Brought to you by the color RED

Over the past couple of months, I have started to notice extreme spurts of energy in Beebs. He's always pretty busy, full of typical boynergy, but we're talking a marked difference in his ability to sit, stay and speak (yes, I'm talking about my son, not the dog!).

It started on the last day of school, when I picked him up from Latchkey and the Latchkey Director asked me if he had any food allergies. She said that he'd had some extra "fun" snacks as they celebrated the end of the year and that they seemed to have affected him behaviorally. Knowing that the content of "fun" snacks = extra sugar, combined with the fact that it was the last day of school and he'd had a field trip, I made mental note of the list of what he'd ingested, including Hawaiian Punch©, as well as his behavior (including literally trying to climb the walls, tables, chairs, other kids...), but put it to the `likely never to be recovered because I have mommy memory' part of my brain.

As the summer wore on, I did notice a couple of these episodes with him, but they usually happened during a particularly stimulating scenario (i.e. loads of kids, birthday parties, swimming pools, etc.), including more "fun" snacks than my kids normally are allowed to consume. I pretty much chalked it up to sugar and over-stimulation. However, about a month ago, he was at Grammy's house for the day and had one of these extreme spurts of energy. He began talking so fast that he was gasping for breath and salivating because he would forget to swallow. He was running, jumping, climbing - generally being spastic. Grammy was in shock by the difference in his behavior. The only sugary, out of the ordinary thing he'd had was a frozen, fruit juice popsicle thing.

Fast forward to two weeks ago and the babysitter mentions that after eating a Fruit Roll-Up©, she noticed Beebs got very hyper. Now, let me explain to you that I have pretty much the most flexible, reliable, tolerable babysitter in central Illinois (jealous, much?!), so for her to mention unruly behavior, it must have really been out of hand. Last week, one morning he was nearly impossible to entertain or redirect, the sitter noticed a 1/2 eaten unfrosted, strawberry Pop Tart© on the counter. Hmmm...

So, what do you know, my mommy memory isn't as much as a black abyss as I'd originally thought! I started realizing there might be some common denominators preceding these "episodes" - and it wasn't all excessive sugar either - sometimes it was real, fresh fruit, like strawberries or apples. The only commonality I could find was that everything he'd recently eaten/drank was red or purple.

I started doing some research and there are, like nearly everything with kids, very different camps on the idea of food dye allergies and intolerance. In fact, it's been a recent topic of discussion at the FDA. I'm not sure what I think, since I can't seem to pin it on anything else, except RED. He definitely doesn't have what you would classify as an allergy, which would manifest in physical symptoms such as hives, swelling, etc. but he does seem to have an intolerance (read: extremely hyperactive, impulsive and sometimes aggressive behavior).

I don't doubt that Red #40 (the most common Red food dye) was tested back in the day and was deemed safe for consumption, but I also don't doubt that, like anything you consume, there can be side effects. Aspirin has side effects...eating chilies has side effects... And we can all agree that the FDA/USDA have approved things that have later been shown to be harmful and I can also say that Red #40 (along with many other artificial dyes) has been banned in the UK. Most of what I've read says that consumption of Red #40 doesn't actually cause hyperactivity but can exacerbate it in children with ADD/ADHD. Obviously I'm going on purely anecdotal evidence right now, basing my own theory on what I'm seeing, but I'm gonna try to eliminate Red #40 as much as possible to see what happens, but lemme tell ya, it's in a ton of food!

This morning I discovered Red #40 in the ingredient list of my whole wheat waffles! Ugh.



Overheard at my house:
Beebs "My birthday is September 18th, but I was born a few days before that."