HOW ‘SUNNY DELIGHT’ TURNED GIRL ORANGE

IT WAS in the late 1990s with a controversial drink called Sunny Delight that food additives came increasingly under the spotlight.

Reports emerged of a fouryear-old girl from Wales who had turned orange after drinking 1.5 litres of Sunny Delight every day.

Although marketed as a healthier alternative to fizzy drinks, it was full of artificial additives and E-numbers.

One of them — beta carotene (E160a), a natural colourant found in carrots — had changed the girl’s skin tone. While it would’ve happened if she’d drunk the same amount of carrot juice, the damage was done — the public was now far more aware of the potential for additives in many products to cause harm. (Sunny Delight was later reinvented as SunnyD with a new formulation.)

E-numbers were introduced in 1962 by the EU so that consumers could have more trust in food additives. Ingredients which had an

E-number — from antioxidants and preservatives to emulsifiers and colourings — had not only passed safety tests and been approved for use, but were subject to ongoing assessment.

In 2007, a study from the University of Southampton found a link between some colours and preservatives and hyperactivity in children.

This led to several being restricted, and some sweets — such as blue Smarties — being withdrawn while natural alternatives were found.

It prompted a move towards ‘clean labelling’, replacing E-numbers with more natural-sounding ingredient names.

Some additives have been banned, including potassium bromate (E924), used in flour and classed as possibly carcinogenic; colourants known as ‘azo dyes’ in some spice powders and also linked to cancer; and brominated vegetable oil (E443), which has been linked to several side-effects.