Banning Food Colourings

I thought that this sort of thing would happen. It always does. A report comes out then there are cries of "We Must Do Something", "something" usually being something grossly illiberal, unnecessary or impossible....or, indeed, any combination of the three.

But there's one area we would all love the Government to invade, and that is the harmful food additives. The Food Standards Agency confirmed this week what we have long suspected - that the artificial additives affect children's behaviour.

A range of E numbers was tested on two groups of children and, tah-daah, the children who had eaten the impure foods were the ones destined for the naughty step.

They were fidgety, couldn't concentrate and became noisy and more difficult to control.

No, that isn't what the report said. Rather, that some who had the foods with the colourings and preservative become hyper. Now what to do about it really rather depends upon how many some is. If bubonic plague swept the country then some would survive, but that wouldn't suggest to me that we shouldn't have public health measures (rat catchers and the like, as we do) to aid in stopping such a sweeping.

Some children are allergic to nuts, to the point that anaphylactic shock can kill them. That points to a system of labelling, so that those at risk can avoid what might kill them: we do not ban the selling of nuts now, do we?

That some children become hyper as a result of certain food additives looks much more like the second case than the first.

But over and on top of this illiberality is the point that we cannot in fact ban these additives anyway.

The FSA has, however, stopped wimpishly short of following the example of some Scandinavian countries and recommending a ban of the red, yellow and orange dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate.

And it is interesting to note that Norway, which this week was named the country with the best standard of living, has already outlawed all the six colourings named in the study.

You see, those additives were banned  in the Scandanavian countries, but are not now. For the European Union has the power to ban or not ban such things, not the nation states. You'll note that the one country which has indeed still got a ban is the one outside the EU? You know, Norway, supposedly the best place in the world to live, the one that is in fact possessed of enough sovereignty to decide what may or may not be pumped into the ankle biters?

So all this talk of banning is in fact a little silly. It's not justified by the report itself and anyway, even if it were, it's not something that our government has the power to do. We have to go and ask the Frogs, Wops, Dagoes and Krauts whether we may or not. In fact, looking at the Commission, it appears that we would have to convince a Bulgar, a Cypriot and a Mick that our children should or should not, in law, be able to ingest things which put them on the naughty step.

Can we leave yet?