Sugar and the hyperactive child.

Although scientific opinion favors a genetic origin for most cases of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, this explanation does not necessarily exclude alternative causes or precipitating factors, such as common dietary components to which some persons are thought to be abnormally sensitive. The current interest in environmental and lifestyle factors as causes of disease establishes a favorable climate for hypotheses about the adverse effects of diet on behavior. Such dietary hypotheses are mainly prompted, however, by parents' reports that their children become restless, irritable, and intractable in reaction to certain foods or additives. Feingold's sweeping indictment of commercial additives to foods1 was . . .