Hyper Kids? Cut Out Preservatives
Parents who suspect that artificial ingredients in food are
affecting their children's behavior can now point to some cold,
hard proof. A carefully designed study released Thursday in The
Lancet, a leading British medical journal, shows that a variety
of common food dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate - an
ingredient in many soft drinks, fruit juices, salad dressings
and other foods - causes some children to become more hyperactive
and distractible than usual.
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"In terms of a question that's been raging for years,
it's the best study to date - an extremely good study,"
says Dr. Philip Shaw, a research psychiatrist in the Child Psychiatry
branch of the National Institute of Mental Health.
The study prompted Britain's Food Standards Agency to issue
an immediate advisory to parents to limit their children's intake
of additives if they notice an effect on behavior. In the U.S.,
there's been no such official response, but doctors say it makes
sense for parents to be on the alert.
Meanwhile, the food industry is awaiting further research.
"We take our responsibility to consumers seriously and will
study the research finding in great detail," says Cathy
Cook, spokesperson for the International Association of Color
Manufacturers.
The research, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology
at England's University of Southampton, involved about 300 children
in two age groups: 3-year-olds and 8- and 9-year-olds. Over three
one-week periods, the children were randomly assigned to consume
one of three fruit drinks daily: one contained the amount of
dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a British child's
diet, a second drink had a lower concentration of the additives,
and a third was additive-free. All the children spent a week
drinking each of the three mixtures, which looked and tasted
alike. During each weeklong period, teachers and parents, who
did not know which drink the kids were getting, used a variety
of standardized behavior-evaluation tools - some observational
and one computer-based - to size up such qualities as restlessness,
lack of concentration, fidgeting, and talking or interrupting
too much.
Stevenson found that children in both age groups were significantly
more hyperactive when drinking the stuff containing additives.
Three-year-olds had a bigger response than the older kids to
the lower dose of additives - roughly the same amount of food
coloring as in two 2-oz. bags of candy. And, there were big individual
differences in sensitivity. While the effects were not nearly
so great as to cause full-blown ADHD, Stevenson nonetheless warns
that "these adverse effects could affect the child's ability
to benefit from the experience of school."
He notes that a separate pilot study found that kids can become
more hyperactive within one hour of consuming food additives.
The Lancet study is the first to nail down a link between
artificial ingredients and hyperactivity, though the connection
has long been suspected and was the basis for the Feingold Diet,
which eliminates all artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and
preservatives and was popularized in the 1970s as a treatment
for ADHD. Though such a diet alone is not a proven treatment
for ADHD, some clinicians routinely advise parents of kids with
ADHD to stick with a more natural diet." I'm not maniacal
about it, but I tell parents that your kid will do better if
they are on a diet that is free of additives and junk food,"
says psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author a several books on
ADHD. "I urge them to eat whole foods; they'll be healthier
anyway."
Now that a link has been found, researchers will be looking
to confirm the British study and build upon it. "My guess
is that if we do similarly systematic work with other additives,
we'd learn they, too, have implications for behavior," says
Dr. James Perrin, professor of pediatrics at Harvard. "My
friends who study the food industry say we have about 70,000
new products a year, so children are facing tremendous numbers
of new opportunities for things that may not be good for them."
The study, he says, is one more reason to cheer the movement
toward organic and natural foods.
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