Red Hot Take: It's ok to hate artificial food colouring

You know the song “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”?. Try this: to the same tune [sing the following]:

“MSG and tartrazine, allura red, and blue and green, if it’s got an e-number, then I want it nowhere near”

 At around nine years old, I discovered this was not a common nursery rhyme, but a ditty my mum had invented to help her distracted child with that classic chestnut: early-years azo-dye memorization. She’d drill my e-numbers as we walked down the street: “Monosodium glutamate?” “E621!” “Allura red?” “E129!”; a semi-scientific army of two.

 My hyperconsciousness of the additive industrial complex stood out among my mid-90s London peers. Friends slurped up a rainbow of irresistible, fluorescent, gooey packets, right in my face. And, despite rigorous lyrical training, my resistance crumbled often, eroding rapidly in the path of a bright red sour pop or a bag of glowing orange cheese puffs.

 The effects were variable but undeniable: some mix of deep anger, overwhelming anxiety, and itching. Memorably, cute little blue-and-green striped candy canes gave me an intense overnight eczema breakout (the drugstore was closed: picture a tiny girl sobbing in front of a Christmas tree, crackled hands wrapped in olive oil-soaked socks).

 So, I was on the “sensitive!” end as a kid. But I was also normal. I liked sweets, wanted to share them with my friends, and couldn’t totally conceptualize the link between action and consequence - between an earlier Cherry Fanta and a present sense of being earth-shatteringly pissed off.

 I was saved only by institutional grace. UK food brands and supermarkets started phasing MSG out of their products in the 2000s. In 2009, the government there advised companies to stop using dyes, and in 2010, the EU mandated that foods containing Red 40 carry a hyperactivity warning notice. 

 By contrast, Dyes are everywhere in the US. They’re in the foods you’d expect, like Lucky Charms (Red 40, Yellow 5 & 6, Blue 1), and the ones you wouldn’t - like the yellow AMC theatre popcorn (Flavacol, containing Yellow 5 &6), or El Yacateco hot sauce (Green version: Yellow 5, Blue 1, Red version: Red 40). They’re in foods served in schools, in toothpaste, and in almond-scented pink soap. And, for a reason I cannot divine, they’re in the Duane Reade Ibuprofen.

  And it’s like, why? Hot sauce is already red! Two popular brands in the UK, Franks and Cholula, don’t have dye. They exist in a state of being red. Texas-favorite Louisiana Hot Sauce? Yellow 6! Red 40! Why am I out here playing sauce-based Russian Roulette? Ibuprofen in most countries is just white; ask a New York pharmacist if they have “white ibuprofen” and you sound like a medicine bigot. 

The FDA site says “some children” may be sensitive, and concerned parents “may check the food ingredient list on labels”. It also says that dyes compensate for “natural color loss”, “add color to colorless and ‘fun’ foods”, and “identify flavors (such as purple for grape flavor or yellow for lemon).” Maybe I’m just not being fun enough - we eat with our eyes, after all. Studies have found that color literally changes our perception of how things taste. But that also means that food companies can use color to their advantage to make substandard products more appealing.

There is clear consumer demand for culinary vibrance: in 2017, US cereal company Trix actually walked back a pledged switch to using all natural colors due to complaints. I get that this is a hard sell. We don’t ban peanuts, or shellfish, or dairy, just because some people get a little anaphylactic. This is America, where customers are always right – but they are perhaps considered “more right”  by companies when they want something shelf-stable and cheaper to produce. 

There are two big problems here. The first is that a lot of consumers may not know that their eczema, mood swings, gut problems, or trouble focusing are related to food they’re raised to see as totally normal. How many kids are out there with parents – or, perhaps, teachers – who chalk their reactions to dyes up to inherent personality problems? “Sensitive” kids probably number more than we think, given the recent meteoric rise in ADHD diagnosis. They need more protection than simple parental guidance. Food dyes are often used because they make cheap food look better – opening a Pandora’s box of socioeconomic questions around which children are most affected by nonchalance about them.

A second, related, issue is that color additives make food more appealing to the exact people who will struggle to notice and resist it. Ever try convincing a raging 5 year old that they’re angry because they ate the same sweets as all their friends? And that they shouldn’t do that? They’ll tell you to piss right off - as, I find, do many adults.

 It offends Americans when I peruse the ingredients of a casual snack offer and reject it. I assume it comes across as the kind of Limey superiority that still triggers PTSD in parts of the Northeast (Red-40-coat pun? Consider!). I understand the perspective that they “grew up eating otter pops/ koolaid/ sour patch kids” and are “totally fine.” On the other hand, a 2021 review by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment found a range of neurobehavioral impacts in children, and McMasters researchers found in 2022 that continual exposure to Red 40 disrupts gut barrier function and can trigger several bowel diseases. So, as modern science catches up, perhaps the issue of brightly colored food is not so… black-and-white. 

 (Ps. Black-and-white cookies? Usually cool.)