It seems like an awfully silly question for a healthy food lover, but we suspect you’re doing both anyway. So, would you rather eat artificial colors or artificial flavors?

These sneaky ingredients find their way into lots of foods, particularly when you’re dining out and labels aren’t accessible. They’re also found in vitamins, medicines, mouthwash, personal care products and cosmetics. So, if you had to choose, which would you rather eat?

Artificial Colors

Food dyes sound harmless enough. A little blue here. Some red there. What would Easter eggs be without food dye? Who ever heard of eating a popsicle that wasn’t bright blue, red or orange?

But according to research, artificial colors have been connected with an increased risk of behavioral issues, particularly among children. For children who already displayed hyperactive behaviors, the artificial colors intensified their behavioral issues.

While some colors have been banned because of their origin in coal tar, which is a known carcinogen, others remain on the market, with severe health risks, including allergies and (still a risk) cancer.

Among the most common artificial colors are:

•  FD&C Blue # 1 & # 2
• FD&C Green # 3
• FD&C Red # 3 & # 40
• FD&C Yellow # 5 & # 6
• Orange B

Green #3, Blues #1 and #2 and Yellow #6 have all been connected with allergic reactions and cancer in lab animals. Red #3 has been connected with cancer and genetic disorders. While banned from cosmetic applications, it’s still allowed in food.

Keep an eye out the next time you’re at a sushi restaurant for that bright green seaweed salad, the wasabi paste and even the pickled ginger, as they’re all potentially harboring artificial colors. Same goes for jams and jellies, mustards, hot sauce and ketchup, and other condiments served at restaurants. Read your vitamin labels. Make your own homemade mouthwash or opt for an all-natural mouthwash.

Artificial Flavors

We’re a species driven by the tongue. We love to talk, taste…kiss. Of course, all of those habits can get us into quite a bit of trouble if we’re not careful.

When it comes to taste, we know all too well how much trouble that’s causing us now, particularly for our nation’s children. Sugary, genetically modified fruit-flavored cereals, sodas, Pop-Tarts, candy and popsicles takes precedent over actual fruit.  Ketchup covered French fries and Domino’s pizza sauce are preferred over an actual tomato. That the artificial flavor came to be preferred over the real thing is not only shocking, but dangerous as well.

Artificial flavors can contain hundreds of chemicals, and because they’re proprietary formulations, companies don’t have to disclose what’s in them, making it difficult to identify health risks. They’re usually only identified on labels as “artificial flavors.”

While more research exists on the dangers of artificial colors, there are some known risks with artificial flavors, like MSG (monosodium glutamate). MSG can even be listed as a natural flavor, as it goes by many other names including autolyzed yeast extract, disodium 5-inosinate, and soy protein isolate.

MSG has been connected with serious health issues including asthma, headaches, diarrhea, blurred vision and numbness.

Artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, are often added to foods to boost flavors. They’re most often found in diet sodas, but aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are also found in yogurts, cereals, and even in that artificially colored pickled ginger from the sushi restaurant.

Aspartame has been identified as the most common cause for food-related complaints to the FDA, and includes a list of severe reactions from tinnitus and headaches, to cancer and fertility issues.

Both artificial flavors and colors pose serious health risks. And they separate us from a true food experience. We’re essentially eating perfumes and lipsticks. And that’s not food. That’s more or less a fruity-flavored insanity.

We do our best to avoid these ingredients, hopefully. But still, we can’t help but wonder, now that you know where they’re hiding and what the risks are, which would you rather eat?

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: e3

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Seventeen-year-old budding scientist Smitha Ramakrishna found out the artificial sweetener sucralose, marketed as Splenda, might be invisible to the bathroom scale – but can pose a hefty danger to fish and other living creatures because it accumulates in the water supply after people excrete it. Pretty sweet discovery for someone who hasn’t finished high school yet!

Scientific American profiled the teenager as one of 40 finalists in the 2009 Intel Science Talent Search who gathered in Washington, DC, for the final judging rounds this week.

While she didn’t make the top 10, she still won a lap top computer and $5,000 for her talent, as well as  recognition for her devotion to water safety and conservation.

Ramakrishna, a senior at Corona del Sol High School in Chandler, Arizona, was granted permission to study sucralose at Arizona State University – looking into various modern treatments such as bacterial digestion used in wastewater treatment plants.

She discovered sucralose was able to resist most treatments, breaking down into biodegradable molecules with extensive time and concentration of titanium oxide and ultraviolent light. Yet, her research showed few treatment plants bother with these methods. As a result, almost all the sucralose consumed winds up in the ecosystem.

Despite the controversies surrounding it, Splenda is wildly popular for weight control and is added to many brands of treats, sodas and cereals to satisfy the nation’s sweet tooth. In fact, one diabetic who is allergic to Splenda blogged that this finding explains why she continues to have reactions even though she tries to avoid the sweetener. “It turns up in everything,” she complained.

Ramakrishna became interested in water issues on a family trip to India when she was only 12. Her parents took her to an orphanage, where she says she was shocked by the poverty – the lack of tables and chairs for eating, for instance – but what struck her most is that these children didn’t even have access to clean water.

She tells Scientific American that upon her return home she founded AWAKE, an organization dedicated to water conservation (including the golf courses of Arizona) and education. Apparently, her cause has already made a dent, helping to get clean water to 3,000 kids in India through reverse osmosis and rainwater harvesting projects.

As far as the breakthrough study that made her a finalist, the young scientist says, “It’s opened a whole new door.” She plans to study the impact on fish when she attends college, perhaps at A.S.U. where her research continues.

Meantime, the student taking the top $100,000 prize in the Intel competition is Eric Larson, 17, of Eugene, Oregon, for his research project classifying mathematical objects called fusion categories. Eric’s work describes these in certain dimensions for the first time. More than 1,600 high school seniors from around the nation entered the search.

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