First Ever Study Reveals Amounts of Food Dyes in Brand Name Foods

Artificial food colors or dyes should be avoided due to their huge negative impact on your health. Calculating how much of these artificial food dyes that you are consuming is almost impossible, since the additives are listed on food labels, but the actual amounts used in common foods are not.

30 milligrams (mg) of dye seems to be an amount that may cause behavioral problems in sensitive children, but If your child eats a bowl of packaged macaroni and cheese or breakfast cereal, how can you know how much dye they consumed?

It’s not only rainbow-colored cereal cupcakes, and candies that contain artificial colors. Even salad dressing, peanut butter crackers, soups and chips often contain synthetic dyes. The amount of dye can add up quickly, with unknown consequences to the health of your family.

First Study Reveals How Much Dye Is in Common Foods:

A study by Purdue University scientists reported the amounts of artificial food colors found in US foods, and revealed that many children could be consuming far more dyes than previously thought.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits nine different colors to be added to foods, and the agency certifies each batch for “purity and safety.” Well, the amount of dye certified has risen from 12 mg per capita, per day in 1950 to 62 mg/capita/day in 2010. It’s clear that Americans are consuming more artificial colors, but how much is in your food?

The study revealed that the amounts of dyes in even single servings of some foods are higher than amounts shown to impair children’s behavior.

Here’s a breakdown of a serving of some name-brand foods and beverages and how much dye they contain:

General Mills’ Trix cereal: 36.4 mg
Fruity Cheerios: 31 mg
Cap’n Crunch Oops! All Berries: 41 mg
Target Mini Green Cupcakes: 55.3 mg
Skittles candies: 33.3 mg
M&M’s candies: 29.5 mg
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese: 17.6 mg Keebler Cheese & Peanut Butter Crackers: 14.4 mg
Kraft Creamy French salad dressing: 5 mg
Powerade Orange Sports Drink: 22.1 mg
Crush Orange: 33.6 mg
Sunny D Orange Strawberry: 41.5 mg
Kool-Aid Burst Cherry: 52.3 mg
Full Throttle Red Berry energy drink: 18.8 mg

With numbers like these, the researchers believed children could easily consume over 100 mg of artificial color in a day, while some children may consume more than double that amount.

Food Dyes May Cause Hyperactivity in Some Children Even at Low Levels:
In 2007, a carefully designed, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study published in the journal The Lancet concluded that a variety of common food dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate cause some children to become measurably more hyperactive and distracted.

This wasn’t the first time such a link had been established. In 1994, researchers found that 73% of children with ADHD responded favorably to an elimination diet that included removing artificial colors.

Unlike in some other counties, the FDA continues to allow these toxic ingredients in countless popular foods, including those marketed directly to children. At the end of March 2011, the FDA held a session to discuss the science on food dyes and hyperactivity.

They decided that warning labels are not necessary on US foods that contain artificial color because a causal relationship had not been established in the general population (although they did acknowledge that food dyes may cause behavioral problems in some children).
Research has shown that a small number of children react to very low levels of dye, while a larger percentage of children are impacted by larger amounts.

With the new Purdue study, however, we can finally see that many children could be consuming hundreds of milligrams of dye daily, levels that have not been previously tested for safety.

As the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) noted, a child who eats two cups of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, a small bag of Skittles and eight ounces of Crush Orange will consume 102 milligrams of artificial food coloring, at just one sitting!

Laura Stevens, research associate in the Nutrition Science Department at Purdue and lead author of the study, told CSPI:

“In the 1970s and 1980s, many studies were conducted giving children 26 mg of a mixture of dyes. Only a few children seemed to react to the dyes, so many doctors concluded that a dye-free diet was pointless. Later studies using larger doses showed that a much larger percentage of children reacted. But some researchers considered those doses unrealistically high. It is now clear that even the larger amounts may not have been high enough. The time is long past due for the FDA to get dyes out of the food supply or for companies to do so voluntarily and promptly.”

Food Dyes Are Linked to Cancer, Behavioral Effects, and Allergy-Like Reactions:

In their 58-page report, “Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks,” CSPI revealed that nine of the food dyes currently approved for use in the US are linked to health issues ranging from cancer and hyperactivity to allergy-like reactions and these results were from studies conducted by the chemical industry itself.

For Instance:

Red # 40, which is the most widely used dye, may accelerate the appearance of immune system tumors in mice, while also triggering hyperactivity in children.

Blue #2, used in candies, beverages, pet foods, and more, was linked to brain tumors. And Yellow #5, used in baked goods, candies, cereal, and more, may not only be contaminated with several cancer-causing chemicals, but it’s also linked to hyperactivity, hypersensitivity and other behavioral effects in children.

Artificial Colors Have No Place in Food, Especially Children’s Food:

We all know children are easy targets for brightly colored foods. Foods geared toward children often have the highest levels of dye. There are some signs that food companies are beginning to listen to consumer concern in the US, the way they have overseas.

For instance:

• Kraft has removed artificial colors from some (but not all) varieties of its Macaroni & Cheese
• General Mills has removed dyes from Trix and Yoplait Go-Gurt yogurts
• Chick-fil-A removed Yellow 5 from its chicken soup
• Frito-Lay removed dyes from Lay’s seasoned and kettle-cooked chips, Sun Chips and Tostitos
• Pepperidge Farm removed dyes from Goldfish Colors crackers

Avoiding Processed Foods Is the Best & Easiest Way to Avoid Food Dyes:

When foods are processed, many valuable nutrients are lost and the fiber removed. The textures and natural flavors are also lost. After processing, what’s left behind needs chemical enhancing to make it appealing. Food manufacturers must artificially add back nutrients, flavor, color and texture to processed foods in order to make them palatable. This is why they become loaded with food additives.

If you must purchase processed food, organic varieties are free of artificial colors. But if you want to eat and be healthy, you should adhere to a pre-1950s model and spend time in the kitchen preparing high-quality meals for yourself and your family. If you rely on processed inexpensive foods, you may very well be exchanging convenience for long-term health problems, mounting medical bills and premature death.

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