Food additives - sugars and artificial colors

I am appalled, yet I do it once in awhile giving ultimately bad combination of food to my children. I am probably as guilty as any parents and after even been informed of how bad sugar is and artificial colors are I will have the mentality of "oh it is just for today."


And sitting in the waiting room at an occupational therapy office watching a parent giving her child junk food and gatorade or vitamin water was like a blasphemy to why do the child even need OT. So I learn that there is no shortcut to giving bad food to your children. 


Looking at labels is gruesome but some smart decision has to be made if you can't read and interpret the label as to any food group categories DON'T BUY THEM!!! Food label are getting smarter in disguising things they call food. I try to by more produce and less processed food. Something like inverted glucose syrup or inverted sugar have high fructose corn syrup derivative.


inverted sugar - a mixture of equal parts of glucose and fructose resulting from the hydrolysis of sucrose. it is found naturally in fruits and honey and produced artificially for use in the food industry. 


So may as well go with the real thing with a dash of honey with naturally made nutrients that function as antioxidants. The food industry of course want to cut cost and produce food that have a shelf life of 6 months to a year. And inverted sugar is sweeter than regular sugar so less for more bangs and lacks anything that is good for you.


Read Cathy's blog 
http://alifelesssweet.blogspot.com/2009/05/because-you-askedinvert-sugar.html


So what to use in replace of sugar :
honey
agave nectar - a small amount goes a long way and it has a lower glycemic index and glycemic load than table sugar or sucrose.
stevia


And of course anything consumed to the max is not good anyways so use sparingly cause sugar is sugar and sweet is sweet. 


What the heck is modified starch? I don't even want to know. 


The only starch I will use are:
arrowroot
tapioca
potato


Any neon artificially colored food and candies ... please avoid all. Now the food industry are replacing names with numbers and of course parents doesn't have the time to look up a bunch of numbers to find what the stuff actually is good or bad. 


Here is an index of color numbers in food ... you can find out for yourself what to avoid completely.


http://www.gluten-dairy-free.co.uk/Food%20Colouring.htm