An Alternative History of Hyperactivity: Food Additives and the Feingold Diet

Notes

Chapter 1 195 Chapter 1 1. Ben F. Feingold, Why Your Child Is Hyperactive (New York: Random House, 1996). In most publications, Feingold’s birth is listed as 1900, and this is the year in which Feingold thought he was born. A recently discovered census document, however, indicates that he was actually born on June 9, 1899. Feingold Association of the United States (FAUS), http://www.feingold.org/pg-aboutus.html (accessed March 31, 2009). 2. Hyperactivity is used here throughout to denote what physicians now call attentionde ficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), partly because it was the most common term for the disorder during the 1970s, but also because it continues to be the term most patients, parents, and physicians recognize and understand. Hyperactivity has been otherwise known as minimal brain damage, minimal brain dysfunction, acting out, hyperkinesis, and attention deficit disorder (ADD). The disorder shared similarities to other childhood disorders, including learning disorder and oppositional conduct disorder. For a study on the prevalence of hyperactivity during the 1970s, see Dennis P. Cantwell, Lorian Baker, and Richard E. Mattison, “The Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorder in Children with Speech and Language Disorder: An Epidemiologic Study,” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 18 (1979): 50–461. 3. Peter Conrad, Identifying Hyperactive Children: The Medicalization of Deviant Behavior (Toronto: Lexington Books, 1976); Peter Schrag and Diane Divoky, The Myth of the Hyperactive Child: And Other Means of Child Control (New York: Penguin, 1982). 4. “Hot Dogs and Hyperkinesis,” Newsweek, July 9, 1973, 53; Lucinda Franks, “F.D.A., in Shift, Tests Pediatrician’s Diet for Hyperactivity,” New York Times, February 9, 1975; Edward R. Walsh, “Why Are We Poisoning Our Children?,” New York Times, December 26, 1976; Ray Walters, “Paperback Talk,” New York Times, May 27, 1979. 5. “Paperback Bestsellers,” New York Times, June 24, 1979; letter from Ben F. Feingold to Beatrice Trum Hunter, October 2, 1979, from the Beatrice Trum Hunter Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, box 47; Ben F. Feingold and Helene S. Feingold, The Feingold Cookbook for Hyperactive Children (New York: Random House, 1979). 6. Camilla Anderson, Society Pays the High Cost of Minimal Brain Damage in America (New York: Walker, 1972), 214–16, 219. 7. This is similar to an argument made by journalist Peter Radetsky with respect to people with multiple chemical sensitivity. Peter Radetsky, Allergic to the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), 18. 8. Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 31–33. 9. Geraldine Pluenneke, “Food Chemicals: Eat, Drink, and Be Wary?” Business Week, January 13, 1975, 12. 10. Matthew Smith, “Psychiatry Limited: Hyperactivity and the Evolution of American Psychiatry, 1957–1980,” Social History of Medicine 21 (2008): 541–59. Notes 11. Narlito V. Cruz and Sami L. Bahna, “Do Foods or Additives Cause Behavior Disorders?” Pediatric Annals 35 (2006): 744; Philippe A. Eigenmann and Charles A. Haenggeli, “Food Colourings and Preservatives: Allergy and Hyperactivity,” Lancet 364 (2004): 823–24; C. R. Steer, “Managing Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Unmet Needs and Future Directions,” Archives of Disease in Childhood 90 (2005): i22. 12. Forty-one oral history interviews have been used as primary source material, in addition to archival, medical, media, and online sources. Interviews were semistructured and conducted and transcribed by the author. Many of the interviews were made possible by the Feingold Association of the United States who kindly allowed me to put an advertisement in their newsletter, Pure Facts. The rest I contacted myself or were referred to me by other interviewees. All interviewees have been given pseudonyms. 13. Simon Szreter has recently encouraged medical historians to seek opportunities to seek ways in which to apply their research findings to informing health policy. Simon Szreter, “History, Policy, and the Social History of Medicine,” Social History of Medicine 22 (2009): 235–44. 14. Maria Theresa Brancaccio, “Education Hyperactivity: The Historical Emergence of a Concept,” Intercultural Education 11 (2000): 165–77; Conrad, Identifying Hyperactive Children; Andrew Lakoff, “Adaptive Will: The Evolution of Attention Deficit Disorder,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 36 (2000): 149–69; Rick Mayes and Adam Rafalovich, “Suffer the Restless Children: The Evolution of ADHD and Paediatric Stimulant Use, 1900–1980,” History of Psychiatry 18 (2007): 435–57; Adam Rafalovich, “The Conceptual History of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Idiocy, Imbecility, Encephalitis, and the Child Deviant,” Deviant Behavior 22 (2001): 93–115; Adam Rafalovich, Framing ADHD Children: A...