Almost every grocery item you buy has some kind of food additives in it. From dyes to preservatives to thickeners, a person can barely buy any food that hasn’t been treated in some way to make it taste better, last longer, have a certain consistency, or have an expected appearance. Foods are full of artificial flavors when they could be full of the flavors from whatever they’re named for.

Did you realize that Lemon Joy dish washing liquid has real lemon juice in it, but lemon pudding has artificial flavoring? Kind of an upside-down way of doing things, don’t you think?

My sister is allergic to yellow dyes found in hundreds of food items. I’m talking about getting hives, intestinal distress, and even to the point of nearly blocked air passages. In fact, she carries and Epi-pen in case she gets some yellow dye unexpectedly and has a severe reaction. You can read more about that on her Sixty Something blog.

Some foods are colored with annatto or turmeric, which are a much safer alternative and still lend the yellow color that may be desired. Grape skins, beets, saffron, carotene, and other natural color producers are available in abundant supply. However, I have to ask why we demand these colors in the first place?

A home made yellow cake gets its color from the yolks of the eggs put into it. But a boxed yellow cake mix, which calls for whole eggs, has yellow dye in it. Why? It’s absolutely not necessary.

Yellow dye, or any other color, isn’t really needed if the food contains the real ingredients it’s supposed to have anyway. The intensity of the color of foods we cook is naturally far less than in foods that are processed into a veritable rainbow of colors through false means.

If my own sister has this problem with yellow dyes, and we all remember the F,D, & C Red #5 fiasco of a number of years ago, then maybe we consumers should be more demanding and selective in our food choices. You can read more about food dyes at the FDA’s own site, including their findings on the allergic reactions resulting from ingesting yellow dye #5.

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