Artificial Food Colors and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Symptoms: Conclusions to Dye for

Food colors and behavior.

meant by the term "'problem behaviors." Nowhere was the subject population clearly described. The strategy of allowing each parent to pick items from five different behavioral checklists leads irrevocably to a case study approach; that is, 22 "studies," each with an N of 1. Such an approach precludes the possibility of deriving scientific generalizations. Moreover, each of the behavioral rating...

DIET AND NUTRITION: The Artificial Food Dye Blues

Mechanisms of behavioral, atopic, and other reactions to artificial food colors in children.

This review examines the research on mechanisms by which artificial food colors (AFCs) and common foods may cause behavioral changes in children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD show excess inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Studies have shown that a subgroup of children (with or without ADHD) react adversely to challenges with AFCs....

Human attention filters for single colors.

The visual images in the eyes contain much more information than the brain can process. An important selection mechanism is feature-based attention (FBA). FBA is best described by attention filters that specify precisely the extent to which items containing attended features are selectively processed and the extent to which items that do not contain the attended features are attenuated. The cen...

Artificial food dyes and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common behavioral disorders in children. Symptoms of ADHD include hyperactivity, low frustration tolerance, impulsivity, and inattention. While the biological pathways leading to ADHD are not clearly delineated, a number of genetic and environmental risk factors for the disorder are recognized. In the early 1970s, research condu...