Hello and welcome to the Consistency Project podcast. My name is Patrick Cummings. As always, I'm here with E.C. Sinkowski. Every week on the show, we aim to simplify the science of nutrition, health and fitness, cutting through the noise to focus on the principles and practices that will help you perform better, feel better, and of course live better. Thank you so very much for tuning into the show. Hello, and how are you, EC? Good. How are you doing?

Wondrous. We're doing, we're doing well. We're jumping into some headlines today. We're going to talk

about some things you've seen in the news, as they say. We're going to cover three topics. We're going to

talk about why red dye number three has been banned and whether that's a real health risk.

We're going to talk about concerns about heavy metals in protein powders and what we need to know about it.

And then the last thing we're going to talk about is the latest updates on alcohol consumption and its link to cancer risks.

Cool.

Have these articles, these things in the news been sent to us, or are these things that you've just seen in your scrolling?

I think, well, two of them definitely were questions, the red dye number three and the heavy metals, direct questions.

The alcohol one just got a bunch of press, and I think alcohol is often of interest to people. So yeah, I figured we should add that into the

mix. All right, cool. We're going to start with red dye number three. It was banned in January.

So we're going to try about what it is, why it was banned, and the risks or presumed risks.

So let's just start with a little background on what red dye number three

even is. How do we use it? How does it show up? And of course, why was it banned? Yeah. Yeah,

synthetic food dye. No surprise with a name like red dye number three, not natural.

I'm a red dye number three tree here. I don't know what you're talking about.

And no surprise.

It colors things red, that bright cherry color, popsicles, cupcakes, cookies, all that stuff.

It was approved for food and medicine use since 1969.

Interestingly enough, it was banned in cosmetics as of 1990, but it was just in this January 2025 that it was banned in food and drugs after a petition was filed in 2022.

And the companies have until 2027 to reformulate their products and get rid of it.

Now, the reason it was banned is based on the Delaney Clause, which we actually

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