Living A Full Life

Food Dyes and Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Artificial Colors

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 21

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What happens inside your child's brain when they consume those brightly colored candies, cereals, and drinks? The answer might disturb you. 

Dr. Enrico Bolchacori dives deep into the scientific evidence linking artificial food dyes to neurological disruption, particularly in developing brains. Those vibrant colors - Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, and others - aren't just harmless enhancers; they're synthetic chemicals also used in industrial applications like dyeing textiles and plastics.

Multiple peer-reviewed studies from prestigious journals like The Lancet, Neurotherapeutics, and the Journal of Pediatrics confirm these chemicals interfere with neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, causing measurable effects on behavior, cognition, and mood regulation. Particularly alarming is evidence showing these dyes can cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially causing neuroinflammation and weakening the brain's natural protective mechanisms.

The gut-brain connection represents another critical pathway disrupted by artificial additives. Recent scientific discoveries reveal the gut's mesenteric system contains more neural activity than the brain itself, functioning as a sensory system that constantly communicates with our brain. This explains why food additives can trigger not just physical symptoms but profound behavioral and mood changes.

While we can't control all environmental toxins, we certainly can make informed choices about what we eat. Reading labels, choosing whole foods, seeking natural color alternatives, and supporting stronger regulations are practical steps to protect neurological health. European countries have already implemented stricter controls on these substances - isn't it time we demanded the same protection for American families? Your food choices today could literally shape your child's brain development tomorrow.

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Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, I'm Dr Enrico Bolchacori and welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. We're continuing on with our discussion about additives and food dyes because of the feedback these last couple episodes if you listened in we talked about toxins in our food and then into specifically dyes, and now we're going to dive right into food dyes specifically that are added to foods that are processed and the direct effects on the brain. So more of a neuro neurological episode today on the science behind how it actually happens. A lot of the questions that are coming in are not hateful, but they're like well, where's the proof that this stuff really does cause issues? We've got parents that are concerned and parents that are skeptical and parents that are skeptical and parents that truly support this and are like yes, I see it in my kids whenever they have this. So let's not persuade or convince anyone. Let's just get into the science behind this and how these chemicals direct chemicals affect neuromodular activity in the brain. We need to go through this and what's happening. So this episode is all about food additives and the neurodevelopmental effects on the brain so in children mainly, but these effects can take effect on an adult brain as well. We brought up in the last podcast, things like monosodium glutamate, like MSG that's added, and how they can lead to lucid dreams and brain decreased brain activity not decreased brain activity, altered brain activity and altered REM sleep within high doses. So that can affect anyone an adult that weighs 300 pounds all the way down to kids that may weigh 60 pounds.

Speaker 1:

So let's go into some more specifics about this and the specific colors that are out there and talk about how they directly affect these things. What we need to understand, the key word here is artificial. These are artificial substances that are added to food to enhance color flavorzanine, yellow 6, sunset Yellow, b1, brilliant Blue, blue 2, indigo Carmine and green 3, fast Green. These are dyes. They have also been used to dye material as well. That's why they have those names. So it's fast green, brilliant blue, allure red. They're also used to dye sheet metal plastics. They are used for other coloring agents as well clothes, but in our food they have been passed by the FDA to be okay in certain quantities in our food to give them color and vibrance.

Speaker 1:

Some additives that are used more so to preserve food that may impact brain function include sodium, besamate, msg, ascortane, high fructose, corn syrup and emulsifiers like polysorbate 80 and carrageenan. So these are things I would say that are probably at the top of your list to look at. Once you read the side of the package, you'll see things like red 40, yellow 5, msg, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup. Those are the common ones on the side of packaging. These should be avoided on all, on all fronts. We should not be eating this stuff. They are used quite commonly everywhere and it's maybe a little bit easier when we go through the grocery store to flip a package over and read it and be like, okay, we're not going to get this one, we've got an alternative.

Speaker 1:

It's a little bit different when you're out and about and you're taking the kids out for ice cream and they decide to choose superman ice cream and you look at it. You're like, yeah, that's probably all three of them right there, a little red, uh, blue, blue five, and the green and the yellow are all there, yellow six. And you're like, oh man, maybe we shouldn't get that one right and maybe we should just default to vanilla or chocolate. Those are are good decisions and they're all around us and these are the decisions we have to make and unless we're aware of these things, we really don't do it and I think it's because most of us are just not aware. When we download information and we process information with social media and all the choices that we have for information, we choose entertainment more than we do science. And that may be okay being entertained is okay but sometimes a little bit of information can go a long way, and that's why this podcast is here and many others like it in the health industry is to help motivate parents and not influence. Not influence parents, but motivate them and encourage them and be supportive of the healthy choices that they do want to make and be more decisive and educated on the decisions that they do make.

Speaker 1:

So let's go behind the science a little bit, I think on the last two episodes I brought up all these great facts, but I didn't really cite science or brain activity or anything like that. So we're going to dive more into science, and research has shown that synthetic foods with dyes and additives can have measurable effects on brain function, particularly in children, and here are some of the studies I pulled from. Like the Lancet back in 2007, with hyperactivity and ADHD symptoms. This study was published in 2007. It was found that children who consumed artificial colors and sodium benzenate had increased hyperactivity and attention issues, and you may see this in your kids as well. With any artificial colors, especially red, blue and the yellow is, when they have these, they'll change in activity, there'll be more mood swings, a bigger crash afterwards and just not listening to instructions. That can happen there as well.

Speaker 1:

We've also noticed cognitive impairment as well, and this is from Neurotherapeutics back in 2015, from a research article that indicates that certain food dyes like red 40 and yellow 5 can alter neurotransmitter function and cause oxidative stress in the brain. So these are from dyes that are doing direct effects in the brain, and I you know I always lean back to children because it's our job to protect them and their brains are growing, their bodies are growing. If this is doing that to their brain, it's also going to do it to your brain too. So these are things to maybe be aware of and consume in very low quantities. Behavioral issues Just from the journal Pediatrics, 10 years ago found a significant correlation between artificial dye consumption and increased aggression, irritability and mood swings in children, and then, in the Frontiers of Neuroscience just four or five years ago, highlighted that food diets like blue wine can cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially leading to neuroinflammation and disrupted neuronal communication and that's based on neuro inflammation. And these are just, from you know, five well-established studies and peer review journals the Lancet neurotherapeutics, the journal pediatrics that we're pulling this stuff from. It's all out there and it's not only just in 2019, 2015, 2012.

Speaker 1:

I could have pulled this stuff back 2001, 1996, 1987. This stuff goes back a long time 30, 40 years in the literature showing behavioral and mood disruptors and additives that we're adding to our food and additives in general. So there's a little bit of what's happening. We get the hyperactivity results from food dyes. We get cognitive impairment from these dyes, behavioral issues and the constant neuroinflammation from them as the body tries to process this out of the system. So you know how do these substances directly affect the brain, the neurotransmitter disruptions that we brought up, that certain dyes interfere with the dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain.

Speaker 1:

These are your mood enhancers or mood downers that are usually held in balance in your brain for just general behavior and mood. Healthy levels of both keep you in a neutral state where happy things make you happy and angry things make you angry. But when they get skewed, we can be perpetually stated into an angry or depressive state or anxious state because of the disruption in these neurotransmitters. So these are crucial for mood, focus and behavior and if we start disrupting these neurotransmitters, well, anything can happen with behavior. In the end of the day, they also cause oxidative stress and free radical damage in the body as well. Artificial dyes can increase oxidative stress, leading to damage in the body as well. Artificial dyes can increase oxidative stress, leading to neuronal damage and impaired cognitive function.

Speaker 1:

And then, by passing the blood-brain barrier, they have a direct effect on the brain itself. Some food diets have even been shown to weaken the blood-brain barrier, allowing harmful substances to enter the brain long-term. So if we're giving these food colorings to our kids and we're damaging and weakening the blood-brain barrier, they're going to be more susceptible to other things passing the blood-brain barrier later in life. This is maybe sensitivities to medications, sensitivities to other additives that affect them. Sometimes some of these studies in Germany they've done falling adults that had monosodium glutamate and did have those lucid dreams. They followed theirs and they believed that the blood brain barrier was weakened in these individuals, allowing things like sodium to pass at a higher level, which caused not only elusive dreams, mood behavior, mood swings, irregular sleep and even insomnia and that was a theory. They're still working on that and doing more conclusive studies on that and following people over time, longitudinal studies to see if the weakening of the blood-brain barrier.

Speaker 1:

This is a new frontier in science. The blood-brain barrier and its duration in life. It was thought to be a thing. It's just a barrier. It's the blood-brain barrier and its duration in life. It was thought to be a thing. It's just a barrier. It's there for your whole life to worry about it, but that thing in itself can change over time and be damaged over time. That wasn't a thought 50 years ago. So that's interesting where science is going. With the blood-brain barrier as a barrier, how does that force field and that shield from the brain and the body weaken over time? That's a new frontier for that as well.

Speaker 1:

And then the gut-brain connection as well. Additives like emulsifiers can disrupt the gut microbiome, which play a key role in brain function and emotional regulation. Let's talk about the vagal, vagus response from the brain to the gut and it's really a sensor between the microbiome of the brain and the gut. New literature and we've talked about this in previous podcasts show that the mesenteric system, the gut system, has more neural activity than the brain itself. It's newer information. It's kind of earth shattering information.

Speaker 1:

When we thought the brain was the neural center of the entire human body, it's actually the gut that has more neural activity and more neurons than the brain itself. The mesenteric system has more. So the brain and mesenteric system have this connection and really the science is showing that it's a sensory system between the microbiome and how that biome is living minute to minute, second to second and giving relays back to the brain saying hey, we're doing okay, hey, we're not. Hey, we're doing okay, hey, we're not. And those signals can be appetite increase, appetite decrease. It can be a sweet tooth craving, it can be a salt craving, it can be whatever. The biome is craving or needing for their bacteria and viruses to survive can actually connect back to the brain and give them information and be like oh, we're hungry, oh we need sugar, and when we really don't, it's really the vital in the gut, like candida overgrowth, saying no, hey, we need the sugar. The bad guys are saying we need the sugar and actually disrupt that communication between the brain and body.

Speaker 1:

Crazy science that we're in right now to think about how the body is working on so many fronts and it's not just systems. We've classified the human body as systems to make it very linear, so that, as humans, we can understand in a linear basis oh the circulatory system, oh the cardiac system, oh the liver, the pancreas, the stomach. And we've taken apart the human body into these different systems. But it doesn't actually work that. Taken apart the human body into these different systems, but it doesn't actually work that way. The human body works in harmony every second, communicating on millions of fronts, uh, to make this whole thing work and it's, it's absolutely amazing. So when we throw in chemicals and additives and the reason we have this podcast today is because it's by choice we can choose not to put these chemicals into our body.

Speaker 1:

We talked about toxins on two episodes ago and how you don't have a choice for all of them. Toxins come in physical, chemical and emotional. And there's Wi-Fi, there's EMF, there's radiation, there's microwaves, there's all these other things that are happening in your environment. Where there's pollution, there's air pollution, there's carbon monoxide, there's a whole bunch of things around you that you can't control. You can't go outside with a gas mask walking around. I guess you could to try and filter all the air every minute of your life you could. But there's pollution. It's the way it is the off-gassing in your home, in a newer home, with the laminate floors and the carpet and the new oak table that you bought or the new furniture that you got, it's going to off-gas.

Speaker 1:

These are all additives and these are all stimulants to the human body. Then there's environmental pollution, chemical pollution, corporate pollution, polluted water we talked about this and you can't filter all of that. You'd be a very weird. Well, you'd be the bubble boy, right, you'd be in a bubble. It doesn't work that way. So we don't have the choice to decrease Wi-Fi, maybe not have Wi-Fi in the home. We talked about those things.

Speaker 1:

But the choices that you can make are easily like what you put in your mouth for sure. If you keep your mouth closed and you don't put that in there, then that additive and those chemicals can't get into your body. Make sense. So we're talking about the things we can make choices on. So instead of bright colors, like we choose bland foods or real foods. Instead of having Froot Loops for cereal, we're going to make egg whites and some other stuff for cereal. We're going to have some bread and butter. We're going to have some healthier choices no food dyes in there.

Speaker 1:

So the things that we can do, you can do, to avoid these harmful additives is read labels. Number one you see color in there. I would just avoid it and I gave you the top five or six red, 40, yellow, five yellow, six blue, one blue, two green, three. Those are the ones. So there's one red, two yellows, two blues and one green that you should probably avoid on all costs. You may see some other ones out there, but they're not labeled with a green number. The numbered ones are the ones approved by FDA that can be into food and pretty much all of them are not good. They're additives that do disrupt neurotransmitters in the brain. So read the label. Number one thing you can do is just blindly buying things based on the packaging and how good it looks Not the best decision we can make.

Speaker 1:

Choose Whole Foods. You go through the Whole Foods section. You're going to avoid artificial dyes, because an apple is an apple and an orange is an orange. They're minimally processed. If you buy organic, they're minimally sprayed and they're probably less GMO and all that other stuff in there as well. Look for natural alternatives. You know some companies use beet juice for red, turmeric for yellow and orange, spirulina for green, for color, instead of synthetic dyes. So that's pretty cool. So if you see turmeric or beet juice or spirulina on the side of the thing, that's probably what they're using, more so for the dye and the color of the presentation than the taste. Uh, beet juice is mainly sugar the thing, or sugar beets is where we get in america a lot of our processed sugar from. So beet juice is, you know, a great red dye. Turmeric gives you a great yellow color and those are probably used in more healthy foods to get the food the color that it needs to be and support policy changes.

Speaker 1:

We're in a time in the United States that's very exciting, with a fresh look at policy, fda, cdc, the foods, the drugs that are being forced onto people. This is a great time to get involved and just write a letter or support a bill that you see going out there. I know Florida is passing something right now on chemicals being released from airplanes a bill saying that you know you can't actively do this without some type of warning or some type of foreshadowing or being transparent about this. That's something we can support about or maybe you know, or maybe you don't care about that, but support the ones that you do care about. There's going to be a lot of fda changes coming up now. That's where you write a letter and you send it to your representative and say, hey, I support bill number number number because these dyes have been in uh, in our food for decades and it's time, with the literature, that we all know that these things should not be allowed in them anymore. And it's writing that simple letter and the representatives see this in an overwhelming support and then hopefully they do their due diligence and support the people and vote in favor of what we support. Right. So it's an exciting time.

Speaker 1:

The European Union has strict regulation on food dyes and the US may fall suit with enough consumer demand if we are loud enough about this and the europeans were loud about this in the 90s. Very loud about this is stop putting stuff in our food. They love food out there the mediterranean culture, the spaniards, the italians, the greeks, the french, the ones they started figuring out the things are being put in the food. They're like forget it. The people actually stopped buying it. So Kraft, one of the big companies, pepsi, all of them had to change their products to a piece to the people because they were just not buying it. They were voting with their dollars. I don't see that happening in America. If it's on the shelf, americans will grab it.

Speaker 1:

So what we need to do is support policy changes on that as well, and then observational behavioral changes in your children. Keep an eye out for this. If you see random mood swings, especially, you know you hear the story. Hey, we went, took the family to Orlando, we came back but we've got some mood issues and they joke. Parents joke like how could you have mood issues when we're on the roller coasters at Universal Studios? And they're like we just took you on this trip. How are you all upset? Well, it's a change in scenery. It's overstimulation, yes, but go back to the foods that they were probably eating. You probably didn't pack enough food for three days to do breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. You went out. Think about those things. Well, where do we go? Do they probably have additives in there? Yes, is that what's affecting my child? And being more aware and being like oh man, maybe we do have a child that's sensitive to certain matters. Let's dig into that and help support them better by knowing which ones they are, avoiding them in the future and helping them eat cleaner and more organic. Those are the strategies I use for my family. Those are strategies you should look into as well, if you have any more.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for the feedback, even the angry emails like there's no literature behind this. Well, I just gave you like six or seven published research studies on this stuff and it's in peer reviewed journals. So we are following up with this. And just because the FDA has allowed things we talked about this on the last podcast the allowable dose in food is a non-toxic dose. So just because it doesn't kill you once you eat it or cause immediate cancer and the FDA approves it, doesn't mean it's good for you. It just means that it's not a toxic dose.

Speaker 1:

The FDA's job is to protect the people from dying, not necessarily protect them from neurodevelopmental disorders, adhd and all this other stuff. That's not their job. They can't do it all. So they're there to put immediate threats that could damage people's health in the immediate consumption of those foods and drinks. That's the FDA's job. And drugs as well, right. So that's their job there to make sure that things don't kill people like Vioxx. And then when Vioxx starts to kill people, they pull it off the shelf, right. So that's the FDA's job and I wouldn't put your family's health in the FDA's hands. It's your job to do that and that's where this podcast came from.

Speaker 1:

But your responses are great. They're great questions. They're out there saying, hey, where's the literature on that? Boom? I did a consumable podcast today on a little bit of the research to not overstimulate you. But keep in mind about that, springtime's here. We got the Easter eggs coming out, we got the candies coming out and you'll see the light pastel ones. Choose those. Those are probably not blue, red 40 and blue one and all those other ones that we talked about. They're probably turmeric or beet juice and those are the ones to choose for your family this year. Stay well, stay healthy. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week. Have a great and healthy week.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host