LilSugar

Would You Eat Gray Cheetos?

Katie Sweeney — Tue, 17 May 2011 10:32:13 PDT

Earlier today I watched an interesting clip on Good Morning America about how a food's color affects perception of taste. In the video, children and adults are given the same flavor of jello and chocolate pudding, but it's been dyed several different colors. Both the tots and grown-ups assume each color is a different flavor.

Most food is artificially colored in some way and at the end of the segment they point out that showing the natural color of certain junk foods, like Cheetos, might get more people to stop eating them. Cheetos are naturally gray and they're given a bright orange artificial color. Would you eat them, and other junk foods, in their natural state? How do you feel about artificially colored foods?

Source: Flickr User jeffeaton

Give Your Easter Eggs a Makeover With Eco-Eggs All-Natural Dyeing Kit

Rebecca M Gruber — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:46:10 PDT

It's eggtacular! With all of the talk about food dyes and their effects on young tots this week, mamas preparing for Easter may be thinking twice about how they'll color their eggs this year. Using plant, fruit, and vegetable extracts, rather than the Red 40 and Blue Lake dyes at the forefront of the controversy, the Eco-Eggs Easter Egg Coloring Kit ($16) still creates vibrantly dyed eggs without harming your tots or the environment. The kit comes with three pots of natural dyes that can be used to create six colors, as well as cutouts that can be used to transform the eggs into bugs, animals, and more. Best of all, when lil ones splatter the dyes on the table and floor, they can be easily wiped up in a snap.

A Rainbow of Issues Tied to Food Dyes; Test Your Knowledge

Rebecca M Gruber — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:30:58 PDT

They make food fun and enticing to a lil one's eyes, but there's more to food dyes than many mamas might imagine. The same drops that are used to create rainbow foods have been linked to attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder in tots and much more. This week an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration will meet to discuss the possibility of added warning labels to products containing synthetic food dyes. Take this quiz to see how much you know about these ever-present color makers in our favorite foods.

Source: Flickr User kckellner

Take the Quiz

Does Red Dye No. 40 Cause Behavioral Outbursts in Children?

LilSugar — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:00:00 PST

You are what you eat and so the saying goes, but a group of parents believe that the food coloring their children digest affects their behavior. Commonly found in processed foods like Twizzlers, Doritos and Twinkies as well as baked goods, red dye no. 40 is to blame for aggressive outbursts in kids according to some moms and dads. The FDA maintains that the dye is safe for consumption. What's your opinion?

Do You Use Natural Food Dyes For Your Child's Treats?

Leta Shy — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:31:27 PDT

Should warning labels be on artificially dyed foods? The FDA is trying to decide this following a study showing that those petroleum-based dyes found in everything from cereal to candy can cause behavioral problems like ADHD. If the findings worry you, moms who still want to make a colorful treat for her kids can still feed them the rainbow by using natural food dye, which are made from the colors naturally found in certain foods.

If you want to try out natural coloring, making your own can be half the fun of an afternoon of family cooking! Lil ones will love to experiment with homemade color combinations, which use common kitchen ingredients like red cabbage, beets, turmeric, onion skins, and coffee to impart pretty shades of pink, red, orange, and more.

Store-bought dyes are another great option, especially for decorating baked goods. India Tree Nature's Colors come in a pack of liquid red, yellow, and blue ($19) and can be combined to make other colors, while Nature's Flavors sells many different shades in powder and liquid form ($15 each).

While natural food dyes don't give you those vibrant colors that we're used to from artificial dyes, what better time than Spring and Easter than to experiment with different shades of pastels! What natural food dye tricks do you use?

Source: Flickr User AmberStrocel

Green Tea 101: A Primer

YumSugar — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:29:10 PST

January sure is a busy month. Along with National Soup Month, it also happens to be National Tea Month. We thought we'd start off the festivities with a primer on a very trendy tea. Green tea came from Asia and took America by storm with its claims to fix just about every ailment. But what exactly is this wonder tea? Keep reading to find out.

Lauren Conrad and Her Brown Hair Land Back in LA

Lauren Turner — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:00:13 PDT

Lauren Conrad dragged her luggage behind her at the airport in LA yesterday following a trip to Texas, where she dined on local BBQ food. She was sporting darker hair after recently experimenting with the color by dyeing her ends light pink. LC's locks may be of interest but it's her reported relationship with Derek Hough that's making headlines. LC and Derek have been spotted out together multiple times, including a PDA-filled trip to Tru nightclub last weekend. Derek wasn't by LC's side when she got Punk'd by Dax Shepard, but she was a good sport about the scary prank, which tricked LC into thinking a woman was stuck in the trash compactor of a passing garbage truck.

Huito: The Hair Dye You Can Eat

Miriam Lacey — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:18:00 PDT

Huito is the natural equivalent of bacon cupcakes: an unexpected combination that really hits the spot for some people. The yummy fruit, which grows across the Caribbean and all the way down to Peru, makes both great jam and a pretty awesome black hair dye. When ripe, it's popular as a flavor for preserves and ice cream, but when it's still green the geniposidic acid it contains makes a tenacious dye when it oxidizes, dyeing anything it touches a rich blue-black.

It's popular for both temporary tattoos and hair color, and it makes a gentle alternative to henna or indigo. So if you're looking for lush black hair color without chemical dyes, pop by your specialty grocery and see if they have any huito. If you can't find the fruit but want to try the dye anyway, you can also buy huito extract (it's sometimes also called jagua) in many health food stores.

Burning Question: Why Is Cheese Orange?

Susannah Chen — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:07:27 PDT

Mother Earth surprises us with plenty of naturally colorful foods, from blueberries to squid ink, and everything in between. So have you ever been stumped about why, given that cow's milk isn't orange, certain cheeses have such a shockingly bright color?

I asked our resident cheese expert, Laura Werlin, what the reason is behind that. Turns out there are several possible historical explanations. "In England, a golden-hued cheese was an indication that the cows were out on pasture and therefore a superior cheese. The beta carotene they ingested translated to the color of their milk and therefore the cheese. So, to get the same price for cheese year-round, cheesemakers began adding drops of a natural dye, annato," she explained.

Another theory is that the orange coloring helped to set regional cheesemakers apart. "When cheesemaking was developing in the United States, cheddars from the East Coast were always white. In order to distinguish their cheeses on the market, Wisconsin cheesemakers made their cheeses orange, says Werlin. To this day, there isn't much orange cheese to be found along the eastern seaboard; some states, like California, produce both.

Are you partial to white or orange cheese?

Clean Up Your Act: Baby-Safe Solutions For an Eco-Friendly Kitchen

LilSugar — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:25:49 PDT

The kitchen is the center of the home, and for families with young kids, it's generally a very messy center. From sinks filled with bottles to floors (and walls and ceilings) splattered with toddlers' leftovers, parents spend as much time cleaning up after their children, as they do feeding them. How parents clean it up takes on new meaning once kids are in the home - both for the health of their tots, and for the good of our planet.

From left:

Bon Ami Liquid All-Purpose Cleaner ($4): Bon ami was making natural products far before natural was something to aspire to - since the 80s, the 1880s. Made with recycled and recyclable packaging, this all purpose cleanser works without phosphates or chlorine, and without leaving any residue.
Arm & Hammer Baking Soda ($3): It's not the sexiest cleaner available, but in terms of green cleaning, plain old Arm & Hammer baking soda is pretty tough to beat. The uses of this ubiquitous household staple go far beyond protection against a funky smelling fridge. Baking soda is perfect for safely cleaning dirt and residue off fresh fruits and vegetables, and for cleaning counters, stainless steel sinks, cutting boards, microwaves, plastic containers, lunch boxes - even for polishing silver.
iQ All-Purpose Cleaner Starter Kit ($4): Though the word innovative is overused, it really is the only way to describe iQ products. Made from plant-based and ecologically sustainable ingredients, the line of household cleaners allows users to reduce plastic waste by 80 percent. Instead of buying a whole new container of cleaner, iQ comes in concentrated recyclable cartridges. To make a bottle of cleaner, consumers just fill the re-usable iQ bottle with their own tap water and drop in the cartridge.
Dapple Dish Liquid ($6): Parents are very conscious about using baby friendly detergents on their tots' tiny clothes, but not everyone pays such close attention to the type of dish soap they use. Not all dish soaps rinse completely clean, and lingering suds can wind up right in your baby's mouth. Dapple Dish Liquid is designed specifically for households with babies and children - made using natural-based ingredients, with no harmful SLES, parabens, phthalates, dyes, or synthetic fragrances - and it really works to remove all traces and odors from food, breastmilk, and formula.