Common food additives cause 鈥渟ubstantial effects鈥� on some young children鈥檚 behaviour, increasing temper tantrums and hyperactivity, according to a UK study. However, the results have been deemed inconclusive by other scientists and the paper has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals.
The study involved giving children fruit juice laced with low levels of common food and drink additives. It was commissioned by the UK government in 1999 and completed in 2001. The results have now been discovered in the library of the Food Standards Agency by a campaign group called the Food Commission.
Researchers at the David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre in Newport, Isle of Wight gave children the additive-laced fruit juice and a placebo juice that appeared identical. Lab-based psychological tests did not reveal any changes during the period when the children drank the laced juice, but the parents of one quarter of the children recorded a significant increase in disruptive behaviour.
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At the time, the Food Standards Agency decided the results were scientifically inconclusive, based on advice from other medical experts. Their key concern was that parental observation could not provide a reliable measurement of children鈥檚 behaviour. But the researchers who did the study, and the Food Commission, contend that parents are better placed to observe real behaviour in natural conditions than lab-based scientists.
鈥淪ignificant changes in children鈥檚 hyperactive behaviour could be produced by the removal of colourings and additives from their diet,鈥� the researchers concluded. They go on to write: 鈥淭he findings of the present study suggest that benefit would accrue for all children from such a change, and not just those already showing hyperactive behaviour.鈥�
Sunset Yellow
A group of 277 three-year-olds took part in the month-long study. For two weeks, they drank a fruit juice laced with 20 milligrammes in total of food colourings Tartrazine (E102), Sunset Yellow (E110), Carmoisine (E122) and Ponceau 4R (E124). The doses were well below those permitted in food and drink in the UK. The juice also contained permitted levels of the preservative sodium benzoate (E211).
For the other two weeks, the children drank a placebo juice that appeared identical. During the study, the children, parents and researchers did not know in which order which child drank the juices.
Parents kept diaries, noting behaviours such as 鈥榝iddling with objects鈥�, 鈥榯emper tantrums鈥� and 鈥榙isturbing others鈥�. Increased disruptive behaviour was recorded even for some children who had no history of hyperactivity.
鈥淣ow that a link between these colourings has been proved, we should remove these additives from children鈥檚 foods and drinks,鈥� says Annie Seeley of the Food Commission. The group says it has identified about 100 children鈥檚 foods and drinks that contain one of the additives tested in the study.
But other groups, such as the British Nutrition Foundation, says a link between these additives and disruptive behaviour remains unclear.