Food additives and hyperacidity in children

A news article says a scientific study has showed that food additives cause hyperacidity in children. Is this study a reliable one? If so, can we say that food additives is the cause of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)?

The scientific study that was the subject of the news item you read was conducted by a team led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at England’s University of Southampton.

It was a well-designed and well-controlled research project whose results were published in a recent issue of the Lancet, a highly reputable medical journal. Thus, the findings of the study are very credible and reliable, to say the least.

The study employed about 300 children in two age groups: three, eight and nine-year-olds. The children were randomly assigned the three groups. Over three one-week periods, the children drank one of three fruit drinks which looked and tasted alike daily.

One fruit drink contained sodium benzoate (a very common preservative) and several food colorings, namely sunset yellow (European food code E110), carmoisine (E122); tartrazine (E102); and ponceau 4R (E124), at the amount of dye that is usually found in a British child’s diet.

The second drink had a lower concentration of the additives, and the third was additive-free. All the children spent a week drinking each of the three mixtures.

During each week-long periods, teachers, parents and a group of psychology graduates who did not know which drink the children were taking, were asked to assess the kids using a variety of standardized behavior-evaluation tools.

Results of the study showed that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive when drinking the mixtures that contained additives.

Three-year-olds had a greater response than the older children to the lower dose of additives, which roughly equal the amount of food coloring that is present in 2-oz, bags of candy.

Do the results of this study proves that food additives cause Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? Definitely not! The level of hyperactivity observed in the children in the study was far less than those seen in children with ADHD.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition impulsivity that usually appear in the preschool and early school years.

All children are sometimes restless, inattentive and impulsive, only if these symptoms are manifested in an exaggerated degree and begin to affect performance in school, social relationship with other children, or behavior at home should ADHD be suspected.

Available evidence points to neurobiology and genetics as the primary factors in the development of ADHD. Social factors and child rearing play minor roles.

A diet that contains food additives at the amount typically present in processed foods can probably aggravate the signs and symptoms of ADHD, but they evidently do not give rise to the condition.

Hence, since diet is not the cause of ADHD, the condition cannot be treated by diet alone. In fact, in the 1970s, the Feingold Diet, which eliminates all artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives in the diet of hyperactive children was popularized as a treatment forADHD. Sadly, the diet was not effective at all.

What this latest study on food additives and hyperactivity in children is that elimination of food additives in the diet of children with ADHD could lessen their symptoms.

Will diet free of food additives benefit normal children? Yes, but only to a certain degree. In normal children, especially thosewho are naturally but not pathologically hyperactive, the adverse effects of food additives could contribute to learning disabilities. In short, parents are well-advised to keep their children’s diet as close to natural as possible.

Source: Manila Bulletin