Nutrition nuggets

Because most of them are horrible for you!! They should call them DIES!! Here’s what prompted this blog post. I got a bunch of crap for having mini chocolates in my fridge at work!! Now, because I’m constantly telling the office people that they are eating “CRAP”, they decided that their only recourse to feel better about eating this crap was to get back at me by making me feel bad about having said chocolates in my fridge 😦 You get the picture. So I swiftly pulled the bag outta the fridge and started reading the 5 or 6 ingredients in the chocolates. After that, I reiterated, that it’s the ingredients in the foods you people are eating, not the foods themselves. “Why day gotta hate”? Anyway, there are plenty of natural dyes, but are the big companies willing to pay for the natural dye when the #ed dyes are so much more inexpensive?

The Most Dangerous, yet cheap, Food Colorings

Many pediatricians have asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban certain dyes, including –

• Blue dye #1 and #2
• Green dye #3
• Orange dye B, which is prevalent in hot dogs
• Red dye #3 and #40
• Yellow #5 and #6

Several if these dyes are banned in countries other than the United States. Manufacturers that sell in this other countries have to change their formulas. For example, in Great Britain Kraft boxed macaroni and cheese is pale because the yellow dye is banned.

Let me give a shout out to Kraft – There was a petition that went around to get kraft to take the yellow dye (the one that makes it look super yummy) out of their mac and cheese and so many people signed it that I believe they don’t put it in any of their mac and cheese any more!! 🙂 THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD 🙂

First of all, if every company started using natural dyes, which include:

Examples of natural food dyes are –

• Brown is often made from caramelized sugar
• Blue made from red cabbage or blueberry skins
• Green made from vegetable extracts like spinach, parsley, etc.
• Orange is typically made from the pulp around the annatto seed but can also be made with carrots
• Red may be made of hibiscus, beets or the Cochineal beetle (sounds gross but it has been used for over a century)
• Pink may be made from beets
• Purple can be made from blackberry, purple carrots or red cabbage
• Yellow can be made from turmeric or carrot

that the demand would be so high, they would start mass producing natural food colors/dyes and the price would come down!!

If you would like to know more about why you shouldn’t eat some dyes, schedule an appointment for a consult at Main Line Integrative Nutrition and while you’re there, sign up for an integrative nutritional plan that fits your lifestyle 🙂