Have you ever thought about the odd colors of food here in the United States?  Ever wondered how and why so much of our food is bright red, yellow, or green?  Food certainly doesn’t come out of the ground like that!

When my daughter Molly was very young, she was really struggling with stomach problems and she would throw up frequently, it seemed like all of the time. Not only did she throw up, but she would become super hyper and we would remark, she is bouncing off the walls again. Our doctor didn’t seem to have any answers.  When Molly was about six years old, it finally struck me that every time she threw up, it had a red color to it.  I started thinking back and it seemed like she had always had something red to eat before she would get sick.  At the time, I knew nothing about food dyes and what they could do to you. I started researching and sure enough there are many people who have an intolerance to food dyes, particularly Red Dye #40 because it is so widely used. My first thought was, there can’t be red dye in very many foods.  Boy was I wrong!  If you really start looking, there are dyes in so many of the foods we eat.  Since we don’t really eat processed food anymore this isn’t an issue for us, but for many people it still is.  If you go to Whole Foods you will see some beautiful colors in their bakery section, but all the colors are from natural sources. As of 2010 they have banned food dyes in Europe because of all the research showing how bad they are for us.  Most of these bright colored foods are marketed towards kids and it is frightening to think what these dyes along with all the other additives are doing to their bodies.  If you haven’t heard about The Truth About Cancer, it is an amazing documentary about cancer and healing and some alternative methods for healing.  They have a great post about food dyes and what they are doing to us here.  If you aren’t following The Truth About Cancer on their facebook page or website, I would highly recommend it.  There is another great resource that I used when we first discovered that Molly had this intolerance to dyes. The Feingold Institute is a great resource. You can find them here. They have a lot of information about the effects of food dye on children.

 It would be to your benefit to become a label reader.  If we stop buying these dyed foods maybe the food manufactures will listen and start leaving them out of our food!

Restoring your health one bite at a time!

xoxo

Jackie