What Do People Think of Food Dye?
It seems like people have some strong opinions about food dyes. I saw this today and wondered what the my fitness pal community thinks and how it effects their shopping habits?
Replies
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I don't understand this question. Does food get sold in some countries coloured in unusual colour?
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ever seen a Cheeto? 😆
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Most packaged foods have artificial colors added to them.
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Ah ok, that's what you mean. I hardly eat processed food. But I know that bread is coloured darker to appear like a comic version of wholegrain.
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Yep, perfect example.
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Generically, food dye can be a lot of different things. It can be turmeric, beet juice, or other entirely benign foods. Even the "chemical" ones vary in their sources and effects.
Personally, when I buy multi-ingredient food products at the grocery store, I read the label - nutrition and ingredients. I prefer buying products whose ingredients are things I'd use in my own kitchen when making a similar dish, especially if it's something I'd eat often or in major portions.
That's not just because I'm concerned about the ingredients, it's also because my experience tells me that a lot of those over-formulated products just don't taste as good to me as real food properly prepared.
Even so, I don't freak out about a "chemical" ingredient way down the ingredient list in things I eat rarely, or in tiny portions. When I'm concerned about one I don't recognize in a food product I'm interested in, I look it up using my phone, and find out the basics right then and there, before buying. (I put "chemical" in quotes because everything food is chemicals, right? Even some chemicals found in "healthy" whole foods aren't that great for a body if we eat too much of them, including some chemicals that our body actually requires in small amounts.)
While I'd like to see the FDA adopt more of a "proven safe" posture for approving food ingredients, rather than the "OK until proven unsafe" kind of thing, I really don't find it that hard to eat the things I want and avoid the things I don't want.
I also don't enjoy extra drama in my life. My bias is that information sources that cultivate and exploit drama (usually for clickbait or marketing reasons) usually offer more heat than light on whatever they're talking about.
Personally, I don't find random TikToks (or other social-media-ish sites on the internet including this one) to be a trustworthy source of information, unless carefully checked to verify facts with actual authoritative sources.
On top of that, they almost always bring the drama. Spare me, please. 🤣
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The US has around 3000 allowable food additives compared to Europe who have around 300 so if we drop some food dye from our list I'm sure most of the population won't miss it, I could be wrong though.
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The problem with a proven safe approach is that somebody would have to prove veggies, fruits, grains, dairy, eggs, meat, legumes, seafood, poultry, certain mushrooms, yeast, salt, honey, etc. are safe before they could be sold for human consumption. Right now, they're just generally assumed to be safe.
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And that's why I used what some will call weasel words, when I wrote "I'd like to see the FDA adopt more of a "proven safe" posture for approving food ingredients, rather than the "OK until proven unsafe" kind of thing".
I admit I haven't studied the question closely, but IMU Europe has moved closer to the approach of wanting to approve additives as safe. The US's permissive approach has been shown to have some downsides, though I'm confident a stricter model has downsides as well. Regulation is a balancing act.
I'm not a chemist, not a dietitian, none of that. As a consumer, I'd prefer a bit shorter leash on producers. If such a thing were to happen, there normally would be a long process of people who actually are more expert working out the details. It's possible that current circumstances would make that kind of regulatory change process less consultative, collaborative, or dialectical . . . which would not be a good thing, IMO again.
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Not too stressed about it. I'm not pounding Code Red Mountain Dew, Cheetos, M&Ms and Twizzlers all day long. I don't eat many processed foods, but if I have eat the odd thing with food dyes, I figure I'll probably survive. 😁
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Thanks for the info. Yikes!
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Interesting demand o n the video - "stop feeding us dangerous chemicals!"
regardless of whether they are dangerous or not, nobody else is feeding them to you.
Adults can read food lables and decide not to buy something with whatever ingredient they are avoiding
Myself I don't bother checking for artificial colours - whatever foods I am eating with them in it are not giving me migraines, irritability, whatever else was claimed
Carcinogenic? - if so, way down list of possible causes. I abide by the big guns of sun protection, not smoking, alcohol in moderation - and ignore every other little thing claimed to be carcinogenic, usually with no qualification on context or dosage.
In short, OP, I don't have strong opinions about food dyes and it does not affect my shopping habits.
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Yeah, it basically comes down to the difference in regulatory philosophy. One uses a "reactive approach" the USA, and says prove it's unhealthy with conclusive proof because emerging evidence is not enough while the other (Countries) use "precautionary principles" requiring additives to be proven safe before they are approved for use.
Almost all research in the USA is industry funded and the GRAS process allows companies to self-certify an additive's safety without formal FDA approval, as long as they believe it meets the GRAS standards. I think we can see where that might be conflicting.
I think a lot is cultural as well. Most European Countries have traditions that draw on centuries of norms that promote a more natural approach to food.
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I’m neutral about food dyes (live in the UK so they are possibly not as prevalent), but the ones I think a lot of people don’t know about are the colourings in animal feed to make egg yolks bright and yellow and farmed salmon pink. It’s not that easy to avoid those - even free range eggs can have colouring in the feed.
When I used to keep chickens I got the most fluorescent yolks when they ate the Rhubarb plant. And too much beetroot turned the whites pink.2 -
Fair enough. 😊
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