feingold diet

in the true sense of the word, it is not a diet. ok, i just looked it up, and it is a diet. however, i prefer to think of it as healthier eating habits.

as a little background to how this came about, my visiting teachers came over the other day. one of them mentioned that shannon was hyper. i'm pretty sure she is adhd, but as she's only 2 1/2, we can't get a diagnosis on that. the other lady is a teacher at the elementary school. she asked if i'd ever heard of the feingold diet. i had not. she told me she would make sure taylors teacher sent home some info about it.

after i got the info, i went online and started looking into it. it cost $83 to get the info to start it! there was NO way that we could do that, at least not right now. i put it out of my mind until i could get the money together to purchase it.

about a week later, we went to the kindergarten patriotic program. while i was trying to keep track of kids, shaun was talking to elizabeths teacher. he told her that we wanted to start on the feingold, and she told him that one of my good friends was already doing it!

i immediately called my friend, and asked for some help on getting started. she told me to basically avoid the artificial colors, artificial flavors, and the preservatives. by doing that, i was basically doing the program. she also told me that i could get my stuff through her when i was ready. (meaning able to)

in my research into the diet, i learned some very interesting information.
1 - did you know that artificial colors and flavors are made from petroleum?
   they are made from the same stuff you put in your cars' gas tank.
2 - the fda knows that some of the colors are not safe, so they have banned them from being used in food. but they allow them in childrens medicines!
3 - european countries dont' allow the artificial colors & flavors. candy companies make 2 different batches of the same candies. they sell the "cheaper" (artificial crap) to the states, and send the real stuff to europe.

so, i started reading labels. went through my food storage, and decided to get rid of anything that had the artificial colors, or flavors. (i cleaned out A LOT!) within a few days, i started to notice when she'd had something that wasn't on the "diet."
one morning, she ruined a dozen eggs. i'm pretty sure she got into my display of m&m's. i have a WAY cool vase that i put peanut m&m's into, and they are only for decoration. problem is, when shannon gets really hungry, she sneaks them out of the vase & eats them. and then i have a mess to clean up - like the eggs.

i discovered that just about everything in the stores organic corner is safe. and on top of that, anything i make from scratch is also safe. as long as i don't use the artificial colors and flavors.