At my job I work with children and at the end of the week we provide the kids with small snacks and drinks for their hard work. One of my responsibilities is to ask the parents and the children if they are allergic to anything and if they are allowed to eat the snacks we have provided. So when I was asking the kids what they were allowed to eat one said they are not allowed to eat food with dye. I was confused and had questions for their parents wondering if it was true. Since I had this encounter I decided to look into it more because I was very surprised and wanted to know why parents decided to keep dyes away from their child.
fda-probes-link-between-food-dyes-kids-behavior
This article refers to a mother with two children who had noticed that her kids were acting differently and she could not understand why. She had heard from a family friend that "what is natural is good; what isn't natural was bad" so she had decided to avoid eating food with dye. There have been studies showing there can be a link between hyper activity and food with dye. The mother explains that her children did not respond greatly to the replacements for the dye but as she continued she saw progress. With the experience with my job and reading this article it has taught me that food with dye may not seem like it has impact but it is something major.
I think that this is interesting to hear that food dye can be linked to behavior, but it isn't surprising. We really don't know much of what these factories put into our foods or the effects of them. I think that it's cool how you got this topic from first hand experience.
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