Almost every parent has a story about their kid bouncing off the walls after downing a package of jelly beans or eating a neon blue-frosted cupcake at school. Most blame the sugar.
But some new research suggests that the rainbow of artificial colors may have a bigger effect on children's behavior. And in other parts of the world, some organizations are starting to take action on these ingredients.
Earlier this year, the UK's Food Standards Agency, the British regulatory counterpart to our Food and Drug Administration, asked food makers to voluntarily recall six artificial colors in food by 2009, a step many food companies have completed.
And in July, the European Parliament voted to add warning labels with the phrase "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children" to products with the same six synthetic red and yellow dyes, prompting many large food makers such as Nestle to reformulate their products rather than risk a drop-off in sales.
These actions were spurred by a study published in September 2007 in the medical journal the Lancet supporting what some parents and scientists had suspected for decades -- that food dyes are linked to hyperactivity, even in kids who don't normally exhibit this behavior.
"The position in relation to artificial food colors is analogous to the state of knowledge about lead and IQ that was being evaluated in the early 1980s," says the study's lead author, Jim Stevenson, psychology professor at the University of Southampton, in a March letter to the UK Food Standards Agency, urging action.
But many psychologists and food scientists aren't convinced.
"I think the studies are intriguing," says Roger Clemens, a food scientist and USC professor of pharmacology. "But the clinical data are still wanting."
"I haven't seen any science that tells me I really need to be warning parents against these," says Scott Benson, a Pensacola, Fla.-based child psychologist who treats hyperactive children in his practice.
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FDA's policy
The FDA still considers the nine synthetic colors allowed in food -- in grocery stores and restaurants-- as safe as long as each production batch has been certified to meet composition standards.
On its website, the agency points to a consensus report by the National Institutes of Health in 1982 that, the FDA says, concluded there was no "scientific evidence to support the claim that food dyes cause hyperactivity."
