Can Supermarket Food Be Dangerous?

In a television report on ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’ shown on Monday, 10 June, Trevor McDonald asked the question: 

“Is some food on supermarket shelves inherently dangerous, particularly food aimed at children?  Already it’s accepted that some additives and preservatives can trigger hyperactivity.  But some scientists are now suggesting that bad behaviour and the growing rate of certain childhood illnesses could be directly connected to what children eat.”

Take a look at the facts about our children:

• 1 in 8 suffer from asthma

• 1 in 5 suffer from eczema

• 3 in 5 have been prescribed antibiotics in the last year

The question is Why?

Connor Mundy is 8 years old and suffers from asthma, eczema and hayfever.  Connor’s mum wants answers.  Could pollution be a cause, or could it be that some of the foods she gives Connor might actually be doing more harm than good?

Connor says: “Asthma does kind of stop me a bit doing what I like to do, because when I’m playing sport I have to stop and start.  In between when I stop and start I have to use my inhaler and wait a couple of minutes before I can play sport again.  It doesn’t bother me that much but sometimes I just wish I could just play sport like all the other children, rather than having to stop and start all the time.”

The ‘Tonight’ programme carried out an experiment in Connor’s school to find out some of the answers.

Parents of Connor’s school agreed that for one week their children will go on a special diet – one completely free of the e-numbers, additives, preservatives and refined sugars which have been blamed in part for the declining health and increasingly poor behaviour of our kids.

Headmaster of St John’s Primary School, Tunbridge Wells, was asked: “Why exactly did you want to become involved in the experiment?”

The headmaster said: “We’ve long been aware that there is a link between food additives and behaviour and achievement of some children and this seemed an opportunity to take part in an experiment which might shed some further light on that.  We are certainly aware that some children are very allergic to some kinds of food additives.  My own daughter, for instance, is very allergic to e110 and e102, and since we cut this out of her diet her behaviour changed completely.  She is far happier.  So we’re aware of that with some children. What we wanted to know was whether actually there are more children affected by the presence of additives in food, and whether we could see a noticeable difference in their academic achievements, in their behaviour, their demeanour, once we took those out of their diet.”

Children and parents were shown the difference between ‘healthy foods’ and ‘unhealthy foods’.  The unhealthy foods included crisps, chocolate, sweets, tin spaghetti, cakes, biscuits, most fruit yoghurts.

Healthy foods included fruit, vegetables, fresh fruit smoothies (very popular), vegetable sticks with houmous.

The nutritionist said: “If you put it to most parents that if they feed their children junk, they are actually contributing to killing them, they would be very shocked, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

Parents did their shopping and thought they’d bought healthy additive-free baskets.  When they showed the baskets to the nutritionist they were in for a shock; the food they were buying was not as healthy as they thought.  For example, brightly coloured yoghurts contained sugar and additives which could actually make the asthma and eczema worse.  Soya yoghurts without sugars and additives would be a healthier alternative.

Parents found labels confusing.  One parent suggested products should show some warning, perhaps a little symbol, to state that ‘this product may contribute towards eczema or asthma’.  The nutritionist explained that now that parents are watching out for e-numbers, the manufacturers are beginning to use the full names instead, e.g. caramel instead of e150, when caramel is known to affect hyperactivity. 

After a week of avoiding e-numbers, additives, preservatives and refined sugars, the children said they’d enjoyed their new diet.  Parents found it a bit harder at first, but also enjoyed it.

Lizzie Vann runs a baby food company.  There are strict rules about what can go into baby food, but once the child reaches one, those rules don’t apply.  She said: “At the moment if we think of children’s foods we think of cartoons, bright coloured packaging, funny shapes and strong tastes.  What we should be thinking about is food that is wholesome, nutritious, minimally processed and good for them.  We should be thinking about providing the building blocks they need later in life.”  She added: “I think at the moment we are just conducting an enormous experiment on children.  We are using them as guinea pigs.  We are letting them have anything and everything that they want, including foods with some of these chemicals. We don’t know what the consequences will be, but we are seeing some pretty scary health patterns develop.”

After a week on the diet, parents completed a questionnaire, with the following questions:

• “Are your children more, or less, argumentative?

• Are they more able to concentrate at school and at home?

• Any health changes noticed?”

The results were astonishing.

In just a week more than half the parents reported significant change in their children’s behaviour.  A quarter said that the children appeared to be much calmer and many said their children slept better.  In fact, the improvements were so marked that the majority of parents now hoped to maintain an additive-free diet permanently.

For Connor, who suffers from asthma, eczema and hayfever, the results have been even more dramatic.  He and his brother Callum have both been eating additive-free foods.  With Connor, his asthma, eczema and hayfever have cleared up quite a lot; his skin has been a lot calmer.  His mother said: “His eczema does get quite red and inflamed, and for the first couple of days it did get more inflamed, but by the end of the week it was fantastic.  He’s never had such good skin.”

And what about Callum?  What was he like at the end of the week?  “Callum was a lot calmer.  Callum doesn’t get the eczema and asthma but he can be quite hyperactive.  But we had a fantastic week.  He was a pleasure to have.  He was actually quite keen to do his homework, and quite keen to sit and read, which normally is quite a struggle with Callum.  We got quite a lot of work done.  He was a lot happier in himself.”

Dr. Neil Ward, from the University of Surrey, reported:

“Our initial findings are that a large number of children do have health problems and that they have chemical imbalances, especially to do with our research area of trace elements.  In other words, many of these children are actually depleted in many important nutrients like iron, copper, zinc and selenium.  They tend to get chemicals through their diet and in many ways, whilst they are not recognised as having health problems, they are actually showing early signs of anti-social behaviour, they are in trouble at school, their learning attainment is not at a level that one would expect for their age.”

There are other countries that have already banned many of the additives British Food Manufacturers are still allowed to use.

Comments by Health4youonline

There are no surprises here at all for nutritionists, or, indeed, for many parents who have had to find out themselves through their own experimentation that certain foods have adverse effects on their children.  A follow-up experiment could exclude milk products also to ascertain the benefit for asthma, eczema and hayfever.

For more information click here to see Asthma, Eczema, Hayfever, Ear Infections and ADHD.

Hidden Sugar

(Information taken from What Should I Feed my Baby?  (Click on the book title if you wish to read more or buy the book).

“Sugar really is the number one problem for any parent interested in their child’s good health.  Most parents know to keep juices and cordials to a minimum to preserve their child’s teeth, but the impact of sugar on the whole body is adverse.  To put it into perspective, sugar is a preservative.  Why would you want to put a preservative into a young body?

Apart from damaging teeth there are other serious problems with sugar.  You may have heard it said that sugar provides empty calories, but what does that mean?  It means that sugar is devoid of any vitamins and minerals that would help the body to utilise it.  For instance, we need a mineral, chromium, in order to metabolise sugar and yet not only does it not provide this mineral, it also causes a net loss of chromium from the body in the urine.  So, over the years, people who consume sugar develop a serious deficiency of this nutrient. 

This leads to another really serious problem with high sugar intake: impaired blood sugar control.  In extreme cases this can lead to adult diabetes and, nowadays, the incidence is on the increase.  This is purely and simply a diet-related problem, which can be improved by keeping sugar to a minimum from a young age.  Other serious complications that arise from excess sugar consumption include obesity, osteoporosis (since sugar increases calcium excretion from the body), suppressed immunity and cardiovascular disease. 

The average person in the UK and USA consumes about 45.5kg/100 lb of sugar a year; in France the figure is about 7kg/15 lb, so cultural attitudes to food are obviously important.  The sugar does not always come from adding spoonfuls of the stuff to food.  It is more usually hidden in the foods we eat.  The chart below provides a list of some of the hidden sugar in common products that children eat.

Hidden sugars are also called other things, so watch out for the following: glucose, maltose, sucrose, dextrose, lactose, galactose, fructose, hydrolysed starch, invert sugar, honey and concentrated fruit juice – to name but a few.

There are lots of delicious recipes in What Should I Feed My Baby?  Although the recipes are aimed at 0-2 year olds, they are absolutely suitable for older children (and adults) too.

Other really useful books are Cooking Without (sugar, salt, additives etc.) and Vegetarian Cooking Without. Click on the books to see more information or to buy.  Other books can also be viewed on www.health4youonline.com

Here’s one recipe which all children (and adults) will enjoy and derive great benefit from:

Fresh Fruit Smoothie

Approx. 8 oz of soya milk

Fresh fruit (e.g. one banana, half dozen strawberries and some raspberries)

1 scoop Vanilla flavour Whey to Go Protein Powder

Blend together in a blender and enjoy.

Whey to Go Protein Powder also comes in chocolate flavour (delicious but amazingly no sugar – click on product to see more details); honey nut flavour and fresh berry flavour.  All natural – nothing synthetic.

Wheat, sugar and fat free Carrot Cake

2 large eggs

90g wheat free flour (e.g. Stamp Collection)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

125g grated carrot

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

100g fresh pineapple or banana pieces

50g chopped walnuts

200g cooked mashed sweet potato or butternut squash

Beat all the ingredients together.  Bake in a greased 180mm cake tin at 180C/375F/Gas 4 for 35-40 minutes.

Report in The Independent on Sunday, 1^st June 2002

The disease now affects six times as many children as it did 25 years ago. About 1.8m children have suffered from the disease, which costs the National Health Service about £850m a year to treat.

On Tuesday, leading British and US asthma experts meet to discuss further research into the disease. The studies include evidence from Professor Antony Seaton, at Aberdeen University, showing that the chances of children developing asthma fall markedly if, during pregnancy, their mothers have eaten diets rich in vitamin E and anti-oxidants.