When walking down the aisles of nearly any grocery store, you will generally see all of the same children’s snacks. Fruit snacks, Pop-Tarts, granola bars, chips, Cheetos…and the list goes on. We generally think that all of these products are safe snacks for our children given that they are in almost every store we enter, but we may want to be more cautious when purchasing these foods for our little ones.
It was recently found that some of those beloved snacks contain unbelievable ingredients such as petroleum. Yes, we have been feeding our children snacks that contain an ingredient most commonly used in the production of oil and gas. Yes, the same stuff that we put into our cars to make them run, that provides electricity and heating, makes our asphalt, and creates the majority of synthetic materials found in nearly everything we use today. These synthetic materials and substances are so toxic that the British government and European Union have banned the use of them in all food production.
If the ingredient list isn’t enough for you to stop consuming these products, maybe this will catch your eye: a variety of health threats have been linked to the consumption of not only petroleum, but artificial food coloring as well – conditions such as hyperactivity in children, cancer, allergic reactions, bed-wetting, ear infections, headaches, hypersensitivity, obesity, asthma, diabetes, eczema, mood swings, sleep disturbances, increased risky behavior, ADD/ADHD, chromosomal damage, hives, and possibly hypoglycemia.
So, the next time your child is pleading for these foods as you venture down the snack aisle, let them down easy, but be firm. Just say ‘no’ when they ask for these 5 common snacks:
- Pop-Tarts
- Fruit snacks
- Cheetos
- M&Ms
- Teddy Grams
Photo courtesy of The Future Leadership Institute
