If your child is having behavioral problems like hyperactivity or inattentiveness and you can’t figure out why, a Purdue University researcher has a suggestion: Try a dye-free diet for a couple weeks.

Laura Stevens, a research associate with Purdue University who has studied the links between artificial food coloring (AFC) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), said parents could also try putting a couple drops of dye in a glass of water and testing the child’s reading ability, handwriting or general behavior before and a couple of hours after drinking the water. The effects can be that quick, she said.

“I think that could be quite revealing to parents,” she said.

Stevens and a team of researchers at Purdue recently calculated the amounts of artificial food coloring in popular kids’ foods. They were surprised to find much higher levels than they expected.

Many people think of artificial food coloring as benign, but studies have linked it to attention deficits and hyperactivity in children and adults, as well as to other physical symptoms due to the carcinogens contained in some dyes.

Previous studies tested smaller doses — 26 milligrams, for example — of AFCs that are currently seen in servings of cereals or candies, said Stevens. This study, however, shows kids could be consuming more than that. A bag of Skittles contains 33 mg of AFCs, and a cup of Trix cereal contains 36 mg. Many children likely eat more than a single serving.

The amount is important, because the higher the dose, the more likely studies are to pick up on the impact of AFC on behavior, which Stevens said kicks in within an hour or two after consuming the food.

One study published in the journal Science studied kids’ reactions to between 100 and 150 mg of AFC. Seventeen out of 20 subjects showed effects based their response to a learning task.

“With the older studies back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, pediatricians, psychologists and nutritionists got the idea that dye didn’t really have anything to do with behavior,” Stevens said. “When they did larger studies with more children and larger amounts of dyes, they found that a greater percentage of the children reacted than with the low amounts of dyes.”

Last year, Purdue researchers reviewed decades of research on the health impacts of AFCs. They weren’t able to draw a direct correlation between the dyes and behavioral or physical symptoms, but consumption was linked to hyperactivity, liver stress and abnormal white and red blood cell counts at high doses.

AFC also can contain small amounts of carcinogens, but the FDA tests batches of dye to ensure the contaminants aren’t enough to cause cancer or other physical ailments. The problem is the FDA uses tolerance levels set in the 1990s, and per capita consumption of dyes has increased by 50 percent since then, according to a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that’s been active in educating about the risks of food dyes.

In fact, the amount of AFCs the FDA certifies has increased fivefold in the past 60 years, from 12 milligrams per person per day in 1950 to 62 mg per person per day in 2010, according to the Purdue study.

Following a pair of British studies linking high levels of artificial food coloring consumption in kids to hyper activity and attention deficits, the European Union approved a requirement that foods containing dye carry a label warning potential consumers that the product can cause hyperactivity and attention deficits in some children. Many manufacturers there are switching to natural dyes, such as beet juice or turmeric. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration convened a panel in 2011 to study putting similar labels on foods, but ultimately decided against the idea, concluding that more research was necessary.

The Purdue study ultimately urges parents to look at labels and find dye-free alternatives, such as Mott’s Medley or Ocean Spray Fruit Flavored Snacks, which are made with real fruit and do not contain AFCs. They could also make their own dyes, using raspberries or cherries to color a white cake, for example.

Advertising cereals to kids

Purdue’s data also showed that cereals with the most artificial dyes also tend to have the most sugar. (Trix and Fruity Cheerios, for example, rank high in both categories.) And those with the most sugar tend to come from companies that spend the most money advertising to kids, according to a study from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.

Cereal is the second most widely advertised food to kids behind fast food. In fact, cereal companies spend $156 million annually on TV commercials alone, the Yale study found. As a result, the average preschooler sees 642 cereal commercials per year. Among the cereals advertised to kids, 42 percent contain AFC, compared with 5 percent of adult cereals, according to the Yale study.

Advertising to kids even happens in grocery stores. Food manufacturers pay grocers to have their cereals placed at different levels on the store shelves, with eye level being the most profitable real estate, said Aviva Musicus, who works in the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Health Promotion Policy & Biotechnology program.

“Oftentimes, no matter what grocery store you’re in, Raisin Bran will always be on the top shelf,” she said, “or Cap’n Crunch will be on the second to bottom shelf. … There often is a lot of control over where their products go in the store.”

Musicus recently collaborated on a study with the Cornell Food and Brand Lab that found that cereals marketed to kids tend to be placed half as high on store shelves — 23 inches off the ground compared with 48 inches for adult cereals. Spokes-characters on kids’ cereals tend to gaze downward at a 9.6 degree angle compared with adult spokes-characters, which tend to gaze straight ahead. That means the average kids spokes-character gazes at a spot that’s about 20 inches off the ground, while spokes-characters on adult cereals gaze 54 inches off the ground.

To perform the research, the team evaluated 86 spokes-characters, 57 of which were marketed to children and had a downward gaze. In total, the team reviewed 65 kids cereals compared with 20 adult cereals, as those were the cereals that featured spokes-characters on their boxes, Musicus said.

Tom Forsythe, a public relations professional who represents General Mills, the Minneapolis-based company that makes Trix, Lucky Charms and other high-sugar cereals, wrote a blog post refuting the study’s findings. He pointed out that a simple Google search of “Trix Cereal Box” proves that the Trix Rabbit looks in all directions on boxes, not just down. He also said the average 13-month-old is 30 inches tall, and the average 4-year-old is 40 inches tall, so the 23-inch-tall gaze doesn’t mean much.

“A supposedly downward gazing character would be looking at what exactly? The kid’s belt?” Forsythe wrote. “The whole notion is absurd — and it would be laughable, if it didn’t also receive mainstream news coverage. Which it did.”

In the end, the only way to get cereal manufacturers to stop advertising cereals to kids is simply for consumers to buy healthier cereals for their kids, as companies will go wherever the profit is, Musicus said

“If cereal companies were convinced that the most profitable cereal they could sell is Go Lean Crunch!, or something very healthy, I think they’d definitely put it at eye level,” she said. “They want to make money, ultimately.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0304, tbannow@bendbulletin.com