UK Food Watchdog Calls For Ban On Food Colours

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Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 10 Apr 2008 - 12:00 PDT

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The UK's food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency (FSA), is to advise government Ministers to ask manufacturers to bring in a voluntary ban of six artificial food colours from food and drink by 2009. They will also advise Ministers to push for them to be phased out in the rest of the European Union.

The Board of the FSA met earlier today to discuss research published by scientists at Southampton University last September, and a review of the findings published last month by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The research examined the effect of food additives on children's behaviour.

Chair of the Food Standards Agency, Dame Deirdre Hutton, said it was the duty of the FSA to "put consumers first". She pointed out that the additives in question are used only to give colour to food, and it therefore makes sense:

"In the light of the findings of the Southampton Study, to remove them from food and drink products."

"UK industry has already taken great strides to remove these colours from food; this decision builds on the work already done and will encourage industry to continue down this path," said Hutton.

The six colouring additives concerned are:

• Sunset yellow (E110)
• Quinoline yellow (E104)
• Carmoisine (E122)
• Allura red (E129)
• Tartrazine (E102)
• Ponceau 4R (E124)

The Southampton study was published in the Lancet in early September 2007 and described the work of Jim Stevenson and his team who gave 300 young children in two age groups one of three drinks: a mix of preservative (sodium benzoate) and a higher than average concentration of colourings (Mix A), a drink that more or less matched the average child's additive intake in a day (Mix B), and a placebo with no additives at all (Mix C).

The children's behaviour was measured using a GHA scale (global hyperactivity aggregate) based on ratings given by parents and teachers, before and after they had their drinks, and a computer test to measure attention span (just for the older group of 8-9 year olds).

The results showed that Mix A (the highest concentration of food colourings) had significant adverse effects on the GHA ratings of both the younger (3 year old) and the older (8-9 year old) children. Mix B also affected the 8-9 year olds in the same way and showed mixed results for the younger children.

Stevenson and colleagues concluded that while the use of "artificial coloring in food manufacture might seem to be superfluous, the same cannot be said for sodium benzoate, which has an important preservative function". And they suggested these findings could have "substantial" implications for the regulation of food additives.

The research was sponsored by the Food Standards Agency.

The FSA's advice to parents is if their child show signs of hyperactivity then cutting artificial colours from his or her diet "might have some beneficial effects".

Chief Scientist with the FSA, Andrew Wadge, said:

"This advice is proportionate and based on the best available science."

But he balanced this with:

"We need to remember that there are many factors associated with hyperactive behaviour in children other than diet. These are thought to include genetic factors, being born prematurely, or environment and upbringing."

The FSA Board discussed the use of sodium benzoate, which was also used in the Southampton study. This preservative is mainly used in soft drinks said the FSA, and their advice is that the primary concern should be the colourings used in the study (which the researchers said might seem "superfluous") since sodium benzoate does serve a purpose, as a preservative.

The FSA anticipates that the next step will be that Ministers will discuss this advice with their respective departments and then start negotiating how to push for this to be implemented in the EU.

A spokesperson for the industry's Food and Drink Federation, Julian Hunt, told the BBC that:

"UK food and drink manufacturers are already taking these colours out of products on supermarket shelves, so we are surprised the FSA board feels it is an appropriate use of their powers to call for a voluntary ban."

Hunt said there were a few products, such as mushy peas and battenburg cake, that still contained artificial colours.

He also said that if the UK introduced a ban it would clash with the rest of Europe, since a UK ban would not apply to imports from other EU countries.

Presumably that is one reason why the FSA wants Ministers to push for an EU-wide ban.

Click here for more information on food additives (FSA).

Sources: FSA press statement, BBC, MNT archives.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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