School Says NO to Additives

Reporter: Sophie Hull - Reported on Today Tonight• Broadcast Date: September 24, 2007

Food additives such as preservatives have long been linked with children's behavioural problems. One school principal decided to outlaw them. Food Detective Sue Dengate thinks she can find the answer to most kids' problems in their lunchboxes.You might need to be a food scientist to decode the information, but children are walking test tubes - in the past few decades, hundreds of additives have crept into their food.Colours, flavours, preservatives: at least 60 of them may cause problems for some kids. But which additives affect which kids? Food companies are leaving parents to find that out for themselves and the results have been disastrous.
Learning without preservatives

For two weeks, children from Nana Glen Primary School in New South Wales cut the additives from their food.

They have a list of nasties to avoid and for any six-year-old it's quite a mouthful: sorbates, benzoates, nitrates, glutamates. Sometimes they're words, sometimes numbers, always in the fine print and hard to find unless you know what to look for.

Their parents have been armed with the same information and the canteen will only serve food with natural ingredients. The effects of a food intolerance can be subtle. The child who fidgets, the child who can't concentrate, the child who has no friends.

Good results

Two weeks after the children of Nana Glen went additive free, Today Tonight returned to see if it had actually made any difference. Principal Lawrie Renshall had to ask teachers, students and parents to co-operate. He was stunned at the result. "Just as an example, this year we've averaged six students on detention per week," Mr Renshall said. "Over this last week we haven't had one student in on detention. That speaks volumes for itself."

Kindergarten teacher Jenny Wiseman said: "They listen to instructions better, they're not so impulsive, that's the biggest change that I've seen. That they think before they do things, think before they act."

Parents also couldn't believe the seemingly benign foods could be having such a detrimental affect on their child's behaviour. Helen Barrett found out her son Liam reacted to additive 160b, found in vanilla ice cream and yoghurt. Removing it from his diet changed his life.

"His behaviour improved: the tantrums stopped, the head banging stopped and basically we've gone from strength to strength since then," Ms Barrett said.
"Now I don't spend my whole day with a child that says 'no' every time I ask him to do something. I have a child that I enjoy being with and he's just a beautiful unique creature."

Better for kids

Most telling is what the kids say themselves.

Jessica: "I was getting more friends, because I wasn't as mean as I used to be."

Jack: "I sleep much better now, because before when my mum or dad tucked me in, I'd always like take a while to go to sleep. But now when mum or dad puts me to bed, I go straight to sleep."

There were less incidences of bedwetting among the children. There were also fewer headaches, stomach aches and skin rashes.
In fact, 60 per cent of children who appeared to have nothing wrong with them were better behaved on an additive-free diet.

A study recently published in the UK proved the long suspected link between food additives and hyperactivity. The food authorities there have already started removing harmful colours from food.

How long will Australians have to wait for similar action to be taken?

"I would like to see this program in every school," Sue Dengate said.
"But more than that, I'd like to see these nasty additives taken out of food, because it's too hard for parents.

Source: Today Tonight - See Article on Today Tonight Website

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