With the current frenzy around banning food additives, and particularly banning artificial colors, I thought I’d recount a little story about the impact of food additives on someone’s life. The story involves artificial food colors or “dyes.” A 4-year old boy named Trenton started pre-K. He started having nightmares and public meltdowns. His mother couldn’t figure out why this was suddenly happening. She searched and searched for an explanation. Then, it hit her! Artificial colors in food. She put a “sad face” on all the foods in their pantry with artificial food dyes in them, and two days later, the problem went away! Trenton stopped having nightmares and meltdowns! So, let’s all make a big stink about artificial colors in foods.
My more astute readers pick up what I’m putting down. Trenton’s life changed drastically. He had to now go somewhere during the day, away form his mom, and be with a lot of strange kids and at least one strange adult. He started having nightmares and meltdowns. So, naturally, it must be the artificial food colors he had been ingesting all along that suddenly caused his behavioral changes, not the scary new pre-K thing. What most likely happened is that Trenton figured out that pre-K wasn’t all that bad and was actually pretty fun. And those strange new children were now his new friends.
“Growing Movement” of Concerned Citizens Wanting to Ban Artificial Colors in Food
And yet, this story was told in an article published by WebMD.com, an outfit you’d think would know better than to publish something so blatantly anecdotal and unscientific. Trenton’s mom, according to the article, joined a “growing movement” of concerned consumers who directly petition food companies to change their ingredients and stop using artificial colors. Another unscientific, or at least not data-driven statement. What defines a “growing movement?” How many people are involved in this movement? How do we know how fast it is growing? Is it growing at all? Or, is this movement, in fact, a relatively small special-interest group that has an outsized influence on what goes into food? Small, that is, compared to the millions of people who actually buy a particular food product. In other words, are food ingredients and manufacturing a case of “minority rule?”
How many people actually care whether Kraft Macaroni and Cheese uses Yellow dyes 5 and 6? And, do we really not want our M&M’s to come in the classic brilliant colors, colors made possible by artificial dyes? Loud and brash “food bloggers” like Vani Hari have convinced, for example, Kellogg’s to remove artificial colors from Froot Loops. Before long, Froot Loops lovers who had heard nothing about Vani Hari started complaining that their Froot Loops were turning brown in the milk and leaving the milk looking like mud. Kellogg’s quietly went back to the original formula and customers stopped complaining. We could ask whether Kellogg’s knew what they were doing all along.
Why Do They Get a Vote About What We Eat?
Here is the pertinent question. Are the people who complained about the colors in Froot Loops cereal actually buying and eating Froot Loops? I’m going to venture a guess: Most of them do not. They can choose not to consume such products, after all.
Most people who regularly enjoy Froot Loops do not give a darn about whether the cereal uses artificial colors. And no, this is not because they are all ignorant and never heard of artificial colors. It’s because, for the most part, it doesn’t concern them. Instead, they had their beloved Froot Loops altered because of the loud complaints of a bunch of concerned citizens, shouting loudly about banning artificial colors when those people don’t even eat the cereal. Froot Loops, after all, are not cigarettes. You don’t have to worry about second-hand Red #4 poisoning.
Tiny Petitions for Big Changes
The same WebMD article provided some numbers that illustrate this point. Shutters, the mother of 4-year old Trenton, started a petition. In two years, more than 182,000 people signed Shutters’ petition. While this is a lot of signatures for a petition, it is not “throngs of supporters” relative to the billions of people who consume products using artificial colors.
Shutters also went directly to the FDA. But, she didn’t have much scientific evidence to back her concerns. When using petitions, groups don’t have to have evidence. They just have to show the food companies that they don’t like an ingredient. Shutters petition was and is too broad to affect the practices of any food companies and it will not likely influence any FDA decisions. But when such petitions are aimed at a single food product, companies often give in to what they think consumers want. Should 182,00 signatures be enough to convince M&M Mars to change the ingredients in M&Ms? Over 400 million M&M candies are produced each and every day in factories that run 24/7.
When Were the First Food Stamps Printed in the United States?
The Consequences of Banning Artificial Colors and Other Food Additives
When I call it “minority rule” I’m pretending that most of us have a vote. But this is not a democratic process. This is the equivalent of a customer “complaining to the manager” of a business and having that business change its polices in response, even when most of the customers never complain. What’s more, this results in the business raising its prices for all it’s customers. If artificial colors were banned completely in the United States, you would pay more for many of the products you regularly buy, whether or not you had a voice in the process. Such a ban would have far-reaching consequences on our economy and food supply. Not only would the availability of products decrease, the prices for those products available would sky-rocket. The well-to-do who loudly complain about the food industry while enjoying an abundant lifestyle would be less impacted by these changes than those who struggle to afford healthy food in the first place.
Yet, not only do we not get a vote, the majority of food consumers don’t choose to “vote” in the form of petitions or any other method. Regardless, many internet users think that there is growing outcry about food additives and about fear of big food companies in general. In fact, most people in America simply do not have the luxury to be concerned about such things. They are too busy being concerned about whether or not they can afford food at all. To explain this, I need to talk about food deserts.
You see, the question that is frequently asked is why don’t people know any better than to buy processed foods full of terrible and potentially harmful food additive. It’s the wrong question. It assumes that everyone has equal access to food variety. They do not. In many rural areas and inner city areas alike, people have very few choices as to where they must purchase food unless they travel many miles away from their home. For those who lack transportation or cannot afford the additional expense, this means that they have to shop at whatever grocery story is near enough to their home. In many cases, there may be one store. In some cases, there are none, placing an additional food burden on these families. Often, people have to travel out of their way to find one grocery store and still be presented with limited choice, overly high prices, and expiring meats and vegetables. These people live in food deserts.
What is a Food Desert?
A food desert is an area where people have low access to healthy foods. People in inner-city or low-income rural areas often live in food deserts. These are places where the people of the community have limited access to supermarkets or even large grocery stores. Often, the food choices they do have are not nutritious, poor quality, and unaffordable. Typically, the stores that are available only stock limited healthy items such as fruits or vegetables. Individuals living in such areas may not have access to transportation or would have to use public transportation to travel many miles away from home to buy groceries, only to have to transport these groceries back using the same public transportation, often changing busses or trains several times in the process. Research shows their is a strong link between obesity rates, chronic diet-related diseases, and food deserts.
For a person who lives in a food desert, worrying about food additives would be a luxury. Having access to a variety of fruits and vegetables would be an extravagant luxury. Those who imagine that all their health problems are caused by toxic ingredients in the expensive foods they purchase while also enjoying an abundance of fresh produce and meats are living in an ivory tower, unaware of the true consequences of lifetime of malnourishment. The current movement concerning food additives like artificial colors is truly a case of minority rule over food. If such individuals were truly concerned about the food supply, they’d want to address the growing lack of food for many Americans.