Mountain Dew Kickstart: Artificial dyes and other chemicals
I do not need kick start
Let me put it forward right away: I am about 57 and I do not need morning kick start. I believe that no one who is on a healthy nutritious diet does. It was always surprising to me why energy drinks market is one of the fastest growing in America? Why young Americans of 14 – 34 year age are the major consumers of energy drinks? Although these questions may not be so easy to answer, let me speculate that malnutrition caused by the Standard American Diet which heavily relies on fast food and soda consumption is to blame. Look at the following possible cause and effect chain:
Fast food & sugar – Malnutrition & extra body weight – Lower energy & Hormonal imbalance, e. g. lower testosterone (even in boys) – Energy drinks & Sleep aid pills – and, finally, your health is DESTROYED.
Of course, food and pharmaceutical industries are quick to monetize on every your weakness, so that dangerous energy drinks and “Low T” treatments are bombarding you with their aggressive marketing tricks day and night. Another example is diet-related erectile dysfunction and Viagra for treatment. It looks like not so many of us seem to understand that the majority of our health problems “kick-start” from what we choose to eat and drink.
So here it is, yet another chemical “kick-start” Fruit Punch from Mountain Dew designed treating your symptoms, not improving your diet and overall health. Why NOT? Simply because there are no profits in doing so.
DyeDiet Doesn’t Buy It!
Mountain Dew Kickstart: Risk, Nutrition and Dye Content
As you see, Mountain Dew Kickstart Fruit Punch is a combination of 6 dangerous chemicals (red segments) 6 non-nutrient chemicals including 92 mg of caffeine (yellow segments) and 8 nutrients (green segments) including 19 g of questionable HFCS, 5% grape juice from concentrate and vitamins B you find in every processed food. It is also high in sodium, 7 % of your RDI.
Food additives to avoid
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Red 40 is an artificial color (azo dye, oxidant) was detected in Mountain Dew Kickstart Fruit Punch in the amount of 40 mg/can. Recent studies showed that Red 40, in combination with other food additives, may cause hyperactive behavior in children and adults, that is, to affect your brain. Please read CSPI document: Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks
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Yellow 5, an artificial color, azo dye, oxidant. Detected: 30 mg/can. See: Study of the teratogenic potential of FD & C Yellow No. 5 when given in drinking-water. Also read Feingold Association document: Behavior, Learning and Health: The Dietary Connection
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Calcium disodium EDTA is a chemical agent that binds a variety of metal ions. According to the Wikipedia, EDTA has been found to be both cytotoxic and weakly genotoxic in laboratory animals. Oral exposures have been noted to cause reproductive and developmental effects
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Sucralose – chlorinated sugar, an artificial sweetener (see PDF file A Role for Sweet Taste Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation). Also read recent report The 4 Best, and 3 Worst, Sweeteners. Sucralose is a chlorinated hydrocarbon that is completely foreign to human metabolism. Many chlorinated compounds are insecticidal and, most insecticides are known to be harmful for humans too. See an opinion about sucralose. Although available data indicate that sucralose has low acute toxicity; oral rat LD50 ~ >10 g/kg; oral mouse LD 50 ~ >16 g/kg (see Section 11 of MSDS), no one can guarantee you that regular long-term consumption of sucralose is safe. Diabetic people may have no choice unless they want to try Stevia or other natural sugar substitutes instead
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Acesulfame potassium – yet another sweetener foreign to human nature added to mask unnatural aftertaste of sucralose. According to the Wikipedia, “Acesulfame potassium has been shown to stimulate dose-dependent insulin secretion in rats, though no hypoglycemia was observed… Acesulfame potassium has not been studied adequately and may be carcinogenic.”
Think twice before you choose to allow this cocktail of anti-nutritious xenobiotic chemicals into your blood. Drinking Mountain Dew KickStart will expose you to HIGH health risk = 2.31 and will give you miserable Nutritional Value = 0.26.
Try Free Dye Diet Calculator
You are welcome to have fun calculating Health Risk and Nutritional Values of any processed food and drink of YOUR CHOICE by playing with trial version of the Dye Diet Calculator. Simply start with typing-in FULL product name CORRECTLY, and (if not in database that is very likely: it is user-created one) introduce all the ingredients from the label, add them and hit “Calculate!” You will see the results and then it is up to you to buy or not to buy the product.
Bottom line. Another caffeine-rich chemical cocktail is perhaps NOT what your body needs for breakfast and NOT what you need for a cheerful and energetic morning. The best way would be to rethink your overall diet, have something meaningful to eat and something less dangerous to drink: a cup of tea or coffee would do much better job. I am not alone in this view; TIME journalists have similar suggestions for you.
Category: Energy drinks, Food Dyes Exposure, Food Terrorism
Comments (5)
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- healthy baby | March 16, 2013
I want to thank you for making this website. Because of you, I switched to fruit snacks with REAL fruit, I don’t drink soda very often, and I choose 100% fruit juices and/or tea. From now on, I will call Lucky Charms “Yucky Harms” and try not to buy them. If you ever need morning kick start, instead of drinking Mountain Dew Kick Start, drink instead orange juice, milk, coffee, or tea. If you are eating at fast food places, stop! You can get better food at better prices. Example: A quick and easy pasta dinner with vegetables costs about $2-$4 (compare this to anything you get at McDonald’s). I like to get cheesy foods (ex. mac and cheese), but they usually are artificially colored with yellow #5 or #6. Also stevia is great for carb watchers (GI 0), but check carefully because some brands may have maltodextrin (GI 150) or dextrose (GI 100) which can make it just as worse as sugar! Also, to check if the ingredient is a foreign chemical, type in the name into a program like Microsoft Word and if spell check cannot recognize the word, it is foreign chemical. To learn more, go to Fooducate Blog.
Thank you, my friend! The encouragements like yours make me convinced to keep running the Dye Diet and hope that one day we will have more healthy choices for our children and families in America and beyond!
I hope the energy drinks in market get discontinued.
Very Nice Informative blog. The knowledge you are providing is really very helpful to me and it’s very helpful for the beginners too.