Additives 'make children hyperactive'
Last updated at 08:06 25 May 2004
Removing artificial colourings and preservatives from young children's diets could have a significant impact on reducing hyperactivity, research suggested today.
Researchers studied 300 children who were split into groups and subjected to different diets, some containing artificial additives such as tartrazine and sunset yellow.
They found that the three-year-olds became significantly less hyperactive when they were on diets where the additives had been removed.
And they became much more hyperactive when they were put back on the high-additive diet, according to the study in Archives of Disease in Childhood.
The researchers, from the University of Southampton, said that removing these substances from products could be in the long-term interests of public health.
Increasing pressure
Manufacturers have come under increasing pressure from campaigners to reduce artificial colourings and preservatives from their products, particularly those marketed to youngsters.
The Southampton team, led by Prof John Warner, started off by screening more than 1,800 children aged three for hyperactivity and allergies.
Of these almost 300 youngsters, divided into four groups, took part in the four-week study.
In the first week all the children only ate foods that were free of artificial additives, including colourings such as tartrazine, sunset yellow and carmoisine, and the preservative sodium benzoate.
But during the second and fourth weeks, the youngsters were randomly given a daily dose of fruit juice with or without colourings and preservatives.
Their behaviour was assessed on a regular basis before the study and regularly afterwards both by formal clinical assessment and the accounts of parents in diaries. The parents did not know what type of juice their child had been given.
Parents' ratings
The parents' own ratings showed that the children became significantly less hyperactive during the periods when there were no additives in their diets.
As soon as the additives were put back in again, their hyperactivity levels increased.
The researchers estimated that for children with high levels of hyperactivity, removing additives cut hyperactivity from 15 per cent to 6 per cent.
They warned the figures should be interpreted with caution as the changes were not reflected in the formal clinic assessments carried out by experts.
But they suggested that the parent's own views might be more sensitive as they saw their child's behaviour over a longer period of time and in more varied settings.
The researchers also found that children with more extreme forms of hyperactivity were no more or less likely to respond to changes in their diet than children with milder forms of behavioural problems.
Behavioural difficulties
They noted that past research had shown hyperactive children were at risk of continuing behavioural difficulties, such as poor social adaptation and educational problems.
This meant that if the issue of additives in diet was addressed it could potentially have a long-term benefit to public health.
"These findings suggest that significant changes in children's hyperactive behaviour could be produced by the removal of artificial colourings and sodium benzoate from their diet," the researchers said.
They concluded: "These findings are sufficiently strong to warrant attempts at replication in other general population samples and to examine whether similar benefits... could be identified in community samples at older ages."
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