Speaker 1: Blue Smarties were dropped in two thousand and five, only
Speaker 1: to return in two thousand and eight as a distinctly
Speaker 1: less blue M and ms have come under attack for
Speaker 1: their use of red, yellow, and blue artificial dyes. Green
Speaker 1: Ketchup was a revelation for Hines when it was introduced
Speaker 1: in two thousand. At its launch, then Global Ketchup manager
Speaker 1: Casey Kelly said the company was on track to ship
Speaker 1: in the first ninety days what we thought we would
Speaker 1: sell in the first year. This thing has taken on
Speaker 1: a momentum of its own, Kelly said, illustrating with his
Speaker 1: use of the term this thing the sinister fascination with
Speaker 1: a new inappropriately colored sauce. Soon there was orange Ketchup
Speaker 1: and purple Ketchup, and teal and blue and pink. But
Speaker 1: it didn't last. Hines withdrew those product lines in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, and the world was left with plain
Speaker 1: old red Ketchup. It might well have been the last
Speaker 1: hurrah of a generation's rainbow of nonsense food. We might
Speaker 1: be healthier for it, but we are less colorful too.
Speaker 1: So next time you stroll down the bland cereal or
Speaker 1: snack aisle, spare a thought for the proud chemical factories
Speaker 1: where scientists in white coats once injected a vast pallette
Speaker 1: of colors into everyday foods. Imagine what we could have
Speaker 1: been eating by now, Rainbow bread, yellow steak, pink cheese.
Speaker 1: Imagine now a gray factory, a decaying factory, windows long
Speaker 1: since smashed, roof and disrepair. A laboratory full of test
Speaker 1: tubes and conical flasks lying on their sides. A solitary cheeto,
Speaker 1: proudly orange blown past in an icy wind. A flash
Speaker 1: of color among the dreary scene. It briefly lifts the
Speaker 1: spirits before getting caught up in the dust, doomed to
Speaker 1: fade and fester. Imagine this and lament.
Speaker 2: You cannot be serious.
Speaker 1: I know, it's the most dramatic render. Like I just
Speaker 1: love all of the imagery of that, so I.
Speaker 2: Do too, I mean, and like, I really don't think
Speaker 2: that it is serious.
Speaker 3: But it's not. It's not serious at all.
Speaker 2: I am not the audience. Like, I'm just thinking my
Speaker 2: favorite cereal these days, you know, historically crackling o brand,
Speaker 2: but these days just plain.
Speaker 3: Brand, not even crackling out. I love a brand cereal.
Speaker 1: That, by the way, was excerpt from an article in
Speaker 1: the Guardian from twenty fifteen by Adam Gabbat, and I
Speaker 1: just loved the imagery of it.
Speaker 3: I love a cinnamon too's crunch.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about this before, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't checked lately to see what colors are involved.
Speaker 2: That's fair, That's fair. I mean I think a surprising
Speaker 2: number of things do have artificial food colorance. Absolutely, and
Speaker 2: it's possible that some of the brands that I have
Speaker 2: purchased over the past few years absolutely.
Speaker 3: Do, very very likely. In fact, great ketch up. Hi,
Speaker 3: I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Erin Alman Updyke And this.
Speaker 2: Is this podcast will kill you?
Speaker 3: Can you guess? We're talking about food dies today?
Speaker 2: We are this? Oh I'm excited for this one, are you?
Speaker 2: I am? Because it's just it's a fun.
Speaker 4: Little story, okay, And it forced me to evaluate the
Speaker 4: feelings that I have about food dies and maybe form
Speaker 4: some of those feelings.
Speaker 3: Do you want to tell me about those feelings?
Speaker 2: We can do that that later on.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 2: Get I'm sure that there will be plenty of time
Speaker 2: to get into the various feelings that we have about
Speaker 2: these things. These things substances.
Speaker 3: I can't. Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: We're gonna focus mostly on the synthetic food dies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, cold tar dies.
Speaker 1: Coltar dies now mostly manufactured from petroleum. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: if let's just get into it, shout into it.
Speaker 2: First things First.
Speaker 3: It's quarantine any time it is.
Speaker 2: What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 1: We could drink nothing other than over the rainbow? So
Speaker 1: many meanings to that.
Speaker 2: So many And of course this is food dies episode,
Speaker 2: like what are we supposed to not do? Blue currosol?
Speaker 1: No, there was only one choice and it was blue currosole.
Speaker 1: And there is only one other choice, and it must
Speaker 1: include Marachino cherries. So, Aaron, you want to tell us
Speaker 1: what's in it? I do?
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: It has of blue curasol, as we have discussed, it
Speaker 2: has rum, it has cream of coconut, pineapple juice. Uh
Speaker 2: and uh yeah, marishio cherries. It's a blended bev.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a little blue situation.
Speaker 2: It is a beautiful drink, which is the purpose that
Speaker 2: food does.
Speaker 3: The point t L d R yep, yeah, t LDL
Speaker 3: we learned, t LDL.
Speaker 2: We will post the full recipe for over the Rainbow
Speaker 2: on our website but also especially on our social media channel,
Speaker 2: So make sure you're following us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, check it out. We're trying to do these like videos,
Speaker 3: yeah things these days.
Speaker 2: It's real taken some getting used to.
Speaker 3: Give for it. Come and tell us how much you
Speaker 3: like them. You still like button? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're not following us yet on social media,
Speaker 1: please we'd love it if you did that. Also, if
Speaker 1: you haven't yet rated and reviewed and subscribed on wherever
Speaker 1: you like to listen. Is it on iHeart podcasts? Is
Speaker 1: it on Apple Podcasts? Is it Spotify? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but just you know, do the things YouTube were there,
Speaker 1: and we have a website, this podcast we Kill You
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 3: There's lots of things on it. Check it out.
Speaker 2: Wow, nicely done, Thank you, nicely done.
Speaker 3: To get in there.
Speaker 2: I guess there's nothing else that we need to do
Speaker 2: before we get started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're starting right.
Speaker 2: Sure? Okay, I guess did we talk about this?
Speaker 1: I thought I think we talked about it one time
Speaker 1: briefly a long time ago, and I was like, man, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't have any All my stuff is like current
Speaker 1: events so I don't really have a biology section to
Speaker 1: tell you about.
Speaker 3: So all right, can we learn about the history of food?
Speaker 2: Don let's do it? Wow? How fun?
Speaker 3: Okay, but totally forgot, totally scripted.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break and get started. It's Saturday morning,
Speaker 2: and do you feel like cooking a big old breakfast, eggs, pancakes, bacon,
Speaker 2: you know, the whole shebang. Yeah, But when you pull
Speaker 2: out that pack of bacon shoved into the back of
Speaker 2: your fridge for who knows how long, you notice that
Speaker 2: it looks kind of off, like it's awfully gray, a
Speaker 2: little bit brown. Better not. It's Wednesday evening and you're
Speaker 2: in the produce section of your grocery store, picking through
Speaker 2: the clamshells of strawberries, trying to find the one that
Speaker 2: has the and juiciest looking fruits, while also keeping an
Speaker 2: eye up for any signs of mold. It's Friday morning,
Speaker 2: and you're eyeing the bananas you got at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the week, trying to decide whether the last of
Speaker 2: the bunch is still snackworthy or if they're destined as
Speaker 2: ingredient in banana bread. How yellow or speckled do you
Speaker 2: like your bananas on the scale of things.
Speaker 3: This is a question, is a real question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, much less speckled.
Speaker 3: Like, oh see, I like I like a speckled very
Speaker 3: I knew.
Speaker 1: This about us, that we have different banana preferences. No,
Speaker 1: I like mine, not.
Speaker 2: Green, but like just after wow, that's too that's too
Speaker 2: too much for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 2: I liked it, but it's just it's a preference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how I feel about the browns.
Speaker 1: But actually, once they start to have like more than
Speaker 1: a couple, I'm like, it's just too soft.
Speaker 3: It's the texture.
Speaker 2: See, I like that texture.
Speaker 3: Then they go banana bread.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah. For many of us, taste begins
Speaker 2: not with our mouth off our taste buds, but with
Speaker 2: our eyes. Our visual perception of food has a powerful
Speaker 2: influence over the way that we taste that food, even
Speaker 2: acting as a deciding factor in whether or not we're
Speaker 2: willing to eat something like speckled bananas. Yeah, like this.
Speaker 1: Hide the broccoli in the mac and cheese. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna go well exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This link between vision and taste, along with smell, is
Speaker 2: evolutionarily ingrained. Our ability to evaluate food quality based on
Speaker 2: its appearance might help us select the most nutritious foods,
Speaker 2: like the ripest strawberries, or avoid food that is spoiled
Speaker 2: or poisonous, like that gray bacon or moldy bread. But
Speaker 2: it's also learned over our lives, we develop strong preferences
Speaker 2: for foods or expectations for taste, based on their appearance.
Speaker 2: Yellow pudding signals lemon or banana flavor. Anything else would
Speaker 2: be weird.
Speaker 1: Right, right, I imagine like yellow strawberry pudding.
Speaker 3: Right, that would be weird.
Speaker 2: It would be jarring. Yeah, light green ice cream, probably
Speaker 2: mint or pisaccio. It would be alarming. I guess maybe
Speaker 2: alarming is not quite the right word, but it would
Speaker 2: be a shock if you got a scoop of green
Speaker 2: ice cream and found out that it was actually orange flavored,
Speaker 2: like you took your first little bite or lift. Yeah, yeah, strange.
Speaker 2: Our expectations of the way that food should taste can
Speaker 2: be so powerful that they can lead to disgust or
Speaker 2: aversion if the reality does not match those expectations, like
Speaker 2: pepsi discovered in nineteen ninety three. When they're highly anticipated,
Speaker 2: clear pepsi completely flopped. Yeah, clear soda should taste citrusy, right,
Speaker 2: like that is what a clear soda means, right, even
Speaker 2: though or I guess cream soda, but even though the brown.
Speaker 1: Yeah cream soda, cream soada, Actually it's at least like
Speaker 1: a light brown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, it's like slightly tan. Yeah, to indicate
Speaker 2: that it's not cru right, I'm a lie. But the
Speaker 2: brown of cola comes from coloring. Seven up, which is
Speaker 2: a clear soda, was initially dyed brown until they removed
Speaker 2: the dye to distinguish it from other sodas. That's like
Speaker 2: a marketing tactic. Yeah. And then of course, like in
Speaker 2: the first hand account, Green and Purple Ketchup, I remember
Speaker 2: that my brothers loved green Ketchup. They were so psyched
Speaker 2: about it, and I was disgusted. I was like, I
Speaker 2: can't eat it.
Speaker 1: I babysat for a family who I remember very distinctly
Speaker 1: bought at one point blue and pink margarine like squeezable butter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was like, you know, like Barbie pink and
Speaker 1: like if there's an equivalent of Barbie pink and blue,
Speaker 1: it was like very blue and pink.
Speaker 2: Jump scare, Like that's not for butter. I'm not into it.
Speaker 3: Into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the power of preference the power of Yeah. But
Speaker 2: one study demonstrated how strong these expectations can influence our,
Speaker 2: you know, overall feelings. When the study they fed participants
Speaker 2: at dinner that consisted of steak, peas, and French fries,
Speaker 2: but the people who were doing the conducting the study
Speaker 2: altered the lighting so that participants couldn't see that the
Speaker 2: steak was actually dyed blue, the peas were dyed red,
Speaker 2: and the French fries were dyed green. And when they
Speaker 2: put the normal lighting back into place so that people
Speaker 2: could actually see the true colors of what they had eaten,
Speaker 2: some people were so disgusted that they got ill. They
Speaker 2: got sick.
Speaker 1: Wow, Like they ate it just fine. They were like, yes,
Speaker 1: this was tasty. Then they saw it and they were like.
Speaker 2: Who yeah, exactly. But it wasn't just like these colors alone,
Speaker 2: like we've encountered blue candy or popsicles before. It was
Speaker 2: even though blue is like, as I saw somewhere, like
Speaker 2: the not very common color that we find in nature
Speaker 2: for food, and so it tends to be reserved for
Speaker 2: like fun foods to the foods. Yeah, yeah, but it
Speaker 2: was this mismatch between expectation and reality. The relationship between
Speaker 2: vision and food color is evolutionarily rooted. Trichromatic color vision
Speaker 2: may have evolved to help us detect red fruits against
Speaker 2: green foliage or to see snakes. Check out our snake
Speaker 2: venom episode from years back.
Speaker 1: Well, and our color vision episode and our color vision episode.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, that is I was like car else
Speaker 2: did we talk about that? Yeah, But it's also something
Speaker 2: that we learn and grow preferences for, starting in early childhood.
Speaker 2: And these preferences, of course greatly affect which foods we
Speaker 2: might select or find appetizing, which has made them a
Speaker 2: very relevant issue for those producing the foods, who might
Speaker 2: opt to add a bit more of this or of
Speaker 2: that color to enhance the appeal of their product. So
Speaker 2: that you pick the pink filet of farm raised salmon
Speaker 2: that actually gets this pink color not from the carotenoids
Speaker 2: in the food that wild salmon eat, but from dyes,
Speaker 2: or you pick the orangeist orange whose skin might actually
Speaker 2: be dyed to saturate the natural orange coloring. And it
Speaker 2: might seem like the controversy surrounding food dies is a
Speaker 2: fairly recent one, at least within the past few decades,
Speaker 2: and growing in volume every year, but in fact it
Speaker 2: dates back millennia, and at the heart of it, the
Speaker 2: arguments against artificial food colorants have fallen into the same
Speaker 2: two categories throughout that entire time, deception and toxicity. Before
Speaker 2: we go back to ancient Egypt, I want to make
Speaker 2: a quick note about the language that I'll be using
Speaker 2: to talk about food dies, because there are so many
Speaker 2: different descriptors for these yes, and so since this episode
Speaker 2: mostly focuses on coal tar dies or synthetic dies, I'm
Speaker 2: calling these synthetic dyes. And if I say natural dyes,
Speaker 2: which I know the word natural meanings meaningless, it's not great.
Speaker 2: I'm referring to the dyes derived from nature, plants or
Speaker 2: animals like those little cochineal insects used to make red
Speaker 2: food dye or saffron which comes from plants, And any
Speaker 2: coloring or dye added to food I'm calling artificial.
Speaker 1: That's the perfect and exactly how I was going to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Airs.
Speaker 3: I'm glad we're on the same page.
Speaker 2: Excellent, Okay, back to ancient Egypt. Yes, even millennial old
Speaker 2: papyri describe colorants added to medicines.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the first conclusive evidence or like written descriptions
Speaker 2: that humans added artificial dyes to food. Food comes from
Speaker 2: ancient Greece and Rome. Dyes were added to wine to
Speaker 2: make them look more robust, have bigger body, stronger bodies, yeah,
Speaker 2: well rounded by I don't know how you'd talk about wine.
Speaker 1: Darker colors, yummier wine.
Speaker 2: There you go, exactly. And then there were things like saffron,
Speaker 2: squid ink, paprika, turmeric, beets, etc. So these like naturally
Speaker 2: derived colors that were added to various foods. These colors
Speaker 2: often carried with them additional meaning. So for instance, the
Speaker 2: rarer the colorant like saffron, the more it was valued
Speaker 2: or considered to have more nutritious qualities. Often, certain colors
Speaker 2: were associated with wealth or royalty or divine healing. You
Speaker 2: could easily imagine that someone might judge up their cake
Speaker 2: or wine with a sprinkling of natural colorant, which is
Speaker 2: exactly what some bakers did in England in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: teaching us that natural does not necessarily mean better. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: white flower at the time was considered top tier, but
Speaker 2: if a baker couldn't get their hands on white flower,
Speaker 2: they resorted to adding lime, chalk or crushed bones. So
Speaker 2: their bread would turn out white.
Speaker 3: Oh, crush bones. I know, who's bones.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I do not know, do not know.
Speaker 2: Does it matter?
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't. But I'm just curious like you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I not regulated, that's for certain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And this practice actually inspired one of the oldest laws
Speaker 2: against food adulteration in the late thirteenth century. Quote, If
Speaker 2: any default shall be found in the bread of a
Speaker 2: baker in the city the first time, let him be
Speaker 2: drawn upon a hurdle from the guildhall to his own house,
Speaker 2: through the great street, where there be most people assembled,
Speaker 2: and through the streets which are most dirty, with the
Speaker 2: faulty loaf hanging from his neck. That's the first offense.
Speaker 3: That's the first off A second, oh my.
Speaker 2: Gosh, there had to be not only a second, but
Speaker 2: also a third.
Speaker 3: You're right, dear.
Speaker 2: If a second time he shall be found committing the
Speaker 2: same offense, let him be drawn from the guildhall through
Speaker 2: the great street of cheap to the pillory, and let
Speaker 2: him be put upon the pillary and remain there at
Speaker 2: least one hour in the day. And the third time
Speaker 2: that such default shall be found, he shall be drawn
Speaker 2: and the oven shall be pulled down and the baker
Speaker 2: made to forswear the trade in the city forever.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, three strikes and you're out totally.
Speaker 2: That's where baseball got the idea. Don't laugh at my
Speaker 2: terrible jokes. Yeah, it's not, Oh my gosh. Other laws
Speaker 2: that I guess later were repealed based on your story
Speaker 2: of babysitting prohibited coloring butter.
Speaker 3: Well, this was margarine technically.
Speaker 2: Well, the margarine thing later became I didn't even go
Speaker 2: into it, but this whole episode could have been about
Speaker 2: the margarine wars and like coloring margarine and you know,
Speaker 2: could restaurants be allowed to serve margarine under the you know,
Speaker 2: but pretend like it was butter.
Speaker 3: Oh, there was like butter in the handy margarine exactly.
Speaker 2: Fascinating Well, because like yellow coloring in margarine. Margarine is
Speaker 2: not naturally yellow. No, it's like crystal exactly, and so
Speaker 2: adding yellow makes it look like butter, and so it's
Speaker 2: like it kind of toes a line of deceitful marketing practices,
Speaker 2: are deceitful food practices? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Interesting, yep.
Speaker 2: And there were other laws that prohibited adding colors to
Speaker 2: pastries that made it look like they contained eggs because
Speaker 2: they'd These laws were designed to protect consumers from deceitful
Speaker 2: sales as well as poisonous additives, and so there definitely
Speaker 2: was some awareness of the addition of dyes and other
Speaker 2: substances to foods and drinks to enhance color or impart flavor,
Speaker 2: and the potential danger inherent in those practices, but things
Speaker 2: remained fairly under control until the seventeen hundreds and into
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, and this is when increasing trade and
Speaker 2: long distance travel encouraged people to look for ways to
Speaker 2: keep food fresher and looking tastier over longer periods of time.
Speaker 2: Vividly colored foods came to represent the quote unquote success
Speaker 2: of colonialism, since saturated and bright colors were more likely
Speaker 2: to be found outside of the sooty streets of Charles
Speaker 2: Dickens London, such as in India, the jewel of the
Speaker 2: Crown of the British Empire, and the demand for these
Speaker 2: brighter colors from quote unquote exotic lands rose. The Industrial
Speaker 2: Revolution only deepened this need for food enhancement, as people
Speaker 2: moved to cities where food had to be transported into
Speaker 2: where it had to have a longer shelf life and
Speaker 2: where demand for year round availability was high, and at
Speaker 2: the same time it provided a means to develop new
Speaker 2: preservatives and colorance through the growth of science and technology.
Speaker 2: Whether these substances were safe was of secondary importance. As
Speaker 2: long as they kept the pickles of vivid green and
Speaker 2: the coffee grounds nice and dark, it was a okay.
Speaker 2: Even if that vivid green was achieved through copper or
Speaker 2: the coffee color gotten through beef blood for example. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's just a problem for future the future producers.
Speaker 3: Just feel like that wouldn't taste good.
Speaker 2: I don't think that was that mattered.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I bought it right, like you already paid for.
Speaker 3: It, Okay, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: But this, like you know, quote unquote future problem was
Speaker 2: actually the not very distant future, as it would turn out.
Speaker 2: As early as eighteen twenty, chemists were ringing the warning
Speaker 2: bell for the increasing use of harmful dyes in food products,
Speaker 2: but it was largely unheated in much of Europe. Even
Speaker 2: if it was heated, chemists were faced with the substantial
Speaker 2: challenge of identifying which compounds were toxic and at what
Speaker 2: levels they were toxic. That's pretty key, right, you know,
Speaker 2: Dose is in the poison? How much lead in your
Speaker 2: cayenne is safe?
Speaker 3: Like, hey, that one?
Speaker 2: We know?
Speaker 3: None? Yeah?
Speaker 2: How much arsenic in your candy yet? None? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Easy?
Speaker 2: But things were going to get even more challenging in
Speaker 2: the second half of the nineteenth century with the explosion
Speaker 2: of coal tar dyes. In eighteen fifty six, eighteen year
Speaker 2: old English chemist William Henry Perkin was tasked with creating
Speaker 2: a synthetic alternative treatment for malaria to replace quinine, which
Speaker 2: comes from Sinchona Park and was expensive and difficult to get.
Speaker 2: He didn't succeed, but he did stumble upon a different
Speaker 2: breakthrough that would revolutionize food and fashion an industry. In
Speaker 2: one of his experiments with anoline, which came from coal tar,
Speaker 2: he noticed that swirling inside his flask was a vivid
Speaker 2: purplish color, which he later called mauvine. Perkin immediately saw
Speaker 2: the potential this could have as a die and enlisted
Speaker 2: the help of his friend and his brother to scale
Speaker 2: up production. He applied for a patent. This is an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old kid, I love this Wow. Left the
Speaker 2: academic lab, gathered funds to start a factory, and changed
Speaker 2: industrial chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry forever. Wow, this is
Speaker 2: basically what kickstarted the dye industry. And this so the
Speaker 2: dye industry. I find this fascinating because it's like a
Speaker 2: really kind of fun, fun, full circle story where you know,
Speaker 2: it started out looking for a replacement for quinine, So
Speaker 2: it started out with a pharmaceutical goal goal, right, and
Speaker 2: then it turned into this massive dye industry. But then
Speaker 2: the dye industry also had still kept its foot in
Speaker 2: like the pharmaceutical ventures, which is why you have you know,
Speaker 2: Bayer producing, which was started as a dye company producing aspirin.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and then a lot of these like later
Speaker 2: then started to develop medications for you know, cancer drugs
Speaker 2: and other types of medications that.
Speaker 3: All started as die, that all started to die.
Speaker 2: So do you remember back in our aceidominifin paracetamol episode
Speaker 2: and we were like, yeah, these two dudes founded accidentally
Speaker 2: because they were looking at coal tar dye. Wh who
Speaker 2: knows why were they doing that? My god, That's why
Speaker 2: I finally realized.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, it is full circle. That's so interesting, and
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of makes sense when it's just
Speaker 1: like we're just over here doing chemistry and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what these We're doing chemistry stuff and seeing
Speaker 1: what kind of chemistry chemicals we can make and then
Speaker 1: what we can do with them.
Speaker 2: It's so I mean, like maybe I just don't know
Speaker 2: enough about the biochemistry of coal tar.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, but like, why is it so
Speaker 3: pharmacologically active? No clue? Great question. Maybe we should do
Speaker 3: a whole episode on it.
Speaker 2: I mean we kind of are. Oh I'm not okay,
Speaker 2: Well anyway, that yeah, future episode, that episode, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: But going back to mauvine, Mauvine became I hope I'm
Speaker 2: saying that right. Question. It became the first widely produced
Speaker 2: commercial synthetic dye, and within a few years of its development,
Speaker 2: it was the color to wear the of the season.
Speaker 2: Clothes had been dyed with natural dyes before, but mauvine
Speaker 2: was much more vivid, color, fast, and importantly, fairly inexpensive
Speaker 2: to produce, since coltar is a byproduct of the gas industry.
Speaker 2: As Carolyn Cobblt, who's the author of this book, Rainbow
Speaker 2: Palette puts it, quote, in a seemingly alchemical act of transmutation,
Speaker 2: they synthesized the molecules of coal tar from dead dark
Speaker 2: matter that had laid for centuries in the depths of
Speaker 2: the Earth into new substances that would transfigure society and science. Quote.
Speaker 2: I also just I don't have this in my notes,
Speaker 2: but I just like the word natural. I think this
Speaker 2: just goes to show how meaningless it is because coltar
Speaker 2: comes from the earth right as well.
Speaker 1: It's just dead dinosaurs and stuff. Yeah, just like really
Speaker 1: really deep down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the word now, I mean minerals are counted
Speaker 1: as natural dyes as well too.
Speaker 3: Lead would be a.
Speaker 1: Natural die, would be counted as a natural dye. Like,
Speaker 1: the word does not have meaning. And I'll die into
Speaker 1: the problems with that when we talk about how we
Speaker 1: regulate synthetic versus quote unquote natural dies today later Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, yeah, it's a it's a mess the word
Speaker 2: natural is. Yeah. But the invention of coltar dies was
Speaker 2: like finding the Philosopher's Stone, only instead of turning mercury
Speaker 2: into gold, chemists turned coal tar into a rainbow of colors. Wow.
Speaker 2: At first, the explosion in coal tar dies seemed like
Speaker 2: a testament to the promise of science. We can make
Speaker 2: the world more beautiful, more appealing, more dimensional with this
Speaker 2: array of colors. Now, available.
Speaker 3: Songs and poems were written.
Speaker 2: About these dies, how but soon the cracks began to
Speaker 2: show these dyes clearly weren't as inert as the chemist claimed,
Speaker 2: and some were downright toxic. Initially, Mauvene and the other
Speaker 2: coal tar dyes that followed were mostly used to dye fabrics,
Speaker 2: but eventually manufacturers began putting them in food, and this
Speaker 2: allowed people to more readily make the connection that some
Speaker 2: of these dyes could be harmful. It was a faster
Speaker 2: sort of intake and toxicity to ingest versus top of one.
Speaker 3: You're just touching it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so began a pushback against the widespread use of
Speaker 2: these dyes. And it's important here. I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: always saying this, but like it is important to put
Speaker 2: this pushback in the broader context of food regulation around
Speaker 2: this time, say the eighteen eighties or so, because food
Speaker 2: dyes were just one issue of many facing the food industry.
Speaker 2: More people living in cities, more food trucked in, more
Speaker 2: food spoiling, more preservatives and other questionable substances added to foods.
Speaker 2: And when I say preservatives, I mean early preservatives that
Speaker 2: were not well tested. Combine this with less oversight and regulation.
Speaker 2: You've got a disaster on your hands.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: People were cinnamon that was really ground brick dust, arsenic
Speaker 2: dyed candy, milk adulterated with formaldehyde, and who knows what else.
Speaker 2: I mean, like all the things that we've talked about
Speaker 2: before on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually amazing to me how many times this
Speaker 1: has come up on the podcast, like in so many
Speaker 1: different episodes.
Speaker 2: So many different episodes.
Speaker 1: This time period was not great for food regulation, no, no,
Speaker 1: And I think it really did kind of illustrate how
Speaker 1: when you don't have any framework in place to evaluate
Speaker 1: and experts, like declared experts, to make these decisions, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a mess on your hands because there are
Speaker 1: so many different competing interests, right, and like, at the
Speaker 1: bottom line of it, it is manufacturers and people who
Speaker 1: are selling us this food whose goal is profit right.
Speaker 3: They are not going to be the ones looking out
Speaker 3: for the safety of their food, no of this of
Speaker 3: the consumer. That's not their job. Their job is to
Speaker 3: make money.
Speaker 2: Yep. Okay, I mean essentially, in this time period, what
Speaker 2: you were paying for you weren't really getting, and what
Speaker 2: you were really getting was making you sick. Health overall
Speaker 2: during the Industrial Revolution deteriorated in many ways, especially for
Speaker 2: the working classes who spent long hours in factories, inhaling
Speaker 2: toxic dust, living in close quarters, breathing in tuberculosis and
Speaker 2: other respiratory infections, and drinking raw milk, consuming the microbes
Speaker 2: that would sicken them and kill their children. Germ theory
Speaker 2: was catching on, but overall, this quote unquote degeneration was
Speaker 2: blamed on modern society and industrialization, and adulterated foods we're
Speaker 2: seen as playing an outsized part in this. Fresh food
Speaker 2: was a rare commodity for much of the working class,
Speaker 2: and inexpensive sugar and adulterated foods were far more accessible.
Speaker 2: By the late eighteen hundreds, one third of recipes in
Speaker 2: a standard American cookbook were for puddings and cakes.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I mean this is not a sugar episode.
Speaker 2: Maybe someday, but I bring this up or like, I
Speaker 2: wanted to share that statistic because it demonstrates a shift
Speaker 2: in the types of foods that people could afford, which
Speaker 2: tended to be adulterated and cheap, and what they were
Speaker 2: wanting to make with that food, And many people blamed
Speaker 2: that shift for what they saw as the degeneration of society. Okay,
Speaker 2: so it was like, we have this massive change in
Speaker 2: the food that people are eating, especially the working classes,
Speaker 2: and that is what is causing the downfall of society.
Speaker 2: That is what is leading to the tire rate of tuberculosis,
Speaker 2: that is what is leading to you know, children in
Speaker 2: you know, working in factories.
Speaker 3: I don't really know that is the root cause.
Speaker 2: That was one of the root causes. Yeah, artificial food
Speaker 2: dies were part of that shift, included to deceive the consumer.
Speaker 2: So like this bright red strawberry jam is totally strawberries,
Speaker 2: trust me by it. It's definitely not apples dyed red
Speaker 2: with sometimes the side effect of making people sick. I mean,
Speaker 2: clearly some type of regulation was needed, but what across
Speaker 2: the board. Regulators like Harvey Wiley I've discussed many times
Speaker 2: now on the podcast, had a really difficult time drawing
Speaker 2: up guidelines for food adulteration, let alone getting people on
Speaker 2: board and enforcing these regulations. Part of the challenge for
Speaker 2: food dies was determining which were safe to consume and
Speaker 2: in what quantities, because at the time, there was no
Speaker 2: standardization in the chemical makeup of these dies or any
Speaker 2: agreement on the names for them, so dye companies would
Speaker 2: sell dies under different names and compositions to food manufacturers
Speaker 2: who really had no guidance on how much to put in.
Speaker 2: It was just like, I don't know, this is butter yellow.
Speaker 2: I don't know what its chemical name is. How about
Speaker 2: half a gram per ten pounds or something like that.
Speaker 3: It looks like the yellow that you want it to
Speaker 3: be exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And chemists had no way of detecting specific dyes
Speaker 2: or their concentrations. The technology just was not there yet.
Speaker 2: Color standardization was in its infancy, which I've never really
Speaker 2: thought about, but color standardization was a.
Speaker 3: Big part of this interesting because it was like what
Speaker 3: yellow is?
Speaker 2: This? Is this butter yellow? Is this a different type
Speaker 2: of yellow?
Speaker 3: Having like a naming system and everything? Yeah, pantone? Is
Speaker 3: that what it is?
Speaker 2: Pantone?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is that analytical chemistry was just
Speaker 2: starting out and really grew in part out of the
Speaker 2: need for food and drug regulation during this period. Interesting
Speaker 2: to be able to test things and be like that's
Speaker 2: what the substance is, that's how much there is in here?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so The testing of individual dies for their
Speaker 2: safety was crudely done, mostly through animal studies, like how
Speaker 2: should it be administered? Should it be oral? Should it
Speaker 2: be injected? Which animal do you want to test? A rat? Mouse,
Speaker 2: guinea pig, from whatever? Beagle? I don't know if they
Speaker 2: were testing beagles back then, probably at what concentration does
Speaker 2: this rat die? At? What point does it cause neurotoxic
Speaker 2: symptoms in a mouse? Like more nuanced health outcomes weren't
Speaker 2: really considered, and results were generally quite mixed. Some studies
Speaker 2: found a dye to be completely safe, while others found
Speaker 2: it to be toxic, and were the results even applicable
Speaker 2: to humans. Sometimes chemists experimented on themselves, including that a
Speaker 2: die was non toxic across the board if they did
Speaker 2: not experience what they considered to be significant side effects, okay,
Speaker 2: And then there was like what if the die is
Speaker 2: interacting with something else, another ingredient in the food, in
Speaker 2: the food? Yeah? Whatever the method of testing, The only
Speaker 2: consistent thing was how inconsistent the results were. Consensus of
Speaker 2: safety among chemists, politicians, consumers, producers, and retailers was a
Speaker 2: pipe dream. Different countries handled this in different ways. Some
Speaker 2: took an approach that was kind of like considered safe
Speaker 2: until found toxic, so they would like ban harmful dyes,
Speaker 2: but everything else was kind of like free for all, okay,
Speaker 2: while others, including the US, allowed a shortlist of quote
Speaker 2: unquote safe dies. So seven were included in the nineteen
Speaker 2: oh six Pure Food and Drug Act that could be
Speaker 2: added to food and had to be included on the label.
Speaker 2: And so this is when I talk about these safe dies,
Speaker 2: I'm specifically referring to the cooltar dies. Seven. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: in effect, this act that identified the seven safe dies
Speaker 2: transformed these dyes from adulterance to ingredients. Wiley, who orchestrated
Speaker 2: this act, later said that he regretted including dies because
Speaker 2: he felt that, regardless of their safety, artificial colorants were
Speaker 2: deceitful to the public just across the board. Interesting but
Speaker 2: safety testing of these dies continued over the next decades
Speaker 2: and into today, and some were removed from the list.
Speaker 2: Others have been added. Demand for more transparency in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century led to additional regulations in the US that
Speaker 2: required manufacturers to list ingredients by their chemical name or
Speaker 2: by the nomenclature created by the FDA. So this led
Speaker 2: to things like FD and C yellow number six, and
Speaker 2: so that means like that yellow number six. Then FD
Speaker 2: and C refers to it being permitted to be used
Speaker 2: in food, drug and cosmetics, and then there are other
Speaker 2: ones that are just in like drugs and cosmetics and
Speaker 2: so on. The unintended consequence of this was that such
Speaker 2: scientific sounding names made people more wary of their food,
Speaker 2: not reassured as to its safety, and over the following decades,
Speaker 2: lawsuits were brought forward, court challenges were heard, and legislation
Speaker 2: was introduced or changed to accommodate new information about the
Speaker 2: safety of these dies or when and where they can
Speaker 2: be used without being considered deceitful to the consumer, like
Speaker 2: margarine in a restaurant. Right, this is a constantly evolving landscape,
Speaker 2: and you could do textbooks about like the different regulations
Speaker 2: and each individual die over the history of the second
Speaker 2: half of the twentieth century alone. And so Aarin, I
Speaker 2: knew that you were going to like deep dive on
Speaker 2: the current concerns with artificial colorance, and so I didn't
Speaker 2: go too deep into that literature perfect, But I was
Speaker 2: curious about the origin of this purported link between hyperactivity
Speaker 2: or eighty eight and food dies. And I know you're
Speaker 2: going to talk a little bit more about this, but
Speaker 2: it turns out it emerged in the nineteen seventies after
Speaker 2: an allergist named Benjamin fine Gold published a book describing
Speaker 2: his observation that symptoms of hyperactivity were reduced when children
Speaker 2: were fed a diet that did not have artificial food
Speaker 2: additives and dies and other things. And he named this
Speaker 2: the fine Gold diet.
Speaker 3: Or the Kaiser permanente diet or the Kaiser.
Speaker 2: Permanente diet yep. And it made a big splash. It
Speaker 2: was very big news. A lot of people were very
Speaker 2: interested in this, and as and the scientific community was
Speaker 2: absolutely interested. They immediately set out to further investigate this
Speaker 2: possible link. And I won't do any spoilers because I
Speaker 2: know you're going to take us through all of that
Speaker 2: and sort of like the past few decades and the
Speaker 2: current landscape of what's happening with food dives today, and
Speaker 2: so I'm going to stop here and when it comes
Speaker 2: to like the history of food dies, okay, But I
Speaker 2: did want to share a few thoughts that I found
Speaker 2: myself have when putting together this episode. And this is
Speaker 2: without me knowing what you're about to tell me, and
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm most excited about because then I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you my feelings, because that's how I
Speaker 1: was going to start my part.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of perfect.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's feelings time. Yeah, okay, feelings. But yeah, it
Speaker 2: turns out that I have more feelings about this than
Speaker 2: I realize. I mean, I think the bottom line is
Speaker 2: that like kind of like we talked about, it's not
Speaker 2: that deep. But at the same time, the bottom line
Speaker 2: as I see it, is that artificial dies, whether synthetic
Speaker 2: or quote unquote natural, in part no nutrition to food.
Speaker 2: They're there for aesthetics. Many of us have been raised
Speaker 2: to expect apples to be shiny and unbruised, tomatoes to
Speaker 2: be giant and red and juicy, salmon to be a lovely,
Speaker 2: pinky orange. Imperfection will not be tolerated. These expectations have
Speaker 2: been formed, in part by the widespread use of artificial dyes.
Speaker 2: Do you remember in The Wizard of Oz when the
Speaker 2: film switches to color and you can feel the world
Speaker 2: getting bigger, like more beautiful, more real. You and I, Aaron,
Speaker 2: like many others, grew up in technicolor oz. We don't
Speaker 2: know what it's like to exist in monochrome Kansas with
Speaker 2: bruised apples and pale oranges, and frankly, it takes them
Speaker 2: getting used to. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't right.
Speaker 2: To be honest, I don't think I have heard any
Speaker 2: convincing argument for keeping food dies natural or synthetic. I
Speaker 2: just haven't it, Aaron.
Speaker 1: I don't want to interrupt your flow because it's so good,
Speaker 1: but and you can take it one step further, because
Speaker 1: you said they have food dies in part no nutritional value.
Speaker 1: They also do not extend the shelf life of our foods.
Speaker 1: They do not make our foods more cost effective, unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about the comparison of synthetic dyes, which are
Speaker 1: more cost effective than so called natural dyes, which are
Speaker 1: much more labor intensive and expensive and not as potent.
Speaker 3: So you have potentially ecologically damaging Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 1: But no, there is literally no benefit to our health
Speaker 1: or our pocketbooks in any way, shape or form when
Speaker 1: it comes to food dies.
Speaker 3: Their only purpose is to make us want to eat
Speaker 3: things more because they look better.
Speaker 2: Because they'll look better.
Speaker 1: I genuinely feel like at this point I have no
Speaker 1: skin in this game, Like we take them all out, great,
Speaker 1: no problem. We keep them there as long as they're
Speaker 1: safety testing. Great, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: That's how I feel like, Yeah, since we use them,
Speaker 2: we should keep evaluating every die included in food and
Speaker 2: we jingle. We do keep evaluating. We should continue to
Speaker 2: weigh the cost and the benefits, including who is paying
Speaker 2: the cost and who receives the benefit. And we should
Speaker 2: not assume that replacing synthetic dies with natural ones solves
Speaker 2: the issue. Just because something is derived from a plant
Speaker 2: rather than cold tar does not make it inherently healthier.
Speaker 2: We just did an episode on Strict nine, which comes
Speaker 2: from a plant, is not used as a die, but still.
Speaker 1: Like this is the exact This is the conclusion of
Speaker 1: the end of this episode as well too. So we
Speaker 1: could honestly step here, don't, but we could.
Speaker 2: It's like all food, drug, and cosmetic dies should continue
Speaker 2: to be held at the standard that they are, and
Speaker 2: we should be wary of companies that claim superiority or
Speaker 2: better better nutrition because of quote unquote natural ingredients. And
Speaker 2: so I just like, I don't know, I think to
Speaker 2: place this in the current context of like the arguments
Speaker 2: today It's like I want there to be the reason
Speaker 2: that we should take out food dives is because it
Speaker 2: doesn't impart nutritional value and if it harms, if there
Speaker 2: are harms, then we should take them out. But like
Speaker 2: I just it doesn't make sense to me, and I
Speaker 2: am open to hearing reasons to keep food dies in,
Speaker 2: but I did not come across any in my reading.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: It's also what I think is really interesting, Aaron, is
Speaker 1: that you brought up that in the past there was
Speaker 1: a lot more it seems like emphasis on the idea
Speaker 1: that these food dies were deceptive in a way. Yes,
Speaker 1: right they are, and today but today that's not the
Speaker 1: conversation that's going on. The conversation is only surrounding only
Speaker 1: surrounding the synthetic dies. There's really not conversation ongoing about
Speaker 1: the natural dyes, which is a problem, yep. And it's
Speaker 1: only around the potential for health harms which I'll get
Speaker 1: into that come with these synthetic dyes. And there is
Speaker 1: no discussion on going about the fact that this is
Speaker 1: still a form of You could look at this as
Speaker 1: a form of deception, especially like you were saying, Aaron,
Speaker 1: the way that we market these so called natural dyes.
Speaker 1: A lot of companies are really leaning into that in
Speaker 1: a way that makes you assume that a food is
Speaker 1: going to be healthier for you because it is dyed
Speaker 1: with natural colorance, right, and there's still artificial.
Speaker 3: Colorance just derived from natural sources.
Speaker 2: And the labeling requirements are very different too.
Speaker 3: I can't can we get into it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So what I'm gonna get into is how these things
Speaker 1: are currently regulated in the US and in other countries.
Speaker 1: Because the amount of mis and disinformation out there about
Speaker 1: the way that food dies are regulated in the US
Speaker 1: versus that you is astounding course. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the truth. And what is the data that exists,
Speaker 1: especially for these synthetic diyes, on what harms they could
Speaker 1: potentially be causing, and what are we doing about it?
Speaker 3: What is the future going to look like?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm thrilled.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 1: Just to bring us up to speed from where you
Speaker 1: kind of left us off, Aaron in the like mid
Speaker 1: to nineteen hundreds ish in the nineteen late nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, there was over two hundred food dies,
Speaker 1: natural and synthetic that were like approved for use, and
Speaker 1: at that point people were like, this feels wrong, there's
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 3: We need more data.
Speaker 1: So at that point the FDA undertook reviews of all
Speaker 1: of those colorants and reevaluated them. And since that time
Speaker 1: the list has been whittled down, I think, and I
Speaker 1: wish I had written the exact number down, but I
Speaker 1: think it's around twenty eight quote unquote naturally derived food
Speaker 1: dies and nine synthetic dyes that are approved in the
Speaker 1: US currently, And the nine is an asterisk, it's actually eight.
Speaker 3: But let's get there, okay.
Speaker 1: The way that food dies are regulated today is that
Speaker 1: they have to be specifically approved for use before they
Speaker 1: are allowed to be used as a colorant, which means
Speaker 1: that regardless of the source coltar, petroleum meaning synthetic dye
Speaker 1: or natural vegetable mineral bugs, whatever, it has to be approved.
Speaker 1: The FDA has to receive safety data to be able
Speaker 1: to consider the properties of that die, consider the amount
Speaker 1: of that dye that somebody might be consuming in their foods,
Speaker 1: any possible health effects, impurities or byproducts that might be
Speaker 1: in the die as a result of the manufacturing process,
Speaker 1: and then the FDA and the European Food Safety Administration
Speaker 1: does the exact same thing in Europe. They set an
Speaker 1: appropriate level of use determination for every single one of
Speaker 1: these food dies, and then they set limits on what
Speaker 1: specific foods these dyes or cosmetics or drugs that these
Speaker 1: dyes can be used in the maximum amount that you
Speaker 1: can use, et cetera. There is no generally Recognized as
Speaker 1: Safe or GRAS provision for color additives, which means that
Speaker 1: our color additives, any color additives that are in our foods,
Speaker 1: are more tightly regulated than a lot of other stuff
Speaker 1: that is in our foods and our drugs and our
Speaker 1: cosmetics and our supplements. Okay, because remember so many things
Speaker 1: that are in supplements fall under this g category. That
Speaker 1: is not true for food colorance no matter where they
Speaker 1: come from. In the US, these types of color additives
Speaker 1: that we all can call artificial colorance are split into
Speaker 1: those two groups that we've mentioned a few times now,
Speaker 1: synthetic meaning derived from coltar or now petroleum, and so
Speaker 1: called natural dyes. But the way that they're actually labeled
Speaker 1: in the US is that the synthetic dyes are called
Speaker 1: certification required, and all of the other dyes that are
Speaker 1: come from natural sources are exempt from certification. So what
Speaker 1: does that mean. Yeah, they all still have to have
Speaker 1: safety data, but synthetic dyes are subject to batch certification,
Speaker 1: which means that manufacturers of these dyes have to send
Speaker 1: a sample from every single batch of the dye or
Speaker 1: the pigment that they are making to the FDA for
Speaker 1: the FDA to analyze it. What the FDA is going
Speaker 1: to analyze it for is purity and the presence of
Speaker 1: any impurities in the dye. They're going to analyze it
Speaker 1: for heavy metals, for moisture, for any unreacted intermediates, because
Speaker 1: with the production of these synthetic dyes, especially a lot
Speaker 1: of times the intermediates in the reaction do have data
Speaker 1: of harm. So that's one of the reasons that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't like these synthetic dyes specifically, is
Speaker 1: because the chemical process that it takes to make that
Speaker 1: the intermediates can be toxic, including causing cancer, and so
Speaker 1: the FDA has to bat certify every single batch of
Speaker 1: these synthetic colorants before they can be used in our foods.
Speaker 2: I just find this really interesting that synthetic dyes are
Speaker 2: subject to this, but natural dyes are not. When if
Speaker 2: you're deriving this from natural sources like a plant. Plants
Speaker 2: individually vary so substantially in what they are made of
Speaker 2: and the concentrations of various correct compounds.
Speaker 1: Correct correct and all vegetable fruit, animal, mineral, natural based
Speaker 1: colorants are exempt from this certification process, which means that
Speaker 1: nobody other than the manufacturer, who should be following good
Speaker 1: manufacturing practices hopefully, are the only ones that are testing them.
Speaker 1: They do again have to provide safety data before they
Speaker 1: can be certified for use, but there's no oversight process
Speaker 1: of the manufacturing of those colorants because they are exempt
Speaker 1: from certification. Also, that means that synthetic colors have very
Speaker 1: explicit ways that they have to be identified on our labels.
Speaker 1: On our food labels, like you mentioned aaron, they have
Speaker 1: to list FD and C yellow number five, right, because
Speaker 1: those are batches that have been approved for use. Exempt
Speaker 1: colors do not have to be explicitly identified in the US.
Speaker 1: They can actually just be listed as added color or
Speaker 1: artificial color, like you don't even have to say the
Speaker 1: exact thing that's in there, yeah, Or sometimes it can
Speaker 1: be listed under a whole bunch of different names, right,
Speaker 1: Because some different colorants actually have a bunch of different
Speaker 1: like common names that people use, and so you might
Speaker 1: have one colorant that has multiple different names, so you'd
Speaker 1: have to be able to identify all the different names
Speaker 1: that it has. In the EU, the regulation for labeling
Speaker 1: in things is different. And every single food additive, whether
Speaker 1: it's a colorant or like a preservative or other food additives,
Speaker 1: whether it's a synthetic dye or whether it's a naturally
Speaker 1: drived dye, it has what's called an E number, so
Speaker 1: like E one two three, E one O two, E
Speaker 1: one thirty.
Speaker 3: Nine, blah blah blah, everything, every single thing, Okay.
Speaker 1: And that means you know, quote unquote natural colorants that
Speaker 1: we might list as paprika or you know, beat dehydrated beats,
Speaker 1: they would list as E. I didn't I don't know
Speaker 1: the numbers of those, but that's what they would list
Speaker 1: it as if it was used as a colorant. So
Speaker 1: that is one difference is in the labeling that we
Speaker 1: have here in the US versus the EU.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, let us.
Speaker 1: Focus a little bit more specifically on these synthetic dyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different like chemical groupings of them.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at like the chemical structure. They're all
Speaker 1: derived from coltart or now a days, mostly from petroleum.
Speaker 1: Most of the dyes that we use in the US
Speaker 1: fall into the AZO dyes group, which means that they're
Speaker 1: like usually these like carbon rings and then they've got
Speaker 1: two nitrogen groups that are double bonded together. That's what
Speaker 1: makes them an AZO. Okay, but there are I know
Speaker 1: there's other groups as well too. But there are in
Speaker 1: the US only eight slash nine ish of these that
Speaker 1: are currently permitted for use for food in the US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are. I will list them for you so
Speaker 1: we can talk about each one in specif wow, I know,
Speaker 1: because there's the true a.
Speaker 3: Lot of them.
Speaker 1: So we've got FD and C they all have that
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Blue number one, Blue number two, Green
Speaker 1: number three, Yellow number five, most famous, yellow number six,
Speaker 1: and red forty. And that's only what six right there.
Speaker 3: Those are the.
Speaker 1: Ones that we are eating because those are the ones
Speaker 1: that are really used in the US.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, the other two are not used.
Speaker 3: There's a couple more.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about them, because these are also
Speaker 1: the subject of some like the April twenty second press
Speaker 1: release that the FDA came out with has some information
Speaker 1: about some of these, so let's get into it. There's
Speaker 1: two more that are likely going to be banned very soon,
Speaker 1: but they are still allowed right now. One of them
Speaker 1: is called citrus Red number two. This is allowed in
Speaker 1: the US, it's banned in the EU. It is only
Speaker 1: permitted to be used at really low concentrations. I think
Speaker 1: it's like less than two parts per million on the
Speaker 1: outside of oranges. This is so specific erin that are
Speaker 1: not meant for juicing or processing.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Also, I did not know that oranges could
Speaker 2: be dyed.
Speaker 3: Me neither.
Speaker 2: Okay. It's so disappointed at everything, Like I'm just like
Speaker 2: do why, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not super common apparently what I saw,
Speaker 1: it's mostly only in Florida oranges. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that is just like that's where they use it more,
Speaker 1: But it's not used very commonly. It's only permitted because,
Speaker 1: again the FDA sets very strict regulations on the amount
Speaker 1: that you can use and what foods you can use
Speaker 1: it in and in what context. So it is only
Speaker 1: permitted on the outside of oranges that are meant for consumption,
Speaker 1: where you're not eating.
Speaker 3: The outside of that orange.
Speaker 2: Right, right.
Speaker 1: And this is a controversial die because there is some
Speaker 1: data at higher concentrations than two parts per million, but
Speaker 1: there is some data of cancer. I think it's bladder cancers,
Speaker 1: mostly in mice and rats. And so that is one
Speaker 1: that the FDA has recently announced that they are planning
Speaker 1: to They have not yet, but they are planning to
Speaker 1: revoke the authorization for Citrus red number two in the
Speaker 1: coming months. Presumably there's another one that is still technically
Speaker 1: approved for use that.
Speaker 3: I just find.
Speaker 1: This is where you just get like, this is just silly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's called orange B and it is technically still
Speaker 1: on the approved list only for use in hot dog casings.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But it gets better. It has not been used since
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: What's being used in hot dog casings today? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Erin probably read forty okay, and like yellow number five, go,
Speaker 1: what are.
Speaker 2: You using your hot dogs?
Speaker 3: Costco's all naturally, Aaron, they're using paprika.
Speaker 2: But know that for a fact?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I don't, but I would guess. But but
Speaker 1: so this is one that in the nineteen sixties, when
Speaker 1: the FDA was reviewing all these things, they actually recommended
Speaker 1: I think it was in like nineteen sixty six or
Speaker 1: seventy something. They were like, yeah, we should probably revoke
Speaker 1: orange be because like there's some data that it's probably
Speaker 1: carcinogenic and it's on a list of probable carcinogens. But
Speaker 1: the one and only company that was using orange b
Speaker 1: for their hot dog casings stopped manufacturing them. So then
Speaker 1: the FDA was like, mah, just never followed through on
Speaker 1: my probably.
Speaker 2: How to file the paperwork. That sounds exhausting, like this
Speaker 2: is pointless. I've got other things to do on this
Speaker 2: Friday afternoon.
Speaker 1: So that's the only reason that it is still on
Speaker 1: the technically approved list, which is just so silly.
Speaker 2: That I've I've rolled my eyes like now eight times
Speaker 2: and they're starting to become strange from me.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Sorry, there's probably gonna be a little more of that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So that one is also now actually going
Speaker 1: to be banned supposedly in the next few months, but
Speaker 1: again it has not been used. No one has been
Speaker 1: eating orange Bee since nineteen seventy eight, unless you're eating
Speaker 1: really old hot dogs.
Speaker 3: I guess someone somewhere.
Speaker 1: Now there's a ninth one that is now banned, but
Speaker 1: it might still be in existence because the manufacturers have
Speaker 1: a couple of years to actually remove it from their products,
Speaker 1: and that is RED number three. Red number three was
Speaker 1: banned officially in January of this year, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: so it's in the process of being phased out.
Speaker 3: The reason that it was.
Speaker 1: Banned is because of data on the increased risk of
Speaker 1: thyroid tumors in and I think it's specifically in male rats.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that directly links RED three to
Speaker 1: causing cancer in humans, but because of this what's called
Speaker 1: the Delaney Provision, which was what went into effect in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty by the FDA, any evidence of the cancer
Speaker 1: causing properties of any food dye means.
Speaker 3: It should be pulled.
Speaker 2: Right even in that is like you know, one in
Speaker 2: one billion lifetime risk of cancer or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, even if it's only in animal studies like
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: So Red number three is now.
Speaker 1: Banned and companies have to phase it out as of
Speaker 1: now by twenty twenty seven for food and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: eight for drugs, although the FDA has requested that manufacturers
Speaker 1: do this on a speedier timeline, So we'll see if
Speaker 1: that happens.
Speaker 3: Okay. Now, of the other.
Speaker 1: Six blue one and two, green three, yellow five, yellow
Speaker 1: six and red forty, ninety percent of our synthetic dye
Speaker 1: consumption comes from just three colors yellow.
Speaker 3: Number five, yellow number six and red forty.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I do like that, and I added pink because I
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So those are the three dyes that are ninety
Speaker 1: percent of our synthetic dye consumption. We don't really need
Speaker 1: to use green that much because we can make it
Speaker 1: from yellow and blue, and then we use blue one
Speaker 1: and two sometimes. So just looking at what is approved,
Speaker 1: I want to address another misconception that always comes up
Speaker 1: in talking about these when we look at the regulations
Speaker 1: in the US versus Europe, these dyes are not banned
Speaker 1: in Europe. People online love to say that all these
Speaker 1: dyes are not allowed in Europe, and that is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent untrue. Is it just a labeling discrepancy, yes, Aaron,
Speaker 1: like I said, the European Food Safety Administration, which is
Speaker 1: their version of the FDA, has different labeling requirements. The
Speaker 1: only synthetic dye of those six that are used, so
Speaker 1: citrus number two and orange bee are not allowed in
Speaker 1: the EU red number three still is, so it's banned
Speaker 1: now in the US. It's still allowed in the EU,
Speaker 1: though only in Marischino cherries.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: The only synthetic dye though that's approved in the US,
Speaker 1: that's banned in the EU is green number three, So
Speaker 1: that is banned in the EU, but it's allowed.
Speaker 3: Here in the US.
Speaker 1: There are three other synthetic dyes Cochineal red, Ponceau four
Speaker 1: and quinn Alone yellow that are approved for use in
Speaker 1: the EU but are banned in the US. Okay, And
Speaker 1: I think that the reason that people say this is
Speaker 1: just because they don't understand how labeling laws work, like
Speaker 1: the U system is logical and ours is not. And
Speaker 1: so yellow number five is called E one O two,
Speaker 1: Red number forty is called E one twenty nine, Yellow
Speaker 1: number six is E one ten. They're all allowed now
Speaker 1: when we talk about the hyperactivity stuff, which we'll I'll
Speaker 1: get into, I swear eventually. There are some other differences
Speaker 1: in labeling laws in the EU and the UK that
Speaker 1: I think has probably led to differences in the way
Speaker 1: that artificial and specifically synthetic dies are perceived in the
Speaker 1: EU and the UK, which has led to companies choosing
Speaker 1: to manufacture with more of the natural dyes than the
Speaker 1: synthetic dies.
Speaker 2: I have a question about just dies die use in general.
Speaker 2: Give it to me, like what proportion of Okay, the
Speaker 2: bottom line is, I'm trying to ask what the difference
Speaker 2: in die consumption, artificial die consumption is in the US
Speaker 2: versus the EU overall, like our great questions, greater concentrations used?
Speaker 2: Do more foods have dyes in one place versus another?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's a really good question. I don't have
Speaker 1: I don't have like hard data on that, okay at all.
Speaker 1: The EFSA, the European Food Safety Administration, sets their acceptable
Speaker 1: daily limits similar way that the FDA does. They might
Speaker 1: have different they might come to different conclusions based on
Speaker 1: the safety data. And the EFSA recently went through and
Speaker 1: reevaluated all of their adis in the last like ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years since like twenty ten ish I think, And
Speaker 1: so that was like a big process that they undertook.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know if we have good data
Speaker 1: honestly on the differences in consumption. I think anecdotally, there
Speaker 1: seems to be more of a shift towards natural guyes
Speaker 1: in the EU and the UK compared to in the US,
Speaker 1: and I think it might come down to some of
Speaker 1: these labeling differences. So let's get more into the health
Speaker 1: data so that we can look at those labeling differences
Speaker 1: and why those might exist. There's two big categories of
Speaker 1: potential for harm that the literature mostly focuses on, and
Speaker 1: that is the risks of cancer and hyperactivity in kits.
Speaker 1: And so there's also, though I'll say, and this is
Speaker 1: I think really important and often underappreciated, there's also the
Speaker 1: potential for hypersensitivity reactions aka allergic reactions. And there's evidence
Speaker 1: that some of these synthetic dyes yellow five, possibly also
Speaker 1: red forty can cause allergic reactions in some people. Natural
Speaker 1: dyes can also cause allergic reactions. A lot of these
Speaker 1: natural dyes actually can cause allergic reactions as well.
Speaker 3: And they're not as clearly labeled, which is also trickier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right in the US, they're not actually labeled, and
Speaker 1: so that is tricky because if you have these natural dyes,
Speaker 1: like a natto extract is one that definitely can cause
Speaker 1: hypersensitivity reactions, but that doesn't necessarily have to be on
Speaker 1: a label. That's a problem, but let's focus on the
Speaker 1: cancer part and the hyperactivity part. And the cancer part
Speaker 1: is kind of short because I already mentioned the big
Speaker 1: ones that we know have some associated information or data
Speaker 1: that suggests an increased risk of cancer, and those are
Speaker 1: the dyes that have since been either banned or are
Speaker 1: on the chopping block. So Orange b Citrus, Red number two,
Speaker 1: and Red number three. Again, none of these have data
Speaker 1: for cancer in humans, although I think that Citrus red
Speaker 1: number two is on like the IARC list of potentially
Speaker 1: carcinogenic in humans. But all of these are now either
Speaker 1: banned or in theory will be banned soon in theory
Speaker 1: by the FDA. Okay, for the other dies that exist
Speaker 1: that are still approved, the other synthetic dyes, there's not
Speaker 1: any real data of cancer in these. So there's very
Speaker 1: limited and pretty controversial evidence of reticulo endothelial cancers in
Speaker 1: mice but not rats for Red number forty. And it
Speaker 1: seems like this data is like based on a lot
Speaker 1: of these studies are honestly just not great. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's a problem in and of itself, right. There was
Speaker 1: a study in Blue number two that was like maybe
Speaker 1: an increased risk of bladder or brain tumors in rats.
Speaker 1: But again it was like not a great study, so
Speaker 1: people were like, maybe it's not accurate with green number three,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of carcinogenicity, Yellow number five, Yellow number six,
Speaker 1: no evidence of carcinogenicity. There's a colorant called Amorants, which
Speaker 1: is red number two in the US or E one
Speaker 1: twenty three in the EU, that is now banned in
Speaker 1: the US that did have some increased risk of tumors
Speaker 1: in female rats, so that's why it's banned here. It's
Speaker 1: still permitted for use in glass a cherries in the
Speaker 1: EU and the UK okay, okay, lots of cherries. So overall, like,
Speaker 1: there are studies that have looked at the risks of cancer,
Speaker 1: mostly in mice and rats, in each of these synthetic dyes,
Speaker 1: and the evidence is not does not show an increased
Speaker 1: risk of cancer for these Thus far might that change
Speaker 1: in the future perhaps, But the big one, and of
Speaker 1: course that gets I think the most press is not cancer.
Speaker 1: It's hyperactivity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so erin.
Speaker 1: We will need to do ADHD someday, Yeah, we will,
Speaker 1: It's on our list. But the idea that food colorants
Speaker 1: might be related to ADHD or hyperactivity stems like you
Speaker 1: mentioned Aaron from studies that date back to the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies that were conducted by a guy named Fine Gold.
Speaker 1: What he did was he put kids who had hyperactivity
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it was technically diagnosed as
Speaker 1: ADHD at the time.
Speaker 2: Not sure what the criteria were, yeah, because.
Speaker 1: That they have changed over time, but in any case,
Speaker 1: kids who had hyperactivity, put them on pretty restrictive diets,
Speaker 1: quite restrictive, very restrictive kind of elimination diets where they
Speaker 1: had no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no preservatives, right,
Speaker 1: a very limited diet. And he saw that on this
Speaker 1: restrictive diet, kids had a reduction in their hyperactivity symptoms.
Speaker 2: And this was was this self assessed? Was this subject?
Speaker 2: Was this parental?
Speaker 3: This is a really great question. Yeah, great question.
Speaker 1: I did not read his study, and so I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what his exact metrics were, but that study
Speaker 1: and that book that he published sparked decades of research
Speaker 1: into diet and ADHD. Food colorance was one part of
Speaker 1: those restrictive diets, and so since then people have also said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we want to parse out food colorance specifically, then
Speaker 1: we actually have to look at kind of controlled trials
Speaker 1: where we expose people to food colorance, we expose kids
Speaker 1: to food colorance and.
Speaker 3: Look for behaviors Jesus Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to just kind of summarize these last
Speaker 1: few decades of days great, leaning heavily on some recent
Speaker 1: meta analyzes that have been conducted to look at all
Speaker 1: of this. The basic summary is this, there is some
Speaker 1: evidence that some kids might have an increase in symptoms
Speaker 1: related to ADHD, like inattentiveness, fidgeting, impulsivity, over activity, and
Speaker 1: other symptoms that we see with ADHD with exposure to
Speaker 1: synthetic food colorings. So I want to be very clear
Speaker 1: about what this data shows and what it does not
Speaker 1: show because it's important.
Speaker 3: There are no.
Speaker 1: Studies that are providing any evidence of a causal relationship.
Speaker 1: So there is nothing that shows that food dies or
Speaker 1: other additives for that matter, are what are causing ADHD.
Speaker 1: ADHD is a condition that has really strong genetic components
Speaker 1: that we don't fully understand, and there are likely these
Speaker 1: like gene by environment interactions and environmental triggers. There's a
Speaker 1: really wide spectrum of symptoms. There's not evidence that food
Speaker 1: dies are causing ADHD, But there is evidence that for
Speaker 1: some kids, some of who might have a diagnosis of
Speaker 1: ADHD and some of who might not, exposure to some
Speaker 1: of these synthetic colorants might worsen some of those hyperactivity symptoms. Okay,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be the most pronounced in younger kids. Now,
Speaker 1: you asked, Aaron, how are we measuring this? Is it
Speaker 1: based on parental is it based on blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: There's a really wide range of that. And because these studies,
Speaker 1: and there's a number of them, and they've been done
Speaker 1: over the last few decades, but they're not a ton
Speaker 1: of standardization in the way that all of these studies
Speaker 1: are done. So in some of these studies, you actually
Speaker 1: can't disentangle the effects of food colorant from a preservative
Speaker 1: called sodium benzoate that they've used in a lot of
Speaker 1: these studies. So some of those like you see in effect.
Speaker 1: But is it the sodium bende or is it the colorant?
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure. Some of these studies only
Speaker 1: show significant effects of increased hyperactivity when we look at
Speaker 1: parental reports, but not when we look at teacher observations
Speaker 1: or clinic observations.
Speaker 2: And these are like double blind studies.
Speaker 3: Or most of them are. They're blinded, and they're.
Speaker 1: Crossover studies, Okay, the good ones. And so that means
Speaker 1: that you're exposing a kid to you have them go
Speaker 1: on a restrictive diet, ideally so that they're not being
Speaker 1: exposed to food color in their regular diets. And then
Speaker 1: you're giving them usually a juice that has either preservative
Speaker 1: or food coloring or both, either one or a mixture.
Speaker 1: And that's another issue is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: studies look at mixtures of food colorance. Many of the mixtures,
Speaker 1: because many of these studies were done in the UK,
Speaker 1: many of the mixtures contain food colorants that are not
Speaker 1: approved for use in the US, So some of those
Speaker 1: scithetic colorance that we don't use.
Speaker 2: So we don't know, like I like, the specific food
Speaker 2: dies that might be associated with.
Speaker 1: This yellow Number five is the most implicated. It's the
Speaker 1: one that's had the most studies on a single food colorant,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them look at a combination, so
Speaker 1: we don't know for the other food colorants.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, so then you expose the kid, you
Speaker 1: have them drink this drink that either has food coloring
Speaker 1: or doesn't. You observe them. You do these clinic observations.
Speaker 1: Parental reports are given and then you do a wash
Speaker 1: out period and then you give them something else that
Speaker 1: doesn't have it, and vice versa. So you randomize them
Speaker 1: to whether they receive that first or whether we receive
Speaker 1: that second, and you observe them at both times. Okay,
Speaker 1: some of these studies, they only really saw an effect
Speaker 1: in kids who maybe had a history of atopy, so
Speaker 1: like allergies or asthma or something. And in nearly all
Speaker 1: of these studies, the effect sizes are pretty small, so
Speaker 1: we're looking at and effects sizes are hard to like interpret,
Speaker 1: but overall it's like a small increase in these symptoms
Speaker 1: of hyperactivity. Okay, but that's you know, even a small
Speaker 1: increase in hyperactivity in kids. If you're talking about like
Speaker 1: a classroom full of kids, that could have a huge effect.
Speaker 2: And so just so I understand this is if you
Speaker 2: if a kid has been diagnosed with ADHD or not,
Speaker 2: this is a deviation, This is an increase in the
Speaker 2: symptoms of hyperactivities specifically, yes, and so by putting them
Speaker 2: on an elimination diet, it's not going to cure ADHD,
Speaker 2: it's not going to lead to an alleviation of symptoms.
Speaker 1: Well, that is what the fine goal data shows, and
Speaker 1: that is what a lot of these restrictive diets show that, Yes,
Speaker 1: if you take away food dies, you put a kind
Speaker 1: on a restrictive diet, you can improve their symptoms.
Speaker 3: OKHD.
Speaker 2: So it's not just like food dies lead to increased
Speaker 2: symptoms or food dies are associated with increased symptoms, but
Speaker 2: it's also that a complete elimination of food dies will
Speaker 2: cause alleviation.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, And so one of the meta analyzes specifically
Speaker 1: looking at kids with ADHD suggested that it's about how
Speaker 1: maybe eight percent of kids with ADHD have symptoms that
Speaker 1: are related to synthetic food colorance was what their estimate
Speaker 1: was overall. So that is what the data shows. And
Speaker 1: because of this data, and because of how much we've
Speaker 1: had over the last few years in the EU, and
Speaker 1: I believe also in the UK, foods that include some
Speaker 1: of these synthetic colorants, especially yellow number five and some
Speaker 1: of the others too that we don't use in the
Speaker 1: US have to include a warning label on the food
Speaker 1: that says, quote may have an adverse effect on activity
Speaker 1: and attention in children end quote, and that I don't
Speaker 1: know the exact year that that went into effect, but
Speaker 1: I very much suspect that that has contributed to this
Speaker 1: shift that we see in the EU towards natural food
Speaker 1: dies rather than synthetic food dice.
Speaker 2: Have similar studies been performed on natural food dice?
Speaker 3: Not that I found erin that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It is because the restrictive diets are no artificial colorants,
Speaker 1: which includes artificial colorance derived from natural sources.
Speaker 2: Okay, And what would the possible mechanism of action be?
Speaker 1: I knew that you were gonna ask that, so I
Speaker 1: have a tiny little paragraph.
Speaker 3: To tell you. We don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The studies that have tried to look into this have
Speaker 1: not all come to the same conclusions.
Speaker 3: Obviously.
Speaker 1: They're also all based on like mouse and rat studies,
Speaker 1: which is pretty limiting. There's maybe some suggestion like is
Speaker 1: it because these are pro inflammatory in some way? Is
Speaker 1: it actually the metabolites from these dyes? Is it some
Speaker 1: like gut brain.
Speaker 3: Axis type of stuff.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is we don't know what the possible
Speaker 1: mechanism could be here, So it's all based on this,
Speaker 1: you know, like these these studies looking just at kids,
Speaker 1: and again also no data in adults that there's any
Speaker 1: issues with hyperactivity, not that adults don't have ADHD, but
Speaker 1: nobody's done those studies. Nobody's looking at adults.
Speaker 2: What's what is the degree of impact?
Speaker 1: So it's it is a small effect and it is
Speaker 1: not all kids with ADHD, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: the most important part. So none of these studies and
Speaker 1: like the kind of community at large in terms of
Speaker 1: how we treat ADHD does not suggest restrictive diets as
Speaker 1: a cure. It's not a cure for ADHD. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: point blank, But there is some data that for some
Speaker 1: kids a reduction in their exposure to these synthetic colorants
Speaker 1: and maybe other food additives. And again there's like there's
Speaker 1: more data that needs to be out there, right, because
Speaker 1: it's especially when we're looking at like kids with ADHD
Speaker 1: being put on these restrictive diets, it's way more than
Speaker 1: just the food colorance. So there is a lot more
Speaker 1: like data that needs to be parsed out in that,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of people that are working
Speaker 1: on that. So I'm not here saying that you know,
Speaker 1: eliminating food dies is a cure for ADHD. That is
Speaker 1: not the case and that is not what the data shows, right,
Speaker 1: But there is an increase in hyperactivity symptoms for some
Speaker 1: kids with exposure to some of these synthetic dies.
Speaker 2: How interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, and it's like really hard to know,
Speaker 1: Like what do we make of it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What do we do about that? What percentage of the
Speaker 1: population has to be effective? For the FDA to say
Speaker 1: that we think that this constitutes a harm and therefore
Speaker 1: these should be banned. The EU and the UK have
Speaker 1: not banned them. They've decided that what they're going to
Speaker 1: do is put a warning label so that consumers can decide.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want my kid to have this
Speaker 1: because I am worried that they might have an increase
Speaker 1: in difficulties with activity and attention. So it's the question
Speaker 1: is how do you decide this? And that's not for
Speaker 1: us to answer, it's for the fdata answer. What the
Speaker 1: FDA has decided that they're going to do, according to
Speaker 1: their press release from April of twenty twenty five, is
Speaker 1: ask nicely that manufacturers please stop using these synthetic dyes
Speaker 1: and instead switch to natural dyes. That's what they said,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the press about this was like
Speaker 1: FDA banning synthetic dies.
Speaker 3: It has not, so it was just like a hey,
Speaker 3: would you mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's not a problem, you're doing well.
Speaker 1: They're asking manufacturers to stop question yeah, these other synthetic
Speaker 1: dyes red number forty, yellow five, yellow six, blue one
Speaker 1: and two green three, and they're saying will you please,
Speaker 1: And the manufacturers apparently are like, yeah, sure, but they've
Speaker 1: apparently said yeah sure before. By the way, this is hilarious.
Speaker 1: In twenty I think it was twenty sixteen, General Mills,
Speaker 1: who makes Tricks, was like, we're going to switch to
Speaker 1: natural food dies because that's what our consumers want. So
Speaker 1: they switch Tricks to be natural food dies and everyone
Speaker 1: hated it and they were pissed.
Speaker 3: So in twenty seventeen they switched back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean like this, this is what I was saying,
Speaker 2: is that like it's going to take some getting used to,
Speaker 2: and I feel like it needs to happen across the
Speaker 2: board if it's going to and otherwise companies will not
Speaker 2: be on board.
Speaker 1: Well, and here's the other thing that I think is
Speaker 1: really important that we need to remember as we're talking
Speaker 1: about all of this and the thing that made me
Speaker 1: the most, like I guess frustrated with this episode. We've
Speaker 1: said already food dyes serve no purpose other than to
Speaker 1: make our food look better and make us want to
Speaker 1: eat more. Manufacturers have a really strong reason to want
Speaker 1: to keep as many as cheap and as potent, right like,
Speaker 1: so you use as little as possible food dyes available
Speaker 1: so that they can keep consumers happy and have us
Speaker 1: buy their product instead of someone else's. The FDA absolutely
Speaker 1: should have very strict requirements and regulations on what can
Speaker 1: be approved as a food dye, whether it is derived
Speaker 1: from a beat or a beetle's.
Speaker 3: Butt, or petroleum totally.
Speaker 1: And that means that the FDA needs to be empowered
Speaker 1: to do this. They have to have the budget, the
Speaker 1: human power, the expertise, the expertise to be testing these dyes,
Speaker 1: to be reviewing these studies whether they are natural or synthetic,
Speaker 1: And we as consumers should expect a really high degree
Speaker 1: of safety testing and scientific grigor Because the risk benefit
Speaker 1: ratio has no benefit, our risk tolerance should be very low.
Speaker 1: This all makes sense, right, But we can first of
Speaker 1: all do that without distorting the data that exists right,
Speaker 1: without lying about what's approved here in the US versus
Speaker 1: the UK.
Speaker 2: That's what I think bothers me about this, or like
Speaker 2: I was trying to articulate, like I want this. I
Speaker 2: want these decisions to be made for the right reasons, exact,
Speaker 2: evidence based reasons.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We can do that without making blatant statements that dies
Speaker 1: are poisoning us, right, and with recognizing that natural food
Speaker 1: dies are not free from risk. These also need to
Speaker 1: have their safety profiles adequately addressed and right now. The
Speaker 1: FDA has announced in this press release in April that
Speaker 1: they are going to expedite the approval process of at
Speaker 1: least four new natural based food.
Speaker 2: Dies because they're natural.
Speaker 3: Because they're natural.
Speaker 1: So what it feels like we are doing with food
Speaker 1: dyes is the same thing that we have done with
Speaker 1: a lot of other issues that we've talked about this
Speaker 1: season already. We are pinpointing a single aspect in this
Speaker 1: case of our food system, and we are demonizing it.
Speaker 1: We are pinpointing something that seems bad because it's synthetic
Speaker 1: or it's not natural, and we're putting all of our
Speaker 1: focus and blame on this one thing, synthetic food dies,
Speaker 1: instead of looking at the bigger picture, and the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: if we really take a step back, is that these
Speaker 1: food dyes, synthetic or natural, are predominantly found in our
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods, which account in the US for sixty
Speaker 1: percent of our diet. And ultra processed foods are more
Speaker 1: energy dense and way less nutrient vs Packing more calories
Speaker 1: and less nutrition than unprocessed or minimally processed foods. And
Speaker 1: yet these are less expensive per calorie, less expensive per
Speaker 1: gram of food, and their cost has increased less over
Speaker 1: time compared to the cost of unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
Speaker 1: Hello eggs versus eggos right now, right right, So why
Speaker 1: can't we focus more on this? Switching our food dies
Speaker 1: from red forty to dehydrated beats or yellow five to
Speaker 1: turmeric is not going to change anything about our health
Speaker 1: if we're all still eating lucky charms and tricks for breakfast.
Speaker 1: It just like feels like a distraction.
Speaker 2: You know it is, And I feel like there is
Speaker 2: so much it's such a complicated topic because there's so
Speaker 2: much to it. There's so much to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you said, Aaron, I hadn't even really
Speaker 1: like articulated what you said about this. As we start
Speaker 1: switching to quote unquote natural, that's a whole new marketing
Speaker 1: gamut for companies. Right, Oh, this is healthier. Oh if
Speaker 1: I look at a label and it says it's got
Speaker 1: beats in it, now my kid.
Speaker 3: Is eating beats. No they're not.
Speaker 1: It's just a colorant. It's not beats.
Speaker 2: I mean it is. It is just a marketing. It is.
Speaker 2: It's all. It's all marketing. I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: And and it's a it's a shape because like I
Speaker 2: don't know, I love color is huge. I think it
Speaker 2: is human to love color and to want to enrich
Speaker 2: our world with color.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at your shirt, Ook at my shirt,
Speaker 3: look at my nail shirt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think that Yeah, there needs to be
Speaker 2: real consideration with where we are using that color and
Speaker 2: why we are using that color when it comes to
Speaker 2: the foods that we consume.
Speaker 1: So if you would like to read way more about
Speaker 1: where we got all of this information from, let us
Speaker 1: tell you.
Speaker 2: Let us tell you. Okay, I have I have a
Speaker 2: bunch of sources, but I'm going to shut up too
Speaker 2: right now. One is a book called a Rainbow Palette.
Speaker 2: How Chemical Dyes change the West Relationship with Food by
Speaker 2: Carol Uncoppled And another is a paper from two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine by Burrows titled Palette of Our Palettes, A
Speaker 2: Brief History of Food coloring and its regulation.
Speaker 1: Love it I relied very heavily on the actual FDA
Speaker 1: websites and the EFSA websites to tell me about how
Speaker 1: these colors are regulated and what they do. But there
Speaker 1: also was a paper from twenty seventeen by Letto at
Speaker 1: All that was titled Comparison of Food Color Regulations in
Speaker 1: the EU and the US A review of current provisions.
Speaker 1: And then the meta analyzes. There was a lot of them,
Speaker 1: and like bigger studies looking. There was one that was
Speaker 1: by Cobby Luski and Jacobsen from twenty twelve called the
Speaker 1: Toxicology of Food Dyes.
Speaker 3: There was a really great.
Speaker 1: Meta analysis from nig at All twenty twelve titled meta
Speaker 1: Analysis of Attention deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Attention deficit hyperactivity
Speaker 1: Disorder Symptoms, Restriction diet and Synthetic food color it is,
Speaker 1: and there were several others that were more recent as well,
Speaker 1: both on restrictive diets as well as food colorantce and
Speaker 1: I have some data to back up what I said
Speaker 1: about ultra processed foods at the end too. So you
Speaker 1: can find sources from this episode and all of our
Speaker 1: episodes on our website, this podcast will Kill You dot
Speaker 1: com under the episodes tab.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this
Speaker 2: episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Tom and Leanna and Brent and Pete
Speaker 1: and Mike and Jess and everyone else, everyone at exactly
Speaker 1: right for everything that you do helping us make these episodes.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, and thank you to you listeners.
Speaker 3: We hope that you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2: Learn something tell us, tell us.
Speaker 3: Please, how do you feel about food?
Speaker 2: Gus?
Speaker 3: I'm really curious what the like non not just the
Speaker 3: internet consensus is. Yeah, so tell us.
Speaker 2: And a special thank you to our patrons. Of course,
Speaker 2: we appreciate your support so so very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do, thank you so so much much. Well,
Speaker 3: until next time, wash your hands, you filthy animals.
Speaker 2: Um um
Speaker 1: Um