The I'm Not Dumb But Podcast
Welcome to The I'm Not Dumb But Podcast, where we won't claim to have all the answers to life's deepest questions, but we promise you an exciting journey into the realms of knowledge you never knew you needed!
Join friends Cesar, Rob, Chris and Victor as we dive head first into topics that might be mainstream but not common knowledge. No topic is too taboo for us to explore. Let's get curious together!
The I'm Not Dumb But Podcast
Decoding the Rainbow: Food Dyes
Could those vibrant, eye-catching treats be effecting more than just what we see on our plates? On this episode of The I'm Not Dumb But Podcast we ride the rainbow of the colorful world of food dyes.
We journey back in time to uncover the fascinating origins of food coloring, from the natural dyes of ancient Egypt to the accidental discovery of synthetic dyes during a quest for a treatment for malaria. As we trace the transition from coal tar to petroleum-based dyes, we explore the intertwined paths of medical and food innovations that have led us to where we are today. We also navigate the tangled web of food dye regulation, comparing the U.S. and Europe's differing approaches and sharing anecdotes of our own experiences with potential side effects.
Vivid colors aren't just confined to our food – they're part of our everyday products, from soap to clothes. Yet, with processed foods on the rise since the 1950s, the sheer amount of dyes we're consuming is staggering. We reflect on how aesthetics drive our buying choices, often at the expense of nutritional value, and share lighthearted memories of our favorite childhood cereals and ice cream toppings. This is an episode that tastes too good to pass up.
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Wait, what are we talking about today?
Rob:Food dyes.
Victor:How about food? Lives Sure.
Cesar:You'll be here all week.
Rob:I have a question for y'all Do you guys check the nutrition labels on your food? Of course, Every day, of course.
Victor:All the time.
Chris:Yeah, absolutely.
Rob:So what do you guys look for?
Chris:First thing I check is for make sure they don't have like some sort of gum food, dyes, stuff like that.
Cesar:I agree, but I mostly look for added sugars. Oh, added sugars. At this point, now I'm looking at it, I'm like this is not good for me. So that's one of my biggest things that I look for. Are you pre-diabetic?
Victor:No, it depends what I'm buying. Buying like, if I get peanut butter, I make sure it's the peanut butter that only has peanuts listed as the ingredients. Nothing else other than that?
Rob:no, I don't look at it so it seems like chris is the only person who's actually checked for food dyes then, or so he says yeah, he just said it, but I don't eat anything with food dyes, like I don't eat cereal anymore, I don't eat um, I don't go down that preservative artificial rabbit hole.
Victor:Vitamins are healthy. Candy doesn't count in the months of October through November. Oh, that's true Of the following year.
Rob:That's true. So this past Halloween I had a kid tell me that I can't have Red 40 as he was rummaging through all the candies. Well, this piqued my interest. I had no idea what he was talking about. I was like Red 40? What the hell's wrong with this kid? So I started looking into it and recently there's been a lot of information that's been revealed about synthetic food dyes and their side effects, especially in young children. So I started thinking I'm not dumb, but are food dyes affecting our behavior? Welcome?
Cesar:to the I'm not dumb but. Are food dyes affecting our behavior? Welcome to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast, where we won't claim to have the answers to life's easiest questions but we'll give you an exciting journey into the realms of knowledge you never knew you'd either. Might be mainstream, but not common knowledge. From artificial intelligence to conspiracy theories, no topic is too taboo for us to explore. Let's get curious together. No topic is too taboo for us to explore.
Rob:Let's get curious together. So I'm Rob, your host for today, joined by our boy Cesar. You, victor how y'all doing and, of course, chris. Hey. Well, with the upcoming holiday season, I'm going to be tearing through a ton of cupcakes, candies and other processed foods, and a lot of the icing is either green, blue, red, crazy colors, and I'm starting to think that not only is the food not good for me, maybe the coloring is not good either. So have you guys heard anything about this?
Cesar:Sounds like you're getting racist, but I've never liked icing on any of these cakes.
Rob:Have you heard anything about?
Chris:any side effects, any behavioral changes about dyes. The only thing I know is giddles. There was a whole. I don't know if it's the food coloring or not, but I remember is it california or something? They're trying to bend? The candy itself, uh-huh, that's the only thing I know listen.
Cesar:When I eat a cake that's american flag, I feel more american. Is that a? I don't think so. Red, white and blue motherfucker, these colors don't rhyme bitch.
Victor:So I have a box of food coloring. Okay wow. What am I supposed to be looking for?
Rob:You're supposed to take it and see if you feel any different.
Victor:Take it now.
Cesar:Take all of them.
Victor:Because this is gluten-free, dairy and nut-free and vegetarian. I don't see any red 40. I don't see any yellow. I don't see anything, it's all.
Rob:What is it made from?
Victor:Tartrazine brilliant blue. Fcf Allura Red, sunset Yellow I don't know if that's any of those Sunset. Oh shit bro.
Rob:Those are all food coloring.
Victor:Yeah, but are those the bad ones?
Rob:California. Yeah, they interchange the names. So what is it? The Sunset Yellow is probably Yellow 6. The Allura Red is Red 40.
Victor:Oh, okay, is there a blue?
Cesar:steel in that one.
Rob:It's black steel. Actually it's black steel.
Cesar:That Hansel's so hot right now.
Rob:So yeah, I mean I've been reading some articles. There's a bunch of TED Talks and they're talking about children experiencing symptoms of like hyperactivity, inattentiveness, aggression, impulsiveness. Some kids are even suicidal from this stuff. So why do we use food coloring anyway? It looks nice. We have to taste the rainbow. I mean, you can't even taste the color.
Cesar:Do you not taste red Powerade Do?
Victor:you not know the taste of purple you?
Cesar:know it, everyone knows it. Come on, crayons taste like purple.
Rob:Apparently, humans have been coloring food since like the 1500 BC. So Egyptians were using food dyes to color their food, hair colors and even increase the color in wines. This came from like when they used to have these grand feasts. They would color the foods and increase the color so that it would look more appealing and appetizing and it would just make everything more vibrant. So this has been going on for some time now, but they did it naturally. If they wanted to get the golden hues, they would use saffron. If they wanted red they use like paprika. They used a lot of lead for white would use saffron. If they wanted red, they use like paprika. They used a lot of lead for white and grays. But if they've already been using natural dyes, when did everything change to synthetic dyes?
Chris:I think it's because of the cost.
Rob:That's why production of food so we made the transition from natural food dyes to synthetic food dyes because of malaria surprise motherfucker kills, I think, billions of people over thousands of years. It still is a big problem. I think it killed like 600 000 people a year in uh africa yeah, it's in africa, parts of south america, but yeah, it's a big problem it's because of the rains, the, the, what the rains in Africa. So malaria is.
Victor:Malaria has been around for no Toto fans around here.
Rob:I can see that, all right. No, the rains down in Africa.
Victor:Yeah, you got to bless them. I liked it.
Rob:So malaria was a big problem, especially in developing countries, right, and it actually came from the Italian word or words malaria, which means bad air.
Victor:What do they call it? Do it in Italian Malaria, Malaria oh okay, it's a me Malaria.
Rob:Malaria, here we go. It came from these marshes and these swamps. People were getting sick, they were getting fevers.
Victor:the romans thought it was like bad air or evil spirits you need a 70 year old doctor to come and tell you what's going on with that bewitchment doc.
Chris:Bewitchment, fuck again, it's always bewitchment is that a reference?
Rob:malaria was the catalyst that basically started this. In the 17th century, spanish Jesuit missionaries were in Peru and they come across this tree bark that the locals were using to cure reoccurring fevers and they called it the cinchona officinalis. And they realized that these recurring fevers was actually malaria and that they had the cure for it. So these Jesuit missionaries take this bark back to Europe and they're like uh, I think we just found the cure to malaria. And they're like you better go back there and just get as much of this tree bark as you possibly can. The Spanish go there, take all the tree bark of this tree bark as you possibly can. The Spanish go there, take all the tree bark, take a bunch of seeds. They own this land in Peru and they had the foothold on the treatment for malaria in like the 1680s.
Chris:You just eat the bark?
Rob:Yeah, that was my question, so what they would do is they would grind up the bark and they would pour it in like wines or drinks and then they would just intake this tree bark. Early 19th century. There's something going on called the Scramble for Africa. So a lot of developed countries are trying to get into Africa and at the same time, peru decides that it wants to be a nation. So they're like listen, you guys have been exploiting us for a while now. We're going to hold on to all these seeds. We're going to hold on to, basically, the treatment of malaria. Great britain doesn't like this. They send an expedition and they just steal a bunch of freaking seeds and take them back to europe and they try to plant these seeds everywhere and, like other underdeveloped nations, to try to grow their own plantations so that peru wouldn't have the cure for malaria I think there is.
Victor:I think there is another treatment. I think they did this when they built the Panama Canal. Oh, what did they do? Deforestation.
Rob:That's one way.
Cesar:Not a good idea. How?
Chris:dare you.
Rob:Around the same time in the 1800s, the Germans start to realize that plants have these things called alkaloids in them, that they can just extract what they need from the plants. So they don't need plantations and grinding up bark. They can just go ahead and take small pieces, take out the alkaloids from the plants and use it as medicine. European scientists were like go ahead and figure out how the hell we can just take out whatever's in this tree bark, so we're not all running around. Can we synthesize something?
Cesar:Now, if we have the cure, why is malaria still killing people?
Victor:It's a treatment and not everybody has it, and you don't want poor people to have medicine.
Chris:No.
Cesar:That's business 101.
Victor:That's not good business.
Cesar:But you do need poor people for business, because who's going to buy your stuff?
Rob:Within reason. Poor people, poor people. So in the 1820s, two French scientists extract the alkaloid from the Sencona Bar. Pierre-joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventeau create this thing called quinine, and that is basically what's found in tonic water Little bits of quinine in tonic water, actually, back then it was like a lot more. So that was one of the treatments for malaria was tonic water.
Victor:Oh, so gin and tonics can treat my malaria, but then that becomes in very short supply.
Rob:A lot of countries like France and Great Britain. They said can we get off this tree completely? Can we just synthesize a fake quinine? We know what it is, we know what we need, we've broken it down, so there's tons of funding for this to basically create a synthetic cure for malaria. There's a young man named William Perkin. He's 18 years old. He just gets put on to be part of this project. So he's home. He's got a freaking lab in his parents' house in East London. Really smart kid At 18, he was like a professional violinist. He finished high school at 15. He was in college at like 16 years old. This guy was like a brainiac.
Victor:What a fucking nerd. He's like in his basement. His mom's like yelling from the top of the stairs Get your dinner. He's like Mom I.
Rob:I'm busy, I'm synthesizing quinine fuck loser. I was playing n64. Yeah, they didn't really know much about chemistry back then. Right, they thought that certain things were building blocks, but they didn't understand what molecules were. So they were. They were playing around with coal tar. That was the idea and like all right, so you can probably make quinine with coal tar. Well, what happens is they were fucking wrong and they realized that 100 years later that they were wrong. You idiot.
Rob:But what coal tar was really good for was. They had the building blocks for colors. He creates this thing in the lab what he calls mauve or mauveine, depending on where you read the lab what he calls mauve or mauveine, depending on where you read and it's this bright purple color that is like not even seen anywhere. It's fabulous and remember at the time they were only using natural dyes and purple was one of those ones that was really really hard to make. Is the purple a popular color? Purple is like a royalty color. I was gonna say it's a popular color. Purple is like a royalty color.
Chris:I was going to say it's a rich color, it's a royalty color.
Victor:You got to jump on my case, right, I'm a peasant over here.
Rob:You only wear gray and black, so you wouldn't fucking know. That's true. Feeling attacked. Yeah, so he calls his dad. He's like I made this crazy color purple. I know how to make this and know how to make like a lot more colors. Basically, they open up a shop and, at 18 years old, selling textiles, the queen of england actually wears a dress at her daughter's wedding and the everyone goes fucking bananas which queen is this? Is queen victoria, queen victoria. Everybody lost shit. So this is in like the 1850s.
Victor:Are we eating these things Right?
Rob:We are now.
Victor:I thought you were talking about food dyes.
Rob:Yeah, we're on food dyes now. I'm there now, okay, I'm just giving you a little fucking history and you can just delete half of this shit, idiot.
Cesar:There's an article I'm reading real quick from 2019. It was like that uh, so he discovered the you know mavene, whatever it is. Yeah, there's a mystery. Uh, using his patented method, it's impossible to recreate the product he made. There's a doctor he's trying to find, he's trying, he's doing investigations to discover the true method of synthesizing movie a pretty interesting fun fact that I learned is he sold his business off.
Rob:So a bunch of other companies jumped in because they were like oh shit, there's a huge demand for just dying food dying, clothes dying anything. They hired a bunch of chemists. Eventually that entire industry got super stagnant and they were like well, we've kind of created as many colors as we possibly can, like what the fuck do we do with a bunch of chemists? So all these dye companies started making instead of making synthetic dyes, started making synthetic medicine, and that's the birth of Big Pharma. Bayer was one of the big dye companies in Germany and we know them as Bayer, so Big Pharma actually came from the synthetic food dye industry.
Rob:Yeah because it was huge companies making tons of money with a lot of chemists.
Cesar:Well, what?
Rob:do you know? So the thing is with the dyes is, when they started making these colors, they were putting them in everything. They were dyeing foods, they were dyeing medicine, they were dyeing clothes. There was really no regulation on what you could dye.
Victor:Oh, so they were like the coal tar dye was going into food.
Rob:Yeah, a lot of people getting sick, a lot of people dying, a lot of people getting rashes. And this was all in like the late 1800s, early 1900s. So that's when regulation started kicking in. The government started having to create regulation. The governments were stepping in and saying, okay, what are all the food dyes you guys are using? And they started testing each one of them. Present day, the FDA has only seven certified food dyes that they can use, and they check them by batches. So what were some of the ones that you saw in yours, victor?
Victor:Sunrise, sunset yellow, not sunrise yellow yellow. That's a completely different yellow. So sunset yellow right have you never seen a sunrise before and you.
Rob:It doesn't look anything more orange sunrise sunset so sunset yellow is a certified food dye and actually goes by the name a yellow six but like what is the criteria for them to approve or disapprove food dyes? They get batches and it has to meet like its molecular setup.
Victor:So every food dye company sends samples to the. Fda, for them to constantly check who agreed. These are acceptable to begin with the FDA.
Cesar:A lot of times it's the company they're testing their own product, sending it to the FDA. A lot of times it's the company they're testing their own product sending it to the FDA. And then the FDA, along with these other companies and their scientists, are the ones kind of getting together to create like a baseline, because the FDA they're in so much shit they don't really have a lot of funding, so they need. That's what happens with the drug trials. The drug makes. You're actually testing these own drugs and then sending these samples and these information to the FDA.
Rob:So we're just hoping that the company is not lying.
Cesar:That and also they send like they also send samples to like independent labs, so they kind of like collaborate all together. I'm assuming this is what exactly is happening.
Rob:Yeah, collaborate all together. I'm assuming this is what exactly is happening. Yeah, apparently there's like a strict criteria of what food dyes have to be and they check what they're made of. They check byproducts, precipitants. There's like a whole list of like what the molecular setup of the dye is. There's no more coal tar. They don't use that much coal tar dyes. They use petroleum dyes now, but apparently in the process of making the dye all the petroleum should have been removed, so there's supposed to be just the color left, and right now they use let's break it down.
Rob:Blue 1 goes by Brilliant Blue Blue 2, which goes by Indigo Green 3 goes by Fast Green. Red 3 goes by Eurythrazine. Allura Red is Red 40. Tartrazine is Yellow 5 and Sunset Yellow is Yellow 6.
Chris:That's a lot.
Rob:They have two other ones that they certified. So there's this thing called Orange B, but they can only use it in hot dog casings, that's it. You can't put it in any other food. Apparently, it's like not good.
Cesar:Hot dogs.
Rob:And then citrus, red number two. We cannot consume it because it causes cancer, but we can use it to make food and ship it to other countries that will take. Red number two. What, what?
Chris:That's messed up. Look, I have a starburst her burst. Look at this, I have a whole pack.
Victor:How many colors you got in there? Did you purposely go out and buy starburst for this podcast?
Rob:yeah, so you actually eat that stuff no, this is jesus christ, chris, this one has red 40 and blue one okay, so I'll tell you right now these are the side effects that you're gonna get. Wait a minute.
Victor:Hold on, hold, on, hold on, hold on. You're fucking so conscious about what you fucking buy that you have to check ingredients for other things, and you're buying starburst. No, first of all, I didn't buy this.
Chris:Oh okay, yeah, it just appeared in your house.
Victor:You just created it from fucking coal tar.
Chris:And whatever the fuck you had lying around, I have a bunch of guys making it right now. Well, anyways, every time I do eat gummy bears or any candies, I break out into rashes.
Rob:now, so what was it? Blue number one and red 40?
Chris:Yeah.
Rob:So apparently some of the side effects, like hyperactivity and rashes.
Chris:Like I have rashes right now because I had a bag of Skittles from like what is wrong with you? No, I had a bag of Skittles like a month ago and then it's coming up like now. I don't think that's how it works. It's like I love gummy bears and then, because of that, I don't think that's how it works. It's like I love gummy bears.
Victor:And then, because of that, I don't eat it. So, Chris, I'm not a doctor If you eat something and then months later start having symptoms from it. I don't think it was that.
Cesar:Yeah, chris, normally a rash. Comes out like right away, yeah, or like shortly after yeah.
Chris:I have no idea, man. Oh, it is rice.
Rob:I'm Korean. It could be the dyes in your. Maybe you have bed bugs.
Victor:Yeah, do you have bed bugs? Do you have bed bugs? Have you checked for?
Cesar:that? Did you live in Paris? When was the last time you went to Paris? That's true.
Rob:Oh shit, Didn't you go to Paris.
Cesar:No, you go to months ago. He needs a fumigate. I don't know. Rashes develop kind of like right away. I used to eat gummy worms like crazy and I never got a rash. Cavities, no rashes.
Victor:So, with all the regulation that's happening, our FDA is getting these samples and all this information. Why are certain dyes approved to use in the US but not approved in Europe? Are they taking different information, like what the fuck's up with that the way?
Rob:I understood it. Like Europe, they take a more precautionary approach. So if they see things that are like could be, they have stricter bans and warnings, whereas the FDA will go by conclusive evidence and then ban and they will use the causation. You know, correlation, whole argument 2011,.
Rob:They had a vote on if they should put on warning labels on foods that have food dyes and it was voted down eight to six, so it was very close, but the FDA said no, we're not putting any warning labels on it. Food dyes, we don't find anything wrong. The FDA did finally say that there is evidence that people could be sensitive to food dyes and they would get hyperactivity and rashes, but that it was very rare. But we're not going to put a warning label on there, whereas Europe said no, we will put warning labels on here. What that did? Instead of companies wanting to put warning labels on their food, they just went and found natural ways to dye their food and actually it was weird. On the FDA website, you can send in if you are getting rashes or if you're experiencing any symptoms. You can send those symptoms in to the FDA and tell them what food colorings you're eating and then they'll look into it more Really. So there's like an ongoing study right now about if food dyes are still bad for us.
Victor:Chris, send them Send them your information with your rash. Send them actually photos of your rash as well and send them like other photos too.
Rob:Like you know, not just the rash, Like different parts of your body.
Victor:Show off your personality.
Rob:Show them like parts of your body that don't have the rash and then show them other parts of your body that do have the rash To get a baseline.
Victor:They need a baseline. He's taking a selfie.
Rob:Some of the things I was reading like with this. They're doing constant studies.
Victor:Shit hasn't been around for that long. You know what? I'm saying Like if I invent something in the 80s, I only have 40 years of study.
Cesar:And that the 80s. I only have 40 years of study and that's like 40 years of very limited studies based on limited groups. Fun fact corona don't have dyes to really embrace life.
Chris:You just have to learn to let go in europe when you look for a gatorade, they only have like one color yeah, but that's stupid.
Rob:You need. I go with the blue what color is it? I go with the blue. What color is it? I go with the blue Blue or red, and lemon-lime is a staple. I like orange. Lemon-lime won championships. Gatorade, h2o. One of the biggest arguments against food dyes is like how do we know food dye is bad for you? Because most food dyes are in processed foods, so are the reactions you're having from the food dye or is it just the shitty?
Rob:food you're eating, so like the orange, it's only in, you know, hot dog casings. Red four is only in skittles, starbursts and you know icing, and we know these things are bad for you. So is it really the food dye or is it a mixture of the food dye and the processed food? Well, I started going in and thinking well, are they just dyeing processed foods or are they dyeing other things too? These are some pretty interesting examples. So pickles, I mean we probably figured out those are dyed. What? Yeah, pickles are actually dyed to keep that color, that yellow color, really yeah, no, what kind of pickles though like the mount olive ones or the vlassics or whatever they are.
Victor:They're actually dyed, but that's a specific brand though, like if I pickle you can get natural, natural pickles, cucumber pickles like the the pickles as Americans know them.
Rob:They're light. You can go to like Trader Joe's and get pickles lighter, but let's go with. Most pickles are dyed. They do that actually to keep the skin vibrant, because it tends to go brown and people don't like to buy it. Another thing that is dyed are oranges. I was reading and they were saying that in warmer climates when they ship oranges over, oranges are green but they have a hard time selling them to other countries in colder climates like America. They dye the rind or the peel orange and then they ship it to America.
Rob:I mean, I think farm-raised salmon is also dyed but what they do is they feed them um pellets that mimic beta carotene and that turns them pink, oh so it's not.
Victor:It's a natural dye. Is that a natural?
Rob:dye. Yeah, they don't actually go over there and paint it. Another way that they dye foods, which was pretty interesting and not using an actual dye, tuna is gassed. Have you ever heard of this?
Cesar:No.
Rob:They will gas tuna with carbon monoxide and what that does is it keeps the flesh pink. Even if it's going spoiled, it will keep the flesh pink and I think there's like a lot of controversy about it, because now the tuna could be bad but will not brown. So there's a lot of ways where they play with the color of our food to be able to sell it to us, and it's not just processed foods.
Victor:A part of that problem is us, though.
Rob:Yeah, it's people, it's education. Well, it's not even.
Victor:I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just like we don't buy food that looks deformed or doesn't look appetizing. Yeah, Like, if you go in there and you see like an orange or something with a hole or a dent in it, you don't buy it. I'm not buying it. But it's a perfectly good fruit or vegetable or whatever. You think it's ugly so you won't get it.
Cesar:Yeah, there is that section by the fruit and veggies where they have like those bags, like all the deformed fruit.
Victor:I've never seen that I bought a couple, I would get food. I've never seen that.
Cesar:It's like a bag of apples, like 20 apples.
Rob:I will not buy a deformed fruit. If I didn't have to, I'd buy it. It's like is this thing going to?
Cesar:last. That's what you do you eat 20 apples right there.
Victor:No, you make an apple crisp. I did this the other day, you have the 20 apples they're starting to go, or make apple sauce.
Chris:Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Rob:Apples in protein shakes are nice too.
Victor:Really, I've actually never tried that, yeah.
Rob:They give it like this weird you might. It's acquired, but it gives it like this weird texture.
Victor:We're talking Granny Smith or Red Delicious.
Rob:I like Red Delicious, the Granny Smith you know it might be weird with like a vanilla.
Victor:Yeah, Well, you've always been a known communist, yeah.
Rob:Communist. I'm not a communist, but there was some other examples too, like cheddar cheese is dyed, wasabi is dyed green. It's not actually wasabi. Wasabi is horseradish here, but I guess real wasabi is really hard to make. Um, in america we don't get it. The pink ginger from sushi is also dyed pink and a lot of dried fruits don't carry their color so they dye those.
Victor:So like dried apricots, dried papaya, dried strawberries, but you're throwing in a lot of you're throwing in a lot of stuff. Are these naturally your thing or is this red 40 could?
Rob:be both so like cheese. They were saying that it's dyed naturally dried fruits. They use dyes synthetic.
Victor:So check the ingredients is what you're saying.
Chris:Ingredients yeah, the the fruit loops, man fruitops will kill you.
Victor:You shouldn't be eating cereal anyway, dude, it's all sugar.
Chris:I know I don't eat cereal anyway.
Victor:I just eat like packs of Starbursts every day. I don't eat them.
Chris:It was like my wife got it as a gift for her birthday.
Cesar:That's bullshit.
Rob:I was looking for this statistic on the FDA. I couldn't find it, but I found it on a bunch of other websites. They're saying from the 1950s to around 2012, 2013,. People are consuming five times the amount of food dies than they did in the 1950s.
Victor:The amount of processed foods from the 1950s to now is probably quadrupled.
Chris:Yeah.
Victor:In the 1950s. How many cereals did you have to choose from? Yeah, Because, like when I was, a kid, I had like 500 fucking cereals to choose from, like there was so many cereals.
Rob:Every single one of them was a million colors. Right, I mean, I only used to eat the marshmallows from Lucky Charms. Great, that's a straight up call Fruity Pebbles. Oh yeah, Just let it all turn into mush.
Victor:Sprinkles, you always go Rainbow, yeah, or Funfetti Cake.
Cesar:I used to go Chocolate.
Victor:You went Chocolate Sprinkles.
Cesar:Yeah.
Victor:I always went Chocolate, sprinkles, chocolate on Chocolate too. I go Chocolate. Now, as an adult, I'm too old for Rainbow Chocolate.
Rob:Sprinkles for ice cream or cupcakes, Ice cream. I want Chocolate ice cream, chocolate sprinkles. But before that ice cream hits that cup, you're throwing sprinkles in the bottom of the cup. Oh, absolutely. And then you hit it the ice cream, and then you dump the sprinkles on top, because I want that last bite to have a ridiculous amount of sprinkles, and then it's a $20 ice cream cup.
Cesar:Mmm chocolate.
Rob:The FDA apparently has accepted daily intakes of each color. How many milligrams of each color you could have for the rest of your life without having any adverse side effects? Blue one only 840 milligrams for 150 pound person. Red 40, only 490 milligrams for 150 pound person. But the one thing I realize is they don't tell you how many milligrams is in your food.
Victor:Because you can't read, because you've ingested so many food dyes, I'm blind in my left eye. You can't even math. You can't even think you are a lost cause.
Rob:No, it's just, it's difficult, you know, they tell you oh, this is how much you can do, because you're on food dyes.
Rob:You've already been corrupted, so everything's difficult for you. I tried so when I was doing research. I was like you know what? I'm not going to eat food dyes for the entire day. I usually don't have breakfast or whatever. My first meal is at one o'clock. So I was like I can do this. So I'm drinking tons of water. I'm like, looking at all my snacks, I'm like, all right, I'm not going to eat this one today, I'm not going to eat that one. So I run downstairs, I go to the bathroom and I see the storage closet and I see all the soaps and they're bright green. And I walk right over to it and it says green number three and I'm like, well, I'm fucking done. Like there's no way to get away from it, because it's not just in your food. They dye your clothes with it, they dye your soap with it.
Cesar:So you eat soap now.
Rob:No, when you rub it on your hands, it goes through your skin.
Victor:I am at the eating zone. This is actually an intervention. We need you to stop eating soap.
Cesar:This is getting out of hand.
Victor:Rob, you've been doing this for way too long.
Cesar:Stop soap. You shouldn't eat it.
Rob:Stop eating soap. There's no way to get away from green food dye. There's no way to get away from any dyes we live in a colorful world, yeah, we're man.
Victor:And I'm a material girl.
Cesar:What colors children? In your research did you come across what sort of effects the dye have on the skin? You're not ingesting it. You're not ingesting soap. Well, maybe he is. I'm assuming. If we had an adverse effect to these dyes with soap, they would have stopped making these soaps a long time ago.
Rob:I mean, if you're rubbing something on your skin, don't you think they would get rubbed into your body, or no? I see people who get rashes when they use different types of like laundry detergent, and that's from perfumes and dyes.
Victor:Or dry skin. Dry skin actually can make you break out.
Rob:My thing is how do you know how much food dye you're actually putting in your body in a day? Really hard to tell.
Chris:It is hard. You just have to be more mindful, that's all.
Victor:I looked up the ingredients for Fruity Pebbles. It has the list of ingredients and then contains 1% or less of natural artificial flavor red 40, citric acid, dalo5, blue 1, bht added to preserve freshness. But if you look at it, there's nine servings per container. The daily value is in percentage, based off of 2,000 calorie day diet, so this would have less than 1% of your daily intake per serving.
Rob:So what color was it? Let's see if we can try to figure out how many is in your Fruity. Pebbles.
Victor:Oh shit, All of them.
Rob:It says that Fruity Pebbles, I guess for their serving size, has 19 milligrams of dyes and the daily allowable intake for dyes is for, let's say, red 40, is 490 milligrams. So you have to eat a lot of Fruity Pebbles in order to hit the acceptable daily intake. I would have to only eat Fruity Pebbles. But the thing is that's just from Fruity Pebbles. So what are you having for lunch? What are you having as a snack? If you're eating a ton of processed foods, you're going to probably get somewhere close to this daily intake.
Victor:But then it falls under your problem again of are you just eating too much processed foods?
Cesar:That's probably the key right Reducing processed foods as much as you can. Try eating an apple that hasn't been dried Fatty, oh, oh, healthy. The fruits in DR are a lot different and they taste a lot different. The ones here, even the apples. It could be the same apple and like, the color is a little bit more dull and it tastes a little bit more.
Victor:I don't know. Healthier, yeah, but like I think our apples are genetically modified, healthier, yeah, but I think our apples are genetically modified?
Chris:Yeah, that could be it too After I read about the Skittles California. Is it California they're trying to ban?
Cesar:California banned Skittles.
Rob:Yeah. So California recently banned Red 3. There are like a bunch of other states that are banning Red 3. So Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, there's a bunch of states that are going to individually ban these food dyes. Actually, Pennsylvania has a bill to ban red three, red 40, yellow five, yellow six, blue one and two. So I think a lot of states are now basically not waiting for the federal government and they're just going ahead trying to ban the dyes themselves. But red three has been one that a lot of states have immediately jumped on to to try to get rid of but no, once I hear about that, I was like oh shit, this is for real.
Cesar:Like well, chris is trying to tell you is that after this podcast, he's gonna double down on eating starbuck, which he doesn't know how he got. So there you go, yeah.
Rob:Chris is like well, I'm going to eat the pink one, so that doesn't have any of them, it's not cake.
Chris:Also, I feel like they don't really talk about this as much Food color like warning people, or at least to talk about it, to be aware of None of these companies are going to warn you, Chris.
Cesar:They make their money on this.
Victor:Pete, I mean, do you follow notices that the FDA puts out?
Cesar:No, the major ones, yeah, no.
Victor:That's like saying, oh, the mainstream media doesn't like to report on this because you never actually looked it up.
Chris:If you call CNN a network, I don't, I don't know. Maybe like in a health class in a high school or middle school, like in a health class in a high school or middle school.
Cesar:You're close to 40.
Chris:No, they feel like they should be talking about it as part of a health education. Why?
Victor:They're trying to teach a bunch of horny fucking teenagers to stop having unsafe sex and to not do drugs or to do it responsibly. I think they got the handful At 16,. You want to talk to me about fucking food dyes? I don't got the handful At 16, you want?
Cesar:to talk to me about fucking food dyes.
Chris:I don't give a fuck.
Victor:I use my only dollar to get a Snapple out of the fucking vending machine and I'm holding my fucking book bag at my low waist because I have a raging heart on it.
Chris:I have no idea why?
Rob:Yeah, yeah, my whole day is fucked. This is a problem. Yeah, man, so it day is fucked. This is a problem. Yeah, man, so it's a problem. We'll see what happens. I'm curious to see what happens in the future.
Victor:I think we're going to go for an all-out ban. Yeah, I think so too, unless Worm Brain Guy gets convinced otherwise.
Rob:I think the warning label would be a good step forward, because it would force companies to then try to do a lot of natural colors. Europe's already doing it. Another thing that I found that was interesting was that American companies that create products that they also ship out to Europe will dye those foods using natural colors, ship those to Europe, then use synthetic colors because they're cheaper and keep them here in America. So they're already doing it. They're just trying to cut costs because I guess it's a lot more expensive for them. So you're not going to look for a company who's going to want to do it. There has to be regulation.
Victor:unfortunately, Is that like being sneaky and healthy?
Rob:What do you guys think? What are your takeaways for today?
Cesar:Cesar, I'm on this health trip and I started looking at added sugars in my food, and now, with this podcast, I'm also going to be looking at what foods have dyes. I just looked at this fruity Cheerios that I bought earlier today that my son actually ate, and it contains two of them. I'm gonna be more conscious about eating foods with dyes and processed foods in general, chris I always been mindful of food coloring but, like you said, it's in everything.
Chris:What I do is like usually I, just once in a while, you know, we'll just get something that has food coloring, but otherwise, like I, like I said, you can't avoid it. So, like I said, you just have to be more mindful and just control the intakes or whatnot.
Rob:Victor, what are your thoughts?
Victor:There's always more information coming out, and if they find conclusive evidence that this is not good for you, I'm pretty sure they'll ban it, no problem, and then you don't have to worry about it at all. But if you are afraid of it, I mean, just avoid these, just try to avoid it as best as possible. Even if it's impossible to avoid, you can at least lessen the amount that you're going to ingest. Or you're going to get to your kids and then, instead of grabbing that candy bar to give to them, grab that genetically modified apple that's been spliced with the salmon and eat that instead, as long as it was free range, alaskan cod salmon.
Victor:No, the apple actually likes to swim with the salmon All right.
Rob:Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, twitter and YouTube at I'm Not Dumb, but, where we post extra fun content that you may not find on the podcast, and, before you go, hit the subscribe button because you'll feel better. Trust me, until next time, stay curious.
Cesar:Later. Do you have an Instagram?
Victor:Chris is supposed to be taking care of it.
Cesar:Chris, we got an Instagram.
Chris:I don't know, do we do Leave that open?
