Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Food Dye and Behavior

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Do artificially colored food dyes make your kids behave badly? This sounds like it could be true, and is certainly alluring to parents as an easy fix. But are they actually related? In the 1940s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold was set to research just that, believing that food dye not only could cause bad behavior, but was linked to asthma, eczema, and hives. But the solution to how to solve any of these problems is a bit extreme – too extreme to be practical or even show any real results.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobo. For the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobbing. It's a marital tour of Miskite in medicine.

I am not the birthday boy. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy and I am the birthday boy. No, well, no. I mean, you are, it's your birthday. I mean, that's the, it's your birthday. Right. It's my birthday. I can podcast if I want to. Or if you don't want to, because the podcast train's gotta run regardless. No, I, right, that's true.

I, well, I, I love to, Justin. I love to share this information. I know you do. And entertain people with the medical mishaps of your, or now, or now, or now, or whatever. As it gets to be. No, this, this is a very special episode because one, we are recording on my birthday.

Which is, I mean, don't get more special than that. Well, it's the most special day of the year, I think. We can all agree on that. But also because of who suggested this topic. Yes, a friend Vanessa. Yes, our dear friend Vanessa sent an email, VLN, to Justin, about some supposed concerns about cereal. She had received the email.

She didn't have the concerns. No, she got email about concerns about cereal. Concerns about different additives that can be in cereal. This was forwarded to Justin, forwarded to me like, hey, what do you think, Sydney? And I said, you know what? We have never talked about mainly food dyes, preservatives too, but the idea that artificial food dyes have some effect on behavior. And that seems like a big, like a big mis for us. Like why haven't we talked about it yet? That's a, that's a big plot hole.

Yeah. I don't think it's, I mean, not, I mean, we don't have a cogent narrative to the Solbin's podcast, but. Okay, I like to think of it as a narrative. It's the story of bad medicine. Yeah, it's not bad medicine like the song. No, that would have been killer, killer in trial. If I thought about it and had the money to license,

was that rat? I don't, yes, it's a song bad medicine license, was that rat? I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I just know that that is a poison. I'm not sure. Okay. It's Bon Jovi. That's me on me.

I'm sorry. Love Bon Jovi. Love Bon Jovi. Could have gotten John on the phone no problem. But I really. Really? Wait, can you get John Bon Jovi on the phone because if you can, why are we recording a podcast?

I can get Bon John Jovi on the phone. That is a good friend of his. What's the deal with food guys? Because you and I have bandied about, I'm going to say this without knowing how all this will shake out. We have long bandied about the thought that red food diet. Food diet makes our daughter Charlie incorrigible.

Yes. Like more active, harder Encourageable. Yes. Like, more, more active. Yes. Harder to get to bed. Yes. Yes. Um, we have done that. And, uh, you've probably heard that for a long time.

That there are certain food dyes that if you feed a child, they will become, um, basically poorly behaved, right? Like, you can't control their behavior at that point. They won't go to bed. They might be physically more active. And to the extent that my mom believes this, I remember my mom wouldn't let me eat red things. She was firmly convinced that things

with artificial, not red things, but artificial red food dog, red number 40, right? Like that's the one that gets the most. I think now that's the one that's associated with the most play, but like the general idea that artificial food dyes are doing something to all of our brains, but mainly child brains, to make our behavior different.

We even fell into this. We briefly avoided red things. Based on this idea that when Charlie would eat something red, it was harder for us to get her down at night, right? Like a red popsicle or something that had red food diet. Which could be something purple too, by the way. Or blue or like lots of things. Yeah.

You know, they're not all red. It food dies like the color we think about it. Anyway. Now I will admit to you that deep in my heart, I knew this couldn't be right because why was I never taught anything about this? Why would no one have ever mentioned it even like as a side note, by the way, the like in medical school, these artificial dioceses do some on my pediatric rotation. Why had no one ever said anything like this to me? Why did I know of no evidence? Why would this be true? And it be a secret.

That's a great question. That's not really how things work, especially when it comes to behavior and kids, because it's one of the number one things that parents come and will ask you about. I know as a family doctor, about their kids' behavior. And so if I had something easy, like I know that these artificial food dyes are the problem, ooh, man, that would be a huge relief, right? Here's a concrete thing you can do.

So it's a luring, it's a luring to think that. Like if I just cut these out, my kid will go to bed at night. You are desperate as a parent to any like quick fix, any easy thing that you can do. I think it is extremely appealing. And we've talked about this just and I privately a lot before.

There are so many times as a parent where you have this moment where you think it can't be this hard. Yes, this can't be right. This can't be right. It can't be right. This cannot be how it goes. Now, where did this idea come from?

Well, the first concern over an artificial food diet was actually expressed a very long time ago, 1940s. And it was over a yellow dye called tartrazine. Now, are you familiar with tartrazine? Not at all. OK, tartrazine is the dye that is in Mountain Dew. Okay. Is that yellow number five?

I'm not sure what number it is. It's yellow. It is a yellow food dye. Do you remember the concern about tartarzine in the 1990s when it comes to Mountain Dew? Do you remember anything about a food dye? Is it that it would reduce your sperm count? Okay, not exactly, but close.

Yes. The idea that it would reduce your sperm count? Okay, not exactly, but close. Yes. The idea that it somehow would shrink testicles or make someone's penis smaller, or in some way affect. I mean, if we're talking about legend. Genitalia, fertility, sperm count. If we're talking about playground legends, all of these could have been true, right?

Like all of these different ideas. Well, this was in the 1990s, there was a very intense but brief moment where everyone got really scared about Mountain Dew. Not that scared because I can tell you from here in West Virginia, everybody was still trying to mountain Dew. Yeah, to this day, Justin,

you'll fall for Mountain Dew every time. So, okay, don't make me sound like, like some sort of bad, bad person. No, I'm just saying like, people for Mountain Dew every time. Okay, don't make me sound like some sort of bad person. No, I'm just saying like people love Mountain Dew. People love Mountain Dew. I love Dr. Pepper. That's my thing. The first time I ever got drunk was a Mountain Dew

could read in vodka. I have no clue. That was not a good night. That went bad for me. What was interesting is that Targisine did seem to elicit an allergic reaction more commonly than other dyes. And by more commonly, I still mean it's incredibly uncommon.

But just on the scale of what is more likely to be an allergen, tartarcin was slightly more likely than the other food dyes. It was as noted, again, as far back as the 1940s, that it could trigger hives in patients, especially if you were allergic to aspirin, or that class of medicine soliculates, salicylic acid is aspirin, that kind of family. If you're allergic to that, there was a slightly higher chance that you would be allergic to tarcher scene as well. Cross reactivity. And it was even suggested that it worsened asthma symptoms if you ate or drank something with tarcher scene in it. Although this was never supported by a lot of evidence. There was concern over this.

But this early research was important because it would go on to inspire a Dr. Benjamin fine gold. And I really think, there are a lot of people who talked about the ideas of food dyes and allergies and food dyes and behavior and stuff. But a lot of what we think about today and a lot of sort of our, I would say misconceptions,

stem from Dr. Feingold's work. So originally from Pittsburgh, Dr. Feingold studied in Germany, Austria, he studied Northwest term for a while, he finally landed in Los Angeles in 1932 where he worked at several different hospitals. He was interested in some ongoing research at the time on allergies, especially food allergies. That was kind of, even though he had done some work in like pathology and general pediatrics, allergies was where he kind of landed.

And he started working in that field in 1945. By 1952, he was chief of the Department of Allergies for Kaiser Foundation Hospital and Permanente Medical Group. He established all of the departments of allergy for Northern California. This was really his domain. Dr. Fungal was... Allergy Expert. Yes, the allergy guy.

This is what he would do for his entire career. This research and his work in allergies, especially in pediatric allergies, would become his legacy. This was his whole life in his legacy. He was initially concerned about the abilities of these food dies, like tartarazine, to trigger an allergic response, which is different than what we're talking about, right? The idea that something can be an allergen is in no way controversial. Right.

Anything could be an allergen, right? Like that's the thought, like, well, not anything, but a lot of things can be allergen. Okay. For the purposes of nomenclature, though, if we're saying that our kid has this adverse reaction to red food dye, aren't we talking about an allergic reaction? Well, for the purposes of an allergic reaction, what we're really involved in is that it involves... Well, not, I mean, yes, but no, an allergic reaction is your body treating

a substance that isn't dangerous or an invader or harmful in any way as if it is. So it's an inappropriate reaction. So it can't just be any adverse reaction. No. No, it's an immune reaction. That's actually a really important distinction because there are times where people will have some sort of reaction to a medication. It made them nauseous.

That's not an allergic reaction. If they list that as an allergy, it may prevent us from using a medicine that's really important for that patient. It is actually really important. It's something we don't do often enough to distinguish between, okay, you had an adverse reaction to this medication, but it wasn't an allergy and something that's a true allergy, which means I just can't give this to you because your body thinks it's harmful and it's not,

but your body got confused and here we are. That makes sense. Okay. So he thought that the allergic reactions triggered by food dies initially. He thought, well, they can manifest in a variety of ways that are pretty typical for allergies. So like hives or eczema or asthma. These are all closely related to allergic reactions.

These are all things that we understand are sort of a family of reactions in the body, the skin, the immune system, that kind of thing. The easiest way to see if these additives were causing problems, so if you have a child who comes in and they have axima, and you think it's tartarazine, for instance, you tell the parents to avoid it, right? Like that's the easiest way to address that problem. No more mountaineered three-year-old. Just look on the package.

If it has this in it, don't let the kid eat it. So that's, again, it just eliminates them. He also had some other concerns. So as we mentioned, there was some evidence that Tarjorzene and Solicilates had some cross reactivity. So he began to throw that in there too. Like also, you know, if your kid's allergic to food dies, they may also be allergic to aspirin and other medications in that family solicitulates, so avoid that too.

Okay, not a huge deal. Solicilates have cell cellic acid, is that right? Yes. In addition, there were a few preservatives that he began to be concerned about, okay? So there are a few different things in food, and I'll go into these. But the three that Dr. Fine Goldhead concerns about are BHA, which is butylated hydroxyanousal, BHT, butylated hydroxytolueine, and TBHQ tertiary butyl hydroquinone. Hydroquinone.

Got that? Got that. You don't need to, we're just going to call them BHA, BHT, and TBHQ. They're preservatives. What do they do? Well, BHA and BHT are both stabilizers in antioxidants. They've been used in food for a very long time. They have been studied extensively, like all preservatives, for toxicity and health impacts. BHA, there was one study where it was found to cause in very high doses, some tumors in hamsters, but it was never found to be a carcinogen in humans or rats,

which I guess hamsters are very not like humans. I mean, I hunt, yeah. Well, a study in rats. Can you drill down that for a second? Is it the size, the cognitive abilities, the hair? It has something to do with the GI track. No, it has to do with a lot of things. The foregamps.

They're very different for humans. That it has to do with the way they break down substances. Hamsters are way more different than humans than rats are in that. I mean, you would think like if it will if it calls tumors and hamsters, it's bad, right? No, if it calls tumors and rats, we're more concerned. If it doesn't cause tumors and rats, we're less concerned

for humans. Okay. This is science. Anyway, BHA, in the amounts that we eat, there's no evidence that they're dangerous. Similarly, with BHT, it's never been shown to do anything bad. TBHQ is a phenyl preservative. It's mainly used in things like vegetable oil or animal fats, and it's never been

shown to harm us. All of these things are similar. You've all heard that sort of idea of aspartame. We talked about this. We're like, if you fed rats, nothing but massive amounts of aspartame for days and days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months on end, you could maybe harm them, but in the amounts any human is actually ingesting, they're not harmful. Right.

Like, it was similar with these substances. We can't find a way they're hurting people is the idea. So they're commonly used as food preservatives, is my point. I mean, the problem with it is that it's gross Like the pink packet especially. Oh god. Yes sweet and low I mean, I was trying to in case they were want to come on as a sponsor I was trying to not like directly attack them, but yes, honey. I listen

I don't understand sweet and love and my mom loves it. There's a generation. It's wild. There's a generation that loves sweet and low Same generation that made Diet Rida thing. I mean, equals not great either, but whole sweet and low. Oh God. If I go to the Sonic or something and I'm getting a sweet tea and I need some yellow and they're like, I get to the window and they're like,

we only have pink, I'm like, keep your tea. I can't have anything to do with this. Please keep your tea. That's just about me. Well, I understand. I can't eat the pink. That's why I grew Stevie in the backyard. Yes.

Those sweet leaves. The sweet sweet leaves. He, okay, so he advised eliminating all that stuff. He also went ahead and said, you know, as long as we're at it, artificial flavors like artificial vanilla or strawberry, artificial sweeteners. Again, what we've just been discussing, aspartame or sucrose or whatever, stevia was actually okay. But all these other artificial sweeteners, bad.

So with all this concern and some information, he started prescribing an elimination diet for patients that presented with allergies or asthma or any of these skin conditions. Okay? So you'd bring your kid in and say, my kid has eczema and he would say, here's what I want you to do. Don't have any food dies. Don't have any food preservatives. Don't have any food dies, don't have any food preservatives, don't have any

artificial flavor, don't have any artificial sweeteners, and avoid all solicit. This was a tall order, especially at the time. I mean we're talking about like by the time we're getting into this it's the 1970s. Oh so yeah we're very deep into messing with food and also interesting guys. A lot of pre-packaged you know food like a lot of food, processed foods. The idea of just eating natural foods is becoming harder and harder. And this rebounds, right? I feel like we're coming back around.

Yeah, that's that's born. It's easier. But it was very much out of fashion. So anyway, he prescribes these really difficult diets and says, this will clear up your kids, scan allergies, whatever. He felt like it was beneficial. He felt like half of these kids were improving, but then he noticed another positive effect. I'm going to tell you what that was.

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Listen, you know you won it, honey. So come on and get it. Period. Okay, so this doctor told parents they can't let the kids have anything fun. Yes. And you notice another effect. So after cutting out all of these different substances, he also began to get these anecdotal reports from parents that kids behavior had improved.

That the kids were like following rules better. Were easier to, you know, instruct in school. Were easier to get to bed at night. Just generally like our kids have been behaving better since we took everything fun of their diets. Since we took all the colors and flavors out of their diet. That's not, and that's a bad thing to say. You know me, I love, no, I love fruits and vegetables.

I'm all about eating fruits and vegetables all the time. So I'm not saying all the color and fun, but for a kid. Yeah, fruit by the foot, gosh, I mean, you're losing all of it. I mean, it was, and I'm not saying that these foods, and we'll get into that. Like, do they naturally have some sort of benefit

above other things? No. Did you see, but did you see tricks when they had natural colors? It was so sad. It colors? It was so sad. It was so sad. Muted, it looked like. It would say muted.

Yeah, it was really, really depressing. So he began to theorize that there is something in all these substances that he had, parents eliminate. Something in there is affecting behavior. There's so many confounders though. In this such a, you described what a wide swath of foods and drinks it is, right? It seemed like there could be a lot of different factors. We're going to get into it's bigger than you think. So with this discovery, the fine gold diet

became incredibly fashionable. Now, when I was researching this show, I found mention of the fine gold diet, and I feel like there's gonna be a generation of people, especially like, I feel like if we mentioned this to our parents, they would immediately know what we're talking about, because this was an incredibly popular idea. Like when it captured the imagination of parents,

they latched on to it very strongly, because the idea that it was useful for all manner of behavioral issues. You didn't have to have a child who was actually diagnosed with ADHD at the time. We honestly wouldn't have called it ADHD. Who would have just said something general like your child is hyperactive, right? So it was good for anything like that. It was prescribed for dyslexia, for autism, all manner of behavioral issues. Whatever your kid was doing that was bothering you,

the fine gold diet may be helpful. And the idea is like, if you're cutting out things that your kid doesn't need anyway, I mean, when you focus on like the artificial dies and flavors, well, it kind of fits in with this idea, like is that what we should be doing anyway? And my, it plays off parental guilt. Like, am I a bad parent for giving my kid

this stuff anyway? Because like, let's be honest, the thing that's on set is like, a lot of it's playing into sugar, right? I mean, it's like, or more specifically like refined sugars like that you would have. To an extent, yeah.

Well, and also this general idea, I think like as a parent, I can tell you, I feel guilty when I am feeding my child something that I didn't prepare or you didn't prepare like that wasn't cooked. I know it's not bad. You can put the investors into the lunch box. I feel guilty about that.

And I know that like a healthy diet can look a lot of different ways. I know that logically, but there's a lot of guilt on parents to not use prepackaged process foods, but to only use, you know, whole fruits and vegetables and things. And that's like, I mean, fit that into modern parenting and our busy lifestyles and budgets.

But the budget is the other part of this. If you can afford that, that's a luxury. But it played on all those ideas. And so basically, you cut out all the things we mentioned. So this already eliminates pretty much everything, process, prepackage, especially back in the 70s. Imagine trying to shop this way before this sort of like whole foods revolution

that would eventually happen. Now, add all the things that contain solacellates because the thing is I said, salicylic acid like aspirin and there's some other meds. But there are foods that naturally contain solacellates. I mean things that grow out of the earth and have salicylic acid in them. So this is where the diet got really difficult.

Let me give you a sampling of foods you couldn't eat strictly on the fine gold diet. Apples. Wow. Apricots. Berries. Charies. Currents. Grapes. Ne grapes, nectarines, oranges, peaches, plums, prunes, raisins, tangerines, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, broccoli, chickery, cucumbers, eggplant, indives, ochre peppers, pickles, radishes, squash, sweet potatoes, spinach, watercress, zucchini,

almonds, chestnuts, other nuts and seeds, no cereals, unless free of preservatives and coloring, which would probably even tough at the time. Yeah. You know, no processed crackers, no allspice, anacids, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, curry, cumin, dill, ginger, mustard, oregano, pimento, rosemary, tarragon, thyme,

turmeric, coffee tea, diet soda, fruit juice, jam's jelly's mint flavoring, chewing gum, and any foods with coloring and flavoring. That is miserable. Yes. I mean, I can't imagine. Imagine trying to feed a kid. You've eliminated the kids' cuisines.

I don't even know if they had kids' cuisines in 1970. I know that in the 90s, I very much wanted a kids' cuisine or a hot pocket. You're eliminating the Totino's, of course, but you're also eliminating all of this. Like apples. Apples. Do the fruits that have naturally occurring cells in the little gas that have a pain relief component? Or is that not? What was eventually found, and like this diet has been edited a lot since then,

many of these foods contain it in such incredibly small amounts that they could not possibly be bioactive. Okay. So no, they wouldn't have a pain relief effect, but they also couldn't affect you adversely either. So eventually, the diet would be modified to remove some of these things. But this is the original sort of idea. These are soliciting containing foods and then everything else.

Initially, there would also be a conversation between Dr. Finegold and the patient and parents about the idea of gluten or milk protein needing to be eliminated. Now, he at least would say, I actually want you to have testing for allergies to these things before I eliminate them, because you imagine if you also, in addition to all that, eliminate dairy and gluten. Maybe what is there? What is there left? I think meat. Celery.

Yeah, meat and celery. It's delicious. Yeah. Especially for a kid. It's a modern bullion. You gotta, let's do it going. And then again, you put all the other factors of like, it's a kid and like they go to school

and like people are working. You gotta do this on a budget and so all the other factors of like, it's a kid and like they go to school and like people are working, and you gotta do this on a budget. And so all these other things. But he did say like, let's do an allergy test before we actually do that. Like you might not need to eliminate that. What can you eat? I do have a list of some things that are acceptable.

Like bananas are still on there. Watermelon, grapefruit, honeydew, kiwi, pears, pineapple. So there's still some fruits. You can still eat all manner of beans and lentils, potatoes, except sweet potatoes are still there. Corn. Like you said, celery, my favorite cauliflower is still on there. There's still some food, but I mean, it's a hard diet to stick it. Yeah, that sounds very restrictive. And you can't have stevia, so there's that.

In the first phase of the diet, you eliminate all this, everything. Wow. Okay. And the idea is that your symptoms will go away. So whether it's allergy or behavioral, it goes away because you've eliminated the trigger. In the second phase, you can pick one of those solicit-late containing foods one at a time and try to add it back. So like the behaviors are better,

I'll let you eat apples for a week and see how things go. If the behaviors do not return, you can keep eating that solicit-late. If the behaviors return, you eliminate it again, start over, try something else. Does that make sense? Yes, sounds a little subjective, but yes.

Now artificial colors, sweet and earth flavors, preservatives, that's gone forever. That stuff is gone your entire life. You never eat those things. So if I go to telling parents to try it, he presented and published his findings throughout the 70s. He felt it was very effective, like I said, like over 50% of children responded positively to his diet. He said that if you're going to get good results from it,

some things that are essential, one, you have to adhere to the diet perfectly. If you, if you fudge it once, it won't work. Two, the entire family must participate. Why? I don't wanna do it, this is my kids mean. It's buying. The idea is that you can't have those foods in the house.

So the whole family. But I want them, Sydney, why are you doing this to me? This is the way he said to do it. The whole family has to be in on it for it to be successful. Well, I'm not, but a lot of parents did. I guess got so worked up. And then again, I just bought a huge package of fruit by the foot. So it's like, what am I going to do with these? And again, it's for life. All these things for life. And you will find that a lot of parents did claim to notice like subjective anecdotal differences. Like I, these are not things that were necessarily measured, but there were a lot of parents who provided testimonials that this was working.

Yeah. That they noticed a difference for their kids. I mean, you have to tell yourself that if you're doing something so incredibly painful and difficult, right? However, this was evaluated by other scientists. I mean, this is a radical thing. If it worked, that's one thing, but if it doesn't work, that's a lot to put parents through. So if you're, especially if you're a doctor, if I can tell you, if I'm gonna tell a parent

to put their family through this, I better know that it can work. So a two week long conference was arranged in January of 1975 in Glencove, Long Island, and the Nutrition Foundation attendees created what they call the National Advisory Committee and added, they published a report saying that there are no controlled studies that have demonstrated that hyperkinesis, so hyperactivity, what we would probably, what we would call now is ADHD. Yeah. Well, hypercanesis, it's not a diagnosis.

Well, it's like a symptom. It's not. Is related to the ingestion of food additives. So they had no reason to think like, look, I know what you're seeing, but we don't have any evidence that this is correlation, it's not causation. In subsequent studies, because there's been study multiple times, even when a difference is noted in behavior when food additives are eliminated, even when there is like a measurable difference in behavior, it's typically only the parents

who notice it. They can't validate the same behavioral changes from like outside observers or teachers. They're also the best judge, that's really tricky. But it's hard because teachers would not know a difference, but the parents swore there was a difference. The results were often inconsistent and conclusive. Some kids behavior seemed to worsen. I mean, probably because they were just mad.

They couldn't have their fruit by the foot. Other kids did seem to get better. The studies that showed more of a difference were ones that weren't properly blinded. So all of the adult observers knew that the diet was turning. Because if you really, if you are really concerned about your child's behavior and you know that they're on this new diet and you really want it to work, you're going to be more likely to think that it works. And that is no shame on these parents, you know, it's just the reality. And at the time again, a lot of these kids

were probably not being properly diagnosed with anything if they did have it. Like if they did have ADHD, there probably wasn't a doctor diagnosing them with that or trying to treat them for that. So parents probably felt pretty desperate. The ones that were properly blinded were pretty inconsistent. There was one example.

If you ever hear this as like somebody trying to argue this is real, they're probably going to cite this study. It's a 2007 British study, which was called the Southampton study. And in it, three to eight year olds were given two kinds of drinks that contained a mix of dyes. Afterwards, parents reported increased hyperactivity in the kids that got the dyes. But teachers, again, anybody else couldn't tell a difference. Because the dyes were mixed together, it was really hard to tell what was the problem. But there was a difference shown in the study, and there was also some sort of age-related difference.

So part of the argument from proponents of this idea is that it's just that we're testing the wrong ages for this. Like you're only sensitive to it at a certain age, and so we're missing that age. Like we need to test younger kids. Yeah, that makes sense. A meta-analysis of all these studies that was published in 2004 was

pretty inconclusive. It basically said, in kids who have already been diagnosed with ADHD, they may be more sensitive to food dies. We don't know, more study is indicated, but that was the best that they could say. So in kids who have already been diagnosed, maybe they're a little more sensitive to these substances for some reason. So where does that leave us now? I don't know. Obviously, all of these things are still in our food in the US and many other countries. There are some countries where specific things have been removed or like warnings put on

packages and things like that, mainly out of concern, but not so much out of, like I said, and overabundance of evidence that there's any harm. They're widely accepted as safe, they're unlikely to change behavior, but there are still many parents who will say, my kid wouldn't go to bed tonight because I gave him a red ring pop, you know. We were two of those parents For a while don't give each other red stuff. It makes your wild and the other thing that's hard about it is that When you're just talking about food dies, which I think is the part that got has has has like

sustained the longest right like I never heard Eliminate apples because they have solicit lights But I did hear to eliminate food dies for sure Yeah, and I think the reason that that continues to get so much play is eight apples because they have solicitates. But I did hear to eliminate food dies. For sure. Yeah. And I think the reason that that continues to get so much play is it's not like our kids need food dies. We don't need food. Nobody needs artificial colors in their food. So it seems like low hanging fruit, right? Like, well, why don't we just remove them? We don't need them. It's also, it also, I think, appeals to the

naturalistic fallacy, where I think in everybody's mind, or at least most thinking people, there's like, every once in a while, you get this pang of like, I should just be eating carrots. Like, I should just be eating carrots that I grew myself in strawberries

and hunt squirrels or something. I don't know, like, up here, like there's so much in the food. There's a part of you that feels like this can't be right. There's, you know what I mean? Like whenever you see the commercials for like, look at this ingredient list, it's like, that doesn't really, I mean,

unless with that. Well, and I mean, to some extent, like that fear is not completely unfounded because as we've talked about on the show before, there was a long time where we put, I mean, lots of wax stuff in food, right? Like, your food wasn't safe. The stuff that they were putting in your food wasn't, you couldn't be sure that it was

okay for your body. In fact, sometimes it very much wasn't. That was prior to the FDA and all of the regulation that has come to play since then. But I think there's still this concern. We know that if there's enough money and something that gets hard to stop it, even if it's proven dangerous. And so, I mean, I think it's always fair to question and then look to the science to see what the answer is. Right now, we don't have science that says these things are linked to behavior

really, at least nothing solid. I think the most important thing is if you have concerns about your kids' behavior, if you're worried that they're not able to pay attention in school, that they're not able to like stay in their seat, whatever, you should take them to their doctor, discuss these concerns, and make sure they're properly diagnosed. Because the big problem with a lot of this is probably these kids really did need help and maybe medication for some underlying condition that wasn't being diagnosed. But then you find the artificial dies

and it's like, well, that's the silver bullet. That's the thing that I need to fix this. And I'll look for the deeper stuff. Exactly, because I think there's a reluctance, like it wouldn't be easier if we could just take something out of the diet then take medicine Yeah, well that might be nice But sometimes we need medicine and thank goodness. We have medicines that are effective and safe

In those cases, so I I would say if you want to eliminate Especially food dies from your kids diet. You're not gonna harm them If you can afford that and you have the the willingness and the time to do that If you can afford that and you have the willingness and the time to do that, you're not gonna harm them. But it may very well be pointless. It may very well be pointless. And again, if you are concerned about your child's behavior, please take them and get them properly diagnosed.

Do not avoid appropriate medical care in pursuit of something like this. I think that's the biggest risk. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you have enjoyed yourself because we've certainly had a good time being here with you. Our theme song is a performer of the taxpayers. We use it as our intro and outro.

And we very much appreciate them letting us do that. If you head to McElroyMarch.com, we've got a new web store. There's a Sydney's classic bumper sticker I'm not afraid of my clown husband. Sorry, not ashamed of my clown husband She is also afraid of you anyway, it's created by Jacob Bailey and it's a bumper sticker And it's very funny and proceeds from that go to the Huntington Jones Museum. So that's cool and That I would say Sid is gonna do it for us until next time. My name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sidney McRoy. And as always, don't draw a hole. Okay. Alright!