Verificação do consumo de alimentos contendo corantes amarelo por adolescentes da rede de ensino público e privado.

Abstract

Over the last decades, many changes ocurred regarding the humans eating habits, which are mainly due to the production of the food that we consume. The great mark in modern civilization history, the industrial age, brought with it the need for quickly prepared and/or ready to eat foods, where ocurred the consumption of industrialized foods in replacement to the consumed in natura or little processed ones. Thus, with the purpose of increasing the food products shelf life and set up inprovement in palatability and appearance, the companies in the food sector searched alternatives to attract and build customer loyalty using artifices like artificial or natural food additives. Of this vast additive group, food colouring stands out, having the sole purpose of dyeing foods, making them more attractive. However, through several studies made over the last few years, it was found that this chemical substances, mainly the ones of artificial origin and the ones belonging to the azo group, like tartrazine and sunset yellow, are responsible for hipersensitivity reactions, like rashes, bronchospasm, rhinitis and angioedema. Moreover, the researches results sugest a possible relation between frequent consumption of these substances and the emergence of alterations in human behavior, like hyperactivity, as likely an increase in carcinogenicity. Considering the importance of the subject, it is aimed with this study the verification on food consumption, containing on it's composition yellow food colouring, by schools age teenagers (7°, 8° and 9° grades) from private and public education networks and it's possible relation with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), using a survey with objective questions. For this purpose the surveys were delivered to the teenagers, whom took them to be answered with their parents and/or guardians, under “Informed Consent Form” (TCLE). The collected data was analized using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 22.0 (SPSS version 22.0) software. After the analysis, it has been noted that the most consumed yellow colouring containing foods are, respectivelly, sodas, crisps, chewing gum, jellybeans, jelly, lollypops, powdered juice mix, dyed chocolate confections and pudding. Concerning the allergy symptoms, a minority was presented, for a total of 17,9% of the assessed population, with the presented symptoms being hard breathing, nausea and vomit, diarrhea, abdominal pain, mouth, eye, throat and skin irritation, and stomach colics. Only two interviewed, in other words, the minority, presented ADHD symptoms, but no relation between ADHD and excessive consumption of colouring containing foods could be drawn, which is one of this study's objectives, since one of them didn't consume the foods presented on the study and the other consumed only a few of them moderately.