Dr. Botta's Health Blog & News
5/12: Colors - The Good, The Bad, and The Yummy!
Posted on: Thursday, May 12, 2011
Keywords: Yogurt, Food, Dye, Sugar, Hydrogenated, Corn, Syrup, Fructose
Colors, beautiful colors, they are all around us and in our food and drink.
Oranges, apples, bananas, and grapefruits. Lemons, limes, grapes, and coconuts.
How do you keep artificial dyes out of your food supply? Don’t buy them!
Black beans, white beans, lima beans, and tomatoes. Green beans, corn, eggplant, and potatoes.
When you buy food, you have a choice. There are many options out there and some are better than others and some are way better than those.
One common example is yogurt. There is an abundance of choice when it comes to this food. When looking at the ingredient list, the dyes are usually listed at the end. The only "dyes" at the end of my list are generally from beets and carrots. Not F & D # whatever. Can you see what I’m getting at? Look for color additives that come from foods in nature.
If you are wondering if food dyes affect you or your children, why wait for a government entity to decide what you consume? Make a conscious choice to eliminate or at least drastically reduce the amount of food dyes in both your food and drinks. Even Wal-mart sells items without allegedly harmless dyes. It’s up to you to read the labels and make conscious choices.
Try this with your family for 2-3 weeks. See if you notice less hyperactivity, more focused attention and many other positive outcomes. I did and therefore I don’t need a study funded by the food dye companies to tell me there isn’t anything detrimental about their product because I know better and you can too.
If the kids can’t survive without something, have it once a week. We had Kool-Aid Sundays for awhile -- whew! they were quite the days to get through -- but now they don’t even ask for it. Now they are the ones reading the labels in the store trying to outdo their sibling at which drink or food is better tasting and healthier than the other. They are getting better at it than I am!
We stick to these general guidelines:
- Sugar less than 10g per serving.
- NO artificial sweeteners.
- No F & D #’s.
- No partially hydrogenated anything.
- No high fructose corn syrup.
They have found many new items we won’t do without and I am happy that they are behaving better, gaining knowledge and making conscious, good choices.
You have choices too! I hope I have given a little bit of helpful advice to make those choices good ones.
Be well!
Dr. B
Previous Health Post: Brain Injury, Nerve Damage and Garden Hoses