This is very important to pay attention to; one thing my daughter observed on her own at a very young age was anything colored "blue" flipped her out.

Sport drinks, "fruit chew" snacks, "fruit roll-ups"; basically most of the junk I see the kids eat at lunchtime when I have lunchroom duty in the schools.

The dyes are also found in pharmaceutical drugs, anyone ever wondered about Ambien blue? Lunesta?Abilify?[ABILIFY Tablets are available in 2 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg, 20 mg, and 30 mg strengths. Inactive ingredients include cornstarch, hydroxypropyl cellulose, lactose monohydrate, magnesium stearate, and microcrystalline cellulose. Colorants include ferric oxide (yellow or red) and FD&C Blue No .2 Aluminum Lake.]

(or other famous little blue pills) (for example)and how many ppl have bizzare reactions?)

Forgot to add the link for the Abilify:

rx list dot com which is connected to webMD.

Sorry for the triple posting, but just wanted to remind readers that Abilify (an antipsychotic) has been approved for 10 year olds, and is in the expanded network of DSM reasons why kids might me taking it.

if this food additives hypothiesis is correct enough, how limiting of a diet will this treatment be?it sounds very impractical because how many people can afford additive-free diets, how many single working parents (mothers) have the time and money? it seems like it would take a huge shift in policy from way high up to extend the cure to a all (or even a majority of)the children affected.

Jenna, you raise a good point. I guess it could be that income and mental health are associated somehow. I remember all of the hoopla back in the 80's when under the Reagan administration ketchup was declared a vitamin for purposes of public school lunches.

I bet the proportion of folks labeled adhd who could also be labeled malnourished is is huge. And eating healthy really is prohibitively expensive. Try going to the grocery store and filling your basket with fresh organic fish and chicken, fresh organic vegetables and fruits and even dairy products and breads. The cost is prohibitive for most people. If I ate like this all of the time, I would not be able to pay my rent. Then try getting regular hamburger meat (filled with dyes and antibiotics and goodness knows what else but I eat it), tater tots, juicey juice and chips (I'm fortunate enough not to have to eat this crap and to know better but many people aren't). You'll save enough money to keep a roof over the kids head, and if the school orders you to drug the kid and like most Muricans even if you do have health insurance, it doesn't cover drugs, then you have no choice, you buy even cheaper crapier food to find the money to drug the kid so the government won't kick him out of school, or worse take him away from you.

And this is the good scenario, the best choice for the loving, conscientious parent - imagine what it's like for a sizable portion of parents, people who, lacking attention at home (parents watching tv and taking psych drugs), have sex as teens for emotional gratification and because it feels better than going to a movie they can't afford anyway, people who don't know where babies come from because it's illegal to teach them in school and the truth of birth control and reproduction are just veiled half rumors their parents don't know about either and abortion is prohibitively expensive even if you don't have moral qualms about it, oh, and you grew up eating sh*t food, it's embedded in your behavior as a dietary habit. Here's a scenario, a kid comes to school hungry because the food industry having taking over the fda's food pyramid as a marketing tool, is fed crap that makes him fat and malnourished and us dumb fatass Muricans just really don't know that food is bad, so anyway the kid gets labeled adhd, and pumped up with speed. (Do Archer Daniels Midland and Coca Cola have financial ties to Eli Lilly?) and then he just keeps getting worse. His appetite for the sh*t food he's presented with decreases and he has the energy to stay up and read on the net about the sh*t food he's eating and especially with all of the speed he's hopped up on, he wants to go outside and play. In fact the way we never allow much less require our children to play outside anymore especially at the schools we're forced to send them to probably means our walking speed freak lab rat child also has a vitamin D deficiency which of course has been shown to cause depression. (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT LOCKING PEOPLE INDOORS WOULD MAKE THEM UNHAPPY? MUST BE A BRAIN DISEASE!!!!)
So the captive lab rat child the system has forcibly addicted to amphetamines becomes more fidgety in class (like he's on drugs;0) and gets his dosage of drugs increased and gets punished by being confined to his room (even less physical exercise and vitamin d producing sunlight for him) so he loses his temper (like a sane adult prisoner would). Now you guessed it, he gets labeled bipolar and his diet gets even worse because if you thought the speed for adhd was expensive try buying zyprexa.
And parent, if you start thinking the kid is getting worse because of the drugs and the crappy school and whine to your spouse or relative that if only you could afford decent food and a private school and to live in a neighborhood where it was safe for your kid to go outside, he might not be crazy, then if you are so overwhelmed this all just makes you so sad you can't get out of bed, well you're clinically depressed. There's a pill for that too (even though thank goodness you probably can't afford it - not being able to afford these drugs may be saving lives;). And as we all know, if you get angry and try and organize the community to change, well depending on your race, gender, education and which drug vendor your medical care provider sees has the best tits, you're either bipolar or schizophrenic, or if there's a really hot speed dealing rep in town, you might even get to be adult adhd suffering concurrently from depression.

Luckily, there’s a happy ending. With all of this bad food, lack of control over your life (oops external locus of control is a symptom of all psychiatric disorder; sadly it’s also a reality for most people which could explain all of that undiagnosed mental illness out there;) lack of exercise, malnutrition, poverty, chances are you’re going to either commit suicide or die young and quick of a heart attack, considerately saving the insurance company money in life insurance premiums. Suicide and they don’t have to pay – Big Phrama and big insurance companies are financially interconnected, most have overlapping boards of directors, and the same is true of ADM, Pepsico, etc. Pills that cause suicide drastically increase profit for insurance companies. Usually health insurers and life insurers are just arms of the same company. Health insurers save ooddles on that expensive elder care if you die early and suicide again saves them money. So our current lifestyle maximizes profits for the corporations. If you have a problem with that, take a mood brightener before you add to the expense of mental illness borne by society, well, not society, but the corporations that own it.

And yes there's also an explanation for why rich kids get labeled. A few variations on the same theme.

If I was a Conspiracy Theorist, I might suspect this:

Toxic additives were introduced into the food chain in the full knowledge they cause mental disorder.

The industry deliberately creates disease in order to treat it with more chemicals, at great profit.

Absurd? I wish.

Dentists often do just that - cause injury for profit - deliberately chipping a healthy tooth with a drill to create work for next time.

Sloopy, somehow I doubt your critique of dentistry. If my dentist damaged one of my teeth (either accidently or deliberately), it would be repaired free of charge or the next step would be Small Claims Court.