Navigating the murky waters of food dyes and their potential impact on children's behavior can be overwhelming. It's a topic that has puzzled scientists and parents alike, stirring up a sea of mixed research and inconclusive results. As a mother of neurodivergent children, I've walked this path, wrestling with research studies, and trying to make sense of it all. I've been sharing my personal journey and learnings about food dyes, guiding you on how to critically analyze these studies, and helping you draw your own conclusions.
In the midst of these perplexing questions, I emphasize the importance of safeguarding our children's relationship with food and maintaining a holistic perspective on their health. Join me in this conversation, where we lift the veil of shame associated with food, and aim to foster a healthy, responsible approach to eating.
Show Links:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Navigating the murky waters of food dyes and their potential impact on children's behavior can be overwhelming. It's a topic that has puzzled scientists and parents alike, stirring up a sea of mixed research and inconclusive results. As a mother of neurodivergent children, I've walked this path, wrestling with research studies, and trying to make sense of it all. I've been sharing my personal journey and learnings about food dyes, guiding you on how to critically analyze these studies, and helping you draw your own conclusions.
In the midst of these perplexing questions, I emphasize the importance of safeguarding our children's relationship with food and maintaining a holistic perspective on their health. Join me in this conversation, where we lift the veil of shame associated with food, and aim to foster a healthy, responsible approach to eating.
Show Links:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy feeding with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and lift the shame together. Hey Mama, welcome back to the show. When this episode airs it will be about a week post-Halloween, so I'm hoping that everything went smoothly in your home. I'm always eager to hear how things go with the Halloween candy situation, so if you have any updates you'd like to share, you can always connect with me via email or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:And one question that has come up quite frequently is related to this idea of the additives or food coloring that's often in the candy and sweets that our kids may be consuming, and, as we are rounding out this mini series on kids and sweets, I thought I would briefly address this in today's episode. I just want to preface this conversation by saying that I realized this is a very nuanced topic. There's a lot of controversy around it, and what I'm sharing is simply just my opinion and also just my lived experience as a mother raising neurodivergent children, and so I also just want to acknowledge that this is a very broad topic and I'm just giving a bird's eye view of it in today's episode. But if this is something that interests you and if you would like to hear more information about it, please let me know. I'd be happy to do a deeper dive and maybe do a part two follow up on this.
Speaker 1:But generally the questions that I've been hearing more recently, especially leading up to Halloween, is this idea that you may feel okay with your child consuming sugar. Maybe that's not the thing that you're worried about. Maybe what you're worried about is the additives or food coloring, food dyes that are in the sweets that your kids might be consuming, and so I thought I would address that, because there can be so much fear mongering around specific ingredients in the foods that our kids like and the foods that our kids want to eat, and sometimes that can be inhibiting us from allowing them the permission that they need to access these foods or to feel like they can normalize eating these things, and this is something I've dealt with personally with my own kids. I have two ADHD years and it's interesting to see the foods that they gravitate towards and to understand if this idea of food dyes in particular having any impact on behavior is valid. And this is where I think it comes down to you. I do really believe that it is an individual situation, and this is why I think it's very important that we learn our own kids that we understand what works for them, what doesn't, when it comes to eating routines, schedules, types of foods, especially for something that has a lot of nuance like food dyes. Maybe your child doesn't necessarily have an allergy or intolerance, but maybe you notice certain behavioral changes when they're consuming certain foods versus others. And this is where I just want to clear out some of the clutter for you, because there's also a lot of mixed messages, not just around additives and food dyes in our food and the things that our children in particular might be consuming, but also around sweets too.
Speaker 1:There is a lot of fear mongering again, or myths circulating that sugar causes hyperactivity in our children, and that has largely been debunked, and I will actually include a blog post for you if you're interested in reading more about this as well as some of the research behind it, because this idea that if our kids eat sugar, it's just going to cause them to become hyper can become an issue if it prevents us from allowing our kids access to foods that they enjoy, which, again, if we're restricting what our children have access to, that can be backfire and actually cause them to become more obsessive about some of these foods that they're gravitating towards so along that. I also see this with the food dyes and I'm going to focus mostly on that for today's episode. I know there's a lot of other ingredients that are in question in the food industry, but for today's episode I just want to focus on the food dyes in particular. Now, when it comes to the research that we've seen about this, ultimately the research is very inconclusive. There is not enough scientific evidence that has warranted changes in the regulation of food dyes and additives in the food that we have access to today by the FDA, and there are certain controversies and limitations of the research that has been done on this topic. So one thing to note for studies that have shown some evidence linking food dyes with behavioral changes in children.
Speaker 1:There are pretty significant limitations to the research studies that we have seen with that, and that's something that I wanted to just briefly talk through today, because a lot of people can throw that out there, like this study showed this or this study showed that, and I think it's really important that we learn how to analyze information, because it's really easy to just take what people say out word without understanding what was the structure of the study, what was the design of the study? What was the evidence behind it? Were there any biases? Potentially? These are things that are important before we just take away conclusions that maybe are not clear or specific to that study. And this is something I've seen a lot with food dyes and links to hyperactivity, where people can just throw that out there, like studies have shown that there is a connection, and there have been some studies that have shown a statistically significant increase in hyperactivity in some children who were given food dyes. However, when we look at the design of the study itself, we see that there are many limitations that can make some of their conclusions problematic. Some of these things include things like the study design or the sample size was pretty small and a very small portion of the general population.
Speaker 1:These studies that have looked at this connection typically also use a mixture of artificial colorings, which makes it difficult to determine if there is a specific coloring or combination of additives that might be responsible for observed effects, so that can make it challenging to draw any definitive conclusions. There also is some ethical concerns in these studies in which a mixture of additives was given to young children, and even in a controlled study, this might not, and usually doesn't, reflect typical dietary patterns, meaning when this is being looked at in a scientific study, they're usually giving a higher quantity and concentrated quantity of food dyes to the children who are being observed in this study, when that is not, again, what we would typically see. When a child's eating foods that has food dyes in it, it's not like our kids are just drinking food dyes, and this is essentially one of the big limitations that we see in these studies is that it's not reflective of a typical eating pattern, and that is a big point to understand, because typically when our kids are consuming sweets or other things that have food coloring in it, it's a very minimal amount compared to what we're seeing given to these kids in these studies. The other thing to note is that attempts to replicate these studies findings have produced mixed results, so some support a link between food additives and hyperactivity, while others do not. So this has been something that's been very difficult to replicate in the scientific community, which makes it difficult to draw any conclusive evidence from this research. There's not enough strong evidence to warrant, again, changes in how food additives are regulated by the FDA, specifically here for the United States. So what can we as parents do with this information? Because it isn't conclusive.
Speaker 1:There's so much clutter out there when it comes to this topic. There's a lot of controversy around it, both in the scientific community and in the general population. There's a lot of misunderstanding around it, and I think this can make it really challenging as a parent when you're navigating this with your child. On one hand, you want your child to have a great relationship with all foods. You want to normalize sweets for them. You want them to be able to self-regulate and not have any of these foods up on a pedestal. On the other hand, you may be legitimately concerned about some of the ingredients that are in the foods that your child might be consuming, and I get that, especially as a parent who's raising ADHDers, I feel that too, where there is so much confusion around this topic, it can be hard to know what is the best thing to do for my child, and this is where I just want to give you some encouragement and also help you to just see the bigger picture at hand, and I think the best way to do this is just to share from my own personal experience with my children. So my ADHDers are. I have a daughter who is currently 11, almost 12, and then my son who's seven, and they both are ADHDers. And it's interesting because I have seen potential effects of food dies in different ways and different scenarios with them, where my older daughter seems to be largely unaffected by them, whereas my younger son does seem to have some effect on him and on his behavior and the way that I found this out.
Speaker 1:And I want to share this little story with you and again, this is just from my own personal experience, but when my son was five, we were at a family barbecue and there was a lot of food out on tables, drinks, and, you know, the kids just had free access to everything that was out there. There's ton of food, sweets, a lot of different things happening at the time, and I just remember trying to help my son with something at one point and he was literally melting down. He was struggling, he was screaming, crying, just really acting out of the norm, and I couldn't understand it. He wasn't sleep deprived, he hadn't missed a nap or anything, he was off of naps. Everything just seemed very abnormal and I was trying to rack my brain like what is happening here.
Speaker 1:His behavior seemed very abnormal to me and, interestingly, I saw that he was drinking cupfuls of a drink that was kind of like in a big pitcher on a table and I just assumed that it was pink lemonade and I didn't really know what it was at the time. And I noticed that he had gone back several times to fill up this huge red solo cup of this pink lemonade and which is guzzling it down. And finally I figured out that what was in that huge pitcher was actually crystal light and not just regular pink lemonade. And that kind of cued me in that maybe he is reacting to something that he's consuming from there, because, as we know, crystal light is an artificial drink. It doesn't have real sugar, but it has plenty of other ingredients to make it taste sweet as well as to make it look pink, because this was pink lemonade.
Speaker 1:And I just had a moment of thought where I wondered is he reacting to the high volume of food dyes that he's consuming in this drink? Because he was drinking so much of it like he kept going back and back, and at the time it was just a hypothesis, because we typically don't drink things like crystal light or any type of like diet sodas. We usually just drink real stuff, like real lemonade, and he really hadn't had a lot of exposure to those types of artificial drinks before. So I just started to maybe put some connections together, thinking that maybe this has something to do with it. And it wasn't something that rigidly changed how I approached food with my kids in any way. I just became a little more cognizant of the fact that he seemed to be more sensitive behaviorally to food dies in food, and I also just want to point out that it wasn't the norm that he would drink something like that, especially in the quantities that he was drinking, and this is part of the novelty of foods that our kids are exposed to. Maybe they're not seeing those things in our home, but when they're seeing them outside in other places, it becomes exciting and they want to have a lot of it because they've never really accessed that before.
Speaker 1:And again, it wasn't that he never had lemonade or pink lemonade before, but it was a drink that he enjoyed and he had free access to it and he was going back cup after cup after cup and I honestly don't really know how many cups that he ended up drinking of that. But I definitely noticed a effect on him behaviorally, where he seemed to really really struggle. There was a lot of dysregulation, emotional dysregulation. It really just felt or appeared like he had no control over his body and at that point I cut him off from the crystal light pink lemonade because I just felt like this was having somewhat of effect on him. And, moving forward, it was just something that was in the back of my mind. Is he more sensitive to food dies at this age? And given just him being a neurodivergent child?
Speaker 1:This is what's hard as parents is that oftentimes we're just navigating this on our own without any conclusive evidence. We're just observing what we know of our own children. And what's interesting is, on the other hand, my older daughter, who is an ADHD as well, did not appear to have the same effect, and this is why I do think it's important to look at our children individually, because what affects one child may not affect another child, and that's why I don't think we can just lump all kids in together and say all kids are going to be negatively affected behaviorally by consuming food dies. I also think the quantity is important too, because, again, my son was consuming a very, very large quantity of this crystal light, and that is not something that is a typical eating pattern for him, but it was something that I just kept in my mind, and we have been making an effort to buy food and ingredients that generally are die free. Now, that is not to say that we don't also buy other foods that do have food dye in them as well.
Speaker 1:We are definitely incorporating many different things in the rotation here in our home, and one thing that I have found that has worked well is incorporating sweets and different things that they enjoy and having things available to them on the regular that tend to be die free. We do a lot of grocery shopping at Trader Joe's and they have a ton of amazing candy options that are free of food dye and food coloring, and so those are things that we tend to stock up on more regularly and I just have found that they're very satiating, they taste great and my kids enjoy them, and especially for my son, who's now seven. He seems to do better with those being the things that he's having more frequently and more irregularly. But again, this is not to say that we have a hard line in the sand and aren't also incorporating other things, and this is where I think, as parents, we have to be very careful about how we're navigating this.
Speaker 1:And as an example, on Halloween my kids got so much candy I mean so much candy we had them dump it out at the end of the night and it was like the entire floor was covered with candy. And what's funny is that my son actually prefers over all the candies that he likes. His favorite candies are Skittles, any type of gummies, and red vines and red licorice, and those are like his favorite things. And I just think it's kind of funny because those are the candies that naturally will have more of the food dyes in them. He's not a chocolate kiddo. He literally separated out all his candy and just put all the chocolates into our like communal family candy bowl and he was like I don't want those, I just want these and that is okay. And I knew that it will be more harmful to him and to his relationship with food if I'm too rigid with the candy that he has access to. He got access to that candy. He went trick-or-treating, he was super pumped and excited about all the candy that he got and I know that, as a parent, if I were to take those things away from him, that rigidity will actually make him become more obsessive with those candies. And so he gets to keep all those candies and he's eating them and enjoying them and he's okay, he's fine. Nothing outrageous is happening, he's not melting down, he's doing great. And we let our kids have their Halloween candy pretty frequently in the days following Halloween, where they get to have some with their meals and their snacks. It's in the rotation, so he's eating a good variety of candy and eating it pretty frequently.
Speaker 1:At this point Now, I tell this story because I think it's so important that, as parents, that we assess what are the pros and cons of allowing our kids to have these foods with ingredients that we might be concerned are affecting them, versus restricting their access to these foods, and it's very easy to be consumed by the quality of ingredients that our children are consuming and eating. And this is where, especially if you're a parent who's recovering from an eating disorder, you need to be careful about that line that you're walking, because it's easy to adapt this orthorexic type of tendency and how we feed our kids, where we become so concerned about the quality of ingredients that they're eating that we have a short-sighted view of what is necessary for them to develop a positive and trusting relationship with food, because the more of a big deal we make out of certain ingredients or foods or candies, the more of a big deal they will become in our child's mind. And this is why I think there's not a clear, one-size-fits approach for this issue with food dyes and sweets and our children and their behavior, and especially neurodivergent children who could potentially be a little more susceptible to some of the effects of these additives or food dyes. I also just think it's really important to clarify and say that neurodivergent conditions, so like ADHD or autism, these are neurodevelopmental conditions. These are not caused by eating certain foods or having certain ingredients incorporated into our diet or our children's diet, and I think this is one of the most misinformed myths about food dyes and additives. That is constantly perpetuated and this creates so much stigma around neurodivergent families. Because, again, these conditions are neurodevelopmental. They are largely and predominantly influenced by genetics and biological factors, and for us to perpetuate and by us I mean diet culture at large to perpetuate this idea that we are causing our kids to have autism or ADHD because we're allowing them to have food with food dyes is so misleading and it's very harmful to neurodivergent families.
Speaker 1:There is not a causative effect between consuming food dyes and food additives and neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD and autism. This is something that I think is really important and I feel very passionate about challenging this stigma because I understand the effects of it firsthand. I do also understand to the importance of validating what you, as a parent, are observing in your child, because I think sometimes it can feel like it's such a black and white issue and it's either you allow them or you don't, and I think that polarizing way of approaching these types of issues creates rigidity around food in itself, which makes food way more complicated and chaotic than it needs to be, and that's where we start to develop food rules and our kids pick up on that and that can now complicate their relationship with food. So I always think it's important to approach these issues with a lot of nuance and to explore the gray areas and I don't think it's all or nothing or black and white and I think it's important that you feel validated as a parent around any potential observations that you're noticing with your child and this is something I've seen anecdotally too with families that I've worked with, some who notice that their kids largely seem unaffected by the food that they're eating, whereas others seem to notice a direct correlation between my child eats this type of food and it really affects their behavior or their emotional state, and I do think it's important that you feel validated as a parent with what you're observing. I also just want to say, as a word of caution, that sometimes we have this like self fulfilled prophecy, where we are looking for evidence to support a claim in our mind that we already believe and there's actually been studies that have shown that that this was a study that was done on analyzing the effects of sugar and behavior on children actually, and they were looking at how parents actually observed their children after consuming a sugary beverage.
Speaker 1:But what was interesting is that the researchers kind of tricked the parents and told the parents that their kids had ingested a sugary beverage. And then they wanted the parents to observe the child's behavior. And what was interesting is, in reality it was just the placebo. The researchers didn't give the kids a sugary beverage, they just gave them I don't know water or sparkling water or something like that, that didn't have any added sugar in it. And what was interesting was the parents. Many of the parents reported observing that their child seemed more hyperactive after having a sugary beverage.
Speaker 1:So the reason I tell you this study and I think it's interesting is because there is sometimes a self fulfilling prophecy where we are looking for evidence in our kids to support a belief about our children that we already have, where it's like I think or I believe that my child will be hyperactive after they have this or eat that, and then we're looking for evidence to support that. That's why these studies can be very difficult, because there is a subjective measure which is always harder. It's not this hard objective criteria. A lot of it has to do with what are we observing, and that's why I think it's always important to have an open mind and consider the different things your child is exposed to and how it might be affecting them, and also this for children as they get older being able to have those conversations with them where we can ask those self reflective questions like, well, how do you feel after having this? How does that make you feel? And these are things that I'm starting to explore with my older daughter, as she is an ADHD error and we talk about like, how do you feel after you have this or eat that? And is it difficult for you to focus? Are you having more symptomatic behaviors, and not just with food, but with many other things? Food tends to be the culprit that we put all the blame on, but we have to remember that our kids are not living in a vacuum. There's so many different other factors that can be also influencing their behavior, their emotional state and all of those things.
Speaker 1:So what is the bottom line? What is the takeaway? I know I'm not really giving any conclusive evidence here, and again, that is because this subject doesn't have any conclusive really takeaways at this point. What I think is important here is keeping your eye on the big picture at hand. If you, as a parent, are feeling stressed or obsessive about the quality of food that your child is eating. If you are feeling so stressed about them, potentially eating ingredients that feel questionable to you, such as food dyes or additives, that stress is far worse for your health and for your child's health than literally anything your child can eat, and this is why I think we have to have this big picture of you in mind, because we'd like to make it all about the food Eat that don't eat. This.
Speaker 1:We have to remember that we're living in a world where all of these foods exist and we can gatekeep all we want in our own home and prevent our children from having access to certain foods that include ingredients that feel questionable to us. But the older they get and the more exposure they have to the food, the more they get to the food, to the world, they will have more exposure to these foods in different shapes and forms. They're going to go to a friend's house or a birthday party. They're going to grow up and go to college and be able to buy their own food. They will be able to buy things that we maybe never let them have access to, and it will be harder for them to learn how to regulate and eat these foods if they've never had the opportunity, and this is why I think it's important that we keep that big picture of you in mind.
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean that you can't include foods in your home Like, for example, maybe it's your preference to buy candies that don't have food dyes in them, and those are the things that are largely in the rotation in your home. However, if your child does get access to those foods or is showing interest in having those foods you know they saw so-and-so at school, having a fruit roll up, and now they're all excited and they want to try that and they're asking about it and they're showing that high interest. That's where it's important that we are responsive to what our kids are showing us and we can find ways to tangibly and proactively incorporate those things in our home so that our child feels that they're accessible and doesn't now put those foods or those candies up on a pedestal. These are important things to keep in mind. We want to think about the long-term goals. We want our children to be able to self-regulate, to have a positive relationship with all foods and to not feel like certain things are inaccessible or now they're internalizing this belief or this message that these foods are bad, when those things are becoming part of their eating experiences and the rhetoric that they're building around food. They start to formulate guilt and shame around eating, and it can create a damaging effect on their relationship with food over the long term. So, again, keeping the big picture in mind, what are the things that you're keeping in the rotation in your home?
Speaker 1:What is your response to your child having exposure to some of the foods or candies or sweets or ingredients that maybe you don't feel comfortable with, and how can you find a middle ground where you can be responsive to the things that your child is showing an interest, while also being supportive of their overall health and wellness? I know it can be hard and I hope this just gives you some food for thought or some things to think about as you're navigating this with your own children. This does tend to come up post-Halloween a lot, which is why I wanted to just touch on this subject and again, as you can see and are hearing, there's a lot of nuance here and a lot of other things that we can explore. So I'd love to hear from you and just hear. What are your questions, what are your concerns, what are things that you're observing?
Speaker 1:Ultimately, we want our children to know that they are safe to consume a variety of foods unless they're allergic to something right. That's a different subject, but we don't want our children to internalize guilt or shame from our projected fears that may be coming out in our feeding interactions with our children. I know it can be hard to post-Halloween when our kids have a large volume of candy that is not the norm for them and they might be getting access to a variety of different candies that they don't frequently see, which can give us some good data to work with. Where do I need to potentially expose my child or allow them to have access to things that they do enjoy but that I don't regularly keep in my home? This is a good point of self-examination, self-awareness, self-exploration to really assess how you're approaching food and ask yourself am I gatekeeping something for my child because I'm fearful of them eating that or how that might affect them? We want to remember that the effects of restricting or controlling feeding tactics are ultimately more harmful for your child's health than literally anything they can consume. That is definitely kind of a big picture takeaway that I do want you to have, because it's so easy to get consumed in all this fear-mongering, messaging around food dyes or additives or all these inquestible ingredients, but we conveniently gloss over the damaging effects of kids feeling restricted or controlling feeding tactics, and the impact of that on our kids and how they feel about food. Again, that is more damaging, I would argue, to their overall health and wellness than allowing them to have access to the foods that they do enjoy and, again, finding ways to incorporate that in your home that fits for your family. I know.
Speaker 1:For me, one thing that I just became more aware of, especially after this Halloween, was the Skittle situation. My son loves Skittles, and I don't think I've been as intentional about incorporating just plain old Skittles in our house, and I definitely want to make more of an effort to do that, because I see how much he enjoys them, and he loves having a pack of Skittles to throw in his lunchbox and being able to eat that food without any guilt or shame. That is what I want for him, and so it was really helpful for me to reflect on that through this past Halloween experience, and I hope you've been able to do the same too, because, oh, my friend, there is so much fear mongering information, and I don't want you to be bogged down with it. I want you to be able to enjoy food as a family free from all this guilt and shame that so often comes with the rhetoric and messages out there that diet culture is just perpetuating about food. So I hope this gave you some food for thought and just some encouragement.
Speaker 1:Again, I would love to hear from you if you want me to touch on this subject in a deeper matter, if you want us to go on a deep dive or revisit this and do a part two. Let me know your thoughts and we'll see if we can give you some more resources and information around this. But, as always, I just so appreciate you being here and part of this community. I am sending you so much love and I cannot wait to connect with you again next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your mother-her journey, come connect with me on Instagram at Crystal Cargays. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.