My favorite dye free foods

I've talked to lots of people who find it so much effort to avoid the food dyes, they just give up. We've found lots of great substitutes.

Drinks: we only do 100% juice or Capri Sun. We often do water at restaurants as lemonade and punch are always loaded. Kroger recently started carrying organic lemonade.

Macaroni and cheese: Kraft has a white cheddar and so does Kroger. We get the Kroger one and the sauce needs a little more mixing than the regular stuff, but my kids like it better than the yellow stuff.

Breakfast foods: we make our own pancakes and freeze extras for quick meals on school days. Tip: Most eggo brands have yellow dye. Most Kroger brand waffles are dye free.

Yogurt: Yoplait is usually dye free. We skip all the Gogurts, Yogos, etc (more sugar and dyes added than good stuff)

Popcorn: Orville Redenbocker and Kroger have natural brands that skip the yellow. It took me months and months to figure out microwave popcorn was a culprit for hidden dye.

Fruit snacks: Motts/Brachs has a dye free fruit chew (my kids still seems to bounce more after eating them, probably due to all the corn syrup). We really like FruitABu brand fruit snacks (health food section of Kroger) They have lots of organic fruit leather individually wrapped type snacks.

Chips and snacks: We skip Doritos and cheesey anything like popcorn or Cheetos. Plain chips and pretzels are usually safe. Kroger brand has a barbecue chip that is free of dyes, so are a few others if you like the flavor but not the petroleum.

Breakfast Cereal: We do Rice Crispies, Cheerios, Crispex, Chex. We splurge sometimes on Organic Wild Puffs (again in the Kroger health food section) Its actually fruity and colorful but from natural ingredients.

Candy: My kids love Yummy Earth candies and lollipops. They taste great, but I've only found them at the health food store. I keep them in my purse so any time someone offers us regular candy like DumDums, I decline and hand the kids my organic stuff. I also gave a bag to each teacher so my kids have safe candy at school.

Basically, we check out the natural food section at Kroger before shopping in the regular part of the store. I'm partial to that store as my husband works in the corporate office (designs their web stuff) and we get nice discounts. I also have a color coded list of what to avoid and what to pick instead. It's in a table so I couldn't find an easy way to post it here. Email me at fooddyediaries@gmail.com and I'll forward it to anyone interested.