Twizzlers: A twisted rainbow of dyes
I do not believe that artificial food colors, artificial flavors, mineral oil and sulfur dioxide (“to maintain freshness”) were the ingredients of the original Yang & Smylie licorice candy. Perhaps those chemicals were added after acquisition of the business by The Hershey Company in 1977 when production of the candy has become really massive.
Twizzlers Rainbow twists of The Hershey Company
Monstrous size businesses tend to grow into the powerful monopolies which control large segments of the market, dictate their policies to others and force the diversity of small businesses to fade and disappear. Furthermore, cheaper ingredients and concoctions they use in their chase for the bigger profits might have produced long-term adverse effect on the nation’s health. Look how McDonald’s (watch the Super size me! video), dictate of Monsanto (watch Food Inc. and The Future of Food movies) and replacement of water by the “liquid candy” of the Coca-Cola Company, (read the CSPI article Coca-Cola’s Anniversary: Why I’m Not Celebrating) affected the health of millions of Americans.
Twizzlers is another example of the popular brand which brings to you low nutritional value, high calories from sugar and a variety of questionable food additives. Twizzlers Strawbery candy, Twizzlers Rainbow twists and Twizzlers Licorice candy were reviewed in detail earlier. Let me just remind you what Twizzlers Rainbow twists are all about and report to you how much the food dyes you and your children eat with every twist.
Twizzlers Rainbow twists Risk Score, DDRS ~ 96
Yes, for ~ $2 a pound you get high foreign additive risk DDFI = 55/14 ~ 3.9, extremely low nutritional value DDNF = 14/82 ~ 0.2 and 1200 sugary calories per 12.4 OZ (351 g) container.
In addition, you get four questionable food colorants (read the CSPI file Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks) in the amounts that are given below.
a Concentrations were calculated based on Beer-Lambert Law application to our spectrophotometry studies; b Five twists of each color per 12.4 OZ (351 g) container.
Please note that the weight of individual twists varies from 10 to 13 g with the average 11.7 g. As you can see, the amounts of the dyes we have found in the Twizzlers are much lower than the FDA Acceptable Daily Intake. However no one can tell you what can be the long term health effects of the food dyes consumption. The DyeDiet concept is to completely eliminate any food additives foreign to the human bio-chemistry. Food dyes are the ones that should be removed from our food as soon as possible.
If you enjoy sugary snacks, the DyeDiet recommendation would be to consider the Farmer’s Fruit Mix for only $2.88 per 12 OZ (340 g) or Sun-Made raisins for $1.91/LB or any other dry fruits instead. Enjoy your food, not the additives!
Category: Candy and snacks
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Nice Post. It’s really a very good article. I noticed all your important points. Thanks”
I really appreciate your site. My daughter has an intolerance to red 40. When the kids get candy—at parties and for holidays I am not sure what has red 40 and what doesn’t as they are not packaged for individual sale.
By the way, there is a lot of information on the web about red 40 causing ADHD and extra hyperactivity for ADHD children, but my daughter is not ADHD and red 40 really affects her. It causes stomach aches and vomitting if she eats a lot of dye (a serving of red jello). It also causes emotional outbursts “meltdowns” that can last an hour or more.
We really had a miserable kindergarten year because of this intolerance and her school food–and what we packed in her lunch was far more red dye than she was accustomed to eating.
Thank you,
Ginnie Crotts
I would call your daughter’s reaction differently: sensitivity to toxins, that is good. The fact that so many people are “tolerant” tells that the damage caused by the chemical goes unnoticed. Your daughter’s organism sends signals to stop biologically foreign substance intake. And the “mood meltdown” is nothing but mental reaction which means that even brain may be affected. ADHD is also mental health problem. So please, please, do everything you can to protect your daughter not only from Red 40 but from all the other artificial colorants and pesky additives. Please write me on Contact Us if you have any questions.