busy week so far

I've barely had time to get on the computer the last few days. Baseball season is always crazy for us. As I commented on another post, I also think we had some "dye exposure" issues. My son was an irritable mess all weekend. It times out back to the "take your son to work" day. The chocolate Tootisie Roll pop is my likely culprit. The label doesn't indicate any colors, but since it comes from a factory with lots of other colored stuff, it probably gets in there. I should have known better. It was sad to watch. It started with a very hyper day. Then all the frustration, the "I can't do this" and "everything's going wrong" feelings really persisted for the next 2 days. But as usual, he's much better now. Thank God! It's achievement test week at school.

As for other updates, I heard back from the food service director for my school district. She thanked me for not yelling at her or making outrageous demands. She explained that ordering foods without dyes is pretty feasible, but needs to be handled by each individual school. She planned on talking to the food managers for each school and was going to pass along my email with links to the information. She said they can definitely try to pay closer attention to the dyes. I was not the first person to make her aware of the issue. She said that getting rid of the preservatives was a much harder issue to address and not likely to happen soon.

So, all in all, I was pleased with what I feel is a good start. At this stage I want to get the information to key people and hope that they begin to make informed decisions. I requested that they pay attention to some specific foods such as yogurts, cookies, etc. and try to have dye-free options whenever possible. I explained that my children don't buy many school lunches because I don't want them to have the preservatives or dyes. I also explained that I don't think decorated holiday treats are good for children and could they just stick to the basics like plain old chocolate chip cookies. I tried to emphasize that I don't think this is just a problem for my kids. It may affect all kids to some degree. I should have added that Maryland recently had legislation to ban dyes in all school lunch food. She said that it should be possible to buy more dye free foods. So, I guess I'll wait and see.

If anyone wants to forward the same information to their food service director, feel free to contact me. I'll send you a copy of the email I sent.