I am officially OVERWHELMED.
Eliminating food dye is HUGE undertaking. It is MUCH BIGGER project than I expected. It seems like there is dye in everything.
We started by tossing food with dye but then I realized it would mean throwing half of our panty away. That seemed unacceptable so I stopped. If I get rid of a large majority of our food, then what are we going to eat?
I need a different plan.
I am now leaning toward a slow & steady campaign to remove food dye from our home. If I do it by categories of food then maybe it won't be so overwhelming? And as food is removed to also find non-dye options to replace it.
Breakfast food..... this morning I checked
** Strawberry Jam has no food dye
** Eggs - none
** Ham - none. I did find a statement on gov website saying chicken & pork are not allowed to have food dye.
** Milk - none
** Orange Juice - has food dye
** Canned cinnamon rolls - yes. I would have never guessed they put red food dye in cinnamon rolls!
So breakfast this morning had 2 out of 6 ingredients with food dye. I'm going to look at other brands of OJ and surely someone makes it without food dye. The canned cinnamon rolls are a very rare occurrence here. I can make them from scratch without a problem.
I fixed the kids peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch.
I knew the strawberry jam was okay. But honestly, I was too overwhelmed to look at the peanut butter. If it did contain food dye, I didn't have a backup plan to feed them. I choose to "stick my head in the sand" and pretend ignorance is bliss.......as I spread the peanut butter onto the slices of bread that I also was too overwhelmed to check for food dye in the ingredients.
I have no idea how to handle the amount of food dye we eat outside of our home. This morning a DFriend sent us a platter of french toast she made that had been baked in lots of syrupy sweet until they were caramelized. The food looked absolutely enticing. I thanked her for her generosity but the only thing running through my mind was....I wonder how much food dye each of the ingredients contained?