The dye debate has been raging since the 1970s, with very little conclusive evidence to settle for either side once and for all. The FDA previously stated that there was no reason to fear the dyes, but since the use of artificial coloring has skyrocketed in recent years, scientists have been examining this claim, with little success. The most convincing evidence comes from a 2007 study headed by University of Southampton professor Jim Stevenson. In the study, children were fed a daily fruit juice containing different concentrations of dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate, and noted a small effect on behavior. It isn’t clear whether the dyes, the preservative or the combination caused the effect.

Basically, scientists don’t know what the cause of hyperactivity is, but children are still going cuckoo. FDA scientists released a report speculating that while many children are probably not adversely affected, those already with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have their behavior problems exacerbated. In all probability, the two-day panel will conclude that it needs more research to reach any conclusions.

It’s tempting, of course, to try to finger a culprit for a disorder that affects a large number of children, even if the science doesn’t support it. Faced with uncomfortable ambiguity, the Times found a concerned mother to weigh in on the debate:

Renee Shutters, a mother of two from Jamestown, N.Y., said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that two years ago, her son Trenton, then 5, was having serious behavioral problems at school until she eliminated artificial food colorings from his diet. “I know for sure I found the root cause of this one because you can turn it on and off like a switch,” Ms. Shutters said.

NPR’s “Morning Edition,” meanwhile, found its own worried mother of a hyperactive child to refute the claim. After her daughter used blankets to slide down the stairs, Christine Woodman adopted a familiar mantra:

“What is natural is good; what isn’t natural was bad,” she remembers.

On the advice of friends, Christine decided to start by cutting out foods with artificial coloring, but Dawnielle didn’t really go for it. She missed her favorite oatmeal with little red-colored dinosaurs in it. Christine tried a substitute. “You know, I made the oatmeal with blueberries and soymilk and thought you would be happy with it,” she says to Dawnielle.

For Dawnielle, however, the problem was only solved once she was diagnosed by a doctor and given Ritalin.

So, despite the media’s best efforts, even the anecdotal evidence is inconclusive.

However, this doesn’t mean that we should ignore the dye debate entirely. As the director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Jacobson, pointed out, regardless of the health risks of the dyes themselves, they exist primarily to lure children to junk foods saturated with sugar — a substance known to stimulate hyperactivity in pretty much everyone:

“Dyes are often used to make junk food more attractive to young children, or to simulate the presence of a healthful fruit or other natural ingredient,” Jacobson said. “Dyes would not be missed in the food supply except by the dye manufacturers.”

Even so, the dyes alone are not the main attraction. Sure, kids might enjoy the rainbow hue of Lucky Charms cereal, but we all know they’re really in it for the marshmallows, no matter what color they are. Ultimately, artificial dyes are the media’s hot new distraction from the real target. Eliminate dyes, and you’re still left with highly processed, sugary foods that pretty clearly increase your child’s hyperactive behavior. They’ll just be a little less colorful.

Brown rice syrup is just one of many “natural” sweeteners that have taken off in the wake of the backlash against artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose, which, of course, were invented to defeat the dietary axis of evil — refined white sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Once confined to Berkeley communes, these not-refined-sugar, not-man-made substances pose a huge marketing opportunity, since most people who avoid sugar don’t want to get cancer but also aren’t ready to commit to a joyless, dessert-free existence. Natural sweeteners are the perfect answer to this conundrum. Right?

The biggest problem is that the term “natural” is a slippery one. Unlike with organic foods, there are no official standards in the U.S. to determine a natural versus unnatural food. Essentially, it’s a word that promises a lot — those wholesome fields — but can mean nothing.

The potency of that promise depends on the leap people make from “natural” to “healthy.” But because the popularity of alternative sweeteners is relatively new, there’s no definite consensus on their long-term risks and benefits. Plus, there’s no telling what unholy quantities Americans will consume of a sweetener with no yet-known health consequences whatsoever. 

Then there’s the issue that sugar, in all its caloric and cholesterol-boosting splendor, is just so damn delicious. For one thing, sugar is more than just a sweetener; in baking, it’s a structuring agent that resists lumping and introduces air into batter as it creams, creating a fluffy and even texture. It also caramelizes when heated, developing a flavor much more complex than mere sweetness. How can you beat that? For people with diabetes or sugar allergies, natural non-sugar sweeteners can be a godsend. But those seeking a consequence-free sugar fix, beware: not all sweeteners are created equal. We took a standard sugar cookie recipe — flour, eggs, vanilla extract, butter — and subbed in a different sweetener for each batch to find out what works, what doesn’t, and what actually tastes good.

Agave syrup

The facts: Beloved by raw food enthusiasts, agave syrup has become one of the easiest alternative sweeteners to find in grocery stores. It’s derived from the Mexican succulent plant agave, of which there are several varieties. It has to be processed to become sweet, and depending on that process, it can be comparable in composition to the dreaded high fructose corn syrup. True, agave has a low glycemic index — meaning it releases glucose into the blood stream at a slower rate than refined sugar — so it can help keep blood sugar levels stable. Eating agave as a “healthy” alternative to sugar, however, is pointless; the two have the same number of calories, no nutritional value whatsoever, and, even though it doesn’t spike blood sugar, the primary sugar in agave, fructose, has been linked to cancer and cholesterol problems when consumed in large quantities.

The experience: Agave syrup is very similar to honey or maple syrup in terms of consistency, though it has a distinctly deeper, cleaner sweetness than either, without as assertive a flavor. Subbing agave for sugar is relatively simple; because it’s sweeter than sugar, a cup of sugar should be replaced by ¾ cup of agave syrup. Don’t expect an identical product, though — our crack team of Salon taste-testers noted that cookies made with agave syrup became “densely chewy” and “raisin-like” in taste, with a “nice complexity.”

Brown rice syrup

The facts: Brown rice syrup is what happens when cooked brown rice meets barley malt enzymes. The sweetness comes from starchy complex carbohydrates, which take a couple of hours to digest. As a result, the glucose is released gradually into the bloodstream, providing a steady supply of energy rather than the rush — and crash — of cane sugar. Plus, the syrup maintains some of the nutrients in brown rice, like protein, so it’s not a total nutritional bust like most sweeteners are.

The experience: Although nutritionally, brown rice syrup is the best you could hope for, it certainly doesn’t taste like table sugar. Maltose (the kind of sugar in brown rice syrup) is not as sweet as sucrose, so you’ll need about 1¼ cups of syrup to replace a cup of sugar. By itself, brown rice syrup is similar to butterscotch in taste and consistency. Baking it into cookies, though, resulted in an “unpleasantly gummy” texture, and made one tester feel “like I just woke up from a nightmare where I was stuck in a San Francisco commune in 1971, only to find out that it wasn’t a dream.” The mild butterscotch taste has potential, though, and could work well as a complementary flavor in bread or a savory dish.

Stevia

The facts: Stevia’s not technically a sugar; it’s extracted from a sweet herb of the same name. Therefore it has no calories and doesn’t raise blood sugar. Though the FDA labeled it a “dangerous food additive” in 1991 after an “anonymous industry complaint” (read: shadowy figures in lab coats), stevia is now back on the market as a “dietary supplement.” In the rest of the world, particularly Japan, widespread use of stevia has been going on for decades.

The experience: The biggest drawback of this seemingly perfect sweetener is that it has an “odd chemical aftertaste” that is not weakened in the baking process; one tester described the aftertaste of the cookie as “psychological torture.” It’s a pleasant, pure sweetness at first that just keeps on going … and going … and going, long after you are ready for the taste to end. If you can get used to that, you only need a teaspoon of the powder to replace a cup of sugar. Keep in mind, though, that sugar is more than just a flavoring; take away its structural properties from a recipe and you’re left with one crumbly cookie. To adjust, we added in more butter, resulting in a shortbread-like consistency.

Date sugar

The facts: Date sugar is so low-tech it’s kind of funny — it’s just dehydrated dates that have been ground into a powder. That means it’s completely unprocessed and retains all the nutrients in dates. It’s high in fiber and protein, and has lots of vitamins and minerals like iron and potassium. Plus, it qualifies as a raw food. It still contains sucrose, fructose and glucose, so it’s not a good alternative for diabetics or people looking to control their blood sugar.

The experience: Date sugar seems to be the Salon staff’s favorite sweetener of the bunch. It has a very subtle sweetness that evoked almonds for one tester. Another described it as “nutty, not super sweet.” The cookie’s texture turned out to be “very crumbly” and “chalky” but not unpleasant. Date sugar’s not soluble, so don’t try to put it in tea or coffee. It is, however, simultaneously delicious and nutritious, which is no small feat. 

This association is the reason why Bolivia’s campaign to end the U.N. narcotics ban of the coca leaf will fail today. The ban, which began in 1961, lumps the leaf — and all products made with it — in with the powder, and called for the elimination of all forms of coca consumption. The United States, as the largest consumer of cocaine and home of the “War on Drugs,” leads the opposition (Britain and Sweden have also filed objections), and its argument against the leaf basically boils down to “mo’ coca, mo’ cocaine.”

But coca has been used as a food and medicine in Andean culture far longer than crack has ravaged American cities, far longer than lines on a counter were a party favor. Since before Incan times, Andean tribes have chewed or brewed the leaf into teas, extracting a mild stimulant entirely unlike the über-concentrated crazy-making stuff in cocaine. (The effect is comparable to a weak cup of coffee.) Coca is packed with nutrients and aids in oxygen absorption, which makes it particularly important to the Andean people who live at high altitude, and its use and consumption has become a powerful marker of cultural pride among indigenous people. It is why Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian elected to that office, has made it his pet project to repair the little green leaf’s reputation, starting with amending the U.N. ban.

Still, the U.S. just isn’t having it — after all, we’ve spent the past several decades and a lot of taxpayer dollars bulldozing, burning and spraying coca crops with herbicide from planes. However, with Morales’ encouragement, a local array of coca food products has exploded to provide a legal market for coca farmers. Coca has always been a dominant crop in the Andes, and many farmers had no other options but to sell their products to cocaine manufacturers.

Of course, coca leaves have attracted curiosity outside the Andes before. A 19th century French chemist created a precursor to Four Loko, called Vin Mariani, out of Bordeaux wine and coca leaves. It was so popular that an American company developed its own non-alcoholic coca drink, which you may have heard of: Coca-Cola. Incidentally, Coca-Cola is the only coca product in the world that may be exported overseas (the cocaine component is removed first). For the most part, though, the Western reaction to coca use has been negative, ever since the Europeans first penetrated the Andes and railed against the “pagan” practice. In fact, the 1961 ban is largely based on an unsubstantiated 1949 report claiming that coca made the natives lazy and drove up poverty levels.

This history lends a sense of urgency to the development and marketing of this new slew of coca products. On Friday, indigenous activists organized a mass protest of the U.S. opposition, with thousands of Bolivians gathering to chew coca outside the U.S. embassy in La Paz and throughout the country. For them, legalization is but a long overdue recognition of the value of indigenous culture.

And then there’s the economic development of the Andes. Of course, in America, where little-known “exotic superfoods” like açai and goji can suddenly become enormously popular, “valuing indigenous culture” is often just fancy talk for a marketing opportunity. Retailers have successfully sold us on products like agave nectar with lovely narratives of pristine streams, muggy rain forests, mysterious ancient origins and so on. We seem to respond to these stories, believing in the exotic, “natural” authority of the natives. Maybe we can chalk up this reaction to Western guilt, or maybe we are genuinely excited to be exposed to another culinary culture. Either way, coca’s history is certainly long and rich enough to capture the imagination.

Why shouldn’t coca farmers be able to capitalize on the romantic ideas of post-colonial, fair-trading Westerners like everyone else seems to be doing? It’s not hard to imagine a Whole Foods display of the goods already on the market in Bolivia. Forget those pop-up ads touting the shocking truth about açai or the rare African weight-loss fruit: “Meet the energizing wonder-leaf, the ancient secret of the Andes, full of all-important B vitamins! Don’t guzzle Coke, grab a Coca!”