Anti-Stress Nutrition Programme to Improve Mood,
Health, Behaviour and Learning
By Brenda Sampson
FOOD DYES AND OTHER ADDITIVES
Many thousands of women throughout the world have found that their children behave better, learn better, are healthier and happier, when artificial colours, preservatives and flavours are removed from their food. Learn how to avoid the unnatural by reading all labels thoroughly, finding out what is contained the numbers given on labels. (There are books available). Find out how many natural ingredients are in sweets, food colourings and flavourings, cordials, soft and powered drinks and if they contain caffeine. These are the main culprits. This evidence has been dismissed by many professional people as anecdotal. Anecdotal means not published, from two Greek words, "an" meaning not and "ecdota" to do with publishing. A woman who can change her shopping, cooking, and the eating habits of herself and her family, and by doing so change an intractable trouble-maker into a co-operative, well behaved, peaceful and happy child, is intelligent. The observations of intelligent people are valuable, even though they do not have access to being published in professional journals.
The human race is thought to be several million of years old. 90% of human beings who have lived on earth, have had to hunt and gather their food. Only 6% have been farmers growing their own food. Only 4% have lived as we do, buying food in shops. Our bodies are programmed to thrive on wild food, or food that is as near as possible to wild food. We are not programmed to thrive on manufactured food, loaded with foreign chemicals. Manufactured food is a misnomer. Food cannot be manufactured. To be useful to the human body, food has to grow.
The human body is an incredibly intricate and complex electro-chemical machine, imbued by spirit. Everything that happens inside our skin does so chemically or electrically. There are trillions of chemical changes going on every fraction of a second. We are not aware of them because they are controlled unconsciously by the autonomic nervous system.
Disease is caused by excessive stress, more than the body has resources to cope with. We are aware of mental and emotional stress, because they occur in the conscious mind. We are not aware of chemical stress because it usually occurs without the awareness of our conscious mind. The body needs and wants the chemicals it is made of, for repair and maintenance. It does not need or want any others; if we ingest foreign chemicals it has the stress of getting rid of them. If it cannot get rid of them the stress is even greater.
There has been a chemical revolution in the last fifty years; thousands of new chemicals have been invented that did not exist on earth before. Many are made from petroleum, itself a poison. Once a chemical is invented, there is pressure from the makers to sell it. Foreign chemicals have invaded food, air and water. We toss them into our mouths with the gay abandon of children tossing pebbles in the water. Our bodies are programmed like a computer, but far more intricately than any invented by man. And they are programmed chemically, not electronically. Our chemical programming was done millions of years ago, when the race was being evolved, when we lived on wild food. Foreign chemicals must interfere with this programming and cause imperfections and loss of efficiency. The chemistry of the human body is a new science; what is known is only a scratch on the surface compared with what is not known. A doctor said that less than 3% of the chemistry of the human body is understood.
The report of the Health Department's Task Force on Nutrition said or implied that food additives are safe because they are allowed and controlled by the Department. How can we regard a chemical as safe, when 97% of our chemistry is not understood? And when there is very little research on the effect of additives on the nervous system. The commonest additive by far is artificial flavours. They are invented by highly paid chemists whose work is top secret. They are known to contain many ingredients, but what the ingredients are is not known; therefore there is little or no research done on them, and there is no control over them in our regulations.
There has been some research on the effect of food colours on the nervous system. Augustine & Levitan (1) working with nerve and muscle cells, found that food dyes make permanent or temporary changes in cell walls. Dyes, including the red dye erythrosine, reduce the ability of nerves and muscles to respond to signals from other nerves; at the same time they greatly increase the intensity of signals sent from nerves to muscles. Erythrosine crosses the brain barrier to enter the brain. It interferes with neuro-transmitters which are essential for all thought processes (Augustine & Levitan (2); Lafferman & Silbergeld (3).
Shaywitz (4) showed that a mixture of colours commonly used in food, reduced learning ability in baby rats. Egger (5) found that tartrazine yellow dye was the most likely of all the substances he tested, to provoke hyperactivity reactions in children. It is also known to provoke asthma, which is tragically common in New Zealand children. We use colours in New Zealand that are banned in USA because they cause cancer. When an asthma attack presents, find out what the person has been drinking or eating before. Keep a record for a while. Once it was a disease of old age; now children get it. Scandinavian countries do not allow artificial colours in human foods. They have a good record for child health and welfare. A Swedish correspondent said in a letter "Artificial colours are allowed in preparations for rats!"
I had a letter from Alexander Schauss, author of "Diet, Crime and Delinquency". He is the director of the American Institute for Bio-Social Research, and operates a clinic for treating disturbed young people and offenders by improving nutrition. This includes reducing artificial dyes and flavours. Schauss described a recent visit from a good looking young man doing very well at university and athletics. At the age of 9 he tried to kill a school mate and was treated by Schauss. He had come to Schauss to thank him. He said that his intervention had prevented many people being harmed. As a child he used to fantasize hurting, maiming and killing people. "Each time I tried to hurt someone, I tried to hurt them harder, like I wanted them to die. I know that if Schauss had not found out what was wrong with me, I would have killed someone before I was 11 or 12."
I believe that most criminals and many violent criminals start life as disturbed children. Their basic problem is that they are allergic and sensitive to foods and chemicals. They cannot tolerate foods containing artificial dyes, preservatives and flavours which damage their emotions, behaviour and learning ability. Without nutritional help in childhood, they grow up unhappy loners, subject to uncontrollable rages and consequent violence. Most sick children receive love and consolation. An unruly hyperactive child receives hatred and rejection. David Gray of Aramoana was a man of this type. His school teacher said, "When I was told that the man responsible had been in my class, I knew at once who it would be. He was not a naughty child; just very fidgety and a terrible nuisance." This is a typical picture of a hyperactive child, constantly tormented by foreign chemicals including food dyes found in everyday food. But with the Feingold low-additive, low-salicylate programme which removes artificial dyes, preservatives and flavours, thousands of these children have been rescued from the torment and have grown up to be first class citizens.
An adult woman described the effect of a food dye on her nervous system. She would experience a constellation of symptoms lasting several hours. "Feeling uptight; tenseness of the scalp; feeling veins and arteries popping out from the skin; coughing; dry heaves; and a crawling and itchy feeling in the skin, but without a rash." No wonder food colours make children irritable and interfere with their concentration and attention! A child could feel similar or even more intense effects, but not have the fluency or the vocabulary to describe his feelings. Or a child who had had these feelings all his life, might not know they were unusual. A boy who "came right" with the Feingold programme, said, "I never knew how bad I felt, till now, when I know what it feels like to feel good."
A science graduate described three kinds of reaction from food or food chemicals he was sensitive to: "(1) A feeling as if acid had been poured over my brain; an uncomfortable feeling as if some chemical was irritating my brain, (2) My brain keeps thinking as if driven; a problem when I am trying to relax or sleep. On one occasion I felt as if the rest of my body was being driven too. I felt as if I had to run or fight to use up whatever was driving me. Running is more peaceful. (3) At a lecture I hear for a while and understand what is being said. And then I do not know what is being said. All I can hear is like a mumbling that tells me that the lecturer is still speaking."
About 1979 I was trying to interest a paediatrician in using the Feingold low additive, low salicylate programme to help disturbed children. He said, "You know it's all a lot of poppycock, don't you." Since it was the International Year of the Child, I thought professionals should listen to what children themselves said about their feelings, and collected two pages of their remarks about the Feingold programme. The recurring theme was happiness. A teenager who stuck to the programme for a year, said, "This has been the happiest year of my life." Other children said things like, "I feel so much better now;" "I don't feel angry inside any more;" "My head feels quieter; it's stopped fizzing;" "I don't get those awful noises in the head any more;" "I don't get those awful nightmares now;" "I just feel happy all the time now."
A pre-schooler said, "I had a motor inside me, and it would not stop even when I wanted it to because I was tired. It has stopped now, and I feel pink, and still; before I always felt black."
An 8 year old wrote, "Now I am on the diet, I feel quiet. I feel light and do not want to fight." A teenager said, "Mum, I don't know what you have been doing to the food, but I feel a lot better; I think I will go on that diet properly." An adult said, "I realise now that I have been struggling against hyperactivity all my life."
Have you ever considered what it must feel like to be hyperactive? To live in a perpetual nightmare of distorted perceptions and sensations, distorted feelings and emotions, distorted action and behaviour; a nightmare that goes on and on; year in, year out, unless the child is one of the lucky minority who are released from it by improved nutrition.
American research indicates that 15% of the population suffers from chemical sensitivity in one form or another. It is caused by chemical trauma, and is now officially recognised as a disability. The massive Kellogg report of 1990, estimates that 15% of American school children are hyperactive or learning disabled. The estimate 15 years ago was that 5% of American children, over a million, were being given drugs to sit still in school. This shows how the problem is growing. In New Zealand, the psychologist Dr Phil Silva said in 1991 that 15% of the 1,000 children in his longitudinal study are disturbed. The Christchurch psychologist, John Church, estimates that there are about 13,000 severely disturbed children in New Zealand schools. Feingold said, "They are not abnormal children, they are normal children living on abnormal food." An Auckland allergist said, "Anyone who denies the link between food and behaviour, denies children the chance to show their true potential."
Severely disturbed children can grow into dangerous adults. With eleven murders in the first three weeks of January 1992, and 116 homicides in the first six months of 1991, we should be thinking of ways to make our nation's food safer for children so that they do not grow up to be murderers. It would be a good time to follow the Scandinavian lead and take all artificial dyes out of human food. Sweden does not allow artificial colours in human food. They have 2 1/2 times as many people as we do, but only half as many disturbed children, and only half as many homicides. (Sadly, in 1996 Sweden is being forced to accept colours, to comply with Common Market rules.)
REFERENCES
- G J Augustine & H Levitan: Effects of Erythrosin B (erythrosine) on neuromuscular transmission in the frog. Annual Meeting Society Neuroscience 6 Toronto, pages 708, 1013
- G J Augustine & H Levitan: Neurotransmitter release from a vertebrate neuromuscular synapse affected by a food dye. Science V 207, 28/3/80 page 1489
- J Lafferman and E Silbergeld: Erythrosin B inhibits dopamine transport in rat caudate synaptosomes. Science V 205 27/7/79 page
- B A Shaywitz & Others: Effects of chronic administration of food colourings on activity levels and cognitive performance in normal and hyperactive developing rat pups. Annals of Neurology V 4 No 2 August 1978
- J Eggers & Others: Controlled trial of oligoantigenic (low allergen) treatment in the hyperkinetic syndrome: Lancet 9/3/85 page 54
