About dyes used in food

• Lab tests prove they’re harmless.
Each of the nine man-made dyes used in food went through 5 to 10 years of laboratory and animal testing before receiving Food and Drug Administration approval. There has never been a confirmed health issue related to food coloring in the United States, except for rare cases of allergic reactions.

• The amount used is small.
To determine how much dye is safe to use, toxicologists take the highest dose that did not cause any adverse effect in animal tests and divide it by 100. The resulting number is the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)—the amount any human can ingest every day for a lifetime without experiencing problems. Most foods containing dyes have only a tiny fraction of the ADI.

• The FDA monitors food carefully.
If they get a complaint, they investigate. If they believe an ingredient is causing the problem, they may issue a recall and even ban it.

NO: They have known health risks.
Michael Jacobson, PhD, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest

• Some may be linked to cancer.
Red 3 was shown to cause thyroid cancer in one animal study and has been banned from cosmetics and externally-applied drugs, but it is still permitted in food. Though there is no proof that the dye causes cancer in humans, there’s reason to avoid it.

• They may worsen ADHD symptoms.
That’s according to an analysis of 15 studies conducted at Columbia University and Harvard University. Two later studies commissioned by the British government found that children were more hyperactive when they ingested a drink containing food dyes equal to that in two to four 56-gram bags of candy (56 grams equals roughly 2 ounces).

• Europe is taking action.
Last July, the European Union passed a law requiring most foods containing dye to display a warning label stating that the additives "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children."

The takeaway:
The strongest suggestion of harm is in kids with ADHD, so if your child has the disorder, talk to your doctor about whether your family should avoid dyes. Otherwise, there’s no solid proof that they’re unsafe—but it’s never a bad idea to cut back on processed foods.

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Food that burn belly fat

There is a lot of buzz surrounding foods that burn fat, but in actuality the concept has been melded into something rather misleading. There are only a handful of foods that eating them potentially increases the the immediate biochemical act of burning fat (hot peppers and green tea are two that come to mind). Most foods set you up to burn more fat if you eat them compared to if you ate something else.

Let’s take broccoli for example. Eating broccoli doesn’t stimulate the process stored fat being liberated and burned. But eating broccoli instead of bread or other high glycemic foods will result in a favorable biochemical response from your body leading to fat burning that wouldn’t have occurred with the high glycemic foods.
These are the kinds of effects that interest me. What are the changes going on in your body when you choose certain carbohydrates over others. Naked Nutrition Insiders that have watched this month’s online seminar, Glycemic Index: The Carbohydrate Solution that Works, know about the advantages to using a lower glycemic index diet approach for weight loss and health; but yesterday I came across new data showing how a low glycemic approach will allow you to keep you metabolism up almost 6% higher than your friend who is sucking on rice cakes and grape-nuts (two high glycemic foods) when trying to lose weight.

Examples Low Glycemic Foods (from Glycemic Index Online Seminar)
Researchers from Harvard (now the lead researcher is acutally at Tufts I believe) decided to look at the effects of eating a low glycemic diet on metabolic rate compared to a high glycemic index diet. They put together a small study (only 10 people) where the people were given instructions to eat a low calorie low glycemic index diet 9 days and then switch to a low calorie high glycemic index diet for 9 days (or visa versa).
Not surprising the resting energy expenditure (basically how many calories they would have burned if they laid around all day) of the participants decreased on both diets. This was expected as reducing the amount of calories you eat and not adding resistance/metabolic exercise is a sure fire way to decrease your metabolism. But, the interesting part is that the researchers reported that by the 6th day the…
resting energy expenditure declined by 10.5% during the high-GI diet but by only 4.6% during the low-GI diet.

They ate the same amount of calories. Both diets would be considered ‘healthy’ by man people (the High GI diet wasn’t loaded with sugar or anything). But the metabolic response was different. Isn’t that interesting!
What can we take home from this study?
Eating a low glycemic diet decreases the reductions in resting energy expenditure when dieting.Most foods aren’t going to instantly cause an increase in fat burning but choosing low glycemic foods over high glycemic foods will allow you to burn more fat and more calories over time.Eating a low glycemic diet usually means you will eat less carbs and more protein (the low GI diet had 24% less carbs and 12% more protein).
 
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