Part One: You Asked For It is about what you can find in some of the big fast food chains. Which ones to enjoy and which ones to avoid! Keep reading this post; you may be surprised!
Part Two: Eat This, Not That - Household snacks, foods and beverages with some better choice alternatives.
Part Three: I'm Using What? - Household and everyday items that you may want to trade out for 'safer' products.
Part Four: What is Extreme? - Why my family has taken to extreme dietary habits, and will probably go even more extreme over time. Or maybe, extreme is NOT chainging our eating habits and just living with the side effects?
But first, let me give you a little background. I was not going to post information about my daughter and her food struggles, but upon this request I have decided that it could be a benefit to others, so here we go. When my daughter (first born) starting eating solid foods I made ALL of her baby food from scratch. Everything was fresh and had no addetives or preservatives. I controlled all of her dietary needs. Before this time she was exclusively breast-fed, so up until the age of 2 she had very pure and healthy food. She was also the picture of an angel. Everyone always commented on how easy and calm she was. So obedient and loving. Then, around the age of 2, I started to relax and allow her to eat the Doritos at play dates and family get-togethers. She was allowed to have that birthday cupcake with the pink and blue icing, or the store brand cheese cubes; afterall, making and taking food everywhere was getting to be a bit much; right? Shortly after we relaxed our dietary provisions she started what I would consider the 'Terrible Two's', and what kid doesn't go through those? But, were these really the terrible two's? I mean, it seemed a bit too extreme! Not just tantrums and power-of-the-will struggles, but all out rages! And the tantrums, which started out once a week became daily, then two and three times a day, then two and three HOURS straight several times a day. And not just a little NO MOMMY tantrum, but her eyes would glaze over and she would literally be unconcollable for hours. She would strip down naked, scream and cry and kick and punch and bite and tear at everything around her for hours on end and pee all over the carpet where she lay. And NOTHING could calm her or stop her. I attempted to explain to other what was going on, but everyone would just slough it off as the terrible two's and evey child goes through that. I knew something was truly wrong and one day my Mom saw this happen and even though I had attempted to explain to her in the past it wasn't until she saw it with her own eyes that she even said it was NOT NORMAL. This had been going on for almost a year, but a few months earlier God put me across the path of a man whose daughter had rages when she ingested Red 40. I had held this in my mind for those months and finally convienced my family that I wanted to try and extreme food test for a month to see if it made a difference. So we did. We took her off ALL ARTIFICIAL FOOD COLOR. Within 3 days the rages stopped and within 2 weeks she was fully potty trained and all of the anger and craziness was GONE! So, as a test we allowed her to eat a few chips at a family get together after a month, and within 24 hours she was having rages again and they lasted 2 weeks. We again removed the artificial food colors and she turned back into an angel. After the rages she would even tell me that she was scared and that the monster was inside her. The monster, what was that? Let me tell you. The monster was her brain absorbing all of the petrochemical that the artificial food color is made of. Why? Because our brain needs fish oil and replaces that oil with any oil it can find. If we give it gas or coal tar run off then that is what it uses. We have had a few accidential slip ups since our new diet, and each time it has resulted with rages within 24 hours that last anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. Now, we have NO more slip ups. We eat all organic and mostly raw. Why? Because so many of the addetives and preservatives are made from gasoline, coal tar, petrolatum, butane and other chemicals that are extremely harmful to the body and especially harmful to my precious little girl. Even the feed that chickens and cows are fed show up in the milk, cheese, yogurt, butter eggs and meat. We even avoid MSG, bleached flour (guess what...they use real bleach to bleach flour), GMO, hugh fructose corn syrup, hygrogonated oils. Hey, we go raw and fresh as much as possible because even the packaging of foods can be dangerous. Did you know that Progresso soup lines it's soup cans with bisphenol A, or BPA and that consuming just one can of soup can exceed the BPA limit by 80 times. To read more about that or sign a petition to have it removed for the cans click here. So, because we have such an extreme issue we are extrememly careful. Another thing, this is not considered a food allergy because it is not a food. Think about it, if every single person's brain absorbs this stuff what is it doing to you and your family? You may not have rages, but does anyone in your family deal with health issues, asthma, allergies, chronic illness, fatigue, weight gain, tummy upset, headaches, mood swings, depression, skin issues, sleep issues, heart problems, vision problems, muscle weakness, foggy brain or others? Then take a look at your food. Artificial food color and petroleum based ingredients can cause all of that and more. Maybe that is part of why our society is so angry and sick all the time? If our daugher just got a rash we may not have been so strict, but then again I'm not sure. No one wants rages in a household, but I don't want illness either. Also, it is compounding. The FDA states that X amount is generally reguarded as safe, but they have no control of how much we eat. If we eat one serving of each, chips, cheese, pickles, cereal, kool-aid, lemonaid, non-organic strawberries and non organic watermelon and a lolipop in a day then we have exceeded the limit of artificial food color for one person by 8 times in that day. And if we do similar things each day it compounds and takes longer to leave our system! OK, that is my story and why we do what we do...so, what do we eat?
I'm glad you asked. Yes, my daughter and our family still eat the occasional pizza or hamburger, but most of the time we eat at home. We purchase our fruits and veggies all organic due to the artificial colors sprayed on conventional fruits and veggies being awful for my dauther, and the pesticides and herbacides are often made of petrochemicals also, which we must avoid. So, organic it is. We do not eat meat evey day. We eat raw fruit for breakfast and snacks. I also like to make organic smoothies with Greens First Powder (and my kids love it). We eat organic yogurt, cheese and eggs. Dinner is usually TONS of veggies with a little meat or carbs like rice and pasta (again, all organic). She can have HagenDaz Ice cream! Homemade cake and cookies with my homemade food color for icing; sorry, no boxed stuff! By the way, my daughter is very happy with her diet and loves her food. She has a strong understanding of why we eat what we eat and never complains or asks for the stuff we use to allow. And, at chruch she is even happy to eat the alternative snacks!
What about when you don't want to cook.
OK,
Fuddruckers without cheese and pickles has been OK so far.
Dominoes Pizza with the veggies and sasuage has been OK so far (without garlic butter)
Panara Bread is GREAT! Go, enjoy. Even their pickles and cheese are ok.
Raising Cane's has been good so far, and she can enjoy their lemonaid, it is fresh!
Yes, this is a short list, but most every other place I have contacted has been bad for us. I do have calls into a few others that I hope will come through.
But we must avoid:
McDonalds, it sends her over the deep end almost immediately.
Chick-Fil-A, they use MSG in almost everything, and artificial food color in everything else.
Other fast food burger joints.
Most pizza places.
All fast food cheese, pickles, drinks, shakes, desserts...
All Sonic...that is completely loaded...almost every menu item!
Hidden source of problems is the anti-foaming agent most of these places use when making fries.
Let's talk about REAL fast food. Actually, it would be the fastest fast food I know. Fruit! Yup, FRUIT! And, it is real food. By-the-way, many people that have health issues and think they can not eat fruit are the very people that would benefit the most from it!
- No refrigeration required
- No preparation required (most of the time)
- No long drive-thru lines
- No utensils needed (except maybe a napkin)
- No onion breath afterward
- No high trans-fat, preservatives, or additives
- Can carry it anywhere
- Just rinse and eat
- Throw the core, stems and peels in your compost pile
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