Is Food Coloring Toxic?

YES. Food coloring is toxic.

But why?

Remember that time you licked a purple lolly pop and your tongue was purple for awhile afterwards? It didn’t disappear after you drank some water and it was still there even after brushing your teeth. This is because the coloring permeated the tissue and bound to it, and if your tongue was purple, so was your esophagus, your belly and everything else down into your internal tissues. 

How does digestion work?

The language of physiology is essentially proteins - amino acid sequences that line up to create proteins that our bodies use to build things. Amino acids / protein sequences are the building blocks of our bodies.

When we eat anything, we chew big chunks into smaller pieces, our stomach mixes our food with acid and enzymes to help break down the chunks into molecules, and our small intestine takes apart these molecules to a protein level, which then gets taken apart into individual amino acids or amino acid sequences that it then re uses to make stuff, like blood, bones, cells, energy and everything that composes our bodies. Everything we intake gets broken down to be used for something or is stored for future use if it cant be utilized immediately. What we eat literally becomes us because our body uses our meals to make its physical and energetic self.

Anything we put into our bodies is a therefore foreign substance until we break it down into something we can recognize as useful material. Some kind of reaction will happen whenever you eat or drink anything because your body has to first figure out what it is, and then what to do with it. If it recognizes whatever you ingest a nutrient, it is used to build cells, tissues, for energy and such. But if your body doesn’t recognize it, we will get a negative reaction like pain, bloating, discomfort, insomnia, restlessness, gas, brain fog, skin reactions, slowed metabolism, depression, mucous, congestion, hormone shifts, a weakened immune system and so forth. The list is a long one and depending on many factors, you will get a varied reaction. Your body may also store whatever part it of your food couldn’t use as a nutrient for a future potential use, or it will store it simply because it cant figure out what to do with it. This is why our body stores toxins.

As you enjoy your lolly pop, your body absorbs the ingredients and attempts to digest them. Since food is intended to nourish us like we mentioned above, the dye goes into your bloodstream and circulates throughout your body. Just like the lolly turns your tongue purple, it permeates everything it is circulated to and also turns it purple, and purple tissue is not normal human tissue. Realize that this means it permeates your vital organs too, like your liver and heart tissue, and turns them into abnormal tissue.

What happens in your body when there is tissue or cells that your body doesn’t recognize as its own?

We have a built in protection mechanism called our immune system that attacks anything that it doesn’t recognize as our own tissue, like bacterias, viruses and foreign substances. When something gets into your system that doesn’t belong there, your body sends a signal for your T-cells to attack and kill it. It’s essentially how we stay healthy. So when your body finds purple cell tissue, it attacks and tries to kill it too.

Your body attacking itself is called an autoimmune response. If you don’t have food sensitivities, you are truly rare and I want to meet you. We all have them on some level because the way we live our modern lives creates them, but they may not be affecting you quite yet which is great. But if you do have food sensitivities or known food intolerances, your body’s response to these individual food proteins will increase with food colorings. You can potentially turn on autoimmunity when you eat foods with food coloring and dyes in them (not to mention pesticides, GMO’s, hybrids, or foods that cross react with other foods) because as they bind to your cells, they create new proteins that your body doesn’t recognize.

It may look delicious, but stay away from anything that has artificial food coloring in it. The lolly pop, cupcake, M&M, or whatever is tempting you just isn’t worth the immune and inflammation response you get in your body. Read your ingredient labels. There are a TON of food options and desserts that use natural things as dyes like turmeric, beet root and cabbage for coloring. Opt for those instead and protect your immune system.

What can you do if you already have food sensitivities?

Food sensitivities can happen in the body for many reasons; processed foods, GMO’s, preservatives, pesticides, hybridization of seeds and entertaining a modern day diet, to not rule out genetic susceptibility. Chances are if you experience food sensitivities, or any reaction to a food for that matter, you also have a leaky gut. Leaky gut happens when life happens. Stress, antibiotics, packaged foods, illness, lack of sleep, bad relationships, emotions, improper foods, artificial sweeteners, and an infinite amount of reasons will bring about the possibility of leaky gut, which occurs when your digestive system loses it’s cellular integrity. Food particles get past your digestive system lining and into your system, bringing on an chaotic immune system response, which creates inflammation in the body.

How long does it take to damage your gut? About 5 minutes with an exposure to a food you are sensitive to, or to a food your body doesn’t recognize as a food. And it can take months to fix if you are diligent and are on the right program.

More so than taking these foods out of your diet, which might be a good idea depending on how many food sensitivities you have, it is important to calm the inflammatory response in your body. An anti-inflammatory diet alongside the right botanicals such as brush border digestive enzymes, vitamins A and D, Glutathathione, a complex Omega formula, and probiotics are a good start to a leaky gut protocol that heals your digestive lining and dampens food sensitivities. A proper detox program to follow will helps clear toxins, fat, hormones and stored impurities would compliment this protocol well, further calming inflammation within and allowing you a fresh start to your health. It is a interesting and natural way to let your body to recover from years of “life” happening that with diligence, consistency and a commitment to your health, can heal truly your body. Fixing your digestive system should always be at the top of your list whenever you think about becoming healthy since how you absorb your nutrients is at the foundation of your health, as you can understand from the lolly pop example. It is how I practice and what I feel is the most important step you can take to creating a healthy immune response and preventing autoimmune reactions in your body.

Everything is connected, and all you have this one body you were given to live in.

Skip the purple lolly pops, or anything artificially colored for that matter. It’s not worth the internal chaos and it takes so much longer to repair your body that the effort to prevent imbalances from occurring in the first place. I’m here if you need any support.

Eat clean and nourish well.

Thanks for reading! Please feel free to share.

xo

Helen