The Fridge is Packed

I still find it hard to believe that OUR house has all these nasty things in it.  As we pull in the driveway with a car filled with our finds from our weekly trip to the farmers market.  How is it, in a home, where my husband is working away in the kitchen to make coleslaw, pasta salad, and fruit salad, where when you open our refrigerator and it's packed to the brim with fresh produce, how is it that food was making my daughter sick.

Then I look at my daughter in the other room, curled up on her bed made of couch cushions, quietly coloring, while watching a tv show, and I know that no matter how hard it is to believe.  It is true.

Bedtime wasn't as successful last night, as it had been on the first night.  Although yesterday was a day where she was at daycare, so I can't be as confident of what she ate as when she's in our own care.  I'm interested to proceed through the weekend, and with her primary caregiver to see how she responds to continuing on our journey.  I do realize that she consumed yogurt and applesauce for breakfast yesterday, which she didn't have the day before when we were so successful.  We are avoiding them again today to see if we will have increased success.  Although last night wasn't as quick and successful as the night before, there was minimal hysteria, and it felt more like "normal" I just don't want to go to bed behavior.

Through starting our journey on the dye free diet, I have also stumbled across a program called the Feingold Diet.  Essentially a Dr., back in the 70s identified a very specific group of foods/additives that when eliminated from the diet of children with hyperactive behavior, resulted in the hyperactive behavior also disappearing.  It interested me.

"Hyperactivity can be triggered by synthetic additives - specifically synthetic colors, synthetic flavors and the preservatives BHA, BHT (and later TBHQ) - and also a group of foods containing a natural salicylate radical."

I was more fascinated as I read all of the symptoms that removing these foods could potentially resolve.  Behaviors, symptoms that every member of our family exhibits.  Not the same ones, but everyone of us exhibits one or more that this diet could treat.  We've decided to embark on this journey as a family.  If I don't think these things should be in her diet, why should I keep them in my diet.  So while we wait for our information and materials to arrive, we will keep avoiding food dyes.  And then we will begin removing all these unnatural chemicals and additives from our diets and hope that it will be a path to increased health and happiness for us all.