I don’t really care what you put in your mouth. I drink pop. I’m just going to lay that out there right off the bat. I drink pop, almost every day. I know it’s bad for me, but alas, I’ve drank pop since I was a little child and there is no apparent end in sight for me. My point is, I’m not going to tell you what to eat or drink. This blog isn’t about that.
Our society makes feeding our children healthy foods insanely difficult. I want to help a little. Just like with the Crunchy Mom Prioritizing, I also have a “What Not to Let your Kids Eat” list. See, there’s a couple of ingredients that the food industry is shoving upon our children’s diets that are exceptionally dangerous to their health. The first thing I want to do is brainwash you into believing these things are poison. Because, well, they basically are.
So… you are getting verrrrrry sleeeeeepy. As I count backwards from five, you will begin to fall into a deep trance. When I *virtually* clap my hands at the end, you will walk away with a desire to throw away half the food in your cupboard. Five… four…three…two…one…
POISON # 1: Food Coloring (Artificial)
Artificial Coloring will be the hardest to eliminate, but it’s so important. If you can’t do complete elimination, at least drastically cut back on them. It’s infuriating that they even allow artificial food dye in any of our foods, even more frustrating that they put the most artificial food coloring in our children’s food. Here’s the breakdown:
- FD&C Red No.40 can cause tumors and lymphomas. (In layman’s terms: Cancer.) Yup, those Jolly Ranchers have a known carcinogen in them. Then again, they even add it some beef and apples to make them seem “fresher.”
- FD&C Yellow No.5 can cause allergies, thyroid tumors, lymphomas, chromosomal damage, asthma, hyperactivity, clinical depression, and anxiety. Way to go, Mountain Dew! That’s probably why I recently saw a version of it called “White Out” on the shelves the other day.
- FD&C Yellow No.6 can cause runny nose, nasal congestion, bruising, allergies, kidney tumors and chromosomal damage.
- FD&C Green No.3 can cause bladder tumors.
- FD&C Blue No.1 can cause chromosomal damage.
- FD&C Blue No.2 can cause brain tumors.
POISON # 2: Artificial Sweeteners
The most popular artificial sweeteners have a pH of around 26.5. So what? Our health is absolutely dependent on us having a proper pH. We should be eating a diet that consists of four parts alkaline to one part acid. You will need a great deal of fruits and vegetables to counter the drastically high acidity of artificial sweeteners. Since the majority of us like to feed our children meats each day, the meat group is really the only place we can afford to be using any of the acid allowance on our children each day. If a child’s pH is too acidic, they will get sick. If it’s too high for too long, they will get diseases. It’s not like we can rely on a strong immune system alone. If we make the pH of our children too high, we will not only be inviting sickness in, we will basically be carrying disease into our children’s bodies on a silver platter. The simplest way to avoid hand delivering an unhealthy pH to our kids is to eliminate artificial sweeteners. A very alkaline sweetener on the other hand is the natural sweetener Stevia. Sweeteners with fairly neutral pH’s are raw cane sugar and raw honey. You can find artificial sweeteners in tooth pastes, chewing gum, diet soda, snacks and even some of the “low sugar” juices.
Most people assume the most important diet change is buying all organic. That’s a great second step. The first step though, that will make a dramatic difference in your children’s bodies is eliminating these two poisons. Even in moderation, these two “food groups” should not be allowed. Our children’s bodies are far too precious for them.
*clap*
Anybody feel like cleaning out their pantry?
While you’re at it, one way to make it easier on our children to avoid these toxins is to eliminate them from our schools. Jamie Oliver is heading a coalition in the United States to get nontoxic, healthy foods into the school system. To do your part, sign the petition here.
genuine question:
So I’ve heard about this acid thing many times from my granola sister… the thing is… what we eat is absorbed through the stomach (although a highly highly minimal trace amount will be absorbed through the mucosal membranes in the mouth and throat before passage to the stomach)… anyway… our stomach is a PURE acidic environment. So what we eat is acidified (how it breaks down for absorption). So our stomach is designed to NOT absorb acid (or else it would digest itself). So what, physiologically / biochemically speaking) is the process by which eating something acidic is directly creating acidity in my body? For that matter, what is the measure by which one is judged to have an out of balance pH – blood?
I mentioned this in another arena when you asked this, but I didn’t want to seem like I was ignoring you. It’s a very good question, that many other people may also ask, because many acidic fruits, actually make your body’s pH more alkaline. It has to do with the chemical reactions that go on inside your body as it uses different foods. Going by the actual food’s pH will not give you an accurate representation of what you should be eating to lower the acidity in your body. There is a plethora of information out there on commercial sites, research sites, nutritionalists’ sites, health food sites, etc that will all concur with the same foods having the same resulting effect on our body’s pH. So, while I am unsure of which reactions happen given all of the different chemistry involved, you can find nearly endless and similar charts available from many different sources (some reputable, some opinion based) online just by Googling the terms: foods for a healthy pH.
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I share the same philosophy….I try to cut bad stuff out for my family as a whole however what I put in my mouth is different than what goes in my daughters mouth.