Today is day 1 of my attempt to greatly decrease the amount of preservatives my daughter ingests. Here are our motives: She's have some attention issues (Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)? Maybe.); she has enuresis which is urinary incontinence and some oppositional defiance issues. Are all these things related to her diet? Probably not. But, certain issues such as bladder instability and incontinence can be improved by the avoidance of food dyes and other bladder irritants. Further, there are links to behavior and attention issues that can be improved by diet. I started to do some research on "diets" for kids with these issues and found a lot of conflicting information. There is so much unedited information on the web. If it's confusing for me, I cannot imagine how the average parent can interpret all this information. Ok, time to introduce myself. I'm a nurse practitioner and I happen to work with children in the community. My specialty is childhood obesity. I spend so many hours during my work day helping the children of others but cannot seem to help my own. Well, today that all changes. I've decided to share my trials and errors with whoever cares to read because I cannot believe I'm the only parent with these issues. In fact, I'm quite sure that I'm not alone because I happen to work with many children who have similar problems.
So, in this blog, I will share credible research; my beliefs (because well, I happen to have professional experience and education in this area); and the experiences my daughter and I have. I don't expect this to go smoothly. My child can be somewhat strong-willed and I do expect her to resist my attempts to better her health. We may eventually start "Samantha's blog" so she can tell the world how mean her mother is for making her eat healthy. Actually, the child's perspective will be quite valuable because one of the biggest barriers to the improvement of the child's diet is the child herself.
So let's get to it. I decided to start small. I was at a conference recently where the speaker suggested that yellow and red food dyes worsened symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit HyperActivity Disorder. Further, my daughter's urologist had previously recommended the elimination of red food dyes at part of the treatment for her enuresis. There's something about the dye that irritates the bladder, worsening the incontinence. So, my first goal for my daughter was to eliminate all food dyes from her diet. How hard could that be? Guess what? There is artificial coloring in EVERYTHING! Well, actually, I should say there is artificial coloring in everything my daughter enjoys. Fruits and vegetables do not have artificial coloring. So
Step 1:
Identify the fruits and vegetables your child will eat. In our case, it's grapes, banana, watermelon, sometimes apple; cucumbers, spinach (yes, I said spinach), greenbeans if desserts' on the line.
Step 2:
Look closely at labels of any packaged foods. Gogurt has been a big hit in my house but it was a big offender. Fortunately, Yoplait also makes a "simply gogurt" that uses vegetable juice for its coloring. I had to go to the organic section to find some lunchbox snacks. These foods unfortunately are a bit more expensive. I tried to look at some of our old standby snacks like goldfish. As far as I can tell, goldfish are not made with any artificial colors or preservative and the label says they're made with smiles, so they're allowed for now. I also got some "Publix" brand pretzels. These are preferable to the brand name because the brand had corn syrup whereas the generic does not. The thing to remember about snacks in general is the kids need some snacks. They should have nutritional value and should not be allowed in excess.
Step 3:
Get your child's input. I started off by asking my child what she wanted to eat for lunch. She knows that I'm not going to get her junk food so the discussion is about compromise. "Which fruit would you like?; what kind of sandwich would you eat?" etc. She requested roast beef. In the past that would not have been a problem, but unfortunately, I could not find any sandwich meat without artificial coloring. There is a brand that boasted roast beef with "natural caramel coloring", but really? I don't think so. Caramel coloring doesn't seem very natural to me. Unfortunately, there is no legal definition of natural so anyone can claim a natural product. In the future, I may make a roast and attempt to slice it for sandwiches, but my kids are rather picky about that. However, my daughter has enjoyed chicken salad in the past, so that will be offered to her. She also likes hard boiled eggs and you can't get more natural than that.
The groceries have been purchased. There are very few residual non-natural foods in my home. Of course, there are other people in the life of my child who may willingly or unwillingly sabotage these efforts. Stay tuned for more and good luck to anyone in a similar situation.
Best,
Amy
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