DUH!
Headlines like this were plastered all over the internet and newspapers yesterday. I first heard on my news radio station (after being given permission to turn off Bonnie Rait’s Something To Talk About by the two back rows in the van), there were “NEW” studies that could “potentially” link food colouring with hyper-activity in “some” children.
What year is this?
I think this was made evident in 1982 minutes after the McDonald’s orange five gallon paint pails were delivered to our classroom on hot-dog day (and no hot-dogs, you are not off the hook either) and the simple removal of the lid, tapping of the syrupy keg had kids skateboarding on chalkboard erasers. That was just the orange dye. Think of the red?
A friend of mine always had cream soda at her house and I’m fairly certain there was some sort of rule (likely sent in writing from my Mother) that I was not permitted to drink my own can but nobody said anything about having a sip of my friends’ radioactive red beverage.
I believe I mentioned being involved in gymnastics as a kid, never looked forward to competitions knowing breaking a few bones would be better than the humiliation of performing to The Muppet Show theme song with my underwear so far up my ass it sometimes never returned.
One sip of cream soda and I could do forty-one, consecutive, builder, back-handsprings in my friend’s kitchen while singing Corey Hart’s Never Surrender.
From Yahoo! News (dated today!): The FDA has so far said there is no proven relationship between food dyes and hyperactivity in most children.
I beg to differ. If our kindergarten class served a tray of bright red Jello with a maraschino cherry kicker most of those kids wouldn’t see first recess. Most.
The same article: But the agency has agreed with many of the studies that say for “certain susceptible children,” hyperactivity and other behavioral problems may be exacerbated by food dyes and other substances in food.
I am not a cream-soda-behavioural expert but I have spent some time around children recently and I believe there are only a handful of children who can handle small doses of the dye without being affected and not the other way around.
Those perceived as being “susceptible” look out! These are the kids who come to school with a strange grin on their faces, often drooling, some sort of tick, cap from their Ritalin bottles exposed out of a zipper wide open pocket on their Last Airbender backpacks. I agree, these kids could probably stand to skip the grenadine funnel but they’re not the only ones.
