Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Cutting sugar does not improve ADHD, and nor does stripping out additives. Both have been tested repeatedly, including under conditions where nobody knew which child had eaten what.
The belief survives because parties are where children eat sweets, and parties are also loud, crowded and thrilling. The sugar takes the blame for the room. If you want to change what a child eats, do it for its own sake, for teeth and health and money, rather than as an ADHD treatment that will let you down.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Let man consider the food he eats (Quran 80:24). Considering honestly includes noticing the times when the food was not the problem.
فَلۡيَنظُرِ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ إِلَىٰ طَعَامِهِۦٓ
Let man consider the food he eats
Qur’an 80:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a network meta-analysis comparing drug, psychological and complementary treatments for ADHD in children and adolescents, dietary and alternative approaches came out below stimulant medication on symptom outcomes. That comparison is specifically about symptom control. Food still matters for a child's health; it simply is not the lever people hope it is here.
Catalá-López F, Hutton B, Núñez-Beltrán A, Page MJ, Ridao M, Macías Saint-Gerons D, Catalá MA, Tabarés-Seisdedos R, Moher D. (2017). The pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents: A systematic review with network meta-analyses of randomised trials.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
When two things always turn up together, the more visible one gets the blame.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If you are going to take supplements, it is worth paying a small subscription to a service that assays what is actually in them. ConsumerLab is one, at roughly sixty dollars a year.
Food colouring is the one narrow exception in this area. Large studies suggest it may mildly wind up some very young children, so a trial removal in a preschooler is a reasonable thing to do.
With EEG neurofeedback, the weaker the study, the better the results look. Six large trials using sham feedback, with parents and teachers kept unaware of who received what, found nothing beyond placebo.