What’s in Your Kid’s Lunch?

By Anastacia Mott Austin

It seems like parents can’t go five minutes these days without being told that yet another thing is bad for their kids. Television will turn them into zombies, sugar will make them hyperactive, too much exposure to popular culture will make them prematurely promiscuous, streetlights and hormones in meat will make them hit puberty too young.

Eh, it’s enough to make you want to give up and just let them raise themselves.

There is great wisdom in the advice to take everything in moderation. Just like too much TV, candy, the mall, and everything else will make them supposedly sprout extra limbs and start committing crimes, going to the other extreme also has its down sides. You don’t want your kid to be the only one at school with carrot sprouts in his lunch, or the only kid who doesn’t know who SpongeBob whats-his-name-is (okay, that one doesn’t seem that bad).

It’s important to make good, careful choices without giving in to the temptation to go completely paranoid about every substance that enters your child’s body.

That said, there really are some ingredients you want to avoid when choosing items to pack into your child’s lunch. It’s hard to decipher, through the hype, what’s just overreaction and what really can cause difficulties for your child.

It’s good to know your own kid, too. I have three children, and two of them could probably eat pretty much anything and be just fine. My oldest, however, reacts to certain food additives as if they were crack. If she eats something with a certain hue of food coloring, her eyes dilate, she gets wired and hyperactive, followed about two hours later by a prolonged period of hysterical weeping. It took a while to pinpoint what the problem was, but once we identified it, it became obvious.

The following is a list of certain ingredients commonly found in kids’ food items. Some of them might be fine for your child, but if you’re not sure, it’s probably a good idea to avoid them:

1. High fructose corn syrup. This ubiquitous ingredient has replaced simple sugar, or sucrose, as a sweetener in just about every food product you will find in your kitchen. Cookies, chips, pasta, soda, fruit juice, soup, sauces, bread, packaged foods, the list goes on. Unfortunately, the body doesn’t process high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) the same way as regular sugar. The liver actually treats it more like a fat, and that’s what it turns into. It raises bad cholesterol, increases fatty deposits in the liver, and can also worsen or contribute to diabetes by damaging the body’s ability to process insulin. In addition, it can create an allergic sensitivity in susceptible people and can cause behavioral changes, especially in children.

2. Hydrogenated oils. Essential fatty oils are an important part of our diets. They help our skin, nails, joints, and mood. But once they’ve been hydrogenated, they basically turn into poison. Hydrogenation is the process by which hydrogen is added to oil in order to harden it, to make it more stable and last longer on shelves, thereby saving money. But a solidified oil that doesn’t break down is not good for the body. Just like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils force the body to create too much insulin, and can worsen diabetic conditions. The altered molecular structure of the oils has been implicated in many diseases, including high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disorders.

3. Food coloring. Recent studies have shown conclusively that certain food colorings cause hyperactivity in children. In one study done by The Lancet last year, kids who were given a mix containing common food colorings and the preservative sodium benzoate displayed impulsive behaviors and a decrease in attention span that brought them closer to a label of clinical hyperactivity and attention deficit disorders. In addition, some food colorings have been shown to be carcinogenic.

4. Preservatives. Like food coloring, some common food additives can cause hyperactivity and impulsive behavior in children. Made from sometimes bizarre ingredients like coal tar, petroleum, and animal waste, food preservatives can also worsen asthma, cause skin rashes, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Some are carcinogenic.

I could go on, but you have to be able to feed your kids something, right? What’s a parent to do? There are some tips for how to have healthier food around the house without losing your mind in the process.

Kids have it hard enough without adding to their problems by eating stuff that is going to make them look like they need behavioral counseling. Especially if your child was walking along that edge already – why make things worse for them?

By removing the offending ingredients listed above, which are unfortunately in just about everything you would buy for your kids, you might be surprised by changes in their behavior. Expect more level moods and calmer, more focused children who can handle their emotions better.

But how to do that? For me, I try to keep it simple, because there are enough things going on inside my head to keep me busy. There is nothing simpler than telling yourself that if you can trace a food to its origins, it’s probably okay. If it’s an apple, you know where it came from – a tree. There’s nothing in it besides apple. (Unless it’s not organic, but that’s for later). The same applies, obviously, to other fruits and vegetables. But it’s difficult to subsist on just fruit and veggies, especially for a child who may not care for either.

The second easiest rule to follow is to look at the list of ingredients. A good rule of thumb tends to be, the shorter the list, the better. Also, can you pronounce the words on the list? Do you know what they are? If the ingredients are whole wheat, butter, water, eggs, and sugar (the real kind), it’s probably okay to eat. If it’s got hydorcelluphenylathamine (okay I made that up, but it could be an ingredient!), and Yellow #2 and Blue Lake #40, and forty other things that you don’t recognize, trust me, it is only masquerading as food. Don’t eat it, and don’t give it to your kids.

When you can, try to buy organic. Organic foods have been shown to have more natural disease-fighting phytochemicals (those are good), and they haven’t been sprayed with carcinogenic chemicals. Meats and fish should either be organic or bought from certified humane, local farms. Meats can be loaded with antibiotics, artificial hormones, and diseases, and fish can be contaminated with heavy metals and chemical run-off. Meat from humane farms or certified as organic will not have artificial ingredients pumped into it.

Not everything needs to be organic, though, and because it can be expensive it’s good to pick and choose. Produce that gets sprayed the most are apples, celery, red peppers, grapes, cherries, and potatoes. Fruits and vegetables with thick skins that can be peeled don’t have to be organic.

It’s hard to be a parent these days, and part of the reason is that time is short and processed foods are easy to pack and prepare. But it’s a lot harder to parent a child who is eating things that make him depressed, angry, moody, emotional, and allergic.

Don’t be fooled by food companies who are trying to sell your family substandard products that are bad for you and bad for the planet, by calling them healthy and natural. If you can’t trace it back to its origin, or the list of ingredients is longer than your arm and requires a degree in chemistry just to read it, it’s not good for you.

It’s hard to not go too far the other way, too, and be afraid of everything that enters your kid’s mouth. But with a little moderation and careful choosing of ingredients, you can have healthier, calmer kids who are more "naturally" themselves!

After that, you’re on your own.