Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co -host Leah Higl and this is episode 128, which is part two of the Nutrition for ADHD podcast series.
Leah:
Excellent. We’ll get straight into it. There are two main things that we’re going to cover in this part two. The first one I’m going to get started with is food colours and then we’re going to jump into thoughts on sugar intake and ADHD symptoms. So starting with food colours.
I think like I didn’t know I was just talking that I think it’s a pretty common experience when you’re growing up for your parents to be like no red food colouring it’s going to like make you hyperactive and that I guess like I grew up with that being the link. So we’re going to discuss some of the research on food colours and hyperactivity and other similar symptoms and just I guess discuss whether there is a link there and if it’s something that you do want to be mindful of with ADHD.
So the research overall on food colours and these types of symptoms has been relatively inconsistent. It’s a little bit all over the shop. For example, some research has identified a dose response relationship in blinded settings. There does seem to be some kind of correlation there, although not every participant in those studies did experience some impact from this so it definitely can be a case by case basis.
Aidan:
For context, one of the main studies on this was looking at tartrazine which is just a food colour and from my memory what they did was they got a bunch of children who had already, there’s some like identification process for identifying children who they thought there was a link with food colours already then they put them into like the hospital program to do the research and then they did this dose response with placebo and blinding and everything like that where they identified the dose response relationship.
And even amongst those people, some didn’t get any difference, but a lot did. Like that’s how they identified the dose response, which is interesting because it kind of highlights it’s like this isn’t relevant in every single person. That was a sample size we’d expect to be even more relevant, but it’s useful information as well.
Leah:
A hundred percent. I think a good summary on this particular area of ADHD is a 2012 literature review and they highlighted that a lot of research on the topic there was this kind of mixed bag of results.
Aidan:
And in that 2012 review they also highlighted that the impact is not unique to ADHD which I think is the most interesting part of this. agree. And it also lines up with that whole thing from coming from the parents being like red food colours gonna cause symptoms etc. although like obviously from a little bit more of a research perspective like
They did highlight that it’s not unique to ADHD and they refer to it as a quote unquote public health issue where it’s like this is relevant to everybody. As I spoke about with that previous one, not even everybody in that ADHD study experienced stuff from this, which would also apply to population level being like not everybody would experience stuff from this at a population level as well.
Leah:
Yeah, potentially we’re just more concerned about it in ADHD if it exacerbates current symptoms, right?
Aidan:
Yeah and then taking this one step further, as you can imagine, some food colours are more linked to this than others. And this is where it gets complex because it’s like we don’t even have a lot of research on this to start off with to be like, which ones are even really strongly linked with this letter line, which ones are proven for sure not to or anything like that. But there was an interesting article looking just in research on this on the, in the process of creating this podcast where the NHS, so the UK’s public health system basically,
They just had a, just a post just being like, they highlighted six specific food colours. This is linked in the show notes if anyone’s interested, that are more linked to hyperactivity than others. And those food colours in the UK come with warning labels about hyperactivity. It’s not the most like reliable research back thing about being like, like it’s hard to, it’s just like the most kind of useful thing I saw on this topic about being like, these six are more links than other ones basically.
Leah:
Yeah, so from that perspective, if you are concerned about this being an issue, it likely makes sense to limit your intake of food colours in general. From another angle, I don’t know, how much does it really matter? Is it something that is playing a role with you and your ADHD? Maybe, maybe not. Could be worth trialing, just reducing food colours, or it may make no difference at all. It’s really gonna depend on the person.
Aidan:
Yeah, and that’s the big thing with the inconsistent research and everything like that. Even in the research where it has identified symptoms, the effect size has been relatively small. So I have the thought process of limiting your intake of food colours, probably a good idea, just in general to a certain degree. But even from a food flexibility perspective, which is where this gets so complex about it, how much do we fit all this stuff in, is if the effect size is relatively small and you want to be flexible with food, you might not want to stress too much about being strict with avoiding food colours as well. But once again, that’s an individual decision too.
Leah:
Yeah. Even looking at it from like a top down approach, like if we go back to the last episode where we’re talking about micronutrients, perhaps as part of that, we’re on more of a whole food based diet anyway to like make sure we don’t fall into any of those deficiencies. And then by like domino effect, it’s reducing our intake of processed foods that contain these anyway.
Aidan:
Yeah. And like thinking of like individual clients, have been individual clients I’ve worked with who’ve had quite high intakes of food colours as well, particularly through diet products in terms of like, let’s say pre -workout, energy drinks, soft drinks, stuff like that. It adds up very quickly too. So onto probably the most difficult topic to interpret in this space is we’re to be talking about sugar. And to some people, this might seem like a clear cut thing. There are some experts in the ADHD world who are just like, no, sugar is very clearly linked to ADHD. It’s a very simple stance.
Why would I even mention it as controversial topic because in the research it hasn’t been that clear. Some animal research has been pretty clear links, but the research on humans has not been that clear cut. In fact, if we were going to point in a direction, is clear cut in the other direction being like meta -analysis data looking at this topic in humans has not indicated any link from what I could see. So why would people identify a link themselves?
That’s a big question that I kind of want to propose some answers to because I don’t want to have a simple stance on this about being like, the marrow analysis found no That it doesn’t matter. So there is no – Place closed. It’s obviously not that simple, right? So what are some potential reasons? A few thoughts. High sugar intake can equal high energy intake. If somebody’s already more prone to hyperactivity, maybe this could exacerbate it. That’s a very complex topic because it’s like, well, wouldn’t that show up in the research anyway?
What makes that complex is it’s like, what if the research used calorie match situations and they replaced some other carbohydrate with sugar, then it wouldn’t be a higher energy intake. But that gets complex very quickly as well. Higher sugar intake usually equals a low micronutrient intake too. For example, what foods do we find magnesium in? We find them in meat, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy.
So five core food groups, like the only way you’re not getting enough magnesium is if you have a low intake of the core food groups and you’re replacing it with other things, e.g. added sugar. That’s one of like hundreds of examples, right? So it’s like, that’s a clear cut reason to reduce added sugar intake. High sugar intake usually means high intake of artificial colours too. That’s something we were just kind of talking about, but like if you’re having a lot of, say, lollies, for example, like you’re having a lot of artificial colours, you’re having a lot of soft drink, you’re having a lot of artificial colours, maybe that increases the role that that plays as well.
Another very complex thing to communicate that I want to be cautious about talking about is the expectations of symptoms can influence behaviour and interpretation of those symptoms. For example, if your child has sugar and you expect them to have more symptoms, does that play a role in how you perceive their symptoms? And or does it even change the child’s behaviour if you hear them talking about it? Like as we were talking about, the food colours earlier, my parents were telling me that when I was a kid. Yeah. I’m like, does that change my behaviour?
Cause I know I’ve had red frogs or whatever. but I want to be very cautious when talking about that because it’s like, this is such a complex topic and it’s like, I’m touching on two things out of a very complex topic that’s very small, right? And then the final thing is individual variation can play a role too. For example, if you self-identified every time I hit trigger, it affects my ADHD symptoms. That is very different to very broad meta -analysis data looking at averages over time. The simple solution, once again, that I would go with is limiting added sugar is typically a good idea regardless.
That is a stance that I have in pretty much all cases anyway. The only reason why I’d even explore this topic beyond saying limit added sugar is just from that food flexibility perspective. Being quite, let’s say obsessive, I know that’s a strong word, but obsessive about avoiding all sugar can potentially create a bunch of issues that may outweigh the downsides of just having a little bit of added sugar as well.
Leah:
Yeah, potentially, like if you’re really obsessing over that, it’s going to create so many more issues with food flexibility. So that’s a good point.
Aidan:
Yeah. So I don’t know how helpful any of that kind of stuff was, but hopefully it was just interesting to hear an overview what the research has shown and everything like that. And maybe some of our personal interpretations as well. This has been episode 128 of the Ideal Nutrition podcast. If you haven’t yet left a rating and review, we would greatly appreciate for you to do so but otherwise, thanks for tuning in.