Sometimes I could just cry!

The director of my preschool/daycare called me today. The box of Little Debbie snacks that I provided as a safe alternative for colored birthday treats, the one I thought I had screened for all forbidden substances, actually contains red #40. UHHHHHG! Of course my boys both ate them yesterday. It figures, I really thought I was getting ahead on the food dye battle. Sometimes I just want to give in and let them eat whatever everyone else eats and who cares about the dye. But then I'm back to hyper, impulsive or argumentative kids whose personalities change and that's even worse, way worse.

If we follow trends of the past 2 years, Alex will be louder than usual (actually he was loud at breakfast and I reminded him 3 times use a quiet voice.) He's usually more distracted, and will probably throw things around more. I hope he can keep it together in school. Ben is usually fine the first day but around day 2-3 he usually blows up over homework or piano practice or both. I'm not going to tell them they've even had the dye and see if that helps.

This is exactly why I started this blog. It should not be so hard to keep your kids on a healthy diet. But the reality is, it is hard to read every stinking label of every darn food product that enters your home. It is so defeating to try and try for months only to get distracted in the grocery store with 3 kids along for the ride "helping" you shop. So I missed the crucial ingredient and actually encouraged people to feed it to my kids. I think it stings more to mess up and have someone else call to point it out, not that I'm not glad they did catch it, it just gets me feeling so defeated.

This is why I want food standards to change. It just shouldn't be so hard to keep track of food dyes. I wasn't even focusing on preservatives as much as I want to or I wouldn't have bought the Little Debbies. I wanted something with a shelf life of a few weeks to keep on hand for unexpected events so my kids wouldn't feel so left out. I guess what I should do is make my own cookies from scratch and send them in to the school/daycare to keep in the freezer and pull out whenever there's a birthday. Then I'm free of preservatives and colors. That's more like my mom and grandma would have done it anyway. I guess I can't get around the fact that good nuturtion takes a little work and planning.