http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/
A very interesting article, It would seem the UK cares more for their children than the US does, at least they are phasing this poison out. Meanwhile back in the States you can be assured that the greed factor is still alive and well and will continue to be allowed to subject your child to this poison unchecked.
Ever since a study in England reported that a mix of six food colorings and one food preservative made kids hyperactive, the "Southampton Six" -- as these substances are rather sinisterly termed -- are being slowly, voluntarily phased out of use in the UK.
Not every manufacturer is playing the game over there, however -- tsk! According to an article at foodnavigator.com, a purveyor of a kind of seaside candy known as "rock" has just been caught with higher-than-even-legal levels of one of the six, Ponceau 4R, and fined 180 pounds sterling (about $295), plus 212 pounds sterling (about $348) in costs.
(In case you don't know what rock is, it's tubular candy that has a gaudy external color and the name of the seaside town it's bought at running all the way through it. Brighton Rock, by novelist Graham Greene, is named for candy rock, not geological rock.)
But the rock infraction is small-fry stuff. Other, larger food manufacturers -- Mars and Cadbury, for example -- have been criticized for being behind on their pledge to remove the colorants. As of March, sunset yellow (E110) was still showing up in Cadbury's creme eggs, for example. (You know: the dye that makes that delicious yolk center so ... intensely yellow.)
In the European Union, any products containing these six colorants will have to be labeled as of mid-2010.
The colorants are:
E102 Tartrazine
E104 Quinoline Yellow
E110 Sunset Yellow
E122 Carmoisine
E124 Ponceau 4R
E129 Allura Red
You can read about the issue in a 2008 Health section article by Melinda Fulmer. There's no planned phase-out in the U.S. Critics of the voluntary phase-out in Europe argue that food companies will drag their feet if they aren't forced to remove these items from foods. In New York City, trans fat content didn't change at restaurants until the phase-out was made
