Amazing Facts About Processed Food

Many processed foods are made with a derivative of coal tar that has been linked to hyperactivity in children.

 

Would you knowingly feed your children an ingredient derived from coal tar? That’s exactly what you may be doing, if you let them eat any orange or yellow artificially colored products including sodas (e.g., Mountain Dew), cheese-flavored products (e.g. Kraft Dinner), flavored chips (e.g. Doritos), pickles or a myriad of other foods and beverages. The industrial waste-derived coloring tartrazine is a common ingredient in all these foods, underscoring once again the need to read food labels religiously. Why would anyone put artificial colors into pickles? 

 

Tartrazine, also known as E102 or Yellow 5, was one of the colorings linked to childhood hyperactivity in a landmark 2007 study conducted by the United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency. As a consequence, products containing it  must carry a warning label anywhere in the European Union. The United States  has no such law—even though the coloring has also been linked to asthma, migraines and cancer.