545: The Shocking Link Between Food Additives and Mental Health

Are artificial food dyes silently harming your family? In this eye-opening interview, Dr. Rebecca Bevans shares the powerful story of how removing synthetic dyes saved her son from extreme behavioral issues—and how it transformed her own health. From hidden dangers in everyday products to shocking research on DNA damage and brain inflammation, this episode reveals the real cost of the colorful chemicals we’ve been told are “safe.” If you’ve ever wondered what’s really in your food, medicine, or even your shampoo—this is a must-listen.

Highlights:

Dr. Rebecca Bevans shares how artificial food dyes caused extreme behavioral issues and suicidal thoughts in her young son. She describes how her son’s brain “buzzed” and how removing Red 40 led to immediate behavioral improvements.
Removing synthetic dyes from her son's diet led to dramatic improvements within days, including elimination of intrusive thoughts. He went from emotional meltdowns and suicidal ideation to a calm and sweet demeanor in under a week.
Dr. Bevans later discovered her own anxiety and cognitive issues were linked to food dyes in her medication and toothpaste. Going dye-free even eliminated a misdiagnosed metabolic disorder she had been medicated for over 10 years.
Synthetic dyes are petroleum-based chemicals often hidden in everyday items like soap, hand sanitizer, lotion, and art supplies. Even topical exposure through colored hand sanitizer or sunscreen caused major reactions in her son.
Research shows synthetic dyes can damage DNA, disrupt gut bacteria, weaken the immune system, and contribute to inflammation. Blue 1, for instance, can cross the blood-brain barrier, and azo dyes like Red 40 affect gut microbiota.
Certain populations—particularly low-income and minority children—consume more food dyes and are disproportionately affected. These children often show behavioral issues that get misattributed to home environment instead of food.
Products marketed to children, including Pedialyte and ADHD medications, often contain harmful dyes with zero nutritional benefit. Some medications meant to treat dye-induced symptoms ironically include those very dyes.
In the UK, foods with synthetic dyes carry behavioral warning labels, unlike the US where the same products contain unlabeled dyes. Dr. Bevans shares how food in Europe is equally vibrant and far safer due to regulations.
Dr. Bevans co-authored a comprehensive book on synthetic dyes with Dr. Lorne Hofseth, compiling over 170 research citations. It includes a practical guide on how to detox your home and communicate with doctors and schools.
She urges listeners to become label detectives, avoid dye-laden products, and vote with their dollars to drive industry change. Companies like Walmart and Kroger have already responded to consumer demand by offering dye-free options.

Intro:

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James.

This is Episode 545.

Ashley James (0:00:11.678)

I am so excited for today's guest. We have Dr. Rebecca Bevans on the show. She has the most amazing TEDx talk called The Effects of Artificial Food Dyes. My gosh, I sent it to all my friends. I mean, I've known about food dyes for actually most of my life, which is crazy, because my mom was really disciplined with food. She was a model before she went into her career as a rep for clothing lines. So she was kind of in the fashion industry her whole adult life, and she had to keep a size eight figure, which is now a size six, and she had to wear all of her samples. So she was super diligent about her diet. She ate super clean, but she was addicted to the weirdest food. She was addicted to red jujubes.

If you had to go into the Bulk Barn and pick out the red jujubes from all the other jujubes—jujubes are these weird, I don't know, almond-sized gummies—I think they're disgusting. My mom loved them. She could only eat them at night because when she ate red dye, for the rest of the day she could not do math. You asked her what two plus two is, she couldn't tell you. Her entire math side of her brain would shut down, and she would just save them for a once-in-a-while treat because she saw how much it affected her brain. I'm like, why are you eating these things? But she was addicted to them. So I grew up knowing, wow, red dye can hurt your brain. Maybe we shouldn't eat that.

Well, watching this TEDx talk, I am so glad that I've raised my son completely dye-free. I mean, there are those accidents where he's like, “Mom, my friend gave me an Oreo.” I'm like, “No, there's blue dye in Oreo, no.” And so he goes for many months to years without any dye getting kind of snuck into his diet.

He's really great. We take him to all these classes. We're homeschooling. We do a co-op once a week, so he's in four classes a week at this co-op. He's never had a problem for years. Well, someone gave him, in one of the classes, some candy—and this usually doesn't happen—and the teacher in the next class brings him out of the class and says, “He can't be in this class. He's being too disruptive. He can't even sit still. He keeps talking. He just has to stay with you until you can figure this out.”

I'm looking at him. I'm like, “What's going on? Did you eat something earlier?” He's like, “Yes, my friend gave me these candies.” And sure enough, it was all this dye, artificial dye. I've never seen him like this. He was nine years old at the time, and he's very smart, and he was bouncing off the wall. He's like, “Mom, I can't sit still and he's moving—honestly, like a crack addict. He's just like, “I can't sit still. I can't.”

It took him a few hours. By the time recess and lunch were over, he was able to go back to his classes—the afternoon classes—and function. But it was like someone gave meth to my child. It just goes to show that it really does affect them. But if you give it to them for their breakfast every day, you don't even realize. You might just think, I've got to put my son on Adderall or Ritalin or whatever. It's really the food we're feeding them. It's wild, and it's in everything.

So I'm so excited to have Dr. Bevans on the show today. Welcome. It's so exciting to have you here because your story is absolutely amazing. I think everyone needs to hear it.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:03:45.296)

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I'm excited to be here. Yes, it is a pretty crazy story. It was 2016 when I delivered our TED talk, but this was, gosh, almost 12 years ago or over 12 years ago when we figured out that Alex was having a really intense reaction to the food dyes.

As a mom, I kick myself for not figuring it out sooner. He was seven. We just thought he was this really hyperactive kid. I mean, he didn't sit still at dinner. He moved around in his sleep. There was a dent in the wall from his heel from him kicking the wall so hard in the middle of the night that it dented the wall, and he was six. So we just thought we had a really, really active child.

The behaviors really started to get worse. He was nursed, and then I made all of his food, and he ate really cleanly until about three and a half. That's when a lot of the behaviors ramped up. But it wasn't until school and his kindergarten teacher diagnosed him herself with ADHD. It wasn't that, because he didn't act like that every day. We know that ADHD is every day.

A friend, Emily Snow, who is in the documentary that we'll talk about later, called it “consistently inconsistent.” It was, yes, absolutely. He was consistently inconsistent. So we kind of knew that something was going on. His first grade teacher was phenomenal and worked with him. Then second grade was rough—really rough—and the ADHD-type behaviors really started to ramp up: the hyperactivity and the inability to sit still.

You mentioned being like a meth addict, and I refer to when we removed the dyes from his diet, he crashed like an addict coming off of meth. They really are like they're high. It wasn't the sugar. It wasn't any of the things. So I started doing a lot of research because I'm a researcher. My degree is in research.

I did a lot of research and I found this blog of this girl. She was 16 at the time. I wish I could find it again. I can't. I wish I knew her name to thank her because she mentioned that when she ate Red 40, her brain buzzed. He was telling me that his brain was buzzing.

So being the cognitive neuroscientist that I am—brains don't buzz. They're not supposed to anyway. I went down the rabbit hole, decided to pull Red 40, and saw a huge change in his behavior.

The problem then was on my end. We continued to let him eat the other color dyes, not thinking, because we all are aware of Red 40. You hear it all the time—oh, Red 40 is bad, Red 40 this, Red 40 that—but we don't really talk about any of the other colors. What we started to see was even more intense behavior. This time it was the agitation and aggravation and the intrusive thoughts.

Within six months, after our trip to Hawaii where he was eating shaved ice with pineapple syrup, he was having meltdowns all day long. Not just throwing fits because he's a spoiled little kid, but I mean we're talking emotional meltdowns. He was so overwhelmed that he started to beg me to get him a knife so he could kill himself because he didn't want to live anymore—at seven.

Ashley James (0:07:38.002)

You had a suicidal seven-year-old.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:07:38.952)

Yes. I can't even talk about it without getting choked up because I can't tell you how many times I've told the story, and it still gets me every single time because I'm staring at this face and this crying and just so overwhelmed child who doesn't want to feel like this anymore. All I can think of is, if I don't figure this out by the time he hits his teen years, we will lose him.

So I went back into digging. I found one article on Yellow Six, I think it was, or Yellow Five, that mentioned aggravation. And I was like, that's it. Fine. We're pulling them. So we pulled all the dyes overnight. Just boom. Done. And watched him crash like an addict coming off of meth.

It took him about three months to physically recover. The beginning of it was really rough. He was very sore and tired and he was sleeping 20 hours a day. It was rough. But within five days, those intrusive thoughts were gone. Those suicidal thoughts were gone. Everything was gone. And he's back to this really sweet kid that we always knew he was and we saw, but not all the time. It just changed everything.

Then I became an unwilling expert in synthetic food dyes. I never wanted to be an expert in food dyes. If you would have told me 20 years ago that I was going to be an expert in food dyes, I would have laughed at you. And here I am, unfortunately, one of the experts in this country. That's okay.

I did my TED talk wanting to reach just one family—just one kiddo that didn't have to suffer like our son did, just one set of parents that didn't have to go through what we went through—and that happened. And it happened over and over and over. I am so grateful that our story has reached so many people. I mean, we're pushing almost half a million views on our TED Talk. I've been on so many podcasts and talked to so many people.

We're both featured in the documentary To Dye For: The Documentary. It's just wonderful to know that there are kids out there that aren't going to have to suffer because of our story. I recently found out that California passed a law removing synthetic food dyes from school foods. And my TED Talk—was instrumental in that, in getting everybody on board.

Yes. I know. I heard that, and I think I cried for two days. I grew up in California, so it was definitely a twofer. My family's still there. But it's just been wonderful to see. Back in 2016, I was that crazy mom that's talking about food dyes, and now there are so many people on the same page, now that we can have this conversation—that there are substances in our food that can cause behavioral changes.

Not only just behavioral changes. I've talked to so many adults. We went dye-free for our kids, and my migraines went away. I've had adults tell me that their seizures went away, their kid's seizures went away. There's rashes, eczema—and not just the intrusive thoughts and the suicidal thoughts and the intensity that it can increase.

I really haven't told a lot of people. I've done a couple of TikToks about it, but two years ago I ended up finding out accidentally that I myself was reacting to food dyes. The only thing that I was eating with food dyes was a medication that I got every day for a metabolic disorder, and then my toothpaste.

So my medication arrived and it wasn't red and yellow. It was a muted color. So I looked it up, and it was red iron oxide instead of Red 40 and Yellow Five. I was like, great. I'd been on this medication for 10 years—I’d called years ago and they didn’t have it any other way.

I ended up with parathyroid hypocalcemia. It was really rare and usually happens because of an injury to the parathyroid. I didn’t have that. They didn’t know why I developed it, so I was just treated with basically a D125. Well, I got it dye-free, and I watched my anxiety dissipate. I watched some of the tabs in my brain that were open, disappear. I watched a lot of things change in me.

Then I got it the next month and it had the color in it, and I watched it all ramp up again. So yes. I went, all right, let's do this. I got it again without the artificial colors in it. I made sure I removed everything else—the toothpaste, any little remnant things that happened to be around, no lotions or soaps or anything.

Within a week, I was having a little mini existential crisis because I didn’t know who I was. I was 52 at the time, going, my gosh, I don’t even feel like me. All of the anxiety that I always assumed was just a normal level of anxiety—was gone. Like I said, the 40 tabs in my brain went down to five or ten. The music was still playing in the background, but that was kind of weird.

But I felt so different and so much calmer. It was a mixture of relief and sadness and joy at the same time, because I was a better parent. I had more patience. The ruminating thoughts that I would have about conversations from eight months ago disappeared.

The drive to people-please out of fear that people weren’t going to like me or I wasn’t going to be accepted—it dissipated. Gone. I mean, I love helping people. That is what I do. But I do it because I want to, not because I need to. I was coming from a need to. So a lot of the weird things just disappeared.

Then I didn’t even need the medication anymore, because I don’t have parathyroid hypocalcemia. We assume that it was driven by the synthetic food dyes. So a very interesting turn of events.

I was talking to Dr. Lauren Hofseth. He’s the associate dean of research at the College of Pharmacy, the University of South Carolina. He is another researcher investigating food dyes. He had said that food dyes can cause metabolic disorders.

We talked about it, and I said, hey, what about this? And he said, yes, it could. Absolutely.

So interesting that I was taking medication to treat a metabolic disorder, but the metabolic disorder was caused because of the consumption of food dyes. Then the medication also had the food dyes that just drove the metabolic disorder. So it was real.

Synthetic food dyes are things that you cannot avoid unless you're purposely doing so.

Ashley James (0:15:49.054)

Everyone, 100% of people listening are exposed to artificial food dyes. We're going to get into what are they actually? Where do they come from? Because they're man-made.

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Ashley James (0:18:51.271)

We're exposed to these chemicals every day. I know there's someone listening going, well, I don't do food dyes. I don't eat junky cereals, so I don't get these food dyes. I don't eat candy. I don't get these food dyes. I guarantee you, if you're not looking like a detective at literally everything that's going on or in your body, you are getting them.

It's hand sanitizer. I do not let my son use hand sanitizer, but he goes to this gym class and they started giving the kids hand sanitizer before and after. “Okay, everyone line up. You're getting your hand sanitizer.” And it's green. I'm like, it's not green because there's aloe in it.

You're thinking, well, it's just on the skin. It can get in the body. Listen, your skin isn't Fort Knox. Your skin is porous and it's designed to absorb. We absorb a lot through the skin. Think about nicotine patches. Think about magnesium soaks. We absorb through the skin.

Absolutely, for sure, if you're putting artificial tattoos, even markers—Crayola markers—on your skin, if you're getting hand sanitizer or lotion, it has dye in it and it gets in your body. All it takes is that small amount. If your kid is 50 pounds, it's getting in there and it's affecting them.

In episode 530, I got the pleasure of interviewing the creators of To Dye For—and that's spelled D-Y-E—a documentary. They talk about how they had their son who was a human ping pong ball, and they got him off food dyes and he was great.

Then all of a sudden he was at a restaurant and he was going nutso, and they're like, what happened? The kid was playing with markers and got some markers on him or used the soap in the soap dispenser or a temporary tattoo.

There'd be these times where they knew they didn't feed it to him, and that's when they figured out it's not just food. Which is wild.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:20:52.747)

Yes. We were on vacation and I sprayed down. In hindsight, we didn't know what it was. We knew that he got dosed because we saw all the behaviors. He was aware of them. I think he was 12, and we couldn't figure out where, where, where. We assumed that some restaurant lied to us and there was something in there.

We lived near Tahoe. So a couple of weeks later, we went up to Tahoe and I sprayed him down with my sunblock that had bronzer in it. He got into the water, and he looked around and he looked panicked. I was like, what? What?

He goes, “Is there color in that?” because the water was all colored around him. Sure enough, first, second, third ingredient was Blue 1, Yellow 5, Red 40. We couldn't get it off his skin fast enough, and he ended up having a reaction.

There are studies demonstrating that the active ingredient in sunblock ends up in your bloodstream within 24 hours.

In the research that I've done and Dr. Hoffseth has done, there are bacteria on your skin that break down azo dyes—that are red and yellow are azo dyes. The bacteria on your skin will break them down not just in your gut, but on your skin.

Alex had a reaction to having yellow paint because they were silk screening shirts, and it was underneath his nails and around his nail beds. That was all it took, and the kid was 16. So it is everywhere.

I have a lot of people telling me, “We eat healthy. We don't eat dyes.” And it's like, yes, well, you do. In pickles or some sauces, bagels can have it in there and not be colored. They look like normal bagels. Bread can be normal-looking egg bread. They can put yellow in there.

There are so many different products that contain synthetic colors. Expensive face lotions. I was staying with my girlfriend and I forgot my lotion at home. She's like, “Here, use this.” I looked at it and I'm like, “Red 33? No. I'm not going to put that on my face and then let it sit there.”

So yes, it is really everywhere. We have been avoiding it for 12 years and we still get dosed. I got accidentally dosed. I volunteer at the railroad museum here, and someone was making caramel corn there in front of you. It wasn't red. Somebody gave me a couple handfuls of it. I ate it. This was six months after I had been dye-free—hadn't had any synthetic food dyes.

I ate about a handful of it, and within about 10 minutes, I couldn't breathe, and my body started vibrating from the inside out. My body was having a panic attack, but my mind wasn't. So I walked over there. I was like, “Hey, yes, there's really synthetic food dyes on there?” “Oh yes, there's Red 40 in the caramel corn.” I was like, “Cool, cool. Yes. Great.”

Yes, it was really rough. The next day, the intrusive thoughts were there, and I was thinking to myself, are these always here and I just don't notice? Then the next day they were gone. I was like, nope, nope, nope.

So yes, they are everywhere unless you're avoiding them. We're talking about synthetic food dyes. For those who don't know, synthetic food dyes are made from petroleum—a petroleum by-product. So they are petroleum-based.

There are a couple different classes. I mentioned the azo dyes—those are the red and yellow. Those break down in your body into different metabolites that can then have an effect. What happens in your gut sends messages to your brain. I was just reading an article that goes vice versa, so that was interesting.

People with certain bacteria in their gut could be more susceptible to breaking down these dyes into metabolites. There's just not enough research to truly understand all the mechanisms of how they work.

Blue 1 is small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so that is concerning. Blue and green go in and out the same. They don't usually get broken down, or they do slightly. But studies with mice—you give them a hundred milligrams of Blue 1 and it will come out in feces and urine nearly almost a hundred milligrams.

So there are a lot of things we just don't understand about how they work, but the evidence is there. The anecdotal evidence is there. This summer, we have a study that we're running starting pretty soon, gathering data from people who react to synthetic food dyes—adults and children. We're going to be compiling that and then publishing that research.

There's nothing really to take all this anecdotal data from individuals. I've talked to thousands and thousands of people over the years, and the stories are the same. We need to get those stories into a scientific format. So we're going to be doing that this summer.

We've been doing a lot of research. My students just presented some research down at the Western Psychological Association Conference. It was in Vegas. We just got back a couple of days ago on the prevalence of dyes in hydration drinks—so electrolyte drinks, Pedialyte.

They went to CVS and took pictures of all the electrolyte drinks in CVS—102 different drinks—categorized them and compiled them. Those that are marketed towards infants and children, those that are marketed for adults, those that have caffeine in them, and then everything in between.

Gatorade is kind of one of the “everything in between,” but the Pedialytes are definitely aimed at infants. Of the 24 Pedialyte-type drinks marketed towards infants and children, 21 of them contain food dyes.

Here we are giving sick infants Pedialyte, and it's got high amounts of Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow.

Ashley James (0:27:32.785)

The one thing to really emphasize is there's zero benefit. We could argue, for example, they put this preservative in, but the benefit is you'd be drinking mold if it wasn't in there; or it'd have a shorter shelf life. I mean, and there's naturally derived preservatives that are less harmful.

I think we could go down the list of ingredients and have, okay, here's the benefit, here's the cost. What are the alternatives that are healthier? Literally, food dye has zero—artificial food dye has zero benefit. There's no nutrition and it's a freaking baby who's sick in the middle of the night drinking Pedialyte. Why is it colored? Why? Why is it colored? Why does anything need to be colored?

It is ridiculous. It kind of feeds that conspiracy that I have that they really want to kill us and keep us sick. Because, for example, with your metabolic disorder—it's caused by the dyes—and they put the dyes in the medication? Hello? It kind of feeds that little conspiracy, devil on my shoulder who's going, there's them killing us again.

I know not every company is literally run by Satan, but it certainly feels like it when we know how bad these dyes are. There's no benefit to them, and it's ridiculous that they're in everything. I'm really glad this space is being disrupted finally, because it's been a long time coming.

My son, at baseball last year, was given a Gatorade. He knows not to drink it. He's like, “I just wanted to try it. I just wanted to try one. I just wanted to know what it was like” because we do all natural. I'm a crunchy mom. I'm like, “Okay, well…” and here's the thing. I ask him to pay attention to what his body feels like before and then feels like after. Then we talked about it. That's something I've done with him his whole life. That's why he doesn't overeat sugar—because he ate too much, he got sick. I'm like, “Listen to your body. This is what you feel like when you eat too much sugar. Let's try to keep sugar to a minimum and make it a once-in-a-while special occasion.”

I don't want to be that mom that doesn't let him have anything and then he goes out and rebels and does too much of it—because I certainly did that as a teenager, because I had a really strict mom.

So I let him have the Gatorade. He doesn't even finish it. He got sick to his stomach. He felt nauseous for half the day. He felt so sick. He didn't finish it. It wasn't like he overdid it, but there's the dyes—and the dyes disrupt the gut—and it made him feel incredibly sick. He hates Gatorade now. He's like, “That stuff's gross.”

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:30:24.327)

Some of the arguments, especially from the food manufacturers is, people enjoy brightly colored things. There was a study done—I think it was 2016—by Spencer was the last name. They looked at the perception of drinks, hydration drinks specifically too. People felt that clear liquids were more hydrating than colored liquids.

So here we are with these hydration drinks, and there's zero reason to color them. They are more hydrating, and people perceive them as more hydrating, if there isn't color in them.

There are companies—Body Armor—that do not utilize food dyes. Vitamin Water has not utilized food dyes. They have brightly colored drinks as well. They're all natural. So there are ways to do it.

I understand. I will play the devil's advocate for a second for the food dye industry. Natural colors will break down in different pHs and at different temperatures. Artificial or synthetic food dyes—they are stable in different pHs and in different temperatures.

So there is this argument for if something's really acidic or if when you bake things that we need these colors. Well, there are natural options that are coming out. Microma is a company that is working on a natural, sustainable colorant that is pH-stable, temperature-stable, and not made from petroleum. So there are options that are coming out, but it's still not a very strong argument.

Now, you did mention the food industry and healthcare. I will say this: we spent a couple of weeks in England and Scotland this last summer, and it was wonderful because we could just basically eat anything. If it did have synthetic dyes in it, it was labeled. It was labeled with a warning that it can cause behavioral issues in children.

So a lot of companies make the same product for the UK, England, and Scotland—and the EU, I should say—and different products for here. Here, they have synthetic food dyes, and over there they have natural colors. So we were there for a couple weeks, and really, the food was no less bright. It was no less appealing. Everything looked wonderful.

So it wasn't like we're going to end up with a bunch of gray food. We're not going to suffer.

What's different between, let's say, the UK and the United States is the UK pays for its residents’ healthcare. So it is directly in their best interest to keep their people healthy, because it costs the state.

Here in this country, we have a for-profit healthcare system. We then also have drug manufacturers that have been making medications to treat these illnesses and these issues that pop up, regardless of where they come from.

Try to find an ADHD medication without color in it. It's very difficult to find an ADHD medication without color in it. It exists.

Ashley James (0:34:04.202)

That has to be intentional. That's insane.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:34:06.208)

I was on that Calcetriol for 10 years, and it had red and yellow in it. Then it had iron oxide, so it wasn't colored. You can still color with iron oxides, and iron oxides come in a variety of different colors. There's really less and less of an argument for keeping these toxic chemicals in our food.

I know that the current administration, the FDA, put out a statement saying that they're going to remove food dyes by 2026. I do want to take a second and correct—there is an understanding between the FDA and food companies that food companies are going to voluntarily remove it by the end of 2026.

There's no laws changing. There's no policy changes. There's no teeth in this. If the companies decide that they're not going to change, then they're not going to change.

Just a couple of days ago, there was a statement from the International Association of Color Manufacturers, the companies that are directly going to suffer if we no longer consume 5.3 million pounds of Red 40 in a year, which is what was produced and used last year.

Ashley James (0:35:27.944)

I don't have sympathy for these companies. Do you have sympathy for the tobacco companies that suffered when we went on these campaigns sharing that tobacco causes cancer? Oh, those poor tobacco companies lost so much money.

Red Dye 40 also increases cancer. This is—honestly—it's like everyone is accidentally smoking cigarettes or hidden cigarettes are in your child's food.

If you thought about it that way, you wouldn't have any sympathy for these companies. They're poisoning us.

I feel so bad for the poison companies that are going out of business because they're not poisoning us as much—because we're not buying the poison.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:36:13.080)

Nope, don't. They came out with a statement in a big backlash. So there is definitely pushback against removing these chemicals from our food supply. It is going to be an interesting couple of years to see if this actually happens.

Now, Red 3 will actually be removed, and maybe Citrus Red 2 and Orange B. Citrus Red 2 is only used on the peels of some oranges in Florida, and only Florida. The FDA requires batch testing for any synthetic food dyes. There are nine of them currently. Red 40 is one of them. Red 3 is one of them.

Citrus Red 2, which sounds red but is actually orange, was only used one year in the last five years, and only a little under 7,000 pounds were batch tested, which is actually a very small amount considering the other batch testing numbers.

Orange B, which is actually red in color, was used in hot dog casings for the longest time but has not been manufactured since 1978. Both of those cause cancer and have been shown to cause cancer. But since one of them hasn't been manufactured, who cares? Because no one's eating it. And because most people don't eat the peels of oranges—although if you zest oranges, you're going to get it in your food.

Those both have been demonstrated to cause cancer, therefore they can trigger the Delaney Clause. The Delaney Clause was put into effect in 1958, and it pretty much states that any chemical that can be demonstrated to cause cancer in humans or other animals must be removed from the food supply.

That's where the bar is for the FDA. It is very high. Telling them that it makes your skin change color is not enough. It's got to cause cancer. So it's a very high bar in order for the FDA to be able to remove these chemicals.

Those two will probably get removed in the next couple of years, but they're really not going to make an effect. I mean, it's really not going to matter.

Red 3 did trigger the Delaney Clause back in the eighties. In the nineties, it was removed from cosmetics. I don't understand this. They fed rats and mice Red 3 and it caused cancer, so don't remove it from the food supply, but definitely remove it from cosmetics?

Ashley James (0:38:58.160)

Did they get a pushback? Is that why?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:39:01.436)

Yes, absolutely, why companies push back, so here we are now—a little under 150,000 pounds of Red 3 was batch tested last year. Again, sounds like a lot, but in comparison to Red 40 with the 5.3 million, and that's just Red 40 straight, the water-soluble one. Red 40 Lake is another several million pounds. Lakes are oil- or fat-soluble.

The non-lakes, or what they call the straights—just Red 40—are water-soluble. Yellow 5, I think it was 3.2 million pounds, was batch tested last year, and Yellow 6 was 3.6 million pounds. So again, we're still consuming. We're knocking off the ones that we use the least.

There is a difference in color. Red 3 is used in maraschino cherries because it is kind of that cherry pinkish-purplish red a little bit, where Red 40 is more of that candy apple red. So, they can start to use Red 40 in place of Red 3. The removal of Red 3 sounds great and it's a win. I'll take every little win I can get.

However, there's still no incentive for these companies to actually remove a lot of these food colors. Now, are some companies going to? Absolutely. There will be some companies that do this. I have no doubt. There are still going to be companies that don't.

Kellogg is the worst offender with their foods targeted towards children containing synthetic food dyes. They've already pushed back and said that they don't want to remove it from the food supply.

Ashley James (0:41:00.267)

I have a really interesting story, and it's that Walmart, of all companies, helped us remove the RBST from dairy back in 2008. So basically, if you were a consumer in the 2000s, early 2000s, and you were like, I don't want this hormone milk. I want milk with less hormones, because I can't say that it's going to be hormone free, but less hormones and/or antibiotics or whatever you're going for with your milk.

People stopped buying the hormone-based dairy and started buying dairy from companies like Great Value Milk, who exclusively had cows that they didn't treat with artificial growth hormones. So Walmart noticed their numbers go down and noticed that their customers were preferring one over the other. So Walmart went to bat, and they were active in helping us reform the dairy industry and getting rid of this type of hormone.

I think it's interesting because you don't think of Walmart as being your advocate in health. But they like the money and follow the sales. So my point being, if we all vote with our fork, vote with your wallet and be that detective looking at the ingredients.

I'm going to throw my husband under the bus—but he's older than me, and he can't see. He has to get his readers out. I'm just saying, bring your readers. Go to the dollar store, go to Walgreens or whatever, and buy some readers and bring your readers with you to the grocery store because you're going to have to read the ingredients and figure out your brands.

Then don't always trust that that brand is going to be true. Sometimes, oh my gosh, I get into a brand, and then my husband will pick it up and be like, did you see there's blah, blah, blah in this? And I'm like, what? So you have to kind of always just double check and just scan it. You can scan.

What I do is I start from the bottom and then scan up because really the crap that kills you might be at the bottom most of the time. Also, I try to avoid processed food for the most part, but if I'm just buying some crackers or something, I'm reading from the bottom up and just checking to make sure there's not something really wacky in there. So that's my suggestion.

Can you imagine this interview that reaches thousands of people and then they share it with their friends and family, and it becomes this ripple? Then you get on other podcasts, another podcast shares. Together, we all start voting with our fork.

These companies like Walmart are going to be like, no one's buying this crap. They're all buying the dye-free stuff. Well, I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop providing this crap and start providing more dye-free stuff. Then the industries, the companies, have to change. They have to change because we are not buying it anymore.

But we have to look at the ingredients because it's hidden in everything.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:44:26.089)

Yes, absolutely. People keep asking me where change is going to come from. Are you waiting for the administrator? I'm not waiting for any administration. I'm boots on the ground. It's us.

Walmart actually, their Great Value often does not contain food dyes. Also, they have their—was it Good Foods Now or their newer brand? That one does not contain food dyes. I have bought naturally colored sprinkles, the Easter ones, the Christmas ones. Whenever they have the holiday sprinkles out, they will have one. You got to look. That is you. It says vegetable based across the front of it. They are vegetable-based dyes, and they really have a large selection of synthetic dye-free foods.

You do talk about using your wallet. I've been on this journey for over 12 years, and I used to have to go to three different stores to get pickles and pickle relish because all pickles notoriously have color in them. Yes. And pickle relish. So I had to go to three stores.

Well, about two and a half years ago, and we have a Kroger brand store called Smith's, but it's Kroger. Kroger's really big. So I'm standing there at the pickles and I'm looking, and there's a whole new line of Kroger brand, and on the front it says no synthetic colors. They had every flavor of pickle, every slice, every pickle relish. It was inexpensive and they're good.

I sat there and was sending pictures to my son, and I have tears in my eyes. It's the silliest thing to be so—these tears of joy that I'm looking at these pickles and there they are, all dye-free.

There are some brands of fruit snacks that no longer have color in them that used to. When we started, yogurt had dye in it. It is now very difficult for me to find yogurt that has color in it—that synthetic colors. So companies have been making a change, and it absolutely comes down to what we are buying.

I will buy things that I may not necessarily need just because it's dye-free and I have never seen anything that dye-free before. I was like, I will reward this company by buying it, even though I don't need it. I will go give it to somebody else. But I want my dollars to go to places and companies that are going to be supporting us in this.

Every year I look at the Peeps. Every year for Easter I look at the Peeps. This year the pink ones—and only in some areas—but the pink ones were naturally colored. They were not Red 40. They're testing. I think what's happening is these companies are testing, and they're testing to see if people notice and if people are going to change their buying patterns.

Tic Tacs—the newer flavors, the colored ones—if you look close, they don't. They're all natural colors. I'm waiting for them to go change the orange ones. I want my orange Tic Tacs back. I love those things. Can't eat them with the synthetic colors in them, but the newer ones have natural dyes in them.

Ashley James (0:47:41.695)

You just made me think of something. I’m sorry to interrupt. I have synesthesia. I can actually taste things when you say them. I haven't had it since I was a kid, but the orange ones taste like licorice, right?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:47:54.440)

Well, no, they taste that really soury, orangey kind of flavor.

Ashley James (0:48:00.176)

So the reason why I made this connection in my brain is in Canada, it's not in the States. So I was an ice cream scooper. It was one of my first summer jobs after I was a mother's helper and I was a babysitter when I was 11, 12, 13. But around 13 or 14, I started working at this ice cream place up in Muskoka. Have you ever heard of Muskoka? On a Port Carling—little cute town.

There's a type of ice cream that is only in Canada and it's orange, as bright of an orange as that Tic Tac. It has that same flavor and then it has stripes of licorice in it. So I thought, licorice—but no, it's actually that Tic Tac orange flavor with black licorice. It's called Tiger Tail or Tiger Stripe or something. It just dawned on me. I kind of feel stupid for not thinking of this sooner.

There are dyes in ice cream. I always read labels and we very seldom take ice cream home. We're dairy free, so we'll do coconut ice cream. Those usually healthier, dairy-free options—don't have dye in them. I look at the ingredients anyway. But if you're out and about, and this place serves some coconut ice cream, you just don't ask.

I just don't think to ask, “Is that dye-free?” In my mind, vanilla—there's dye in vanilla. That's wild. You don't think to ask. “Well, it's white. There's not dye in it.” You've got to ask.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:49:34.112)

Baskin-Robbins back in 2018 pulled all the synthetic colors out of their ice cream. They did not make a big deal out of it. There was a small—well, no, because people do the backlash. “You ruined my childhood because you took colors out.” So, I mean, they should be doing it now, but they very quietly—there was a little sign on the door—and my friend sent me a picture and was, “My gosh,” because we couldn't take Alex to Baskin-Robbins. If he wanted ice cream, he couldn’t eat—“There's two, two out of 31 you can have there, bud. I'm sorry. Don't look at the others, but you can have these two.” So we just never went. A friend of mine sent the picture. My husband and I ran down there, and we're both again standing there crying, going inside going, “Are you sure? Let me see. Let me see. They all look gorgeous. Let me see. Are you sure?”

We brought him down there and then the kid’s crying because—I think he was 13 or 14 years old—and his eyes welled up with tears. “Here you go, bud. Here, you can have—you can have any of this.” Yes, we’re not eating it all the time, but there’s Ben and Jerry's—I was just down in Vegas and there was a Ben and Jerry's, and I can't do dairy. They had an oat milk, and it was a strawberry swirl. I was, “That sounds really good.” But they're, “Oh no, we don't use any artificial colors in anything here.” It was so exciting to be, “Oh, I can have that.”

It's just the simple things, but the companies—you don't know, because they still look colorful. They still look fun.

Ashley James (0:51:16.090)

Wait. We're not going to miss it when it's gone.

You mentioned in your TED talk that you figured out the bagels you guys were eating had yellow dye in them. I was just thinking, you go out to eat pizza and you don't know—in the freaking crust! I have a friend who thought she was gluten intolerant. I'm a big advocate of being gluten-free—no barley, wheat, rye, or oats.

But here's the thing—why do some people get incredibly sick in North America eating flour products, and then they go to Europe and eat the flour products and they don't get sick? I know two people who are hospitalized if they eat barley, wheat, rye, or oats here in the States, but not in Europe. Everyone's like, “Well, it's the glyphosate.” I'm like, “Okay, but it could also be the artificial dye. What else are they putting in there?”

It can also be the artificial fortification of nutrients. So they put artificial vitamins—synthetic vitamins—which, if you have MTHFR, for example, you can't process that, and it makes her incredibly sick. It took her years to figure out that she's not allergic to wheat. She's allergic to the fortification. So she has to call up the company.

We wanted to go out for pizza. She literally had to call them and have them read the ingredient list and then talk to the owner.

We go to this really cool place in Seattle called Rozzie's, where they make everything from scratch and they have a celiac kitchen separate from the regular kitchen. Yes, it's really neat. They do dairy free, they do soy free, they do garlic free.

It's a place you go if your whole family has allergies, but everyone has a different allergy, and then you can all eat the same food. It's really cool. She had to talk to the owner and make sure that there was no fortification in the flour. That's the level that she has to do.

But how many products do we eat when we go to restaurants and we don't know? Let's say we get some processed meat—there can be dye in that. The bread—there can be dye in that. Like you said, the condiments—there's dye in condiments. It is in everything.

But you're also a living example—your whole family's a living example—that we can be dye-free. You have many things in your home. You don't suffer. You still eat processed food. You still get to have your treats. But it's dye-free, so it's possible. The diligence just needs to be there.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:53:58.108)

It's exactly the diligence. It is absolutely possible. I joke that we have everything from organic to Oreos because the Oreos don't have Blue 1 in them anymore. But we have a variety of things in our house. Dark chocolate is obviously one of the fan favorites around here, but it's good for you. And it's really easy to find dye-free.

It's the restaurants. We have restaurants in our town that we go to. I was at a Mexican restaurant two nights ago and I had to ask, “Okay, how do you make your rice? Do you use any packaged seasonings?” And he was like, “No, we use tomatoes.” Wonderful. Thank you. No problem with that.

A friend of ours owns a local restaurant that makes everything—all of their sauces, their own ketchup, everything. We can eat anything and everything there because they will not carry anything with food dyes.

But when we travel—and we travel a lot—traveling is wonderful. We've been taking Alex all over the place since he was a couple of months old because we wanted him to see the world. That's where we were more likely to end up accidentally consuming food dyes than anywhere else. You ask people at the restaurant and they assume, or they give you false information, and then we end up with a kid—or now me—that accidentally got dosed.

So even when you're diligent, even when you've been on this journey for 12 years, there are going to be times where there's a hiccup. But if he eats dyes once, he's not back to where he was when he was overwhelmed and having major problems. Instead, we learned to calm ourselves down.

There's actually an amino acid complex that is made by a biotech company that is local. If we take it after we eat food dyes, it knocks the reaction down. So we have kind of found an occasional antidote, which has been wonderful.

Brain Health Formulas—their Restore—is all natural. It's all herbs. It's amino acids. It's been great. It was a very happy moment. I was talking to the owner and head researcher and he was like, “Well, you should try it.” And I was like, “Okay.”

So my son, being the teenager he is (and it's still his idea), went and ate something purposely with color in it and then took some to see if it would work. And it did. Good scientist, yes. So we've been testing.

We were told that half the kids grow out of it during puberty. We were at the California Office of Health Hazard Assessment back in October 2019. They held a symposium and researchers came from around the country and even from the UK—Dr. Stevenson from the UK presented research. The FDA was there. Coca-Cola was there. Big Candy was there.

So there were a lot of people there, all with MDs and PhDs. And Alex was the only 13-year-old kid there—the only kid there at all—who personally reacted to this stuff. So we talked to a lot of researchers. We talked to a lot of doctors, I'm so grateful for them for their research—but they don't live it. They're not living it.

We had some wonderful conversations, but they kept saying, “Well, we think 50% grow out of it into adulthood.” And so we were really excited and hoping that Alex would grow out. So we tested him and kept testing him and no. Not a chance.

Ashley James (0:58:00.343)

Well, I mean, you have it. So I want to get into this a bit.

First of all, I really want to dive in—if you could dive deeper into—I know you said they're petroleum-based and you said something about the lake, like Lake Yellow or whatever. That it's oil-based and fat-based. I want to talk about that. I just want to talk more about what it actually is.

Why do some people have a massive shift—like your son—and other kids not so much? Why is it that it affects some more than others? What do you think it is?

This concept of growing out of it. I think that we are blaming the symptoms of food—I want to say poisoning—but the food poisoning on other things.

“That's just puberty.”
“That's just hormones.”
“That's because he's just upset because of this or that.”

I think we're gaslighting the really ubiquitous effect. We have a much bigger problem. I think more people are negatively affected than we believe. But we're just going, “It's just this.”

How many people are medicated to suppress the side effects of dye?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (0:59:27.419)

Well, digging deeper into that, what population consumes the most synthetic food dye is our minority populations and our low socioeconomic status households.

So kids who have the highest risk factors for developing psychological disorders and physical disorders and health issues because of the stresses in their house and the exposure to lead and other chemicals and the highest consumption of artificial food dyes.

Then these kids in schools—their behaviors are blamed on poor family life, stressful home life.

Ashley James (1:00:13.961)

Which it could be accumulation, but when we look at a child taken off of dyes, it's night and day, and they do so much better.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:00:26.097)

Yes. They do. These kids are suffering, no fault of their own, no fault of their parents when they're not educated or don't have access. If the school foods have food dyes in them and that's what they're living on because mom and dad don't have the money, the schools then are poisoning these kids. It's heartbreaking to me just how devastating one set of chemicals can be on a population and then yes, that population gets blamed for having all of these other problems. Then they get put on medications that continue to perpetuate the problem because allergy meds have it, vitamins have it.

You've got to read every single thing that you pick up because you're putting it in your body or on your body.

The cheaper it is, the higher likelihood that it's going to contain food dyes because it covers up the inferior products that are being used to make some of these things. So you really have to be diligent.

Regular food dye is water soluble—Red 40—but Red 40 Lake is oil soluble.

It's how you can't mix water and oil together. Let's say I was going to make a red oil for something. Let's say I wanted to take an oil and make it colored a little bit. You couldn't put just regular Red 40 in there because it dissolves in water, but you could put the Red 40 Lake in there.

Ashley James (1:02:17.844)

But Red 40 Lake, the oil they use, what is it?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:02:22.520)

It's not really an oil. It's just an oil-based version of Red 40. So Red 40, the way that it is manufactured, the chemical structure–that chemical structure integrates into water.

When you see “lake” at the end of it, that chemical structure has been altered so it integrates into fat or oil.

Ashley James (1:02:47.856)

Fat soluble and it's petroleum. It’s derived from petroleum.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:02:53.062)

It's the same formula. It's just altered a little differently in order to be able to be absorbed into oil. Vitamin D is oil-based. It's fat-based. So let's say they wanted to make the vitamin D pill colored. They could add Red 40 Lake to make it colored so that it is more colorful. You wouldn't add Red 40–not that they do, but I'm just using that as an example. So that's the difference, they call them the straights and the lakes. So the straights are water.

Ashley James (1:03:31.096)

I'm suspicious. I want to know what makes it the lake. What did they add to it? How does it react differently in the body? Do we absorb it in our fat? Is it more absorbed by the body, less absorbed by the body?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:03:48.209)

Yes, all great questions. Too bad we don't have research on it.

Ashley James (1:03:51.015)

I think we should just avoid all of them. Let's just avoid all the artificial dyes.

But just to think about when you travel, do you bring your own soap so you don't use the soap in the airport bathrooms?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:04:04.808)

Yes, I do. Now, so some of the soaps, I mean, if you're going to wash your hands and rinse it off really quickly, the odds are that you're not going to absorb it. We know that dermal absorption from other chemicals, it's about 10 percent. Of course, the longer it's on your skin, the more it's going to absorb. So a patch is going to continue to absorb 24 hours, whereas if you're washing your hands and rinsing them really quickly, generally you're probably not going to absorb enough to cause any kind of issues.

However, I was just at a hotel for five days. So yes—shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face soap, all of it—because I don't know. Now, the hotel, everything was white or clear—wonderful. No dyes in any of it. It was fantastic. Their lotions that they provided, no color. I was shocked. I just don't expect it.

So yes, we travel with everything. We used to travel with American cheese when we did our road trips because our son, if he wanted cheese on things, or we would cheddar. I've never found a cheddar cheese, a straight cheddar cheese, that had anything—annatto maybe, yes, but not any other colored. The only colored I've found are maybe a wine cheese spread or American cheese, but even those are getting more difficult to find. I'm finding more and more without synthetic colors in it. So we do travel with a lot of things just because we can't come across anything with color in it and then use it.

Ashley James (1:05:37.344)

So you're coming out with a book, which I'm really excited about because as I'm listening to all this, all I want to ask is, give us a beginner's guide. Give us step one—go through your pantry. Step two—go through your cosmetics. But there's hidden ones that I'm not thinking about. The hand sanitizer, the art supplies.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:06:05.692)

Yes and the dermal absorption. The book that we have, Dr. Lorne Hofsteth. As I mentioned earlier, he's the Associate Dean of Research at the College of Pharmacy at the University of South Carolina. He has over 100 scientific publications. He's the chemistry and the mouse research side of this. I am the human behavior and human side of this. Together, we make a really great team. He is an awesome human being.

We have been working for months and months and months on taking all of the research that is very difficult to digest for average people and turning it into a book that has the introduction of what this is and why we should care, and a nice big chapter on the history of food dyes. Each dye gets its own chapter until we get to Blue 2, Green 3, Citrus Red 2, and Orange B—those are in one chapter.

Then we get into how do you pay attention to this, how do you get it out of your diet, who should you be talking to—because you need to be talking to family, you need to be talking to the schools, how do you talk to your pharmacy, your pharmacist. The last chapter is a lot of additional information about where the future is going with this and other information.

It's a big book. There's 173 different research articles that we discuss in this—all of the research that we could pretty much scour together. We put it in a fashion that anyone can understand it—anybody from who's new to this to people who want to know all the research. We compiled the best we could. It's probably going to be almost 200 pages. It's a good-size book. It's everything you need to know about synthetic food dyes.

We will try to keep updating it or have updated versions as we go as things change because things are changing and new information is coming in. We’ll stay on top of it the best we can. In each chapter, it'll talk about where to look, where to find things, how to read, how to read labels, what to look for, and as much of the information as we can possibly put together.

It's also the research. You could take it to your doctor. Not all doctors believe you when you say, “My kid, okay, I have synthetic food dyes.”

Ashley James (1:08:56.380)

That's where you fire that doctor and you find a new one because they're not the god of your existence. They work for you. I am a firm believer that you should get second opinions, third opinions, and fire doctors who don't believe that your body can heal itself.

You do not owe this doctor anything. I don't care if you've been seeing them for 15 years. Go find one that will listen to you. Don't have an abusive relationship. Don't have a narcissist as a doctor. What are you doing? Fire that doctor.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:09:27.316)

Yes. When we had to, our insurance changed, we had to switch pediatricians for my son. Thankfully, it was only for a year. Although we did find a very good doctor, I had to call around and say, “What do you think about food dyes? Do you think that they can cause issues?” And if, “No, no, no,” finally I got a pediatrician who said, “You sound like you know far more than I do, and I am absolutely willing to listen.” I was sold. We will see you next week.

Yes, it was great. It was nice, but not always. Family doesn't listen. Family can be the most difficult to get on board. Yes.

So our book, we tried to get it to such a fashion to where it can be used in the fight against food dyes. “Look, here's the research. Read this.” We talk about the mouse research and the rat research. Yes, we aren't mice and rats. However, our systems often work very similarly. And if it causes DNA damage in mice, well, you can bet dollars to no nuts it's causing DNA damage in your gut as well.

He had a grad student who wanted to feed a pregnant mouse Red 40 to see what effect, if any, it would have on the pups. All the pups died. They replicated it. All the pups died. And she was, “That's it. I'm not doing this again.” He talks about that in the book. That was one of these pivotal moments for him, especially of, “My gosh, what are we doing?”

We know that it comes through breast milk and it's not being filtered out by the placenta. It's entering into developing fetuses. We don't know enough of what it does to humans. I think we know enough that it does terrible things to other creatures that we don't need to be doing any more of the research. Just get it out of our food supply. Get it out of our vitamins. Get it out of our medications. Out of our lotions. Get it out of everything.

Ashley James (1:11:33.992)

If it's in your vitamin, you need to never trust that brand again. I'm sorry, but if a brand of vitamins puts dye in it, they do not choose the highest quality ingredients. That is not a company I would trust. The entire company and everything they sell, I would not trust them.

So you mentioned supplements. Just fire all those companies. Find a supplement company that's dye-free because you have got to have high standards, the highest standards possible when you're looking for your health.

But the weird things on food, you said the oranges could be sprayed in it. So weird.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:12:19.468)

Only in Florida. I will debunk some myths. No, Eurythracene or red three is not used in watermelons. my gosh. Last summer that was all over TikTok. It was ridiculous. No farmers are not injecting their watermelons with red three. No synthetic colors have been approved for use on fruits or vegetables except Florida oranges, except Florida oranges. That is it.

Ashley James (1:12:41.187)

What about fish? Salmon and tuna?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:12:44.323)

So we did a deep dive into salmon. They feed salmon a “dyed food” in order to make them pinker, but it is not synthetic colors.

Yes, so, do you know how flamingos turn pink when they eat certain shrimp? There's a chemical in those shrimp that causes the flamingos to turn pink. The “dyed food” that they're giving to the salmon has that chemical in it that then causes the salmon to turn pink.

It was at one point a naturally occurring chemical that they've made in a lab and made it into a food, but it is not a synthetic color.

Meats are not dyed with any synthetic colors.

Now, yes, there is Red 40 or Red 3 in pickling salts that are pink. However, even the Center for Science and the Public Interest, which have been the biggest advocates for getting food dyes out of our foods—they are really the quiet, behind-the-scenes unsung heroes because they have worked with so many companies, including Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin’ Donuts, and others—but even they say there is so little Red 40 in pickling salts that by the time something is pickled with that and you consume it, there is a negligible amount.

My son does not react to anything that is pickled using pink pickling salts. And I'll tell you, I have not met a child who is more reactive than that one. My kiddo is the canary in the coal mine. If anybody's going to react, it's him. And if he doesn't react, I don't think anybody will.

So pickling salts—yes, it's in there. However, not going to cause, should not cause, a problem.

Ashley James (1:14:34.146)

Yes, but for example, wasabi—if I go to a Japanese restaurant—wasabi, pickled ginger, and then sometimes I look at the tuna and I'm, is that dyed? I mean, do they dye tuna or no?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:14:48.752)

Not that I know of. No. Now, this wasabi that you have in, yes—100% Green 3—because it is horseradish with Green 3 in it. I honestly, absolutely, 100% Green 3.

Ashley James (1:15:00.828)

And most of the pickled gingers are fluorescent pink. It's not natural.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:15:06.564)

Those have colors in them too or they've been pickled with red onions, but that's probably not happening. My son avoids both of those when he goes and gets sushi. He loves sushi. He's had all of the tuna rolls, no problem.

Ashley James (1:15:22.570)

Okay. Of course, you have to avoid the artificial crab in the California rolls. You have to ask for real crab.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:15:32.213)

Yes. Here's the other thing. If it says artificial color, then it is not synthetic dyes. So it is not petroleum-based. Instead, it could be titanium dioxide, could be annatto, depending on how annatto was processed.

Ashley James (1:15:48.889)

Titanium dioxide causes a lot of problems like cancer. I would avoid that also. But interesting that something could say artificial dye and that doesn't mean petroleum-based.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:15:59.074)

Correct. In this country, it has to be listed with red 40, yellow 5, whatever the specific synthetic color is. There are nine synthetic colors that are also considered artificial, but there are other artificials that aren't synthetic. So I know it's confusing.

Ashley James (1:16:17.750)

So this is really great clarity because I think some people would go, well, I ate artificial dye and I didn't feel any bad after, so that means I'm not allergic to it. But there's a bunch of like you're saying, there's artificial dyes that aren't petroleum-based. And what you're specifically talking about is anything that has a color and then a number, or it says color and the word lake and a number.

That's what we want us to 100% avoid because that's what's getting in the brain, getting in our gut, doing major disruptions.

I know you have to go in a few minutes. Your website is livingdyefree.org and I want to make sure that listeners go to that—livingdyefree.org.

When's your book coming out?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:17:03.486)

So the book should be out this June. So just around the corner.

Ashley James (1:17:09.022)

Yay. Okay. Just around the corner. So should they get on an email list or just follow you on Instagram or Facebook? What's the best way for them to know about your book?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:17:14.008)

Gosh, that's a good question. So, following me on Instagram would be really good. And let me look up what I am. I'm on Instagram and TikTok. Both of those are good ways to go. You could find me as Rebecca Bevans on Facebook as well.

Ashley James (1:17:31.783)

Yes, and I'll make sure that I have all of your socials and make sure that's in the show notes of today's podcast, learntruehealth.com, and make sure that it's accessible for everyone.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:17:43.719)

Yes. Following me on that, I'm going to be. It'll be up on the Kindle version first and then the paperback and hardbacks will be available. Then in a couple of months, they'll be available in stores.

Ashley James (1:17:59.455)

Cool. I hope you do an audio version too for those audio files. I want you to sit down at your computer with your partner and record it like a podcast. I love listening to when the real author– I don't know if you're interested in doing that, but I just love it when the author gets really emphatic or they'll pause reading and then tell a side story and, it's not in the book, but it's in the audio book. And I just love that.

I think my final question is, you've talked a little bit about how it disrupts the brain, how it disrupts the gut. What do we know? Because I know there's a lot of unknowns. We just see the result. But what do we know about how these artificial dyes affect the body? Do we know if it disrupts this, it turns this on, it turns this off? What do we know about it and how it affects the body?

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:19:05.857)

We know that it interrupts the immune system. There is some preliminary research that isn't necessarily—I don't think it's published yet—that demonstrates that it interrupts the macrophages in the brain. That is part of the immune system in the brain. It causes DNA damage in your intestinal system. It causes colitis in some individuals. It causes inflammation in the body, and inflammation then leads to greater risks of cancer and DNA damage.

So we know somewhat on how it may work in some mice and rats, but we don't necessarily know the exact mechanism. What is interesting is how what happens in the gut affects the brain for some individuals. So we know that certain bacteria break it down. We talk about which bacteria in the book break down the azo dyes, the red and yellows. And so those bacteria, if somebody had a higher prevalence of those bacteria—which, we have thousands of different strains of bacteria in our gut—but if those bacteria are plentiful in the gut for some individuals, that could cause some individuals to be more reactive.

We also know that individuals with a certain polymorphic gene are more reactive or more likely to be reactive, but they also have higher levels of reactivity to pollen or allergens or eczema or asthma. So people with asthma and eczema have a higher rate of being allergic or reactive to food dyes than people that don't.

So there's still so many mechanisms that are unknown. But it is known that it does go through your intestinal system and it does cause problems.

Ashley James (1:21:09.933)

So what's interesting is that we know it affects some, it seemingly doesn't affect everyone. We're like, well, some people are bouncing off the walls and other people aren't. Some people are having suicidal thoughts and some people aren't. But what you're saying is that 100% of people, we know it hurts your DNA, it suppresses your immune system. That should be a motivation enough to just avoid it.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:21:35.739)

Yes, I used to tell people, hey, you know what, remove it from your diet for two weeks. If you don't see any behavioral changes, well, then you can go back to eating it if you want to. After doing all this research with Dr. Hofseth, I can't say that anymore. I can say, great, it doesn't cause behavioral damage or problems, but it's causing DNA damage. It's causing intestinal damage. It's messing with your immune system. I mean, the reason that the Brain Health Formulas’ Restore works on knocking down the reaction is because it is designed to work on the immune system. So we assume that it's liberating the immune system.

Dr. Hofseth is going to be testing the Restore from Brain Health Formulas on some mice with Red 40 because we're going to try to figure out what mechanism is actually being activated in that. We're working on it. His lab has shifted to do a lot more research in a lot more areas. So there's going to be more research on this.

But yes, I used to tell people, it's no big deal. There's always going to be chemicals that are going to kill you. I don't say that anymore. Now it's, okay, remove it. And I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't eat it if I were you. And my husband, who I adore, it's taken him a little while to get on board, but he ditched his blue deodorant and his armpits stopped hurting, his neck stopped hurting, his shoulders.

He goes, babe, I think it could be correlational—but I don't have the tightness in my shoulders and my neck anymore. He felt actual physical differences in his body and he won't touch it now. He went completely dye-free because he started to notice little things with him. And he's been helping edit on this and is like, no, maybe it doesn't cause behavioral problems with me, but it's causing gut issues for people. So no, I'm not going to eat this anymore.

So, yes, I can't tell people any longer that this is okay. It causes damage to everyone. And I wasn't suicidal. I wasn't anything other than what I thought was normal, and it did have an effect on me. I've had students that are like, “I feel angry all the time and I need a therapist.” And then instead they went off dyes and were like, holy cow, things went away that I didn't think were because of a food substance that I'm eating.

I really think it's affecting—there's a population that it's so damaging to that you see the behaviors. My son is just—it is so intense for him, but he's one of the smaller percentage. I think there's far more people that are reacting without having any idea that they're actually reacting, which is frightening, because then we aren't who we are then.

So get off dyes and see who you are. Test it, see how you feel. Like you said, you tell your kid all the time: how do you feel now? How do you feel later? We really need to start paying attention to how we feel and what is affecting how we feel. And dyes are one of those things that we absolutely, categorically know that will change the way people feel. We just don't know which people. So maybe it's you.

Ashley James (1:25:10.745)

Thank you so much, Dr. Rebecca Bevans, for coming on the show. This has been enlightening. I know we're going to help people with this interview. Please, everyone, share this interview with those you love. Share this interview with those you don't love. Share this interview with everyone. Just get it out there, get it out there. And of course, everyone can go to Dr. Rebecca's website, which is livingdyefree.org. That's D-Y-E.

And check out her book, which is coming out next month. Very, very, very exciting. It is so wonderful having you on the show and I'd love for you to come back anytime you have more to share, new research. We'd love to have you back.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans (1:25:51.621)

Absolutely, we're going to be doing a bunch of research this summer. I would be happy to come back. Thank you so much for helping share the message and having this awesome podcast. I so appreciate you. Thank you.

Ashley James (1:26:03.627)

Awesome! Thank you.

Outro:

Hi, my name is Jennifer Saltzman, and I am the head coach at TakeYourSupplements.com. I wanted to share with you a testimonial that I received from a client of mine—one of the many success stories that I have—but this one was very close to my heart because she's young, has struggled so much to regain her health, and has had such a phenomenal, overcoming testimonial that I really wanted to share it today.

She writes:

My name is Angela. I am 25 years old. I have been on a health journey that consists of an autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and other issues that left me feeling defeated and debilitated every day. For 15 years, I have seen eight different specialists and many doctors, and have been in and out of physical therapy, dealing with symptoms I thought would leave me wheelchair-bound and in diapers by the time I was 30.

Well, I am now 25, and after everything I've learned through Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com, that definitely won't happen.

Some things doctors have said to me have crushed my hopes. I was told to lose weight and that my pain would go away. So I lost 90 pounds—and the pain was still there. My days were short, and after a five-hour work shift or even a day of running an errand or two, I was left debilitated. So the doctors told me the pain was all in my head because I was previously diagnosed with fibromyalgia—the only diagnosis so many doctors agreed upon because they couldn't think of anything else. Despite me having some form of an immune disease, I felt hopeless and as if life was going to pass me by.

There were times when I tried hiking one or two miles and I was unable to walk or function for days after. I was missing out on trips and adventures, and as embarrassing as it sounds, I was having BM bathroom emergencies so frequently it was ruining my daily function. I could go on about the ways I was ill and what it kept me from, but honestly, after the progress I've made, a long list of symptoms I used to have has become a blur of the past.

When I finally decided to check out TakeYourSupplements.com, recommended through the Learn True Health podcast, I was immediately connected with Jennifer, who kept track of my overwhelmingly long list of complex symptoms and thoroughly created a personalized, step-by-step plan.

Her recommendations have changed my life, and the changes were practically instant. She put me on a complete digestive activation complex that has taken away all of my stomach pain, unnecessary bloating, and gas. She explained to me that the formula supports every stage of digestion—from breakdown to absorption—designed to optimize stomach acid, bile flow, and nutrient assimilation.

She recommended a cellular repair-focused diet, which not only has helped my stomach, but the food gives me energy and makes me feel really good. It reduces inflammation in my body—something no doctor ever told me about.

When I first started with Jennifer, I took the TakeYourSupplements.com health evaluation and scored a negative 32. I just retook it and scored a 69. That's 100 points better in five months.

Still room for progress, but my life nevertheless has been changed, and I am so happy. My days have been much longer and full of adventure. I have hiked the 4,000-footer mountains of New Hampshire—something I never thought I would be able to do. I have had successful days of workouts, errands, and work.

The Learn True Health podcast and Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com have done more for me than any doctor ever has, and it all started with validation.

I am now 25 and feel my life is just now starting. It's really hard to put into words just how much has changed for me, so I'll keep on living as actively as possible and learning as much as I can so I can finally take part in the beautiful things of life.

I can't wait for the adventures to come with the hope I've been given through this program. If anyone out there hears this and feels their doctors are taking more than they're giving, give this a try.

Thank you, Ashley and Jennifer. Your knowledge and expertise is a gift I cherish every day.

Learn more and book your free health consultation today by visiting TakeYourSupplements.com.