Noble Pig

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Are You Against It?

I know a lot of people feel very strongly about it.

I don’t, knowingly at least, eat copious amounts of it.  At least I don’t think I do.

But I also don’t actively stay away from it.  I know many who do.

I know many are crazy against it.  But I will happily eat piece of red velvet cake without even thinking twice about it.  (And we all know how much is in there).

So last night, as the Wild Boar and I consumed our grilled salmon for dinner, we wondered if it would have been as visually appealing had it not been injected with the usual red dyes.

Would we buy gray salmon?

Artificial food dyes…how against them are you?

Comments

  1. Hmmm, I don’t know that I have a stance either way. I guess I wouldn’t intentionally eat mass quantities of it, but I wouldn’t purposely avoid them. I don’t smoke or do other purposefully harming activities to myself, so maybe that affords me the right to eat some food coloring?

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  2. That’s part of the reason I don’t eat red velvet cake all that much – all the red dye that goes into it! But I still eat it every so often. 🙂

    I never really thought a lot about artificial colorings, but for me, I don’t add much if at all in my own baked goods.

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  3. I’m not against it if they’re used with moderation. I do a loy of fondant cakes and couldn’t do it without the artificial colors, because who would like an all white cake, except brides? But then I never eat the fondant cover, not because the colorings, just because of the sugar.

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  4. I would call myself an “independent” here.
    If the food I am about to eat has been infused with A.F.D.’s, then I would like to judge it by it’s individual characteristics and talents.
    Is it pretty?
    Is it tasty?
    Will it help me satisfy my sweet tooth?
    I am an equal opportunity eater.

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  6. My mother is 92 years old, made red velvet cake all her life and eats pink salmon when presented; she eats anything her lovely heart desires. Yeah, I’d eat pink salmon, red velvet cake, red licorice, red popsicles, etc etc. I’m not afraid!

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  7. Here in Maine we have red hot dogs. I won’t even look at what’s in them but I eat them. Not so much as an adult but as a child a whole lot. Now I don’t let my kids eat stuff with dye in it except every so often. We are not EVER going to turn down red velvet cake we just don’t make it at home. I also used to eat, as a teen, large quantities of red pistachios. Yum

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  9. Being one with intolerances myself, I do avoid dyes for the most part. I try to follow Michael Pollan’s guidance about not eating processed foods with so many ingredients one is clueless about (the “only eat what your great grandmother would recognize as food” principle … he says grandmother, but my grandmothers were all about the convenience of processed foods and NEVER read labels).

    Every time I tried a particular popular sports drink, I’d get a headache without fail. I mentioned that to my husband who suffers with headaches a lot (enough to take daily medication to prevent them). He stopped drinking it and his breakthrough headaches disappeared. He had drunk this sports drink for years previously without incident. He mentioned the incident to his neurologist who suggested that the sport drinks might have changed their food dyes recently. So dyes can definitely have an impact. Our son was one who would be off the wall as a child if he took a medicine (e.g., cough syrup) that was red or orange. He still sees that as a young adult and self monitors.

    I’d buy gray salmon. I love salmon.

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  10. Who me the Red Velvet Cake Roll-had-to-make-18-of-the-things-right-before-Christmas? I did cut down on the dye as it does change the flavor of the cake. I think we eat more dye and preservatives than we would ever like to know or think. It is everywhere!

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  11. Ack! I didn’t know! Do they inject all salmon, or just wild? I do not like wild…I know, I’m the only one. What about salmon trout? Is it naturally that pink color? How do you find these things out? Why is canned salmon the pink color? Ack!

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  13. Eh. I don’t worry about it too much. I don’t particularly care for red velvet cake and I’ve never seen the need for putting the food coloring in it. It really doesn’t add to the aesthetic appeal in my opinion. I had no idea salmon is not naturally pink!

    I have an aunt and a cousin who are highly allergic to red dyes and have known several kids who had allergies to it which caused symptoms similar to ADHD. Those people all have other food allergies as well.

    There are other things I’m much more concerned about than food dyes. Artificial sweetners freak me out. I’ve seen the effect they can have on me (leave me jittery, weak, barely able to stand, heart palpitating wildly). I know someone who started having grand mal seizures because he started drinking diet pop. He’d never had a seizure prior to that and never had another one after quitting. The stuff is known to cause problems and yet so many people who don’t need to drink diet pop or consume artificial sweetners in other things. Okay, so, who really *needs* to? I allow a pass for people who are diabetic.

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  14. I try to limit it because FD&C Red Dye number 40 is a derivative of coal. However, some things can’t be avoided…like a lovely red velvet cake. *lol*

    I will however eat things coloured with carmine or carminic acid because whilst it’s disgusting, it’s natural. It’s derived from ground beetle (some south American beetle I think) carcasses. I think it’s mostly in cosmetics/shampoos now days because it’s more expensive than using coal derived colours, but I’d rather have carmine based products leeching through my system than anything else.

    Wasn’t there some big bruhaha a while back about red food colouring? I know they’ve changed the formulation, but as it stands, still a coal derivative.

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  15. Honestly…the thought has never crossed my mind. It really hasn’t! So I guess the answer to your question would be I’m not against artificial food dyes. But I will say some of the red colors they use are nasty bitter. I won’t eat those, mostly because they taste gross.

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  18. I just checked my pantry and I do not have one item in it with red dye listed as an ingredient. I sure hope the Good Lord is not injectinig tomatoes and strawberries with red dye, because I eat the heck out of them. That is about the only red food I eat. How about red wine? Now I am wondering if there is not coloring in some wines??
    Anyway, I can neither be for red dye or against it, since I am no authority on it. I know it is supposed to be bad for you…but actually I never gave it a second thought.

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  19. Have to say, around easter, strongly for them. Other than that, I don’t look for them. But thinking about my love of M&M’s – can you imagine only grey M&M’s? I’m a big lover of color:)

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  21. I’m not adamantly against it in food I buy, but I’ll never use any of it in food I make. Things either get the color they came with, or I’ll toy around with herbs and spices to try to pep colors up a bit.

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  24. Doesn’t bother me a bit. But I know some kids react to it and such and it should then be limited or omitted. Can you believe I’ve never had red velvet cake? I want to though. And I just had salmon last night. It was the prepacked prefrozen kind and it seemed a little gray. A little color would have been great! Though it tasted fine.

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  25. I don’t think I’ve had Red Velvet cake so I don’t know that I can take a stand on red dye. However, I have eaten many, many, many salmon that I’ve caught myself and I can say with authority that it’s not gray. It’s a lovely “salmon color”! Not all that different from the salmon on display at Costco. I’m trending away from pre-packaged foods and in my soup phase right now, so if someone’s in the veggie aisle injecting color into my leeks and carrots, I’d be pretty surprised!

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  27. I know The Kids would not be such salmon lovers if it was gray. For me, I would just sauce it up so the gray color would be covered up – or eat with my eyes closed.

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  30. Very, very, against food dyes, and farmed fish.

    Wild Salmon are naturally orange because they get plenty of caretenoids in their natural diet. Salmon variety also comes to play when talking about color.

    Farmed salmon is often given food dyes because their diet consists of cheap grains, like wheat, soy, and corn. Grains are not natural to a salmon and do not produce the desired NATURAL color.

    Bottom line, don’t eat food dyes or farmed fish. 🙂

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  31. I have no opinion of red velvet cake, having never had it. I do believe that food dye to make food look more appealing is not a bad thing. We do always judge our dinner by its presentation on our plates, after all; if you look at some of my dinner pictures, there’s always some green and other colors. Given the number of people demanding foods not native to their areas, it’s rather obvious to me that it has to be farmed. Maybe not ideal, but necessary.

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  33. I’m not huge on junk foods usually & I generally try to avoid overly processed foods & dyes, but certainly not with any fervor. And I have never found a reason to avoid Red Velvet cake.
    However, the daughter of a friend of mine (ironically, a red head) is allergic to red dye (she turns into a demon child) and I never realized how much dye is in the food we eat until shopping with her mom.

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  35. Wow. I feel really stupid. I had no idea “they” dyed salmon. I’ve never had red velvet cake but when I saw a recipe recently I decided I had no interest in trying it. I don’t make a huge effort to stay away from artificial coloring (I’m addicted to Gummy Bears) but I’d rather have something natural. And why is is my kids only like the brightly colored yogurt instead of the normal stuff?

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  37. My fanny wouldn’t be the jinormous size it is if I worried about what I eat..I know I should be better and I do try…but not too hard. My thinking with most everything is “Do I need it?” “Do I want it?” or “Do I deserve it?” And I usually go with the last one…

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  38. I don’t think non-dyed salmon is grey, is it? Just not as brightly colored?

    We can’t eat salmon anymore, since it tries to kill my Hunny. Which is very sad, since we all love it so.

    As to dyes, I don’t tend to worry about them overmuch. For my Little Guy it’s sometimes an issue, since he’s ADHD, but I don’t keep any fluids other than water, juice and milk in the house (KoolAid and soda are notorious). And we just don’t buy the kind of food which are loaded with dye. I think it’s like anything else you put in your mouth – all things in moderation.

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  41. well to be honest there is not much we can do about all the chemicals, dyes, preservatives, etc in our foods. But thankfully the organic movement is gaining it’s momentum and becoming more and more available location wise and price wise. I try my best to limit what we intake in terms of chemicals in our foods. Moderation is the key here, for us at least.

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  42. I remember when farmed fish seemed so politically correct. But now, with the addition of dyes to salmon, and training tilapia to eat corn products (can we ever get away from these crazy corn products in EVERYTHING?) I do tend to buy less fish and stick to the ocean fresh product.

    As to your direct question of grey salmon … it would never sell.

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  43. Part of me believes the “they’re all out to kill us” duress involved with attempting to ascertain the dye/preservative/contaminant levels in some foods (and toys) is capable of causing stress and anxiety more damaging than the dyes themselves.

    Red velvet, bring it on. Diet soda tastes better to me than sugared. Multi-colored sprinkles on yogurt are like the proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. (and for our protein challenged daughter, a smidge of dye ensures much needed consumption.)

    I dunno — I’m not going to add or consume seemingly “unnecessary” ingredients willy-nilly, but in moderation, I think just about everything okay.

    Personal soapbox: What about the natural color “removal” achieved when zinfandel grapes are “peeled” for the creation of White Zinfandel? Now THAT is offensive to me! 😉

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  44. I don’t worry about it much – but we’ve been lucky. No food allergies or adverse reactions in our family. I LOVE Red Velvet Cake! Didn’t know Salmon was died though!!!! That just seems all wrong! But, I still will eat it!

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  45. I do believe 20 years from now will show much different eating patterns than we’re seeing today. Wild caught salmon is beautiful – I wonder if they fed farm-raised salmon if it would be the same pretty non-gray color…
    I try to steer clear of artificial dyes and flavorings. That said, hubby GB’s birthday cake last night was Red Velvet. He said it was delicious – I abstained.

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  48. Cath,
    Everything in moderation.
    Yes, I would eat a slice of red velvet cake, once a year, and yes, I would eat those rainbow cookies (more than once a year).
    Apple martinis have food coloring in the green liquor, M&M’s have it, and so does most salmon. Sad truth.
    I do avoid sucralose, nutrasweet and any other artificial sweetener!
    Hey, I need a TAN! Would I take a bite of my husband if he was browned from the spray tan???? (we like real sun!).
    Stace

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  50. I’ve never really cared one way or another. Until my daughter was eating a blantantly red dye filled hot dog. It grossed me out and my husband pointed out that she was, in fact, eating a hot dog. Red dye should be the least of my concerns.

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  52. I’m not overly concerned about dye because I don’t believe I encounter them very often – I rarely eat any kinda of processed food. Once in a while – say if a Red Velvet Cake was available – I would just enjoy.

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  53. Considering that I just made a 2-bottle of food coloring Red Velvet Cheesecake, I’m pretty much ok with it. I’ve never really put a whole lot of thought into it, but I’m well aware that there are those who avoid the whole dye thing (and are very opinionated about it!)

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  54. i lived in sweden for 3 years, and my stomach could tell the difference when i moved back. sweden has rather strict regulations on preservatives and food dyes (and no wax on vegetables! man, i miss that). they’re nowhere near as bright as american dyes. i don’t think dyes are always necessary, especially in foods that, if homemade, wouldn’t have a bright pink color anyway. if there were foods with less dyes i would prefer them, but i don’t think i have any influence over food manufacturers. and mostly i make my own food from scratch, so it’s not something i worry about.

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  55. My 6 year old daughter reacts the same way to Red#40. I won’t allow anything in the house with any FDC colorings (red, yellow or blue). It truly limits alot of treats/candy/drinks we can have. I think 20 years from now many additives will be avoided or outlawed (they already are in many other countries). I know that just because my daughter is sensitive to these additives doesn’t mean everyone is but I believe many of the mysterious illnesses and rise in illnesses is due to all the junk we put in our bodies. I try to cook everything fresh and consume the least amounts of additives as possible. Just my feelings of course.

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  56. Very against. My daughter is allergic to red food coloring. It took us a long time to figure out what was giving her hives but we narrowed it down to red food dye. It is in EVERYTHING!!!!!

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  58. I don’t have the time, energy or money to completely avoid all artificial dyes, although I would prefer to. But for the most part I respond with a resonding “meh”.

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  60. I don’t like the dyes. But there are lots of things they put in our food I don’t like. I just try to make everything from scratch and read the ingredient labels on everything I buy. I try to keep up on all the reports they do but I also know there are stupid (sorry) people out there that will say anything just to sell their product. So all we can do is try to do the best we can and limit the bad stuff. I would really be sad if I never had another piece of Red Velvet Cake or another hotdog. (My dad was a meatcutter/butcher and he wouldn’t touch hotdogs!)

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  61. I say no, except maybe here and there on special occasions. Meaning, I would actively avoid it, I wouldn’t make anything with it in it, but if I was at your house and you did use it, I would eat it. The problem isn’t really the dye itself here and there, it’s that overall most people don’t pay attention to the fact that it’s in tons of other treats and things like fish. On top of all the other toxic like items we eat, it just wreaks havoc on us. So if most of the time you are healthy and eating nutritious food, why not slip it in there?

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  62. working for a baby food company that won’t even use beet juice extract or grape skin extract (both natural colorants) to dye their food, i can safely say that i’m against it…for babies. personally, i’ll eat all the blue #5 and red #40 that i want. 🙂

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  63. I am very much against food dyes, one of the most common causes of hyper activity in children.

    Many would lead you to believe that it is sugar that is the culprit, but not the case. If you think back, our forefathers quite often had a diet very heavy laden with both sugar and carbohydrates. Yet, hyper activity in children was certainly not prevalent then.

    It is the colorants and preservatives and other additives that are the problem. Yeah, they say everyone in moderation is ok, but the problem is, they are in everything, so you are never just eating one little piece of food with additives in it. Thus, you get a cumulative effect.

    When my son was small, I cringed when he was invited to a birthday party. All that colored frosting, he would come home with a grab bag with Amarties, double whammy there. Not only are Smarties coated with colored exteriors, they have chocolate in the center, another thing my son had problems digesting then and now. I made my own popsicles, whatever I could.

    And today, he is the same as me, well both my children are. They cook wholesome foods, usually from scratch and they tell me they taste so much better.

    It is not hard to cook without all that junk, you just have to become a person who reads labels and devotes some time to cooking from scratch instead of resorting to precooked or boxes from the grocery shelves.

    Yeah, I know a lot of you work, but cook large portions on the weekend, freeze, bring them out during the week.

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  64. I don’t think all that much about food coloring, I probably should. I don’t think I eat that much, because I do avoid processed food, but I really have no idea how much I consume. Gray Salmon? If it tastes the same I don’t care what color it is!

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  66. I’m happily on the fence with this. I wouldn’t obviously consume food dyes – I’d definitely say no to blue salmon and green chicken, but I’d happily eat grey salmon.

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  69. It’s funny you should mention this, as we’ve had this discussion before.

    Last year while visiting our friends at their beach house, the guys all went out & purchased fresh salmon just as it came in off the boat. No dyes, no cleaning, no nuttin’.

    While it seemed to taste the same as what I was used to, I just couldn’t get past the color. I grew up on the color & am just not sure I could be such a fan of the undyed salmon. That’s like taking Coke away & replacing it with a new, improved Coke. It’s just not the same.

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  70. I try to eat as close to nature as possible. Not a lot of processing, additives, preservatives. I’m not always all or nothing about it though … M&Ms and Nacho Cheese Doritos come to mind … I don’t deliberately seek them out, but if they’re around I’ll eat them. But … the farther away a food is from it’s natural state the more I question it and usually decide I don’t need to eat it. This is one of my goals for the year too … to be more diligent about this. Wish me luck.

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  72. In the Pacific Northwest we usually consume fresh salmon, so am not sure I have eaten dye injected salmon. I am not sure I would eat it if I had to think about red dye being injected into it, but I do consume red punch, and pink frosting…so, I can’t say I would be a stickler about any decision completely for or against. Maybe the fact that I don’t consume a lot of red foods needing dye to be that color factors into my opinion.

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  77. I thought salmon was supposed to be pink. Oops. I saw on Alton Brown last night on the granola bar show that hydrogenated oils are made from cow parts and almost barfed. Ignorance is bliss, right?

    Overall, I’m not that worried. I’d be more worried about all the unpronounceable chemicals and preservatives.

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  78. I doubt any of us really know how much dye we consume: think about that lipstick and mascara you put on this morning! What’s in that stuff? I try to limit processed foods in my diet, and I’m staying away from salmon because the population is pretty stressed, but I won’t pretend that I would reject a bowlful of M&M’s because of the dye (or any other reason!) 🙂

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  79. Holy moses, I’ve never had dyed salmon – that I knew about! This is the first time that I’ve heard about food dye in fish!

    Food dyes that are natural are fine by me, but they tend to be quite expensive and harder to find – very rare in processed foods. I remember being just gutted with disappointment when my friend’s mother taught me how to make her traditional biryani. I love the yellow and orange flecked rice, and was eager to see how it’s done…..food coloring!

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  80. Wow, I had started to type my response, then stopped to look at what others had thought. It is interesting the amount of responses you received on this very hot topic Cathy!

    I agree with you, down with the dyes…as someone who recently learned that much of ground beef is injected with co2 to help keep it red – and in fact bright red, I changed where I shopped for my ground beef. I now shop where I can see it being ground, it’s super fresh, and then I am able to buy only the amount I need. I no longer buy ground beef in the large shopping stores, since with the large shopping stores, this is where the practice of ‘dying the red meat’ comes.

    One of my own resolutions this year is to seriously watch my labels, and though labels can stretch the real truth as to what’s in the box…I wish we were more like Sweden, in that we couldn’t have wax on our fruits, it would be quite nice to be able to eat apples without the wax on their skins….hmmm

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  81. I do not really eat as much seafood as I should just because it is so expensive here. However, I don’t know a lot of it depends on what does the dye actually consist of. I know meat wise I am picky as heck and an obsessive label watcher.

    Probably one of those things I never actually thought about till now.

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  82. I’m diabolically opposed. I’ve always wanted to say that.
    I think I fear it because one of my cousins was severely allergic to it and would go hyper as a nutjob when exposed. It taught me to fear red food dye.
    Crazy, I suppose, but I’ve always been a tad crazy.

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  84. We really do try to avoid them. I’ve been under the impression that wild salmon isn’t generally dyed — so we opt for that whenever we can (thereby avoiding PCB’s as well… I think I feel more strongly about the PCB’s, though).

    Oh, sure, I’ll eat red velvet cake. But, if I can figger on a way to make it with beet juice, I absolutely will. srsly.

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  85. I try to avoid unnatural foods in general, so I’m not likely to eat a lot of dyes in the first place. However, I’m not snob. If something looks or smells really delcious and I want to eat it, I will even if it’s dyed bright chartreuse.

    I don’t eat salmon, period, so I’m not help there.

    I’ve never had red velvet cake, so I don’t know if I’d eat it despite the dyes. I definitely would try it. If I loved it, I’d eat it again.

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  87. DUDE! I was just thinking about that this morning driving to work. I don’t even remember why. How odd.

    And I am against. We could get used to what things are “supposed” to look like just the same as we got trained the other way.

    One of the worst offenders besides salmon is mint-flavored stuff being colored vibrant green. Um, no.

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  88. i never actually thought about this before -great question. just like i’d be willing to try cow balls in cream sauce, i’d also be willing to give grey salmon a try. it would be weird at first, but eventually i’d be used to it.

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  92. What doesn’t have injected stuff in it nowadays? I was watching the History Channel this evening for a spell, about the growth of the meat slaughtering business in Chicago, and they showed all the things that meats are injected with to make it taste and look better. Hmmmm… educational.

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  93. Wow, I’m just catching up around here, but this has struck a nerve.

    I actually didn’t know that salmon is dyed – and I ate it tonight! I usually try to buy Alaskan salmon, which I always thought was naturally red. One time my husband caught a fresh water salmon in a nearby lake and the flesh was pink when cooked and I’m pretty sure that fish wasn’t dyed.

    I’ve never eaten red velvet cake. My mom was terrified of red dye and really those fears instilled when we’re kids are hard to break.

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  94. I pretty much only use them when decorating cakes and cookies… I did not even know they were in salmon, which I don’t like anyway, but truthfully, like you, I just never think about it.

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  95. I don’t think it’s really a question of whether you would eat gray salmon or not. It’s a question of why food producers feel the need to inject a food dye into a product to make it look better. The fact is that farm raised salmon is not fed a natural diet and does not live a natural salmon life– because of this they are not able to produce the cartenoids which result in wild salmon’s pink color. In addition, one of the red food dyes they inject it with has been linked to retinal problems in humans. There is a great article that sums it all up here: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2008/07/02/catch_of_the_day/.
    So really, it’s not a question of whether you’d eat gray fish. It’s a question of what is being hidden from you and why they are trying to make a fish look “healthier” than it actually is.
    As for my self, I always buy wild when it’s in season (in small quantities since it is more expensive) or the naturally-raised farm raised since I can know that these fish are at least eating a natural diet- and not corn or cheap grains.

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