My son’s diet runs his mood. Took me too long to figure out what was actually in his food

He’s high functioning and sharp as a tack most of the time. But when things get sporadic at home, so does he. We noticed the pattern years ago but couldn’t always pinpoint why.

Turns out a lot of it tracked back to what he was eating. Not in an obvious way. We weren’t feeding him soda and candy for dinner. We were feeding him things that looked completely reasonable. Fruit snacks with real fruit on the label. Kids vitamins. Gatorade after sports. Cereal that said “whole grain” on the front.

What we didn’t realize is that a huge number of those products contain petroleum based food dyes. Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1. The FDA is actively phasing them out right now because of their links to hyperactivity and neurodevelopment issues in children. They’re in things you would never expect.

We started scanning everything before it came into the house, and ended up building a tool for ourselves that separates the score between adults and kids. Some things that shocked us:

∙	Flintstones vitamins: 8 out of 10 concern level. Three petroleum dyes, taken every single morning.

∙	Gatorade: 7 out of 10 for kids. 34g sugar and artificial dyes.

∙	Honest Kids juice pouches: 6 out of 10. Almost an entire day’s worth of sugar for a child in one pouch.

The swaps weren’t hard once we knew what to look for. YumEarth instead of regular gummy bears. Larabar instead of most granola bars. Water instead of Gatorade after practice.

His consistency improved. I can’t say it was entirely the food but the correlation is hard to ignore.

If anyone else is navigating this I’m happy to share what we found. What ingredient do you watch most closely for your kids?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​