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FDA to "phase out" food dyes in these snacks

 

Hello sunshine, I'm Coy Wire.

Welcome to CNN 10.

It's Thursday April 24th Happy Friday Eve.

We are cruising through the week with lots of news for you today.

Not a lot of time to do it so let's get to it.

We're going to jump right in.

Beginning with something that could bring major changes to our cereal to our candies and more.

 

cereal [ˋsɪrɪəl] n. 谷类加工食品；玉蜀黍薄片；麦片

 

The US Food and Drug Administration or FDA just announced it plans to quote phase out some artificial dyes used in foods.

 

phase out (使)逐步淘汰

 

Foods like cereals candy beverages and even some medicines.

The reason concerns about the dyes impact on our health.

These synthetic dyes are a group of chemicals derived from petroleum.

Yes as in the fossil fuel that's also used in the gas in many of our cars.

They're there for cosmetic reasons.

They have no actual function in the cereal other than to make it attractive.

And there's research that shows that people like brightly colored foods.

They think they taste better.

Um and they much prefer them.

When cereal companies have taken the dyes out of the cereals and put in natural dyes instead people don't buy them.

 

The Consumer Brands Association a group that represents the companies that make a lot of packaged food says that the ingredients have been rigorously studied and were demonstrated to be safe.

But research in animals has shown otherwise.

Now the FDA says it will work with these companies to remove the dyes rather than going through Congress to make laws restricting them.

We are simply asking American food companies to replace petroleum based food dyes with natural ingredients for American children just as they already do for children in other countries.

All right our chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta is here to break it all down.

Well first of all these petroleum based dyes are exactly what they sound like.

They are dyes typically of colors that you're not going to find in nature.

And they're based in petroleum which is a really stable chemical.

So that allows these colors to stay very stable over time which is what the food industry wanted out of these.

Uh some of these you'll probably recognize you know.

So this is red dye 3 that is not a normal color you'd see in nature.

Or this is red dye number 40 uh which is another dye again based in petroleum.

So that is really what the concern is here.

What we've known is that when it came to red dye 3 even 30 years ago there was a correlation between that dye and certain cancers in animals.

Uh and that has been sort of a concern for a long time three decades.

It just got banned under the previous administration.

And now obviously the sights are set on these other dyes as well.

There's a concern as I mentioned about cancer in animals.

There's a concern that there may be carcinogens.

 

carcinogen [kɑrˋsɪnədʒən] n.【医】致癌物质

 

There's also a concern that they may lead to these behavioral problems when it comes to children who have been eating these types of dyes for most of their lives.

Whereas if you're an adult many of these dyes weren't present in your diet before that.

So we don't know the specific links.

When you have something that's as ubiquitous as these dyes out there it's hard to really know.

 

ubiquitous [juˋbɪkwətəs] adj. 到處存在的，普遍存在的，無所不在的

 

Is it the dye or is it something else in the environment?  Is it social media is it phones that are causing some of these problems but there is enough of a concern.

And there's also something known as the precautionary principle.

 

precautionary [prɪˋkɔʃən͵ɛrɪ]  adj. 预先警戒的; 预防的

 

We're not sure. Let's just be cautious.

Uh this cereal for example is a good example of that.

Uh many dyes in here as you can see from the brightly colored  Froot Loops.

The concern though is that in many countries around the world such as Europe um in Europe and Canada they make these same products without those petroleum based dyes.

They use natural food coloring.

So watermelon juice, carrot juice, blueberry juice to create some of that coloring may not be as vibrant may not be as stable but that's what they do.

Sort of using this precautionary principle.

That is I think what we're going to see in the United States as well. A phasing out and eventually eliminating of nine of these petroleum based dyes in the months and years to come.

All right Thank you Doc.

Did you know that in addition to being a sterling journalist he's also a practicing neurosurgeon and the host of Chasing Life podcast.

 

sterling [ˋstɝlɪŋ] adj. 符合最高标的；纯正的；优秀的

neurosurgeon [͵njʊroˋsɝdʒən] n. 神經外科醫生

podcast 播客节目; 播客（由 iPod 和 broadcast 拼缀而成）

 

You can find it anywhere you download your podcast, smartest guy I know.

But, does he know which planet has the most volcanoes?

 

pop quiz, hotshot

Which planet in our solar system is home to the most volcanoes?

Earth, Venus, Jupiter or Mars.

If you said Venus you're correct.

It's home to 85,000 volcanoes.

While scientists are still studying how many of those are active data from NASA's Magellan mission points to two of the planet's volcanoes erupting in the early '90s.

 

Magellan [məˋdʒɛlən] n. 麥哲倫

 

One of the world's most active volcanoes is erupting again but this time it's reaching new heights.

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano spewing lava up to 650 feet in the air.

The US Geological Survey says this is Kilawea's 18th eruption since it became active again last December.

Good news is the lava is no longer a danger to Hawaiian who live nearby.

And the volcano's active zone has remained within the national park which is protected land.

But bad news for tourists who love them some lava.

High levels of sulfur dioxide have been detected as well as volcanic glass fragments that can drift through the air.

 

Now to some major news in the state of New Jersey where an explosive wildfire quickly spread to scorch thousands of acres this week.

The fast-moving fire caused thousands of evacuations and threatened more than 1300 structures.

Even parts of the Garden State Parkway the longest and one of the most traveled highways in the state had to be closed because of the fire danger.

Let's go to our meteorologist Derek Van Dam in our weather center for a look at the extent of these dangerous fires.

 

Hi Derek. Yeah Coy you don't really think about the state of New Jersey experiencing wildfires.

But when you get this type of drought and of course the lack of rain that's fallen over the past several weeks you have the potential at least for the dry vegetation to allow for fire to spread.

And that's what happened in Ocean County, New Jersey.

This is in southern New Jersey.

Look at the smoke billowing into the air.

 

billow [ˋbɪlo] v.（巨浪）翻腾；波浪似地起伏，滚滚向前

 

Look at the flames how high they rose.

Uh just incredible to see this footage because we're talking over 8,000 acres that were burned.

A serious firefighting effort that was underway this week as part of the state forest continued to burn from the dry conditions.

There were several hundred structures that were actually threatened from this wildfire which by the way you could see from space, Coy.

This is an incredible image.

So the white moving across the screen that's the cloud cover in the upper levels of the atmosphere.

That's actually the flames as the as they erupted.

Uh and you can see the smoke billowing into the Atlantic Ocean.

This is what it looked like on the ground.

This is again Ocean County, New Jersey.

Uh and that is some serious fire.

Something more equivalent to what we would experience on the western parts of the country but this of course is on the east coast.

And if you get a closer look at this, this is actually an area that's under moderate to severe drought.

That's southern portions of New Jersey.

The winds here help fan the flames.

And the good news is, Coy, that there is an increase in relative humidity.

So more moisture in the atmosphere.

This is ahead of a cold front that will bring some welcomed rain to the area and should help douse the flames and help get these fires under control.

 

douse [daʊs] v. 弄熄

 

Coy, back to you.

 

Did you know that arguably one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet this loving thing right here, the butterfly, does what we humans might consider one of the most nasty things when eating.

 

nasty [ˋnæstɪ] adj. 龌龊的；令人作呕的；使人难受的

 

They taste food with their feet.

Yes these interesting insects have six legs and they have tiny sensors on their feet with which they taste because they can't taste with their mouths.

And since they don't have mouth parts that can chew they have long straw-like structures to eat that food that they just touched with their feet the more you know.

Today's story getting a 10 out of 10.

An alluring story about some fisherman teens making a life-saving catch.

Their trip gone fishing turned into a rescue mission when a driver had a medical emergency lost control of their car and got swept up into a river's quick current.

The teens cast themselves into the role of heroes.

I jumped in and got like right around here, and, I was, like,10 feet away from the car.

He untied the rope threw it at me.

I wrapped it around my arm.

I swam a little bit, tied it on the, like, rear shock (absorbers) of the car and then that's when he pulled it.

 

These youngsters grabbed a rope tied it to the car and pulled the driver to safety.

All of this before police or fire officials arrived.

All helped to save a man's life.

How does that feel?  It feels good. Good.

I mean I didn't get no fish.

We didn't. We didn't catch nothing.

We're fishing. We didn't catch nothing.

but we catch a car.

Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they wear fishing gear.

Those four friends did a real good deed.

 

All right, rockstars. We've reached the end of the show but before we go let's send a very special shout out to Mrs. Schmidt and all our friends the pirates at Pathfinder School in Pinckney, Michigan.

We understand Mrs. Schmidt is retiring after guiding inspiring and uplifting so many people over an incredible 30 years of teaching.

Much love and many blessings on your next chapter. Rise up everyone. Thank you for tuning in.

We'll do it again one more time tomorrow.

Go out and make it an awesome day.

I'm Coy Wire and we are

 

CNN 10.