CSPI dyeing to link food coloring to ADHD

Like the mole in the whack-a-mole game, the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Michael Jacobson just keeps coming back for a good whack in the head. This time, he has tried to resurrect the unfounded claim that food dyes trigger Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in kids who are predisposed to it — an issue first introduced in the 1970s by Dr. Ben Feingold. Jacobson has petitioned the government to ban the synthetic blue, green, orange, red and yellow food colorings, commonly found in popular snack foods such as Cheetos, Eggo Waffles and Jell-O desserts. Jacobson will plead his case next week before an FDA advisory committee that will consider whether taking any action is justified, even though numerous scientific studies over the past 30 years, including those conducted by the FDA, have conclusively determined that there is no demonstrable link between artificial colors and hyperactivity.

“This is so 1970s!” says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “You’d think that after all the abuse Jacobson took for his last bizarre proposal, the soda-caramel coloring ban, that he would give it a rest for a while.”

“And how are you supposed to separate all of the confounding influences on hyperactivity?” asks ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Even if a small subset of kids were sensitive to the food dye, banning synthetic food dyes altogether would be like saying ‘If 1.3 percent of the population is allergic to penicillin, we should ban it all together.’ Nonsense!”

ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom adds that chemically, it makes no sense to lump food colorings together: “Just because something is a dye doesn’t mean its structure or function has anything to do with that of another dye. In fact, dyes are represented by a broad spectrum of unrelated chemical classes. The chances that any group of them will elicit a specific biological response are minuscule.”