SunnyD or Kool-Aid: Which waste is deadlier?

Perhaps after Kool-Aid, SunnyD is the next most disgraceful chemically saturated fruit flavored drink, which no human being should ever touch. Red-colored versions of SunnyD contain about 400 mg/gallon of potentially carcinogenic azo dye Red 40 whereas aggressively marketed to children Kool-Aid contains doubled amount of the dangerous artificial color; about 800 mg/gallon.

Based strictly on the properties of food ingredients, the Dye Diet Calculator estimates health risks and nutritional values of any food which comes with an ingredient list. Unlike other food rating systems, it takes into account toxicological and nutritional data of every ingredient separately. Therefore final calculation result is more adequate and depends on a number and properties of food ingredients. For instance, food grade in Fooducate, ShopWell, FoodFacts and other approaches is not affected by the number of artificial colors added to a food product. From the other hand, health risk and nutritional values calculated by Dye Diet Calculator will be dramatically affected not only by the number but also by a ratio of nutrients to non-nutrient ingredients. The health risk will come higher and the nutritional value will come lower for food products that contain too many wasteful food additives and little of digestible nutritious ingredients.

Let’s take a look at how SunnyD Fruit Punch and Kool-Aid Cherry Bursts drinks are rated in three different approaches.

Table. SunnyD vs Kool-Aid ingredients and ratings (click of the values to get to the source)

Fooducate and FoodFacts discrepancies

• In Fooducate SunnyD Fruit Punch receives Red D+ with three warnings. Curiously, another version of SunnyD Fruit Punch with no sucralose (or the ingredient is missing?) gets an extra (fourth) warning – “highly processed” as if the former one is not highly processed – and still the same Red D+ rating. Why removal of the artificial sweetener didn’t affect the rating? Also same caloric content of 80 per for the both versions raises questions. Anyway, in Fooducate SunnyD gets D, a very low grade as it deserves;
• ShopWell doesn’t value SunnyD too high either: Red 31 (for strange reason the rating result doesn’t show up on page linked to the result) and
• FoodFacts database was of no use – no SunnyD Fruit Punch was found;
•  At last, the Dye Diet Calculator shows Health Risk = 1.94 (High) and Nutritional Value = 0.34 (Unacceptably low) for the SunnyD with 4 bad food additives to avoid; Note: you have to type-in “sunnyd” into the calculator and choose from suggestions to see the result;
• Now let’s look at Kool-Aid ingredients. It contains only 2 ingredients your body can somehow use: water and HFCS (given in green). All the rest 9 ingredients are waste 6 of which are certainly to avoid (given in red). Kool-Aid misses 5 juice and vitamin additives presented in SunnyD and has awful 2/9 nutrients to non-nutrients ratio vs 7/9 of SunnyD. Therefore we could expect that Kool-Aid is at least 3.5 times more hazardous and less nutritious than SunnyD.
• Surprisingly, all of a sudden, Fooducate awards the Kool-Aid with a descent Yellow C- grade. Why?? Because it contains less nutrients and two more dangerous chemicals? Ask Fooducate. Another miscount is an extra ingredient, “natural flavor” which doesn’t present in the actual list;
• ShopWell keeps it simple (stupid) – same Red 31 score for the Kool-Aid
• FoodFacts again failed to offer data for the exact quest but similar sugar-sweetened Kool-Aid got worst possible grade of Red F (0 – 9). Further exploration of the database revealed that Kool-Aid Unsweetened Black Cherry flavored drink mix gets Red D- (10 – 17) whereas Kool-Aid Unsweetened Cherry flavored drink mix  gets only the worst Red F (0 – 9) when the ingredients are identical: Citric acid, Calcium phosphate, Red 40, Salt, Artificial flavor, Ascorbic acid, Blue 1;
• Finally, the Dye Diet Calculator shows Health Risk = 11.25 (Unacceptably high) and Nutritional Value = 0.03 (Unacceptably low) for the Kool-Aid. Nutritional values ratio SunnyD/Kool-Aid ~ 0.34/0.03 ~ 10.

Dye Diet Calculator: Result for SunnyD

Dye Diet Calculator: Result for Kool-Aid

CONCLUSIONS

• According to Fooducate Kool-Aid Cherry Bursts drink is healthier than SunnyD Fruit Punch which simply is NOT true;
• ShopWell makes NO difference between the two beverages, that is NOT right either;
• FoodFacts fails to offer data on exact products and
• The Dye Diet Calculator empowers you with clear knowledge that while both drinks are very unhealthy, Kool-Aid Cherry Bursts drink is approximately 10 times more hazardous than SunnyD Fruit Punch. Why not 3.5 times? Because contributions of different food ingredients into overall risk and nutrition outcome are different; some are stronger, some are weaker. Don’t forget that Kool-Aid injects twice as much Red 40 into your blood as SunnyD does. (Red PDF file: Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks)

But the most important conclusion is this: Pure water should be our preferred beverage of all times and ages. A bottle of mineral water a day is OK too. I would never recommend touching sugar or artificially sweetened drinks like SunnyD, Kool-Aid and all the rest of them. However the decision is yours.

Tags: dye diet, Dye Diet Calculator of health risk, Dye Diet Calculator of nutrition, FoodFacts scoring system review, Fooducate grading system review, Kool-Aid health effects, ShopWell scoring system review, SunnyD health effects

Category: American diet, Dye Diet Calculator, Soft drinks