Are Skittles Banned in California?!? The Food Additive Ban + Halloween Scaries
Happy HalloWEEK, FRIENDS! This week Your Doctor Friends are doling out TWO episodes of spoooooky stories and hair-raising health headlines! Each episode contains a “sharing size” story with a little “fun-sized” article at the end!
Today’s main topic involves the TERRIFYING California “Skittles Ban”! Spoiler alert, it really doesn’t have anything to do with Skittles (thank goodness!), but does involve four different food additives now being banned in California with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “California Food Safety Act”.
What are these substances? Are they actually harmful to us to ingest? What does the data show?
At the end Julie does a deep dive into a certain parasitic fungus that can control the minds of insects to propagate itself! It’s the source material for the hit video game and HBO/Max series The Last of Us and the closest thing to zombies we will probably cover on this show 🙂
We hope you enjoyed your Halloween and have a lovely Dia de los Muertos, friends!
Resources for this episode include:
The New York Times article titled “What to know about the 4 food additives banned by California“.
A study from Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology about the effects of oral erythrosine on men’s thyroid function, as well as pituitary-thyroid function in rats
A study from the Egyptian Journal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology about toxicity of parabens in adult male rats.
A review article from Environmental Health on potential impacts of synthetic food dyes on activity and attention in children.
An article from Food Chemistry on potassium bromate.
A National Geographic article on how Cordyceps fungus species take over ants’ brains.
Another awesome National Geographic article entitled “Could a parasitic fungus evolve to control humans?“
An Annals of Internal Medicine study on the worsening spread of Candida auris in the US from 2019-2021.
The CDC webpage about Candida auris.
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