The Food Standards Agency wants six artificial colourings to be removed from food products because of an "accumulating body of evidence" in a Southampton study that they are associated with child hyperactivity.

The board of the FSA will meet tomorrow to consider recommendations that manufacturers should voluntarily remove the E numbers from their products.

In a study for the FSA, researchers at Southampton University looked at the effect of food colouring on behaviour.

Professor Jim Stevenson, who carried out the research, said he believed the effect of the additives posed a threat to psychological health.

More research is being carried out on the preservative sodium benzoate used in many fizzy drinks.

In a paper to the agency's board, officials said discussions with British companies suggested they would be able to introduce satisfactory alternative ingredients by the end of this year.

However, they said some products where alternatives had been difficult to find, such as canned and mushy peas, battenberg and angel cakes, Turkish delight and tinned strawberries, "might be lost to the market temporarily or even permanently".

The paper said some consumers would be disappointed by changes in the colour of their food but many others would be content that action had been taken to protect them.

The colourings involved are sunset yellow (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102) and ponceau 4R (E124).

In the wake of the Southampton University research, published in September, the FSA advised that cutting the six colourings from the diets of hyperactive children might improve behaviour.

It later pledged to make its advice more meaningful to consumers and called on the food industry to reduce its use of additives.

In March, Europe's food safety watchdog dismissed the study as too inconclusive to justify updating advice to parents.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said the results "provided limited evidence that the mixtures of additives tested had a small effect on the activity and attention of some children".

The FSA said the Southampton study was of "the highest scientific quality".

Other options to be considered by the board include doing nothing, requiring point of sale notices in stores, removing colours only from foods consumed extensively by children and restricting the use of colours in the EU to products where there are no alternatives.