Update of my favorite dye free foods: candy

In case you are new to my blog I have to break it to you. It's not just the sugar that is making your child act "that way." It's the coloring. REALLY! Don't just take my word for it. Look at all the research articles I've found on the right hand column. Food coloring causes all kinds of behavior problems and even serious health problems in some people. Moms have written to me from all over the country describing hyperactivity, asthma, motor tics, hives and other issues that are probably diet related.

So you think you don't have time to read labels and go dye free? I didn't have time not to do that. I've learned the well being of my family depends on eating real foods, not chemicals. Sure my grocery trips are a little longer and I go to different stores to get some things, but I spend most of my days in peace with my children, a gift I will never give up. We will never go back to the way my kids were when they ate food dyes. My son yelled, screamed, tantrummed and literally spent several days each week hating me. Going natural has given back the kind, thoughtful, responsible, affectionate boy I had hoped he would be.

We have found many great tasting candies that are all natural, without dyes. Although most chocolates do not have food coloring listed, be aware that chocolate often contains artificial flavor or vanillin, which is also petroleum based, so it can have the same effect as the food dyes.

Here are some of our favorites:

TRADER JOES:

• Fruit Jellies
• Salt Water Taffy
• Gummy Bears
• Gummy Tummies Penguins
• Gourmet Jelly Beans
• many more in the store

SURF SWEETS: (I go to the health food store for these)

• Sour Gummy worms
• Gummy Bears
• Gummy Swirls

YUMMY EARTH: (We buy from the health food store or on Amazon)

• Lollipops --lots of great flavors I keep these in my purse
• Gummy bears in individual packs

TARGET:

• Darrell Lea Strawberry Liquorice (yes, you can still eat red licorice!!!)

AUNT ANNIES BRAND (find it at Kroger, Toys R us, health food stores, etc.

• Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks (Individual packs)

With all these choices, it's easy to eat dye free and still have special treats. I keep these kinds of treats on hand for teachers so my kids have something that tastes good when there are parties at school.

Why don't more families go dye free? Well, the main reason is they don't realize how much difference a few chemicals can make. Food dyes affect my kids for 3 full days. Most food companies don't want to have to use more expensive ingredients to make natural foods. Food dyes and other petroleum based chemicals are cheap. And the FDA doesn't want to get involved or to acknowledge research like the Lancet study (2007) linked at the right, which made Britain ban artificial colors from their food a couple years ago. So tell your friends and family members too. If you have not tried your children on a natural diet free of chemicals like food dyes and preservatives, you may have never known the joy of how pleasant your real child is. The only way to know your REAL child is to feed him/her READ FOOD.

baseball season

Welcome to my new followers! Sorry my posts are not nearly as frequent as they used to be. My boys are already deep in the practice part of baseball season and having my husband coaching means I've been super busy lately. The real fun starts in May when the games will be 5 days a week. We have the unfortunate spacing of ages that results in my boys always playing on opposite days. It's the only sport they play, so I'm willing to endure the craziness for a limited amount of time each year.

With baseball comes an array of food challenges. First, how do you have a healthy dinner consumed before 5:30 and get something for my husband who I end up meeting at the ball park? In years past I've made my own wraps: southwest chicken wraps, Greek chicken wraps, Thai wraps, you name it. We wrap it in flour tortillas or Asian rice wraps and take it to go. It saves a lot of money and ends up being quicker than fast food and sooo much better for us. On my two work days each week, I honestly don't even have time for the drive through. I need to bring dinner that can I keep in the small office 'fridge and eat at the ball park. We do lots of fruits and veggies as sides too.

But lets get real too. We are not complete health nuts and my kids sit there and watch other families eat lots of concession stand junk food and candy. With 3 kids, I end up at the park watching one play and entertaining the other 2. I've learned to stock up on my own candy ahead of time and always keep a tote bag ready in the car.

Most of the other kids drink Gatorade and other florescent colored sports drinks. Gatorade makes a clear one that I keep on hand on recommendation from a pediatric neurologist specializing in migraines. Yes, we have a very strong history of migraines and my boys have had more headaches the past year. So far a dose of dye free Ibuprofen and a drinking a whole bottle of clear Gatorade seems to help take care of it. I'll have to stock up on the clear Gatorade for games, but usually a Capri sun and a bottle of water is just as good and also dye free.

My candy favorites to take to baseball:

Surf Sweets gummies, sour worms, swirls, etc. (from a local health food store)
Yummy Earth lollipops (ordered a 5 lb bag on Amazon)
Yummy Earth gummy bears (ind bags, also ordered on Amazon)
Darrel Leas Australian Licorice (dye free red licorice from Target or on Amazon)
Mentos chewy mints or fruit chews (some have dyes and some don't so check carefully)

On our away games, families take turns bringing snacks. I make it really clear at the beginning of the season that my boys have an allergy to dyes and can't eat things with them. I end up educating several new parents every season about the benefits of going dye free. Usually parents have been good about planning dye free snacks.

getting ready for a dye free Valentine's Day

It just hit me that another "red holiday" is right around the corner. My friends and I have found lots of strategies that help so I thought I would share them ahead of time, in case you need to order stuff.

Here are some candy options I've come across:
http://www.naturalcandystore.com/category/natural-valentines-day
http://www.surfsweets.com/products.php

If you want to bake for Valentine's day, I have not ordered these, but the pictures looked so good, I'm really tempted
http://www.naturalcandystore.com/category/natural-baking-projects

There are also options on Amazon:
Yummy Earth
India Tree

Here is last year's post about what I made:
http://fooddyediaries.blogspot.com/2009/02/bring-on-red-were-all-set.html

One of our favorites continues to be Darrell Lea's Australian Licorice from Target--great tasting dye free red licorice. I couldn't find it on Target's web, but they actually have different colors (green and yellow) at amazon. I might order that with a friend some time since you need to get large quantities:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dgrocery&field-keywords=darrell+lea+licorice

Happy party planning!

dye free lollipops at Amazon

My friend found Yummy Earth on sale at Amazon. They have really good dye free candy. The Amazon link actually has a video where you can watch how they make them. The kids enjoyed hearing them talk about how they don't use red #40 and all that yucky stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HDK0D2/ref=s9_top_bw_tr01?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-7-1&pf_rd_r=1FM3S25V0V7A2X4TFNNB&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=482672651&pf_rd_i=51537011

Free Candy from Surf Sweets

I've mentioned Surf Sweets candy several times on my blog. I received an email from that company last week inviting me to request some free samples. We already really liked the Gummy Swirls and Jelly Beans that I have bought in the past. I originally found them at the health food store, but they are also available at Toys R Us.

Here is a little bit about what the company had to say, "We're doing our best to give our customers a healthier alternative to mainstream candy. We have six different varieties of gummy candies and jelly beans, made from all-natural ingredients: - 100% Vitamin C per serving- NO synthetic flavors and artificial colors - NO trans fats- NO GMOs - NO corn syrup - NO gluten.

We got the candy in a nice size box and all I can say is, "Wow!" I can't believe they sent me all this for free. What's better is that it is all dye free and tastes great!!!! We really enjoyed the Super Sour Gummy Worms. It's been hard for my kids to be at all the baseball games when their friends are able to buy sour candies (with lots of artificial colors) at the concession stand. I've brought other kinds of candies, but it will be nice to have all the options from Surf Sweets.

Happy Happy Day! Thanks again Surf Sweets. It's great to see a company that cares about putting the right ingredients in treats for our children. I encourage all my followers to try their candy. You'll be hooked. It's going to be hard to save them for the kids and to not eat them all myself.

Colored candy bliss, or nightmare

As we wind down the week with beautiful weather, I am absolutely grateful for thinking ahead. My son was set to go to "take you son to work day. " I encouraged my husband to ask what snacks they were going to have for the kids. You would not believe the colored sugar bliss that awaited! There was a whole bag of candy for each child. There was so much Red 40 and the like I had to take a picture of it all. On the left were the ones without dye, then the obviously dye laden lot on the right

Luckily, since we got the bag a day ahead and knew the other kids would have candy galore, I was able to make a quick trip to Trader Joes and get lots of safe choices for my son. We replaced the "bad stuff" with with natural candies. He had Trader Joes' Gummy Tummies, rolled candy and organic lollipops. The funny part was, he didn't even eat half of the candy I sent. Most of it came back home. He's never been one to overdo it on the sweets. I was just so glad he didn't have the disappointment of emptying out a whole bag, only to end up with one or two allowable things.

Bring on the red, we're all set

We are ready for 3 different dye-free Valentine's Day Parties. I baked cup cakes for 2 of my kids' parties. Since Alex needs to stay off wheat, I baked his cupcakes too and froze a bunch for later. I'll just send in his own cupcake and the rest of the class can have whatever overload of color some other parent sends in. I still remember his kindergarten party with the florescent pink and dark red inches of frosting on the cup cakes. It stained everything from their teeth to their fingernails and every item of clothing in between. It was pretty gross.

Here is what I used to make my cupcakes.

So far Alex loved the wheat free cupcake from the Pamela's mix. I cup up the red licorice and put it on top for decoration. It does have wheat, so it's still not ideal for the gluten free crowd. But it gave the cup cakes a nice bit of strawberry flavor. I'm thinking of sending in extra candy in their lunch boxes so they won't be as tempted to eat the candy hearts. Does anyone actually like those anyway?

winding down another dye free week

Lindsey had her best day in months on Monday. She was calm and sweet and enjoyable. I'm hoping to have more dye free days to enjoy with her. Her Preschool teacher is really being diligent about the food dyes. She let me know on Tuesday that they had an M&M activity coming up. That gave me time to get to the health food store to buy the organic equivalent, Sundrops. It's nice when I have advance notice so I can get dye free products for my kids. I just wish it didn't cost so much. But it's well worth the extra couple dollars to have an agreeable calm daughter.

dye free Halloween a success

I think we did it. I think we actually managed all three classroom parties, trick-or-treating, and even the big Fun Fest at our church without any food coloring. There was no shortage of candy as we've had our fill of chocolate and white Nerds. We were almost hyper-vigilant at times, but now we can enjoy our weekend without all three kids falling apart all over the place.

It was hard at Fun Fest. They really wanted the popcorn (coated with yellow), especially since Ed was eating it. But I stood my ground and said "No". Then they got candy from every game. People were nice and let them pick chocolate or tootsie rolls (one of Ben's favorites) or I found someone with a whole barrel of candy and tossed back the stuff they couldn't eat. They let me pick extra stuff as trade and Alex was more than happy to get Peanut Butter Cups from the deal.

My Mom also supported the cause and sent Halloween cards with Barnes and Noble gift cards rather than candy or other stuff. The kids were so happy to go pick out books today. What a sweet grandma!

getting ready for a dye free Halloween

I'm gearing up for the parties and trying to figure out how to let the kids have fun, without going "off the wagon". I'm sending alternate treats to school for the kids so they don't feel so left out from whatever orange colored pumpkin treat comes in. I have natural food coloring from the health food store that I need to experiment with. I'm hoping to make my own pumpkin shaped sugar cookies and dye my own orange frosting. Then I'll use mini chocolate chips to make the face. My gluten free/dairy free boy will get his GF cookies with the same frosting and organic chips.

Last year I let the kids go trick-or-treating as usual. Then I took all the candy and sorted out the stuff with dye (about 2/3 of it) and sent it to work with my husband. We kept what was left (lots of chocolate and clear stuff) and I still threw some away in December that they never got around to eating.

Lessons learned last year: Butterfinger has yellow dye. Most chocolate products don't have dye. Chocolate Tootsie Roll pops don't have dye, but the rest of the flavors do. Regular tootsie rolls are also dye free. Coconut and Cream Soda Dum Dums don't contain dyes but could have trace amounts from all the other flavors that do. Biggest lesson learned last year: don't save the red licorice and eat it all yourself while the kids are sleeping. I was sooooo grumpy the next morning that Ben actually said, "Mom, are you reacting to red dye?" and I had to admit that I was. What a proud parenting moment that was!

I'll probably get some chocolate candy, hopefully without artificial "vanillin" to swap for some of the colored stuff they get from trick or treat night. I'm also stocked up on Yummy Earth lollipops and Sweet Surf candy to use as trades for stuff they get from school, bus drivers, etc. The deal I have with my kids is that whenever they hang on to a piece of candy (such as given by bus driver) and turn it in to me, I give them 2 of my organic candies as a trade. I throw away the dyed candy. That gives them an incentive to delay the gratification a little more because they get extra. Sure, I spend a little more that way, but when the pay off is 3 kids with self control and stable moods it seems more than worth the extra 5 dollars spent on organics. I also keep candy in my purse so they don't feel like they miss out all the time.

We also have coupons for free Frostys from Wendy's to give out. I checked, the vanilla and chocolate are dye free. My friend had her kids bring back their dyed stuff to the house and she gave it back out to other kids. Feel free to comment if you have other ideas. My friends and I seem to do better when we put our heads together and swap ideas.