"Artificial Food Colors and ADHD"
It is estimated that there are currently
thousands of additives in our food supply.
Some are good—
like supplementing foods with vitamin B12, for example;
others you have to weigh the risks and benefits—
like the nitrites in processed meats.
Yes, they may increase your risk of cancer,
but as preservatives, they decrease your risk of dying from botulism.
Then there are additives used for purely cosmetic purposes,
like food dyes, used to provide color
to colorless and "fun" foods.
According to the FDA,
"Without color additives, colas wouldn't be brown,"
"margarine wouldn't be yellow"
"and mint ice cream wouldn't be green."
Heaven forbid!
According to the FDA color additives are now recognized
as an important part of practically all processed foods we eat.
Because we are eating a lot more processed foods,
we're now getting 5 times more food dyes in our daily diet
than we were 50 years ago.
15 million pounds of food dyes are used every year
in foods, drugs, and cosmetics in the United States.
I always wondered why they called them like Blue #1
instead of their actual chemical names in the list of ingredients.
Then, after reading this report from the
Center for Science in the Public Interest, I realized why.
Here's a box of Kraft mac and cheese.
It has Yellow #5.
Do you think people would be as likely to buy this product
if instead of "Yellow #5" it said...
this instead on the label?
This list of approved colors used to be longer,
but different dyes keep getting banned,
including Violet #1 "which, ironically, was the color used"
"in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's meat inspection stamp",
so they may have been actually further cancering up the meat.
Years ago, I featured this landmark study,
a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenge
published in perhaps the most prestigious medical journal in the world,
showing artificial colors increased
inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity among young children.
So, what happened?
Well, the British government said
OK, there's no health benefits to these dyes;
only health risks, so it's a no-brainer.
The British government mandated
that food manufacturers remove most
of the artificial food colors from their products.
In fact, the whole European Union said, Fine,
you want to continue using these dyes,
then you have to put a warning label stating,
look "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children."
So many international food companies
have taken them out of their products... in Europe,
but continue to be used them in the same products
here in the U.S. where similar regulations
are not currently in place.
Why not?
The FDA put together a committee
that looked at that same landmark study
and conceded that the food additives
may have resulted in changes in behavior,
but the "type of treatment effects reported in the study,"
"even though the investigators referred to increases in levels of "hyperactivity",
"were not the disruptive excessive hyperactivity behaviors of ADHD"
"but more likely the type of over-activity exhibited occasionally"
"by the general population of preschool and school age children."
To which a distinguished toxicologist responded—
look, low level lead exposure may only shave off
a few IQ points off of kids,
but just because they'd still fall within the normal range
doesn't mean it's OK to expose kids to it.
And in fact, now looking back,
the lead in leaded gas may have been causing
brain cancer and even urban violence.
The aggravated assault rate in cities around the U.S.
seemed to follow the lead levels in the air pretty closely.
Anyways, CSPI continues to call on the FDA to ban food dyes
and for food companies to voluntarily stop using them.
Good luck with that.
In the meanwhile, some researchers recently suggested
a way to see which food colors
may be damaging your children's brain,
advising parents to test artificial colors
by purchasing little bottles of food dye at the grocery store.
Then have your child do some homework or something,
and then have them chug down an artificial color
and see if it affects their handwriting/reading/math at 30 minutes,
then at 90 minutes, and then at 3 hours.
Also see if they get irritable later, have problems sleeping.
Then if that's OK you try even more
to see if that will mess up their mind.
If I may offer an alternate suggestion, maybe...
we shouldn't be buying our kids processed crap in the first place.