Tricky Labels

Have you ever been to a farm stand and found produce with a sticker on it from the grocery store? Some people buy produce and then sell it at a stand as if they grew it themselves. One cattle farmer I was speaking with accused another local meat seller of buying meat at the butcher shop and selling it at the farmer’s market. I’m not dropping names because I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe he sells to the butcher shop, which explains why their label is on some of his products. But these incidents support my theory that you need to know your farmer.

I was at a farm stand looking at pickled products in jars by the Jake and Amos “Amish Style Recipe” company with a picture on the front of a couple of Amish farmers. While I’m not big on things pickled, except for pickles, the rest of the family is, so I bought them some pickled jalapeno eggs. I realized when I got home that I fell for the packaging. First of all, there are 17 grams of sugar in two eggs (more sugar than vinegar) — a regular egg has .6 grams of natural sugar. Their website says, “…made with only the finest ingredients available.” There were three kinds of dye in the eggs: FD&C Yellow 5, Yellow 6, and Red 40. The recipe could not have been “handed down by generations.” We have to remember to be more vigilant about considering the ingredient list over any other packaging details.

If you would like to know the exact chemical makeup of food colors and every excruciating detail about mice being tortured with dyes, tumor measurements and the amount of dyes in mice excrement, etc., I highly recommend for your reading pleasure this excellent and objective Food Dyes paper. I say it is objective because it specifies where more research is needed and where there is opposition to study results. But I will give you their conclusions on the findings of these three dyes. And this is not just to pick on the Jake and Amos foods because if you look at your labels, these colors are all over the place.

FD&C Red #40: “Considering the lack of published metabolism data, the positive results in comet assays, the disputed mouse studies, causation of hypersensitivity reactions, possible causation of hyperactivity in children, and the non-essentiality of the dye, Red 40 should not be used in foods.”

FD&C Yellow #5: Yellow 5 may be contaminated with significant levels of carcinogens. On another front, Tartrazine (the only dye to be tested on its own, instead of in mixtures) has caused hyperactivity in children (Rowe 1988; Rowe and Rowe 1994). Since Yellow 5 poses some risks, has not been adequately tested in mice, and is a cosmetic ingredient that serves no nutritional or safety purpose, it should not be allowed in the food supply.

FD&C Yellow #6: It is of concern that Yellow 6 may be contaminated with significant levels of recognized carcinogens. Also, while rarely life-threatening, it causes mild to severe hypersensitivity reactions in a small percentage of the population and may cause hyperactivity in some children. Because it provides no health benefit whatsoever, Yellow 6 should be removed from the food supply.^[1]

One of the FD&C blues is really bad as far as the tumors and brain gliomas in mice. And these dyes and many other ingredients in processed foods are banned in other countries. That means large industries like Kellogg and Quaker that sell internationally, already know how to formulate their products without controversial chemicals. Here is a comparison, for example, of a label for Quaker strawberry oatmeal in the U.S. compared to the U.K. version.

But Americans consumers aren’t demanding colors and chemicals be removed – in fact, they’re buying them like crazy – and they’re FDA approved so we’re stuck with them for the time being. It’s cheaper to use chemicals and dyes than 1% strawberry pieces and Americans in general are loving cheap food.

Speaking of produce stickers, as I was quite some time ago, I came across an article on usa.gov explaining the codes on produce stickers. The common 4-digit number (4011, etc.) are for conventionally grown food with pesticides. I knew the 5-digit number starting with a 9 was for organic, but the 5-digit number starting with an 8 means the produce was genetically modified (GMO). So if you’re looking for organic, go with the 94011, which by law cannot be GMO.