Feingold on youtube

Why is your child irritable, angry, hyper or upset? This is really worth checking out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uptp94xLchk
Feingold has short video clips on youtube about food dyes and reasons to avoid them. This is a nice clip to pass along to teachers or family members who do not understand about keeping children off food dyes. Pass this along to anyone who is interested!

surprising dye free cereal

While shopping at Kroger today we noticed a large display at the end of an aisle of a new line of natural cereals from Mom's Naturals. They actually have an all natural substitute for Lucky Charms, only without the junk. No kidding. I always loved them as a kid, so of course we bought them and tried them already. Picking the crunchy little marshmallows is still just as fun, only now without all the side effects of the dyes. Here's a link to the company where you can even get coupons: http://www.momsbestnaturals.com/all-natural-products/mallow-oats.php

I've heard that the demand for natural foods has finally increased such that companies are able to produce foods in larger quantities pushing the price down. Kroger is now offering more and more natural foods because the lower prices also make it more likely the average Kroger shopper will buy them. Isn't that a nice change.

imagine paint poured over a cookie

That's what the snack at daycare looked like today. I should have taken a picture. They apparently mixed food coloring (the entire bottle from the looks of it) with sweetened condensed milk and poured it over a pan of bar cookies. I planned ahead and expected myself to forget to pack the cookies this morning so I packed up my own plain old chocolate chip cookies ahead of time and already had them in a bag in the car (Luckily it's been cool here). That way when I walked into the daycare kitchen this morning and saw today's cookies, all I had to do was go back to the car to get safe cookies for my kids. I wonder how many kids are going to be cranked up all weekend? At least it won't be mine.

I also think it's time to search for new info on how many countries have actually banned food dyes and their reasons for doing so. Of course I'll post whatever I find on that, but I'm thinking I need to print it out and hand it to the director of my daycare/summercamp/preschool just for good measure.

So today's lesson about avoiding dyes at day care. Always look ahead at the menu and always have a safe snack.

what are the odds of this?

We rarely eat any restaurant food anymore. It's just easier not to. However, tonight Alex had a cello recital and we wanted to celebrate how well he played, so we stopped at McDonald's. We were originally only going to get fries, but Ben wanted a chocolate shake and that sounded good so we both got one. I was driving home drinking my shake when I suddenly found myself chewing on a piece of strawberry. Just as I was starting to grumble, Ben says, "Mom I think my shake tastes like strawberry."

You know what that means. McDonalds only has strawberries with red #40 in them. Of course they make dye free strawberry sauce for Britan. If you have not read my whole blog then you may not know that food dyes are banned in Britain and other countries. Those countries acknowledge the research that indicates negative health effects on children from consuming food dyes. I'm still wondering how our own FDA gets away with ignoring the same research and allowing neurotoxins in our food.

In the mean time, I'm trying an experiment. I told Ben I'll pay him 5 dollars if he shows no sign of irritability, defiance or the other negative results of food dyes for the next 3 days. I'm curious if he's old enough to summon the effort to over-ride it. We'll see how I do too. My guess is that Friday and Saturday will the "hot days." So the contest is on to see who can keep their cool longer, me or my son.

How is this legal?

I was cleaning through m medicine cabinet last week when my boys had poison ivy. I came across a package of Benadryl tablets that look hot pink and contain. D & C red #27. I found that interesting as I know only red #40 and Red #33 are approved for food. Tuns out this one's in lipstick and lip gloss despite it being known as a neurotoxin. Check out the link I found about that: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/ingredient.php?ingred06=701794&nothanks=1

Now obviously I threw it all out before anyone in my family could accidentally take it, but how many people take that on a regular basis? Hmmmm.

Celebrating 5000 with another food dye mishap

That's right, yesterday marked the 5000th hit on my blog.

We have learned to be very very careful about what we feed our children. But somehow those nerotoxins still seem to sneak in. This week it was salad dressing at golf camp. How ironic that my 2 boys were among the few that chose to eat the beautiful healthy salad since there were always chips, cookies, brownies, etc. OH MY GOSH! It was not until I even typed this that I stopped to consider the brownies. Those can often have red #40 too.

I noticed Ben getting progressively more negative and grumpy at home all week. I kept asking him what he ate. I suspected they had the lemonade at camp. Both boys insisted they only drank water. Then it dawned on me when I asked a food server to check the ingredients on the potato wedges that looked a little too orange. Sure enough, there was dye in them, so we avoided those. That's when I looked at the Italian dressing they were having all week. Nice red bits, deep yellow base, pretty sure we had the culprit. Luckily this camp encouraged parents to come eat with the kids every day so I could be the overprotective "no you can't eat that" watch dog of a mom. Well, that part's more due to the milk/soy/wheat allergy than the food dyes.

But, trying to keep it all in perspective, my boys loved golf camp and may be developing a lifelong interest they can share with their dad. They developed skills, made friends, behaved well, avoided injury, and ended the week with a new bargain set of clubs so they don't have to share anymore. The camp also included new golf shoes and a Tiger Woods hat for everyone. So while I would prefer to not have the grump and the energizer bunny running around my house for the next 2 days, all things considered we are still doing pretty well. I'll try to count my blessings. On second thought, there must not have been red#40 in the brownies. I ate them 3 days in a row (Ben kept getting too full to enjoy good chocolate so someone had to do it). If there really was red#40 in them, I'd be way too irritable to write about counting blessings. So that's another blessing.

Why is my child so angry?

My obvious answer to that question is FOOD DYE, FOOD DYE, FOOD DYE.

Sorry to be redundant to my regular followers, but I'm hoping that a few more parents looking for answers will stumble across my page if I address anger problems. For those who haven't heard, I probably sound completely crazy. How could my food make me or my child angry? Well, don't take my word for it. Food dyes are banned in Britain. That's right. You can't buy food there with artificial colors like red#40 or yellow #5. That happened as a result of a study that came out in 2008. Check my links to research at the right hand side of this page. I'm not making it up.

Still not convinced, then just try it for yourself. Start paying attention to what your child ate for the 2-3 days prior to an outburst. Was there red or yellow food coloring in it? Hmmm, I know it seems way too simple to be a real issue. Better yet, take your child off all food dyes for a few weeks. Summer is the best time to try this since you don't have school lunches and snacks to worry about. Then after you are sure you have cleaned out the dyes for a good week or two, indulge in some nice red #40 colored something. See what happens for the next 3 days after that. It could be the most enlightening experiment you ever do in your family. Or you could live with tempers flaring, outbursts all over and relationships frustrated and failing.

Now I'm not to say there are not legitimate mental health problems that cause anger. If your child has a trauma or abuse history or your family is going through lots of stress then you may need more intervention than diet. I'm really talking to all those families whose children have a pretty good life but still seem angry or grumpy all the time and no one knows why. Those are the ones who could benefit from being dye free. But on the other hand, if perfectly normal healthy children in intact stable families show dramatic behavior changes just by taking away a few ingredients, isn't it more important for children facing other stressors to have the same benefit?

I hated the way my son and I were always at odds. He acted like he hated my guts. I was sending him to his room a lot and he would yell, scream, cry, threaten, etc. Rewards and punishment didn't seem to change it. It wasn't until several months after I weaned my family off food dyes that I realized how much better my son was. He doesn't get angry or explosive any more. He stays calm and accepts the ups and downs without loosing it. I never would have believed it if I had not lived it with my own 3 children.

I didn't even start my quest to avoid food dye due to anger or irritability. I started because the dyes made my other son wildly hyperactive. The calming of the storm in my other 2 children was a completely unexpected but very real blessing. It was almost miraculous when I think back to how crazy things were. I just wish more people knew about this. Others, feel free to comment on your own stories.