Sue Dengate

Sue Dengate first became aware of the harmful effects of food additives when she noticed her child bouncing off the walls after eating a packet of Smarties.

Her child is now an adult and Sue Dengate has become a guiding light for parents struggling to find answers to their children’s behavioural problems.

Last week, Dengate and other consumer advocates within the food intolerance network joined forces to demand that Australia’s Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) follow the UK’s lead by placing consumers first and banning six additives from Australian food.

The United Kingdom has put a voluntary ban on the additives, all food colourings, after a landmark study showed evidence that certain artificial colours increase hyperactivity in children. The colours in question were sunset yellow (110), tartrazine (102), carmoisine (122), ponceau red (124), quinoline yellow (104) and allura red (129).

We spoke to Dengate about her campaign to Put Kids First.

Many parents know that artificial colours are bad, but what do you claim are the effects of the six colours in question?

They can cause a wide range of problems, but the ones being focused on at the moment in the UK are simply the contribution to hyperactivity. And that doesn’t just mean climbing the walls it means that kids can be restless and unco-operative. The big one is that they can contribute to inattention. They [kids] can’t concentrate at school, so you don’t necessarily see it straight away but it does affect their grades and can also contribute to learning difficulties and learning to read and that can be quite serious in later life.

Is it only a problem for kids who are have learning difficulties or attention deficit problems?

Not all children are affected. What they found in the Southampton study is that, it’s not just children with ADHD who are affected, it’s children in the general population. You won’t necessarily see whether your child is affected or not until you cut them out and in my experience the majority of parents don’t realise their children are affected until they remove the additives from their children’s diets.

What inspired you to become involved in campaigning against additives?

When my daughter was little. Only twice did I see a reaction, once after eating Smarties. Artificial colours were replaced with natural colours in Smarties two years ago but in Australia we still have five out of six banned colours.

It was the improvement we saw when we took them out which convinced me.

What would you like Australian food regulators to do?

What we are asking for purely and simply that there are six artificial colours subject to a voluntary ban in the UK and we’d like that to happen here.

In Europe the European parliament has just legislated that if those colours are used in products that they have warning labels on them saying that they may contribute to hyperactivity and inattention in children. Our first choice is that we’d like them banned, our second choice is that we’d like warning labels on them.

Parents are too busy to read labels or they may be well hidden. You can miss just one number sandwiched in between natural numbers. A lot of it is hidden in takeaway food. The average person eats out more than three times a week — that’s a lot of artificial colours.

So in the UK it’s only a voluntary ban?

Yes but food manufacturers are complying — the major supermarkets and two largest confectionary companies are supporting this.

Why do you think Australian food regulators are so reluctant to remove them?

I’d love to know! Mothers have been accused of misrepresenting the studies.
The food industry would prefer not to [remove them]. It’s a matter of profits — natural colours are more expensive. But the UK industry managed to survive.

How is the campaign going? Has awareness around additives changes a lot since you first became involved?

It’s been huge. We’ve had 7,500 signatures on our petition in just four days. There has been a deluge of messages of support from people who look after children. It’s the women, teachers, childcare workers, health professionals, podiatrists who notice balance problems with kids and speech therapists. People are downloading the resources and taking them into schools. It’s become a real grassroots movement.

There is now much, much more awareness now. When I became involved people didn’t really know, there was not a lot of science backing it up. But of course Dr Feingold said this in the 1970s so various people have been saying this for over 30 years but there has been a lot of studies done over the last 30 years and all of them have contributed to the idea that food additives, especially colours, are contributing to hyperactivity in children.

What pitfalls do parents need to be aware of when it comes to artificial colours?

Any goods covered by the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration] don’t have to have colours on the labels. So they may be unlisted on toothpaste. I’ve seen a range of problems from that.

And often products labelled “natural” are more likely to have them, for example a popular ‘natural’ ice-cream outlet doesn’t have them but their cones do. Ice creams cones can be really bad. Smoothies from natural food outlets, I have found colours in some of those too.

So what can parents do?

The most important thing they can do is sign the petition and tell everyone. This is the time for parents to stand up. If parents stand up now we can achieve progress.