Only Fools Dye Their Young

Sometimes I think I might get arrested for loitering in the grocery aisle. I read every single food label. I'm a food marketer's nightmare because I can sniff out misleading and meaningless food-lingo in a heartbeat. Why? Because I've been reading labels incessantly since my daughter was young.

It's Not Nice To Dye Our Young

It started with an innocent breakfast cereal that made grandiose claims of being "All Natural Berry, Berry Goodness," "Kid Approved" and "Contains Healthy Antioxidants." After ingesting bowlfuls of her new favorite cereal, my daughter started to display frightening symptoms. First, she developed a headache. So we gave her Children's Tylenol. The headache got better. Then she broke out in hives. We gave her Children's Benadryl. Very quickly after taking the antihistamine, she complained that her throat was feeling weird, like she couldn't swallow. We rushed her to an allergist, who confirmed what we had already figured out. My daughter was allergic to Blue Dye #2...a common food dye that was an ingredient in the cereal and the two over-the-counter children medicines.

Of course, we learned to avoid food dyes like the plague...reading labels like one would read an FBI file. Everything from lip balm to ice cream became suspect. Who knew?

It's Not Nice To Fool The Bees

French apiarist Andre Frieh holds a sample of normal honey (right) besides a blue colored one (left) Ribeauville, France, October 5, 2012.

I was reminded of this parental chapter (nightmare) when I recently read that beekeepers were discovering blue honey in their hives. Apparently, bees were harvesting M&Ms manufacturing waste from a plant that processed the industrial runoff from a Mars candy factory.

"The plant operator said it regretted the situation and had put in place a procedure to stop it happening again...The company, which deals with waste from a Mars chocolate factory, said it would clean out the containers, store all incoming waste in airtight containers and process it promptly." ~ BBC

We're not innocent bees, we're conscious consumers who should not be duped by honey-coated claims. Although labels are supposed to say exactly what's in their product, the food aisle is teeming with misinformation. As parents, we like to fix things like this. How can we fix marketers who aim to make money by poisoning our kids? We can't.

But don't be a fool...Real food doesn't come with labels.

 

Follow Ronnie Citron-Fink on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@econester

Comments

[s h1]

12:47 PM on 10/10/2012

My younger sibs use to love this multicolored cereal. Every time they ate it, I would shudder. It discolored their teeth and tongue a bluish purple and made their breath smell bad even when I stood feet from them. Fortunately, they grew tired of how much they had to brush before they went to school.

[Mom of 5]

11:58 AM on 10/10/2012

I tried commenting before. I like to point out it's a chemical allergy not a food allergy.

We have a daughter who is allergic to more than one color. I find most people we encounter think of it as a food allergy. I always point out it's a chemical one. Hopefully people will think about what's in our food differently. What's in our medicine is important, too. Trying to find her antibiotics once was an experience I don't wish to repeat. Good luck to you and those who face finding safe food, meds and personal care items that are dye free.

[Mom of 5]

11:32 AM on 10/10/2012

I like to point out, it is not really a food allergy.....it's a chemical allergy. Few people I have met think of it this way. The colors are "normal" to most people I meet.

My daughter has problems with more than one dye. Strange isn't it to see a reaction and reach for benedryl only to make it worse. Finding antibiotics is a multi-pharmacy search and a long car ride. Over the years it's become a fact of life but it turned our life upside down for awhile. My own mother asked me, "How can she have a normal life?" When did smurf blue food become normal?

[sabelmouse]

06:54 AM on 10/10/2012

allergy isn't the word i would use. perfectly predictable and reasonable reaction to an environmental poison is what it is. i get that a lot with all sorts of things including all sorts of synthetic perfumes that are hard to avoid.
what a world we have created !

[Martha Spieth Bryce]

08:21 AM on 10/09/2012

Thank you for this great article. Our journey with a son highly sensitive to Red Dye #40 led us to create a site with information and resources about artificial dyes in the foods we eat and feed to our children. We can be found at www.whydye.org.

[MrPlanIt]

02:15 PM on 10/08/2012

Wow, this really struck a note with me because my daughter was allergic to Blue #2. The irony here is that I worked for a chemical company that manufactured dyes in the 1970's and guess what, one of the dyes I was exposed to on an almost daily basis was Blue #2. Some days I would come home with my skin blue, some days red, and others green. There were guys that I worked with that were so terribly exposed to the dyes that their pee would turn the color they worked on that day. I always suspected that my exposures were the reason why she became allergic and after reading about the bees, this just seems to reinforce that suspicion. Thanks for exposing this. By the way, I wasn't foolish enough to stay there more than a year or so and was lucky to get out when I did. Many of the other laborers in the dye plant weren't so lucky.