Grocery shopping for families with kids often means navigating snack aisles and saying “no” to too many sweets.

But for families like Katie’s, whose children stay completely dye-free, even ordinary grocery trips require something extra: checking every label first.

“How does just one ingredient, a simple ingredient like dye, make such a difference in the mental state of children?” said Kathryn Reynolds.

The biggest changes she saw were in her son, Issac, who has ADHD. Before cutting synthetic dyes, she said he was almost a different person.

“He went through so many extremes, the high highs and low lows, the anger, aggression, sadness,” she said.

The Bull family has seen similar effects. Their daughter, Charley, who also has been diagnosed with ADHD, even advocates for herself because she knows how dyes make her feel.

“It makes me scream and more angry. It makes me want to throw stuff at my parents and crash out,” Charley said.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Western Nevada College, began researching synthetic dyes after her own son experienced severe reactions.

“When you look at the face of a kid who wants, who begs, for a knife to kill himself at the age of 7, you figure it out,” Bevans said.

Now, with co-author Dr. Lorne Hofseth at the University of South Carolina’s College of Pharmacy, she studies the connection between dyes and children’s behavioral and mental health.

“I’ve been looking at synthetic food dyes, and in my opinion, those do cause inflammation, and they do cause DNA damage,” Hofseth said.

Their work contributes to a broader effort to challenge outdated food-safety assumptions and revisit regulatory policies, including concerns related to the Delaney Clause.

The Delaney Clause requires the Food and Drug Administration to ban food additives that cause cancer in humans or animals.

“Awareness needs to happen – then that pushes and triggers policy change,” Hofseth said.

And that public awareness is rising. In January, the FDA officially removed Red No. 3 from the list of approved additives, and the push to phase out the remaining artificial dyes continues.

Large companies, including Walmart and Kraft, are beginning to respond by removing petroleum-based dyes by January 2027, supporting broader Make America Healthy efforts.

Compared with the European Medicines Agency, many Americans say they feel a difference in how regulators respond.

“There’s no incentive to get rid of the problem when we have a pharmaceutical company that’s willing to fix it, but they patch it, not fix it,” Bevans said.

“They don’t want us to be good and healthy. It really is true,” Reynolds said.

As more families witness dramatic changes in their children’s behavior after removing synthetic dyes, the push for policy change and removal continues.