Carcinogenic Kids?

If you, like me, tend to read alot you have probably come across at least one article filled with warnings about the potentially carcinogenic additives with which the food industry is filling our bellies.  The truly frightening aspect of this, though, is just how many products produced specifically for kids are chock full of these risky chemicals.  Food dyes, preservatives, flavorings, and additives put in to change a food's texture or to make it more palatable for kids are filled with things we, as parents, would never knowingly feed our kids.  For example, natural citric acid is harmless and is added to all kinds of things, but what about artificially made citric acid?  Apparently it can contain sulfuric acid, molds, and sulfites that don't get fully filtered out during the production process.  Scary huh?  What about artificial sugars? Researchers indicate that the new wonder-sweetener, Splenda, is now being found in our water supplies because it isn't broken down in the body and is a potential environmental hazard.  Crazy, right?  Think that's scary, look in your pantry right now and see how many items contain Caramel Coloring.  If the carmel coloring in your food item is made from sugar, it's not a big deal, but since many companies are opting to reduce the cost of their production lines because of our slow economy, they might be replacing the more expensive Caramel Coloring with an artificial one that is potentially carcinogenic and they don't have to specify whether they are using natural or artificial Caramel Coloring on their ingredients labels.

So what is the solution?  Spend more money.  Unfortunately, feeding our kids healthier options is expensive.  Look at the difference in price between GoGurt and YoBaby yogurts for example.  GoGurt is generally half the price of YoBaby yogurt, but I pay it.  Why?  Look at the ingredients lists.  GoGurt is filled with dies, artificial flavorings, and additives designed to change the consistency of the yogurt, whereas YoBaby is made from Organic milk, Organic fruit purees, beet juice for coloring, and live active yogurt cultures.  Another food item I really like in place of the kid-hyped snack bars are Lara Bars, which are made of ground dates, natural spices, and nuts.  How can you go wrong with that, and they taste like candy bars!  If you watch for them, they often go on sale at your local grocery store, our Smith's has them on sale right now for 10 for $10.  Granted they aren't cheap, but they are filling and they reduce the overhead of mom-guilt you might be feeling when you give in to your kids' desire for a cartoon character sponsored fake food.

Another option, is, of course to feed our kids only fresh, homemade foods.  This is probably never going to happen, though, as most of us live a very busy lifestyle and convenience is important to us.  All we can do is work to make sure we give our kids the best we can and avoid as much poisonous food as possible.