Why my experience with food dye is unimportant to most people

When I share our experience with food dye, I'm never met with the response I feel it deserves. There's a certain amount of incredulousness, and silence. There is a discomfort, that if they acknowledge my story as truth, it contradicts several other parts of their belief system. 

The only time I received a response that was both thoughtful, concerned and disturbed by the reality of our experience was when I reached out to a molecular biologist from Guelph University who studied food dye. Her response was due to her own distrust of the chemical.  I asked her for any information about what could be happening physiologically when my daughter consumed dye. This was what she said: 

                

                        It could be a gut microbe that colonized her which metabolizes dye to a psychoactive substance.  This is understudied, and to me the reason that Health Canada should immediately re-evaluate the situation. We all harbour different microbes, some of which have dye-metabolizing tendencies and some of which do not – and there is no current way to know whether a dye might be harmful through this route because of the complex way in which microbes in communities process xenobiotic substances.  I am absolutely in favour of the removal of these non-nutritional additives from foods and drugs.

Here's an interview with her on CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/q-and-a-why-this-microbiologist-is-warning-people-not-to-ingest-some-food-dyes-1.7255454

I've sent over 100 emails to politicians, researchers, scientists, Health Canada departments, reporters, and the like. I rarely receive a response. I'm reminded of a quote from Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, Departmental Science Advisor at Health Canada. "All knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, observational, real-world, inspectors, social and behavioural knowledge, is critical to enhancing science-informed decision making".  Yet, my experience holds no value to those making the decisions. 

Is this cognitive dissonance in action? Or is it an example of decision makers not being invested unless it's happening to their own family. Some folks have compared my experience to another parents peanut allergy. Just avoid the peanuts, and be thankful it's not deadly.

But no test exists for a dye "allergy". So the families like mine are just wandering around aimlessly wondering why their kid sometimes freaks out unexpectedly. This child's whole life is affected, their families relationship with them is affected, their experience on this planet is tainted by their physiological reaction to an ingredient in most things, including their toothpaste. How is that not important?  

I must increase the pressure but I am only one person. One person, speaking into a vacuum of people that either a) are sick of hearing me talk about it b) are experiencing it themselves (in the food dye community). I don't know how to reach the ones being affected who don't understand how to fix the problem because they haven't connected the dots yet. How do I reach them? Unless you're searching for food dye related articles, you won't find mine. My experience needs to be found when searching for kids mental health solutions.