E102 in medication

[occular]

I am taking some antibiotic medication. The pills have the notorious additive E102 (akak Tartrazine) in them. For solely the purpose of making the pills look yellow

Comments

[zotz]

Patients are more staisfied that their pills are working if they're the right colour. Well-established. Sedatives should be blue or green, stimulants a nice bright colour like red. It's a bit like bleach - blue bottles make customers decide that the bleach in it is really strong, while bleach from a green bottle isn't, even if it's the same bleach.

Also, it helps you tell them apart if you've got more than one to take.

[occular]

Good call!

[jogamatic]

helps tell them apart if your a pharmacy tech that counts them out who is overworked/underpaid/stressed-out-by-the-crazy-customers too.

[johnnyrandom]

Ricockulous!

[blu_matt]

"Ooh, the patient might refuse to take their pills if they're not yellow."

That, surprisingly, is actually one of the reasons. As Zotz says, it plays to people's expectations (and helps differentiate different drugs). guess there might be some kind of basis for this cue from nature (wasps and bees sting, red and white spotty mushrooms are poisonous, etc.).

In a similar way, they add yellow colouring to marge to make it look more like butter. Normally, it looks much like lard and was found to be far less appealing to spread on a bit of toast.

[occular]

You remind me of the egg yolk thing too - they add colouring to make the yolk look "the right colour". I'm just expecting people to be less fickle about colours or something that clearly doesn't match the world :)

[anonymouseth]

maybe it's to anger the patient, so that the blood courses through his veins - especially the one in his temple - helping to spread the drug throughout the body.

:)

[occular]