ottawa foodies

modernfarmer.com

Everyone knows the old tale, eat too many carrots and your skin will turn orange. But what happens if you eat too much Kraft Mac & Cheese?

A dorm-room delicacy, and the unofficial national dish of Canada (where it’s better known as Kraft Dinner), this cheesy meal-in-a-box is infamous for its unnaturally orange appearance.

Many foods found in supermarkets across North America are loaded with artificial food dye in quantities that, until now, have been unknown to the general public.

Researchers at Purdue University’s Nutrition Science department in Lafayette, Indiana took a rainbow of common foods and put them under the microscope to determine just how much dye manufacturers put in some of their most popular products. Their findings were published in the Medical Journal Clinical Pediatrics last month.

Laura Stevens, lead researcher of the study, says that as expected many bright red and orange foods contain high amounts of dye, however there were a few items that surprised her.

“Finding red dye in cherry pie filling was pretty odd, you’d would think the cherries would make it red enough.”

She also found that some brands of pickles have blue and yellow dyes and that even white icing contains artificial color.

Tests have been conducted in the past looking for links between consumption of food dye and behavioral issues in children. Stevens says the tests, conducted in the ‘70s and ‘80s, used a baseline of 27 milligrams of mixed dyes – around half the amount of dye found in an 8 oz. serving of Burst Cherry Kool-Aid.

Stevens says tests were also done to observe the effects of children on higher doses of dye — around 50 to 100 milligrams. “They found conclusive links between consuming these high levels and behavioral problems. However at the time they didn’t think children would ever be able to consume that much dye,” says Stevens.

Footnotes and References please ...

- difference between artificial and natural food dyes?
- unnaturally orange appearance... should check out my pumpkins!
- unofficial national dish of Canada.... wowsers!
- researchers at purdue... but then the findings of "unnamed studies" conducted in the 70s and 80s are mentioned.

While I won't suggest you go out and chug a bottle or three of any type of food dye ... please use your brain.

Orange cheddar is not the devil - it's simply Annatto seeds... and carrots will never change your colour - the dye is water soluable you just pee it out!

Eating a Lot of carrots actually can change your colour. When I took my 1+ year old baby in for a check-up the doctor said I might want to lay off feeding him so many carrots. When I asked how he knew (it was practically all he would eat at that point in his life) the doctor said...look at him. He did have a very orangey complexion!

Same thing once happened to my sister in law regarding eating too many carrots. She went to the doctor thinking she was jaundiced.

I used to know kids who were allergic to red dye: red kool-aid, red candy, red popsicles . . .

Remember when Red Dye #3 was a thing?

www.nytimes.com

What about people who have some kidney or liver issues- should they be avoiding food dyes?

Esp if they are n ot eliminated from your system so easily?
A family member has kidney issues and has to be careful with all the nutrients they eat- so even eating a couple oranges could kill them.....

I was just at independent and saw the seaweed salad had food dye listed and was swimming in this neon green stuff.
Passed on buying that...

I try to avoid food dyes if I can and usually buy candy made with vegetable dyes.
Even buy ORGANIC GUMMY CANDY.

Shoppers lately is quite good with selling some natural flavored and colored jelly beans. pharmaplus has them too under their store brand.

Those bright pink pickled vegetables they give with shwarma plates . . . . is that a natural color? I don't know. Just asking.

Francis, some of those pickled turnips are artificially coloured and some are naturally coloured (with beet juice). You have to read the label to find out! :-)

I didn't see any labels at the shwarma place. :-)