Wednesday, October 31, 2012

No Dye Diet Follow Up

At last I will follow up from our 2 weeks of the No Dye Diet. It was a bust. No improvement/change at all. Credit must be given to both boys who did actively participate in the monitoring of dyes in their food. Both would actively question certain foods, especially if they were colorful. If the food is bright and comes from a package, beware!

I did learn a little bit about food dyes. Although we only actively omitted petroleum based dyes from our food, I did become aware of "natural" dyes too, meaning non petroleum. Did you know cheese is colored orange with annatto? It is purely for aesthetics. I found annatto is in a lot of food products. I have read that this coloring sometimes also has a negative effect on behavior. I didn't try eliminating this one. I also learned that except for those gummy snacks, we're already doing pretty decent with our food choices. Our main culprits were gummy snacks, cookies with frosting and Sunny D. So, it's tough to make good choices during a birthday party.

What really made this experiment tolerable for both boys is that they knew there was an end. Reid was on the 2 week countdown and was very vocal about how many days were left in the No Dye Diet. I am thankful they both humored my need to try this to knock out some symptoms of ADHD.

Speaking of food dyes, Happy Halloween!!!