Hello, I'm Monica Reinagall, and you're listening to The Nutrition Diva Podcast Welcome.

Nutrition Diva listener Courtney writes, so many foods include artificial colors like

yellow, five, lake, red, forty, lake, blue, one, and so on.

And I've heard from several people that artificial red dyes are the worst, what makes them the

worst, and are they really bad for you?

You know, Courtney's right, if you start reading ingredient lists, you might be surprised

to see how many foods have added colorings. And I'm not just talking about rainbow colored

cereals or other garishly tinted items. I'm talking about things like yogurt, cheese, gravy,

and crackers, foods that don't look colored at all. For example, a blue dye might be added

to make white frosting look whiter. You might also have wondered about the names of these

ingredients. They're a little odd. The synthetic dyes approved by the FDA for use in foods are

identified by number as in yellow number five or blue number one. And then that word lake

indicates that the straight dye has been mixed with a mineral salt so that it's insoluble

in water. So the straight dyes are generally used in drinks and other liquid products,

and the lake colors are used in baking and other solid foods. But why? Why are we adding so much

color to our food? You know, we may think that we don't want anything unnatural in our food,

but studies of consumer preference repeatedly show that foods that are enhanced with synthetic

coloring are more appealing than foods made without coloring, or even those made with natural

colorings. The color actually affects how we perceive the taste. So macaroni and cheese made with

yellow dye tastes creamier and cheesier than the all natural brands with no color added or

colored with turmeric or something. Synthetic colors tend to be a lot more stable, and ironically,

they are better at making food look the way we think it should look. And all of the colorings

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