Scientists Say Chemical Food Dyes Pose Health Risks to Children |
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“Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.” -Michael Pollan, 'Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual'
Chemists at major food companies have been coming up with colorings to help market foods for generations, products often targeted at kids. Concerns about the safety of the chemical dyes additives go back as far as 1960, and a recent study suggests those fears have been well founded.
A recent report from the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest says:
…studies of the nine dyes currently approved by the FDA suggest, if not prove, that most of the dyes cause health problems, including cancer, hypersensitivity, or neurotoxicity (including hyperactivity). And that’s the case even though most of the research was commissioned, conducted, and interpreted by the chemical industry itself and its testing labs and academic consultants.
That is particularly troubling because food dyes are tested for safety individually, even though food marketers add them in various combinations, likely heightening the risk. Adding to the threat are impurities that might be “upwards of 10 percent…Yellow 5, the second-most widely used dye, may contain up to 13 percent of a witch’s brew of organic and inorganic chemicals,” says the report.
CSPI says it “has urged several major multinational companies that do not use dyes in Europe to do the same in the United States.” Most of those companies said European government has urged them not to use dyes, but they would continue adding dyes in the U.S. until they were ordered to stop or consumers demanded such foods.
To view the full report from CSPI cited above, go to: Center for Science in the Public Interest
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