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Comment by mrguyorama | Hacker News Reader

There's something about one of the red dyes in america that is partially linked to adhd symptoms or restless kids?

I think almost everyone who works with children (teachers, day care, people who chaperone ski trips) believes that ingredients of junk food (sugar, food colorings, etc.) despite their being little evidence.

I'm allergic to tartrazine. It doesn't seem to affect me much as an adult but as a child I'd go into drastic coughing/wheezing fits from consuming orange-flavored drinks in which it's used as a food coloring. I have a solid ADHD diagnosis but not looked into any kind of larger overlap with other allergies, due to the cost of screening/testing.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Tartrazine

Reading this made me think about how Twizzler Pull and Peel make me cough. Went and looked it up. Yellow 5 is in them. Have been diagnosed ADD for the last 22 years. Huh.

I’m tired of the constant “no evidence” bs. I have children and their behavior changes dramatically when they eat food with artificial coloring. I’m honestly tired of being told I’m crazy. You can take my kids and try it yourself.

There's a big difference between "nothing changes" and "it's not the color causing the changes".

And double blind tests aren't hard to do.

No, they are hard.

If you're going to feed kids candy that is colored with agent A you need to make identical candy colored with agent B so the kids can't tell them apart. You can test A vs B but not A vs no color. (Though maybe you can have the kids eat the candy while blindfolded)

If you're going to test the influence of sugar you could use sugar for candy A and some combination of Sucralose, Ace-K, aspartame and some strange carbohydrate like mannitol or xylitol in candy B and get pretty close in terms of taste and mouthfeel but in A/B tests people will notice the difference.

Then people will wonder if those other substances cause problems and none of these address the possibility that the sensory pleasure of junk food makes kids squee and lose self control.

If you're blaming a specific coloring agent it's pretty easy to hide a drop. And I'm not talking about sugar or sweeteners or anything.

I was under the impression there was lots of evidence - not that the junk food causes bad behaviour, but that adults treat children who have just eaten junk food differently causing them to misbehave.

Probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azorubine , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye), or another cousin from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azo_dye s.

I knew it from 'Strawberry Milk' which made me sneeze and feel strange long ago. Since then I'm avoiding E122&E123. But haven't seen it that much in the last years. Still wouldn't want to have it. It's cheap stuff to upsell cheap products. Mix/blend some real strawberries into your milk/yoghurt, or use organic syrup, marmalade.

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