"The favorite table from the lounge was brought out in the center of the street and linked with all the other personal possessions covered up with cloth and that sort of thing," Goldsmith remembered. "Food was magicked from somewhere, and kids gorged themselves on all sorts of cakes."
"The favorite table from the lounge was brought out in the center of the street and linked with all the other personal possessions covered up with cloth and that sort of thing," Goldsmith remembered. "Food was magicked from somewhere, and kids gorged themselves on all sorts of cakes."
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===== How bugs and beet juice could play roles in the race to replace artificial dyes in food =====
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===== Sleep training is no longer just for babies. Some schools are teaching teens how to sleep =====
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By JONEL ALECCIA AP Health Writer
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By JOCELYN GECKER AP Education Writer
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ST. LOUIS (AP) — As pressure grows to get artificial colors out of the U.S. food supply, the shift may well start at Abby Tampow's laboratory desk.
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MANSFIELD, Ohio (AP) — The topic of a new course at Mansfield Senior High School is one that teenagers across the country are having trouble with: How to Get to Sleep.
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On an April afternoon, the scientist hovered over tiny dishes of red dye, each a slightly different ruby hue. Her task? To match the synthetic shade used for years in a commercial bottled raspberry vinaigrette — but by using only natural ingredients.
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One ninth grader in the class says his method is to scroll through TikTok until he nods off. Another teen says she often falls asleep while on a late-night group chat with friends. Not everyone takes part in class discussions on a recent Friday; some students are slumped over their desks napping.
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"With this red, it needs a little more orange," Tampow said, mixing a slurry of purplish black carrot juice with a bit of beta-carotene, an orange-red color made from algae.
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Sleep training is no longer just for newborns. Some schools are taking it upon themselves to teach teenagers how to get a good night's sleep.
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Tampow is part of the team at Sensient Technologies Corp., one of the world's largest dyemakers, that is rushing to help the salad dressing manufacturer — along with thousands of other American businesses — meet demands to overhaul colors used to brighten products from cereals to sports drinks.
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"It might sound odd to say that kids in high school have to learn the skills to sleep," says Mansfield health teacher Tony Davis, who has incorporated a newly released sleep curriculum into a state-required high school health class. "But you'd be shocked how many just don't know how to sleep."
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"Most of our customers have decided that this is finally the time when they're going to make that switch to a natural color," said Dave Gebhardt, Sensient's senior technical director. He joined a recent tour of the Sensient Colors factory in a north St. Louis neighborhood.
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Adolescents burning the midnight oil is nothing new; teens are biologically programmed to stay up later as their circadian rhythms shift with puberty. But studies show teenagers are more sleep deprived than ever, and experts believe it could be playing a role in the youth mental health crisis and other problems plaguing schools, including behavioral and attendance issues.
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Last week, U.S. health officials announced plans to persuade food companies to voluntarily eliminate petroleum-based artificial dyes by the end of 2026.
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"Walk into any high school in America and you will see kids asleep. Whether it's on a desk, outside on the ground or on a bench, or on a couch the school has allotted for naps — because they are exhausted," says Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education. Pope has surveyed high school students for more than a decade and leads parent sessions for schools around California on the importance of teen sleep. "Sleep is directly connected with mental health. There is not going to be anyone who argues with that."
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called them "poisonous compounds" that endanger children's health and development, citing limited evidence of potential health risks.
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**How much sleep do teens need?**
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The federal push follows a flurry of state laws and a January decision to ban the artificial dye known as Red 3 — found in cakes, candies and some medications — because of cancer risks in lab animals. Social media influencers and ordinary consumers have ramped up calls for artificial colors to be removed from foods.
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Adolescents need between eight and 10 hours of sleep each night for their developing brains and bodies. But nearly 80% of teens get less than that, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has tracked a steady decline in teen sleep since 2007. Today, most teens average 6 hours of sleep.
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**A change to natural colors may not be fast**
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Research increasingly shows how tightly sleep is linked to mood, mental health and self-harm. Depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts and behavior go up as sleep goes down. Multiple studies also show links between insufficient sleep and sports injuries and athletic performance, teen driving accidents, and risky sexual behavior and substance use, due in part to impaired judgment when the brain is sleepy.
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The FDA allows about three dozen color additives, including eight remaining synthetic dyes. But making the change from the petroleum-based dyes to colors derived from vegetables, fruits, flowers and even insects won't be easy, fast or cheap, said Monica Giusti, an Ohio State University food color expert.
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For years, sleep experts have sounded an alarm about an adolescent sleep crisis, joined by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC and others. As a result, some school districts have shifted to later start times. Two states — California and Florida — have passed laws that require high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. But simply telling a teenager to get to bed earlier doesn't always work, as any parent can attest: They need to be convinced.
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"Study after study has shown that if all companies were to remove synthetic colors from their formulations, the supply of the natural alternatives would not be enough," Giusti said. "We are not really ready."
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That's why Mansfield City Schools, a district of 3,000 students in north-central Ohio, is staging what it calls "a sleep intervention."
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It can take six months to a year to convert a single product from a synthetic dye to a natural one. And it could require three to four years to build up the supply of botanical products necessary for an industrywide shift, Sensient officials said.
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**'Sleep to Be a Better You'**
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"It's not like there's 150 million pounds of beet juice sitting around waiting on the off chance the whole market may convert," said Paul Manning, the company's chief executive. "Tens of millions of pounds of these products need to be grown, pulled out of the ground, extracted."
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The district's high school is piloting the new curriculum, "Sleep to Be a Better You," hoping to improve academic success and reduce chronic absences, when a student misses more than 10% of the school year. The rate of students missing that much class has decreased from 44% in 2021 but is still high at 32%, says Kari Cawrse, the district's attendance coordinator. Surveys of parents and students highlighted widespread problems with sleep, and an intractable cycle of kids going to bed late, oversleeping, missing the school bus and staying home.
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To make natural dyes, Sensient works with farmers and producers around the world to harvest the raw materials, which typically arrive at the plant as bulk concentrates. They're processed and blended into liquids, granules or powders and then sent to food companies to be added to final products.
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The students in Davis' classroom shared insights into why it's hard to get a good night's sleep. An in-class survey of the 90 students across Davis' five classes found over 60% use their phone as an alarm clock. Over 50% go to sleep while looking at their phones. Experts have urged parents for years to get phones out of the bedroom at night, but national surveys show most teens keep their mobile phones within reach — and many fall asleep holding their devices.
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Natural dyes are harder to make and use than artificial colors. They are less consistent in color, less stable and subject to changes related to acidity, heat and light, Manning said. Blue is especially difficult. There aren't many natural sources of the color and those that exist can be hard to maintain during processing.
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During the six-part course, students are asked to keep daily sleep logs for six weeks and rate their mood and energy levels.
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Also, a natural color costs about 10 times more to make than the synthetic version, Manning estimated.
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Freshman Nathan Baker assumed he knew how to sleep, but realizes he had it all wrong. Bedtime meant settling into bed with his phone, watching videos on YouTube or Snapchat Spotlight and often staying up past midnight. On a good night, he got five hours of sleep. He'd feel so drained by midday that he'd get home and sleep for hours, not realizing it was disrupting his nighttime sleep.
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"How do you get that same vividness, that same performance, that same level of safety in that product as you would in a synthetic product?" he said. "There's a lot of complexity associated with that."
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"Bad habits definitely start around middle school, with all the stress and drama," Baker says. He has taken the tips he learned in sleep class and been amazed at the results. He now has a sleep routine that starts around 7 or 8 p.m.: He puts away his phone for the night and avoids evening snacks, which can disrupt the body's circadian rhythm. He tries for a regular bedtime of 10 p.m., making sure to close his curtains and turn off the TV. He likes listening to music to fall asleep but has switched from his previous playlist of rousing hip hop to calmer R&B or jazz, on a stereo instead of his phone.
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**The insects that could make 'Barbie pink' naturally**
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"I feel a lot better. I'm coming to school with a smile on my face," says Baker, who is now averaging seven hours' sleep each night. "Life is so much more simple."
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Companies have long used the Red 3 synthetic dye to create what Sensient officials describe as "the Barbie pink."
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There are scientific reasons for that. Studies with MRI scans show the brain is under stress when sleep-deprived and functions differently. There is less activity in the pre-frontal cortex, which regulates emotions, decision making, focus and impulse control and more activity in the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala, which processes fear, anger and anxiety.
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To create that color with a natural source might require the use of cochineal, an insect about the size of a peppercorn.
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Parents and teens themselves often aren't aware of the signs of sleep deprivation, and attribute it to typical teen behavior: Being irritable, grumpy, emotionally fragile, unmotivated, impulsive or generally negative.
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The female insects release a vibrant red pigment, carminic acid, in their bodies and eggs. The bugs live only on prickly pear cactuses in Peru and elsewhere. About 70,000 cochineal insects are needed to produce 1 kilogram, about 2.2 pounds, of dye.
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Think of toddlers who throw temper tantrums when they miss their naps.
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"It's interesting how the most exotic colors are found in the most exotic places," said Norb Norbrega, who travels the world scouting new hues for Sensient.
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"Teenagers have meltdowns, too, because they're tired. But they do it in more age-appropriate ways," says Kyla Wahlstrom, an adolescent sleep expert at the University of Minnesota, who has studied the benefits of delayed school start times on teen sleep for decades. Wahlstrom developed the free sleep curriculum being used by Mansfield and several Minnesota schools.
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Artificial dyes are used widely in U.S. foods. About 1 in 5 food products in the U.S. contains added colors, whether natural or synthetic, Manning estimated. Many contain multiple colors.
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**Social media isn't only to blame**
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FDA requires a sample of each batch of synthetic colors to be submitted for testing and certification. Color additives derived from plant, animal or mineral sources are exempt, but have been evaluated by the agency.
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Social media has been blamed for fueling the teen mental health crisis, but many experts say the national conversation has ignored the critical role of sleep.
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Health advocates have long called for the removal of artificial dyes from foods, citing mixed studies indicating they can cause neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children.
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"The evidence linking sleep and mental health is a lot tighter, more causal, than the evidence for social media and mental health," says Andrew Fuligni, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-director at UCLA's Center for the Developing Adolescent.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that the approved dyes are safe when used according to regulations and that "most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives."
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Nearly 70% of Davis' Mansfield students said they regularly feel sleepy or exhausted during the school day. But technology is hardly the only reason. Today's students are overscheduled, overworked and stressed out, especially as they get closer to senior year and college applications.
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But critics note that added colors are a key component of ultraprocessed foods, which account for more than 70% of the U.S. diet and have been associated with a host of chronic health problems, including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
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Chase Cole, a senior at Mansfield who is taking three advanced placement and honors classes, is striving for an athletic scholarship to play soccer in college. He plays on three different soccer leagues and typically has practice until 7 p.m., when he gets home and needs a nap. Cole wakes up for dinner, then dives into homework for at least three hours. He allows for five-minute phone breaks between assignments and winds down before bed with video games or TV until about 1 a.m.
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"I am all for getting artificial food dyes out of the food supply," said Marion Nestle, a food policy expert. "They are strictly cosmetic, have no health or safety purpose, are markers of ultraprocessed foods and may be harmful to some children."
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"I definitely need to get more sleep at night," says Cole, 17. "But it's hard with all my honors classes and college stuff going on. It's exhausting."
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**The cautionary tale of Trix cereal**
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There aren't enough hours in the day to sleep, says sophomore Amelia Raphael, 15. A self-described overachiever, Raphael is taking physics, honors chemistry, algebra and trigonometry and is enrolled in online college classes. Her goal is to finish her associate degree by the time she graduates high school.
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Color is powerful driver of consumer behavior and changes can backfire, Giusti noted. In 2016, food giant General Mills removed artificial dyes from Trix cereal after requests from consumers, switching to natural sources including turmeric, strawberries and radishes.
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"I don't want to have to pay for college. It's a lot of money," says Raphael, who plays three sports and is in student council and other clubs.
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But the cereal lost its neon colors, resulting in more muted hues — and a consumer backlash. Trix fans said they missed the bright colors and familiar taste of the cereal. In 2017, the company switched back.
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She knows she's overscheduled. "But if you don't do that, you're kind of setting yourself up for failure. There is a lot of pressure on doing everything," said Raphael, who gets to bed between midnight and 2 a.m. "I am giving up sleep for that."
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"When it's a product you already love, that you're used to consuming, and it changes slightly, then it may not really be the same experience," Giusti said. "Announcing a regulatory change is one step, but then the implementation is another thing."
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The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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Kennedy, the health secretary, said U.S. officials have an "understanding" with food companies to phase out artificial colors. Industry officials told The Associated Press that there is no formal agreement.
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However, several companies have said they plan to accelerate a shift to natural colors in some of their products.
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PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said most of its products are already free of artificial colors, and that its Lays and Tostitos brands will phase them out by the end of this year. He said the company plans to phase out artificial colors — or at least offer consumers a natural alternative — over the next few years.
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Representatives for General Mills said they're "committed to continuing the conversation" with the administration. WK Kellogg officials said they are reformulating cereals used in the nation's school lunch programs to eliminate the artificial dyes and will halt any new products containing them starting next January.
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Sensient officials wouldn't confirm which companies are seeking help making the switch, but they said they're ready for the surge.
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"Now that there's a date, there's the timeline," Manning said. "It certainly requires action."
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Dee-Ann Durbin contributed reporting from Detroit.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.