When Ihuoma Eneli, MD, MS, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, advises her patients to load their plate up with colors for optimal nutrition, she’s not talking about brightly-colored candies or vivid treats found in snack aisles. She means fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed foods.
“There are so many different ramifications to how we approach and see food,” she says. “The message in the clinical space, especially related to food dyes, is to opt for whole foods as much as possible. If you pick up a particular item at the grocery store and it looks jazzy and has artificial coloring, you may want to reach for something else.”
A renewed focus on how food dyes impacts nutrition has prompted a wave of new laws, regulations, and efforts to minimize petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the food supply.
While some states have moved to ban certain food dyes and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced earlier this year the agency’s plan to work with industry to phase out certain dyes, Eneli and many of her colleagues working in nutrition say food dyes are a complex subject and emphasize that their relationship to processed foods also have an important place in the conversation.
No 'magic switch' in banning dyes
Understanding what synthetic dyes mean for overall health isn’t a simple task, says Kristen Sutton, PhD, a research fellow in the T32 Nutrition program in the Department of Pediatrics.
“One of the most challenging aspects of studying food dyes and whether they are linked to conditions such as cancer or childhood behavior is that these food dyes are more common in ultraprocessed foods that are also more likely to be high in sodium and saturated fat and low in nutrients,” she says. “It’s hard to isolate the food dye as the culprit for certain health and behavioral issues, and it’s not likely to be a magic switch for health if food dyes are taken out of the food system.”
Existing research around food dyes has mostly taken place in observational studies, which are more likely to be affected by confounders and bias compared to clinical trials, or in animal models and has not yet been replicated in humans.
These findings may still provide a cautionary signal, Sutton says, but more research is likely needed to confirm those findings.
For example, some studies have suggested synthetic food dyes worsen symptoms in children with ADHD, but the results have not been consistent “and it is difficult to isolate the effect of only the additive dyes from many other overlapping factors that affect behavior in childhood,” Sutton says.
A focus on whole nutrition
The shift in how many people think about food dyes often lends itself to a holistic viewpoint of wellness – which Eneli says has generally been a good thing.
“From a medical perspective, I notice that families are somewhat more knowledgeable than 15 to 20 years ago. More importantly, they are engaged,” she says.
This has meant a lot of questions about food dyes, but also organic food versus non-organic food, pesticides, and environmental contaminants that may be present in the food supply.
“For food dyes, as the general population is learning more about processed foods and ultraprocessed foods, how unhealthy they can be, and how they’re linked to obesity, there’s a realization that there are food colorings that can be natural,” Eneli says.
In many ways, food dyes have become a piece of a larger conversation – even if they are receiving more fanfare than ever. In the research world, there’s still more to learn about the health effects of food dyes, but for now, Sutton and Eneli say the basics hold true.
“A healthy diet will contain a balance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, nuts or legumes, healthy oils, and protein foods,” Sutton says.
