If you have a child with serious behavior problems, the cause may be lurking in the food they eat -- red dye.

Some parents claim the most popular coloring -- red -- can cause behavior problems like ADHD or sporadic outbursts.

Andrew Pawloski is a typical, happy 6-year-old boy, his parents say. And bright too. At a very young age, he learned how to read food labels.

His interest in ingredients started more than a year ago when his unexplained behavioral outbursts became too much for his kindergarten teacher to handle. She called Andrew's mom in a panic.

"Andrew was running around the classroom , uncontrollable. She said there's something in his eyes, like a switch went on and a switch went off," said Elizabeth Pawloski, Andrew's mother.

Elizabeth investigated and noted that the class was given rainbow sherbet minutes before his outburst.

So, she began monitoring everything Andrew ate.

Doctors chalked it up to typical boy behavior, but his parents believe red dye No. 40 is the answer -- the most prevalent dye used in foods.

"Really aggressive behavior would come on all of a sudden, like Jekyll and Hyde," said Mike Pawloski, Andrew's father.

Red dye No. 40 is found in hundreds of foods, including Twizzlers, Doritos, Twinkies, chocolate cake mix, vanilla frosting and crosissants.

The Pawloski family found support on the Internet, where you can read countless stories of children who react to Red 40 with hyperactivity, impulsivity, and learning difficulties.

But the Chief of Allergy, Dr. Jay Portnoy at Children's Mercy Hospital is skeptical.

"It's so subjective that it's difficult for someone who wants to believe there's a problem to separate reality from their hope or expectation," said Portnoy.

Part of the problem is that the dye doesn't cause a physical reaction, so it is difficult to test.

"In studies where that is done, parents are unable to differentiate between the food they think is the problem and the placebo. They can't tell which is which," said Portnoy.

"I don't need a doctor or scientist to tell me if it's true or not," Mike Pawloski insists.

The Food and Drug Administration maintains that red dye is safe.

But recently, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban the use of certain dyes, based in part on a British study that uncovered a link between dye and behavioral problems in children.