Dye equals die when it comes to food coloring

Popular Food Dyes Carry
Profound Cancer Risks

I’m horrified when I walk by the baked goods section of the supermarket and see cakes or cookies drenched in garish colored icing. Valentine’s Day brings cookies iced with dark red or hot pink. St. Patrick’s Day means foods dyed greener than any healthy lawn. I’ve even seen cakes on Halloween that are completely covered in orange and black icing.

The stuff doesn’t even look appetizing. It looks like brightly-colored plastic toys (and that may be the idea). But I wouldn’t be surprised if plastic is less toxic than some of the dyes in our foods these days.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Read on for the disturbing truth about new links between food dyes and cancer.

Continued below…

Oliver was doomed to die from cancer within 8 hours – But then he found out what to do. . . Oliver had reached the end of the road in his seven-year fight against cancer. His doctors didn’t think this 32-year-old man would live through the night. But when I talked to Oliver six years later, he was the picture of health! He got rid of his cancer completely. Yes, Oliver found the answer — his own cancer miracle. I sat down with him and his doctor and they told me an incredible story. . . a story that could help save you or someone you love from this dreaded disease. If you’d like to hear it, click here now.

Manufacturers add about 15 million pounds of synthetic dyes to our foods each year. They do it because dyes are supposed to make foods look tastier and healthier. But they’re deceptive, not to mention poisonous. The fake coloring simulates healthful, colorful fruits and vegetables –ironic, considering the adverse effect of the toxic ingredients in these foods.

It’s practically an epidemic. The dyes are in just about everything, from breakfast cereals to salad dressings to every type of candy out there. Fruit drinks, sodas, and ice cream are also contaminated, not to mention certain breads. Because food dyes are so prevalent, our per capita consumption is up 500 percent from what it was about 50 years ago.

Manufacturers claim they add dye to foods for the following reasons:

To enhance the color of food

To add color to food that’s has none

To avoid color loss that’s a result of environmental elements

To deliver consistency when colors vary in food

Most of the colorings are synthetically produced. That’s where you get names like Blue No. 1 and Green No. 3. The three most widely used dyes are Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 – all of which are contaminated with cancer-causing agents.

Another dye, Red 3, has actually been identified as a carcinogen by the FDA, but incredibly is still used commercially! On top of that, many of the most common food dyes are petroleum-based.

Three of the most commonly used dyes contain carcinogens. Four of them cause serious allergic reactions. And studies show that seven of the most common dyes caused cancer in lab animals, including colon cancer, brain tumors, and testicular tumors.

Of course, the FDA supposedly regulates food color additives with the goal of making them safe for human consumption. FDA approval includes studying the composition, health effects, and safety effects of dyes, along with ensuring colors are labeled on food so people know what they’re eating.

That regulation is pointless, since synthetic chemicals shouldn’t even be in our foods. They do nothing to enhance the nutritional quality. They don’t make the foods safer (quite the opposite). We’re seeing them trigger not only allergies, but also behavior problems in children like hyperactivity, and as I mentioned, the scariest of all – cancer.

Beware of “natural additives” as well

Some food colorings come from natural elements, like the pigments of vegetables, minerals, and sometimes even animals. But I’d caution you to steer clear of anything with “natural additives.”

Caramel color is a good example of a natural additive that can be toxic. It’s commonly used to give sodas that rich, brown color (by the way, caramel color has no connection to real caramel, which is made from sugar). According to a 2013 report from market research firms Mintel and Leatherhead Food Research, caramel color is the single most used food coloring in the world. But two of the four types of caramel color contain something called 4-MeI, which is a potential carcinogen.

Most people have never heard of 4-MeI. But you need to know how dangerous it may be, especially since a two-year government study showed it causes cancer in mice. Worse, it’s hard to tell which sodas have 4-MeI, since all the food label will say is “caramel color,” leaving you to wonder whether you’re drinking one of the “safe” varieties of this dye.

In 2013, Consumer Reports conducted tests on a variety of carbonated beverages, including Pepsi, Coke, and Malta Goya to determine levels of 4-MeI. Their results showed quite a bit of variation. Pepsi and Malta Goya had significant levels of 4-MeI – both averaging more than 29 micrograms per can or bottle. (Note: 29 micrograms was used as the cutoff point because that’s the level that poses a one in 100,000 risk of cancer according to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.)

Like many of the poisons in our diet, there are no federal limits on how much 4-MeI can be put in a beverage. Most Americans drink 2.5 glasses a day of brown sodas. (I don’t drink any, so someone else must be drinking five to make up for me!)

I’ve got a wild, crazy idea:
Eat real foods

Over the last couple years, prominent watchdog groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) have said food dyes pose major health risks and that the U.S. government should ban them. In most of Europe, they’ve already been banned.

The health risks are huge, especially for young children. In 2008, CSPI petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban use of these toxic dyes. It’s outrageous that the FDA hasn’t done something, especially considering how easy it is to replace those colorings with safe, natural ingredients. Companies want to keep using the dyes because they’re cheaper, more stable, and brighter than most natural colorings.

Yet, there are safe, saleable alternatives. Consider strawberry-flavored Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain cereal bars. In the U.S., the bars are colored with Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6, and Blue No. 1. In the U.K., where food dyes are outlawed, the exact same cereal bar by Kellogg’s is colored with beetroot, annatto, and paprika extract.

Or, look at the strawberry shake sold by McDonald’s. That pretty pink color comes from Red dye No. 40 if you drink your shake in the U.S. But in Britain, the shake that goes by the same name is colored with concentrated beetroot juice.

Even Fanta orange soda is better for you in Britain. There, it’s dyed orange with pumpkin and carrot extract. The U.S. version is laced with Red 40 and Yellow 6.

Read labels!
It’s your only protection

Given the wide array of medical problems I had when I was young, I started reading ingredient labels at an early age. It’s a good habit to get into. By the time I hit the ripe old age of 60 I didn’t have to read labels much anymore because I had simply stopped buying processed, manufactured foods.

If you want to limit your exposure to potential carcinogens like 4-MeI and all the other toxins, stay away from products with ingredients like “caramel color,” “artificial color,” or anything with a number in the name (like “Red No. 3"). Especially stay away from Red No. 3, Citrus Red No. 2, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, and Green No. 3. These dyes have compelling links to cancer development.

I’d also caution you to look past pretty pictures. Photos of brightly colored fruits on packaging might give you a false impression of what’s inside. Instead, always read the label. Or, shop at chains like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's, which drastically limit the amount of foods they carry with artificial coloring.

There’s no question that the FDA needs to ban these toxic petrochemicals from all food. Then the food industry would be forced to use colors made with natural dyes. The safe alternatives include things like blueberry juice concentrate, carrot juice, paprika, grape skin extract, beet juice, purple sweet potato, corn, and red cabbage. They all sound delicious to me. But until their use is common, make sure you protect yourself by reading labels and boycotting artificially dyed foods.

There’s another point worth making here: When you hear about all the wonderful, cheap, abundant food we have here in the United States, think twice. “Cheap” is not “good.” It’s true the typical American family spends only 13 percent of its budget on food. In 1900 families spent a staggering 43 percent of their money just getting enough to eat.

Spending so little of our income on foods sounds like progress, but it’s not – at least not entirely. One of the reasons is that most of that inexpensive food comes out of a factory. We’re consuming some pink chemical in our strawberry shake, not the natural red of strawberries. And the farms themselves are factories – I don’t need to repeat all that for you today; I’m sure you’ve seen the horror stories: chickens or cattle crammed together with no space to move and stuffed with drugs to make them get fat faster, crops genetically modified and drenched in pesticides and herbicides.

I’m an avid radio listener and I keep hearing a public service commercial about how one child in 88 now has autism, a disease that virtually didn’t exist a hundred years ago. And I could mention five, ten or probably two dozen diseases in the same category.

If you don’t think nutrition has a lot to do with it, you’re fooling yourself.

So spending only 13 percent of your budget on food is NOT a good idea. Spend more and eat right. Here’s a benefit: It also tastes better.

I eat tons of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. As for meat, I eat it much less frequently than does the average American, but when I do eat meat it’s the finest cuts – grass fed beef, free range chicken, heritage pork richly marbled with tasty fat (unlike conventionally grown factory pork that has all the fat bred out of it and tastes like leather; in one of its sporadic, irrational efforts to help us “eat right,” mainstream medicine decided saturated fat was bad, and the pork industry obliged by breeding low-fat pigs. This was a disaster for flavor AND for health. And margarine – a factory food that’s a real killer – was another one of mainstream medicine's brainstorms).

So if you’re ready to spend a bit more for healthier, tastier food, our last issue discussed one that’s worth spending some of those extra dollars on. It’s rich in nutrients including omega 3 fatty acids. If you missed it, please scroll down and read it now.