Disturbing Dye Discovery

I try to be health conscious. Aware. I am truly interested in nutrition and feel a major responsibility to feed my kids well and educate them on healthy food choices. But sometimes, no matter how much you read and learn, a much bigger impact is made when you make little discoveries on your own.

Here's my story: I made cupcakes for my daughter's 7th birthday...they looked like this, only her batch had white cake:


I decided to make the frosting myself because I couldn't even pronounce the ingredients on the store bought can, and that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. My recipe made so much frosting that I ended up being able to frost two batches of cupcakes (that's 48!). So, that tells you what a HUGE batch I was working with. The frosting was a creamy white color, and I wanted to spice it up...so I dug around and found this in my cabinet:



I had a brilliant idea: squirt some red icing into the frosting! I had my suspicions that it wouldn't take much icing to achieve the pale pink color that I was going for. So I started small. This small:



And that's all it took to dye a huge batch of frosting pink. And that's when I realized that while I was letting my kids lick the icing can--I was literally dyeing their insides RED. With Red Dye #40!

There are controversial reports over Red #40, and my intent is not to discuss that here, but to encourage moms, dads...everyone to question things like dye, sugar, and chemicals such as aspartame even though they are FDA approved. I have started to think for myself on some of these nutritional issues and I no longer believe that something is safe just because it's for sale at the grocery store. The more I learn, the more I realize that I want to know just exactly what goes into my body, as well as the bodies of the little ones that God has entrusted to me.

Here is a photo of my son, begging me to stop dying his insides:



Ah, who am I kidding? He couldn't care less about dye or chemicals or refined sugar. He just didn't want his picture taken. But I care...I am responsible for what I feed that sweet "boy who brings me flowers."



Thank you for reading my blog! If you would like to share some tidbits of wisdom about children's nutrition, I welcome your comments. If you don't want to share tidbits of wisdom, but would like to say "hi," then I welcome your comments as well!