It is more than 30 years since an American scientist, Ben Feingold, first suggested that artificial food colors and other additives caused overactive, impulsive and inattentive behavior in children; this sort of hyperactivity is known to be a marker for later educational difficulties, especially problems with reading, and antisocial behavior.
The UK Goverment recently commissioned a research project with the soul perpose of finding out if certain food chemiclas are directly responcable for some a large amount of ADHD cases. They found out that alot of non-organic* foods had a detrimental effect on a childs behavior. This may sound like good news, bt its not, we have known this for a very long time and nothing has ever been done. Groups such as the Hyperactive Childrens Support Group have ben argueing for a long time that eliminating junk food can dramaticlly improve a childs behavior pattern.
This is a direct quote from Professor Jim Stevenson.
it provided a clear demonstration that changes in behavior could be detected in three-year-old and eight-year-old children who consumed a mix of additives.
The additives that these children were exposed to were not rare, these were the type of additives youve had whilst eating your cereal this morning, your lunch, the point is that they are every where. One point that i think i should STRONGLY point out is NON of these additives are found in organic food.
Since Feingold’s original work, behavioral problems among schoolchildren have risen, as have diagnoses of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Estimates of numbers of children suffering from full ADHD vary: one UK survey estimates that 2.5% of British schoolchildren are affected, and international studies put the figure at 5-10%.
The UK Government’ Food Standards Agency (FSA), which commissioned the study, was taking a cautious line yesterday. Professor Ieuan Hughes, the chairman of its expert committee on the toxicity of chemicals in food (CoT), said that since some children in the study reacted significantly to the additives but others did not.
So that must mean if one kid falls on the floor in pain and then gets up and is hyper for 6 hours it doesnt matter because 10 children were fine. If 1 child has an adverse reaction to any thing that gets put in food it should be with drawn, unfortunatly our goverments do not have the same mentality.
The FSA revised its official advice, but only to suggest that parents who think their children show signs of hyperactive behavior should avoid foods containing artificial colors and the preservative sodium benzoate by checking labels.
O wait theres a bit on the FSA home page with reads...
many of the products which contain these additives - sweets, cakes, ice cream and drinks - are sold without labels.
So cheak the labels, the labels that dont excist ? O well just give it to oyur kid and if he/she is ill, o well you wont give it to them again, that amkes sence....right ?
The FSA has also not issued advice to schools on whether the additives should be banned from school food but advised concerned parents to ask head teachers.
Now i belive ive already said in a post some where that a school in Wales topped giving there pupils additives and the behavior massivly increased. Now i know that, you know that, the FSA knows that. So why isnt the FSA doing any thing ? Ill add an external quote in below from another case.
Head teachers who have worked to remove additives from school meals said the research vindicated their efforts. Alan Coode, former head of a primary school in Merton, said: “We knew this all along. When we changed our school meals and removed additives there was a new calmness to the school. The science has just caught up.”
