13.679 the acceptable daily intake, let's look at Red forty for 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:16.840 an example, is seven miligrounds per kilogram per day. 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:17.800 It's quite a bit. 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:19.840 How did they come to that number. 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:23.800 Because in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the government actually 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:28.240 does do these experiments. They do maximum tolerable doses, and 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:33.200 the mice or rats didn't have any significant pathologies at 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:35.200