I say this a lot, but beware when someone says they're busting a "myth." Whenever someone points out a myth that they're correcting, that's a sign you're highly likely to get a dishonest argument. I'm not sure why. It's not like there aren't wrong things believed by people that can and should be corrected. But for some reason, when someone identifies something as a "myth" and then goes about debunking it, they often (usually, even almost always) seem to go off the rails.
For this blog post, let's look at a Washington Post article (probably pay walled), "Does eating too much sugar really make kids hyper?" The article starts with a question: "Is it true that eating lots of sugar causes hyperactivity in kids?" It says that parents "long have blamed their children’s 'bouncing off the wall' behavior on eating too much sugar, but experts say there’s no truth to it."
The expert they consult says, "It’s a myth that sugar causes hyperactivity." How does he know this? Well, in the 1990s, he conducted studies " that disproved the notion that sugar causes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children."
The article also cites the CDC, which the article quotes as saying, "research doesn’t support the popularly held views that ADHD is caused by eating too much sugar, watching too much television, parenting, or social and environmental factors such as poverty or family chaos."
Do you see what the did here? The article starts by asking whether sugar makes kids hyperactive and continues by explaining there's a myth that sugar makes kids "bounc[e] off the walls." Then it goes to experts who address a different question, which is whether sugar causes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder."
To my mind, there are two questions here, not one. One question is whether sugar causes ADHD. The other is whether sugar makes kids hyper. The experts and the article answer only the first question. But the article frames the answer as addressing both questions.
Now, there's a little wiggle room for what the article is doing. First, the author could credibly claim that by asking whether sugar makes kids "hyperactive," they're actually asking whether sugar causes "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder."
Sigh. Maybe. But I suspect that when a lay reader sees the term "hyperactive," they don't necessarily think of ADHD or clinical behavior, especially when "hyperactive" is followed by a sentence talking about kids "bouncing off the walls." Maybe ADHD involves kids "bouncing of the walls," but kids sometimes bounce off the walls even if they don't have ADHD. Does sugar contribute to the latter? We don't know from the article.
Second, the studies from the 1990s, from the article's reporting, found no connection between sugar consumption and "normal" behavior. And maybe that means the studies address behavior different from that typical of ADHD. Maybe? Possibly?
Later in the article, we find that certain chemicals kids are exposed to, such as red dye no. 3, may, according to some studies, contribute to "hyperactivity and other behavioral problems in children." (I assume they're referring to ADHD and not just "hyperactivity" in general.) But that point seems to contradict the earlier statement I quoted from the CDC that I'll requote, with bold added by me: "research doesn’t support the popularly held views that ADHD is caused by eating too much sugar, watching too much television, parenting, or social and environmental factors such as poverty or family chaos." Red dye no. 3 seems like an environmental factor to me, as in, something in the child's environment that contributes to their condition.
So the "myth" is busted only if it states that ADHD is caused by too much sugar. But I don't think that "myth" is typically what people mean when they posit a relationship between sugar and "hyperactivity." They typically just mean that when kids eat sugar, they get more energetic and rambunctious than when they don't. They probably don't usually mean to insist that sugar itself is the cause of a clinical condition.
Maybe sometimes they do mean that. If so, fine. The article can debunk that "myth." But why not just clarify that's the "myth" it's debunking?
