My mother sent me this article from the Guardian Unlimited. The article looks at a new study linking food colors and preservatives with hyperactive and disruptive behavior in children. It's worth a read.
I know it's British and not American, and that it's probably not a huge surprise to anyone that the additives in our food are not good for kids, but the US is a lot less careful about what ends up in our food than much of the rest of the industrialized world (at least when it comes to GMOs - which are banned in much of Europe) so I'm pretty sure it applies here as well.
9:22 a.m. Edited to add:
This just in - also, you can no longer eat popcorn. Okay, you can eat it, and okay, all of you do-it-yourselfers who pop it on the stove, or over the coals of a nice hot fire are okay, but anyone who lives in the 21st century and ever makes microwave popcorn? We're doomed. Check it out: Doctor Warns Consumers of Popcorn Fumes. Turns out making microwave popcorn several times a day for years isn't good for the old lungs!
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And people think I'm crazy for not eating pre-packaged foods. Ha! This proves conclusively that if you just sit around doing nothing, eventually some will prove you right with SCIENCE.
I'm from Northern Ireland, and so am very familiar with this ban. Concerns about 'E numbers' as we all called them have been around for a very, very long time and many were removed ages ago.
I'm not trying to sound sanctimonious but, I do not use prepackaged foods here for this reason, and for the fact that hydrogenated oils, and high fructose corn syrup are not good for us either! I make most things from scratch, I enjoy it and I know exactly what's going into the food I feed my family :)
I'm becoming paranoid about food.
You can't trust what's in it, you can't tell where it came from and the sodium in that stuff — yikes!
I bet those cherries had some of that stuff in it.
I betcha.
Toys, food, animals. Sigh. What's left.
Sigh. If it's not one thing, it's another.
Can we eat anything anymore?
And now we can't even smell our food? Who knew there was such a thing as popcorn fumes? I love popcorn and assumed that its fumes would only promote deliciousness, not cancer. Good to know.
Shocking! Weird chemical additives are not good for you?!?!? Who'd have thunk it???
We TRY to limit the amount of over-processed, "fake" food that we and our kids eat. Its hard with a mother-in-law who thinks that snacks like "Yo-gos" are health food becuase the name sounds like it might have something to do with yogurt. Sigh. But we keep trying.
I love McDonalds. I love Kool-Aid. My kids have sips off my sody pop at least once per day.
But I grew up living on pop-tarts, McDonalds cheeseburgers, and Tab soda. I have great teeth, if you can believe that!
Not saying that's my excuse for letting my kids practice some unhealthy diet choices. I just can't let myself get too paranoid. Changing the subject but kind of the same type of worry: My kids were playing in a creek the other day. The creek was run-off water from the streets coated with oil and exhuast, from the lawns sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals. I'm pretty sure the mosquito guy sprays once every two weeks near there too, and who knows what chemicals he's letting loose into our lungs and into the run-off water. But what could I do? I could grab them out of the water, explain to them that I'm saving them from cancer, and burst their happy little child bubble. Or, I could let them play in the water and live in the moment.
I think it's wonderful that some people are able to raise their kids never having tasted sugar until they were 5. A mother at the Children's museum today broke out huge, beautiful banana for her toddler with a big sticker that said, "Organic", and I felt inferior and mediocre suddenly. I had to double-take on this banana because it looked like it was on steroids! It didn't matter that I too feed my children lots of bananas, avacados, grapes, nuts, etc. I feed them the non-organic stuff though. And I didn't feel good about that anymore.
I remember a little old southern woman I knew as a child. She was 107. My mom asked her one day how she was able to stay so young and spry. She told my mom with her beautiful southern twang," I eat fried porkchops and chew tobacco. That's how."
I have NO idea what I was trying to say. Just blabbering :-) . I guess I just do my best with their diets. Sometimes it makes me happy to watch them get excited over sugar and eagerly eat a McDonalds cheeseburger. I wish I didn't feel so bad about it when I read about things like this... Motherhood gives us a little bit of that guilt stuff, doesn't it?
Oh, the colors just wild out my boys, who each live with issues. On days...like today, a birthday party...I relax my standards with food...we all pay for it.
BTW, glad I dropped by. Love your place.
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