Don't Tell Me It's An Urban Myth

Christine and I have been talking about the evil Southern delicacy known as red velvet cake a lot more than usual lately, being the Christmas season and all. It is evil because while we love the cream cheese icing (it's the only reason I eat carrot cake), so much red food coloring goes into one that it makes us uneasy. Today she was researching recipes since it's her husband's favorite, and she discovered that it calls for 1 oz. of red dye. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it equates to 4 small bottles or 1 very large bottle. When she read that she said "I'm going to make it anyway and just leave out the red dye. And I'll call it 'cake'."

Just what the hell is red dye made of anyway? It can't be anything good if people are allergic to it. And what is this fear of ours? We certainly aren't health food nuts as we injest plenty of preservatives and additives and macaroni and cheese every day. We discussed these points and then it came to her. She said "We are the red m&m generation." Red stuff is bad in our minds because we ate red m&m's when we were very young, then they were suddenly taken away because someone died from them. Remember how scary that was? This, along with other important things happened during very formative years. I still don't eat red m&m's, swim in the ocean (Jaws), or eat Pop Rocks candy while drinking soda. I wouldn't want to end up like that kid from the Life cereal commercials you know.