Food Dye and Behavior

Episode 407

29th March 2022

Do artificially colored food dyes make your kids behave badly? This sounds like it could be true, and is certainly alluring to parents as an easy fix. But are they actually related? In the 1940s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold was set to research just that, believing that food dye not only could cause bad behavior, but was linked to asthma, eczema, and hives. But the solution to how to solve any of these problems is a bit extreme – too extreme to be practical or even show any real results.

Episode notes

Do artificially colored food dyes make your kids behave badly? This sounds like it could be true, and is certainly alluring to parents as an easy fix. But are they actually related? In the 1940s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold was set to research just that, believing that food dye not only could cause bad behavior, but was linked to asthma, eczema, and hives. But the solution to how to solve any of these problems is a bit extreme – too extreme to be practical or even show any real results.

Music: “Medicines” by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

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About the show

Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin welcome you to Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. Every Friday, they dig through the annals of medical history to uncover all the odd, weird, wrong, dumb and just gross ways we’ve tried to fix people over the years. Educational? You bet! Fun? We hope!

Send topic suggestions to sawbones@maximumfun.org and follow @Sawbones on Twitter.

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