Part One of the Article, Is Yellow Dal Safe?, can be found at this link: http://freeradicalfederation.com/IsYellowDalSafe

In this part I want to show photographs of what I feel is strong evidence that some kind of coloring is added to the yellow dal commonly sold in Indian food stores. I compared a sample of certified organic yellow dal with a sample of standard yellow dal.

I rinsed both samples the same way and I took photographs of the water used to rinse the dal. If you are keeping up with the news about food safety and healthy foods, you are aware that foods are sometimes artifically colored while the manufacturers claim that they are not adding any coloring. The recent USA Today article says,

When Consumer Reports tested 23 supposedly wild-caught salmon fillets bought nationwide in 2005-2006, only 10 were wild salmon. The rest were farmed. Farmed salmon gets its coloring from dyes added to food pellets the fish are fed, while wild salmon gets it from the plankton they eat. "When you cook it, the wild salmon retains its color, and in the aquaculture salmon, the color tends to leak out," she says. Suspicious consumers can call the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition hotline at 1-888-SAFEFOOD.

Using that same logic I compared these two samples of yellow dal, one organic and one from my local Indian store. These photos show that the non-organic dal is a brighter yellow in the package. And I was shocked to see the amount of color that comes out in the water after rinsing this dal. In my mind, there is no way the bright yellow color of this water is natural. The yellow dal manufacturers's may deny that they are adding coloring to the dal, but I think these photos are proof that they are indeed doctoring the food.

The organic yellow dal is on the right in this photo. The beans are a lighter shade of yellow.

Another photo of the same two dal samples of yellow dal (split mung or moong beans).

This is how I rinsed the dal. You can repeat the same test yourself at home.

Here is a larger photo showing the water after the organic dal was rinsed.

Now, here is the shocker. Look at the color of the water after rinsing the yellow dal from my local Indian store. This bright yellow color is not natural!

In case you think it was the lighting or something, here is another angle. In person, the water looks even brighter, if you can imagine that!