Color Me Calm: Is Food Dye Messing Up Your Kids?

Is that soda or seemingly innocent mac n’ cheese causing your kid’s diagnosis of ADHD? Could be, according to an article by Stephanie Gleason in today’s New York Times. The decades-old fight to remove dye from prepackaged foods by concerned scientists, doctors, and consumer advocates has been exhumed with the mighty Food & Drug Administration after a convincing 2007 Brit study unequivocally linked the two. The FDA is hosting an open panel on the topic this Wednesday to begin government investigations, adding new gravity to concerns about additives with creepy sci-fi names like Yellow 6 and Blue 1. In a memo from the FDA, the link between hyperactive children and synthetic dyes was laid out in no uncertain terms: “The data [from the 2007 study] suggest that their condition may be exacerbated by exposure to a number of substances in food, including, but not limited to, artificial food colors.” If the link is acknowledged as truth by the FDA, we can only begin to imagine the drug shake-out that will follow. Producers of Ritalin may need a little Prozac.