Harvard Pilgrim’s Winter 2009 mini-magazine includes a brief feature titled “Eating Organic on a Budget.” (see page 11)

Now, if you read the “fine” print (the paragraph titled “A Guided Tour of the Supermarket”), this feature seems to be just somewhat of an ad for one of the Harvard Pilgrim programs called “Supermarket Shopping” which

includes an aisle-by-aisle supermarket tour, led by a registered dietitian, that teaches you how to make informed decisions about the food you buy for yourself and your family.

Too bad they do it only on Cape Cod! I’m quite a long way from the Cape.

But the article also includes “Tips to avoid pesticides” and provides a link to a pdf of the “Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce” released by the Environmental Working Group. I especially like the page titled “Reducing Exposure is Smart” on the EWG site, which has a section “Tiny Doses Can Be Toxic to Children” and a list of references at the end.

I took a peek at Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children and what really got me interested was a quote that’s actually not related to pesticides or organic food at all.

Chapter 2, “Special Characteristics of Children” says

Because of the dependence of behavioral development on physical and functional development, toxic effects occurring before maturation may permanently alter behavioral development. The most commonly encountered and well-known toxicants that can permanently change all four of the components of behavioral development are bilirubin toxicity in the newborn and lead toxicity in the infant or young child. All four aspects of behavioral development are important in studies of developmental toxicology, but much more attention has been given to the first two because they are easier to measure.

The four aspects of behavioral development that they’re writing about are:

(a) gross motor and fine motor activities; (b) cognitive ability; (c) emotional development; and (d) social development.

And apparently:

Alteration in one of these domains can affect the development of each of the other three.

Interestingly, both of my children had neonatal hyperbilirubinemia, which was caused by our blood type incompatibility.

My son’s hyperbilirubinemia was severe enough that he had to get phototherapy. (if I remember right, when he was two days old his levels were at 17 or 18 mg per dL).

My daughter also had hyperbilirubinemia but didn’t receive phototherapy because supposedly her levels were never high enough to warrant that. I do not remember what they were and I do not have these records at home, and now I wonder, because her jaundice hung around for much longer. In fact, she is quite yellow in the pictures from the first days of her life.

Now, I knew that one of the effects of hyperbilirubinemia might be “mild mental retardation.” But if I understand the paragraph I cited correctly, hyperbilirubinemia might also influence the other aspects of “behavioral development” such as gross motor and fine motor activities; emotional development; and social development.

I wonder if anyone has done studies what percentage of people with autism and ADHD had neonatal hyperbilirubinemia as compared to “control group.”

Another thing to add to my “things to research” list…

My comment “Revamp the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program” got only 210 votes overall and two comments. My two other comments got more points — “Education for Gifted Children” got 500 points and “Gifted Education” got 470 points.

The “Begin a discussion about fair public school funding” comment was just a tad more popular — it got 230 points (and two comments). I must say I’m really surprised people put up with the way the schools are funded because it really is not fair to poor kids to have to go to crappy schools just because their parents cannot afford to live in a town where the schools are good.

“Fulfill the promise of the federal IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) funding” got 420 points (and eight comments, some of them quite passionate).

I must say I’m quite surprised that of the four comments I submitted, the “Ban artificial coloring and chemicals in foods” was the most popular — it got 620 points (and 5 comments). Granted, that’s nothing with the most popular entries that got thousands and thousands of votes. But if people care about this topic so much, why isn’t there more of an outcry to do something about artificial coloring in the U.S.? I wonder if the new administration will do anything in that direction.

That’s because of “an overseas study” linking artificial coloring “possibly linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” (see also the entry “Food dyes and the Center for Science in the Public Interest”.)

I’m not holding my breath on when that will happen in the U.S. or even Canada.

(By the way, apparently Kellog’s also has decided to include natural colorings in their products sold in the U.K., but those sold in the U.S. are still loaded with chemicals, see http://www.cspinet.org/fooddyes/index.html)

Well, I guess we’ll just have to continue banning Nestle and Kellog products in our house. I’m not feeding my children that crap.

An organization calling itself the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban artificial colorings from food. The press release page has links to the petition itself, and also mentions Dr. Ben Feingold with a link to his Feingold Association of the United States, and two British studies exploring the effects of artificial food colorings on children’s behavior.

The first study was published in 2004, in Archives of Disease in Childhood – “The effects of a double blind, placebo controlled, artificial food colourings and benzoate preservative challenge on hyperactivity in a general population sample of preschool children,” by B Bateman, J O Warner, E Hutchinson, T Dean, P Rowlandson, C Gant, J Grundy, C Fitzgerald, J Stevenson.

The second study was published in 2007 in The Lancet – “Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial,” by Dona McCann, Angelina Barrett, Alison Cooper, Debbie Crumpler, Lindy Dalen, Kate Grimshaw, Elizabeth Kitchin, Kris Lok, Lucy Porteous, Emily Prince, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, John O Warner, Jim Stevenson.

The CSPI is also “urging parents who believe their children are harmed by food dyes to file reports online at http://www.cspinet.org/fooddyes/.”