Our modern, go go go!! busy society is flooded with advertisements for convenience foods, which are high in sugar, fat, and preservatives. Many of these products are directly marketed to kids. (The happy, dancing cartoon boy in the Pop-Tart commercial comes to mind.) However, these products are also advertised to parents. (I love Nutella’s new commercial. Nutella has a “hint” of cocoa and is a great way to get your kids to eat whole wheat bread.)
I must confess I have had my fair share of Nutella, and I had Pop-Tarts every weekend as a child growing up. However, my husband and I have become more concerned with our own health as we age, and we have noticed that our son in particular has trouble behaving after eating sweets or processed foods. We joke with him that he is “sugar intolerant.”
If you watched Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution this past spring, you may have been shocked as I was that many elementary school kids can’t identify common vegetables. My son is not quite that bad, but, like most kids, he would pick junk food over healthy food any day.
My husband and I have decided to embark on a process we like to call, “What Are Our Kids Eating?” We hope that our kids will learn where their food, both natural and processed, comes from and why it is best to make healthier choices. We have several “activities” planned with our son to make learning these lessons fun. (And I am sure we as parents will learn quite a bit too!) I plan to share them all here.
I have a friend that has a son on the autism spectrum, she has removed all processed foods from both her children diets and has seen tremendous improvement in their behavior. She follows the feingold diet to a “T” but said even when she began with baby steps replacing Tyson nuggets by making her own homemade nuggets she saw a big improvement. I have 2 baby boys and have just recently started making their food and snacks for the week on Sunday. If nothing else it makes me feel better they are not eating so many preservatives! While I cannot afford the Feingold system, I am doing what I can. Looking forward to you writing about your journey!
We have also seen an improvement with our son’s behavior. The problem is weeding out all of the “treats” he gets at school. I will have to look into the Feingold system.
Here is the Feingold site. I found another when I googled Feingold recipes. While I do not agree 100% with the “all natural mom of 3” I have tried a few of her recipes and they are delish!
http://www.feingold.org/index.php
http://allnaturalmomof3.blogspot.com/search/label/Feingold%20Recipes
Thanks for the links! I will check them out.
We recently started Feingold and we have been so pleased with the results! Miraculous difference in everyone’s attention and focus, huge improvement in the “short fuse” issues with the children, as well as a tremendous improvement in my migraines. My husband, who is usually rolling his eyes at my tendency to be a “crunchy mom” swears that he will never go back to our pre-Feingold way of life. I like that with the materials from the Feingold Association, I don’t have to study every label on everything we buy. If it is in our shopping guide then I buy it, if not then I don’t 🙂
Thanks, Brandee. It’s good to know. My husband is very intrigued, so it is something we will be looking into further.
from what I have learned from the “institute of google” there are quite a few regular grocery store items that make the feingold cut:
Lays potato chips
Sunchips
Natural Cheetos
Fritos (which I crushed up and used for breading for my homeade chicken nuggets- kids and Daddy loved them)
Teddy Grahams (honey only)
Homeade Lemonade (in lieu of juice)
Gerber Pear juice
Oscar Meyer bacon
Rold Gold Pretzels
Motts apple juice
Crispix cereal
Jif Peanut butter
Aunt Jemima (sp?) pancake mix
Tostitos
Tostitos salsa (all natural)
Breyers ice cream]
Hillshire farms honey ham slices
Land o Lake butter
Philly cream cheese
Lipton sides
Smuckers strawberry spreadable fruit
Thanks so much for the list!
We’ve used the Feingold diet for many, many years. You CAN afford to eat the Feingold way. Much of the normal person’s grocery budget is processed food and those always cost more. By eliminating those nasty additives, your family will also be more healthy.