Watchdog clarifies additive advice
Updated on 20 September 2007
The Food Standards Agency has pledged to clarify its advice on a group of common food additives - but fell short of warning that all children should avoid them.
Its advice was recently updated following Southampton University research showing links between some E numbers and hyperactivity in youngsters.
Professor Jim Stevenson, who carried out the research, said he believed the effect of the additives posed a threat to psychological health.
But the Food Standards Agency (FSA) rejected calls to warn that all children should not consume those additives. Instead it pledged to make its current advice "more explicit" and called on the food industry to reduce its use of additives.
In wake of the Southampton University research the FSA advised that cutting the six food colourings from the diets of hyperactive children might improve behaviour.
Environmental and children's campaign groups have called on the watchdog to go further by extending that advice to all children.
But at a meeting in London the FSA's board agreed to wait for the European Food Safety Authority to make a decision on whether the additives should be banned.
In the meantime, the watchdog will re-write its advice to parents concerning the group of E numbers.
FSA chairman Dame Deirdre Hutton said: "We have not been sufficiently helpful to parents. There is a real difficulty for people in looking at every product to see whether it has particular E numbers or not."
Dame Deirdre added: "I think there is a general astonishment that industry has not responded more quickly to consumer demand in terms of taking colours out of their food."
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