Welcome the Holidays, but say farewell to Artificial Food Dye

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s the Christmas season.  Given the festivities of the season, I’m pleased to introduce you to a wonderful alternative to our traditional petrochemical food coloring agents.

An ever growing body of evidence links Artificial food dye to health and behavioral problems in children.  I link to a few of the studies at the end of this post, but I will attest with my whole heart that I know there is a strong correlation.

When my youngest gets food coloring, she simply spazzes out. She runs around touching everything, and ruining much of it. When my middle child gets food coloring, he becomes hostile and violent. When my oldest gets food coloring, he becomes very emotional and will cry within the hour.

But I don’t want to get into the studies this time.  I’m still kind of bitter at how slowly progress is being made regarding our children’s dietary safety.

Given my personal interests, I gravitate towards other crunchy mom types. Their kids eat almost all organic too. They are usually in cloth diapers.  Artificial additives are simply not allowed in their children’s diets. Let me tell you, it’s quite obvious when some fancy color slips through the cracks. It’s that dramatic of a change. Knowing the truth and having the heart of a dreamer, I really thought that by the holiday season, we’d have warning labels on foods with artificial coloring. I will keep holding out hope, but for now, the glimmers of hope come in the form of major brands voluntarily switching to natural colors.

Unfortunately, it’s still fiercely difficult to find natural colors in the holiday junk foods that children love best.

Thankfully, this holiday season,there are bright and beautiful alternatives available. India Tree offers perfectly safe and natural food dyes. If you get these now, you’ll still have more than enough time to decorate those Christmas cookies.

Everything Birth isn’t in the business of selling food dyes, so I added it to our favorite products index to save you time and energy. To order this safe food coloring made from actual food  order from Amazon here.

 

Be sure to make lots of beautiful cookies so that you have something to trade with your child in case some unknowing Santa leaves candy colored the fake way.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8179235

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15613992

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19882794

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1719942/?tool=pmcentrez