The Feingold Association has helped many families find their way to better behavior and more peaceful homes. They have given a chance to thousands of children that otherwise would have ended up on medication or worse. As the Feingold Association has shown, artificial food additives simply are not healthy.
However, making a commitment to the Feingold diet is the easy part. Once on the plan, many families discover that it can be a rough road to an additive-free life.
Expense of a Healthy Diet
Unfortunately, a healthier diet is often a more expensive diet. It is possible to eat inexpensively on Feingold if you make everything from scratch, but in today’s society that is hard to do. Most families like to have some convenience foods to pack in the lunch box and for desserts and special treats on the holidays. Feingold friendly holiday candies are more expensive than their artificial counterparts. But, they are well worth the expense in order for a family to get through an over-stimulating holiday with minimal behavioral issues.
Relatives that Don’t Understand and Don’t Cooperate
Once a family has been on the Feingold diet for a few weeks, they will begin to see it as a common sense approach to family nutrition. However, it can be a hard sell to friends and relatives who may not want to understand the program. Some people refuse to believe that there is a link between food additives and behavior. Others believe that it is a radical dietary change and that the children are being deprived of their childhood right to have sweets and other junk foods.
There is no easy way to counter this. If your child is likely to have a drastic behavioral change when a particular additive is consumed, sometimes a demonstration in front of the uncooperative relative is helpful. However, if your child’s behavioral changes are more subtle or don’t show up right away, then it is harder to prove. You can bring your own meals, drinks and snacks each time you visit. And, you can keep talking about Feingold and healthy nutrition, hoping that it will make a difference one day.
Snacks at School and Other Public Places
Just as difficult to deal with as uncooperative relatives are the schools. Classroom birthday snacks are often brightly colored cupcakes. Lunchrooms offer meals that are as processed as the trays they are served on.
Packing your child’s lunch is an easy solution, but it’s harder to avoid the classroom snacks. Continue to educate your child on the benefits of Feingold and the dangers of food additives and trust him to make the decisions when he is away from you.
Unfortunately, the brightly colored, artificially flavored and preserved foods are so thoroughly enmeshed in our society many people cannot imagine life without them. Because of this, following the Feingold program outside the four walls of your own home is incredibly difficult. Some families find that following the program inside their home helps improve their children’s overall behavior enough that they can relax outside of the home. Others don't have that luxury and have to be strong advocates for what their child eats where ever they are.
Source:
Feingold Association of the United States (FAUS), 554 East Main Street, Riverhead, NY 11901, or phone (631) 369-9340
