Why My Kids Hate Me This Month

One of my kids has said at least twice since the month began, "I HATE JANUARY!!!"   You may be wondering why this happy child hates the first month of the year.  Well, it has everything to do with our family's new year's resolution to eat a healthy, whole-food diet.  The idea is to do it for the month, then, most-likely, continue.

What do we call a "whole-food diet"?  The definition we are using is a diet containing as few chemical additives as possible.  That doesn't mean we can't still eat some of our favorite things.  And I'm not going to go all crazy and allow only organic foods.  It's just that we want to try to go more natural, and less processed.
The problem is, everything they want to eat is full of chemicals!  I guess that is my fault for giving in to their picky eater personalities.  Only one of the three will eat greater than 1 type of fruit.  None of them will gladly eat a vegetable.  Salad?  What's that?

To their credit, they like whole wheat bread.  That's because that's pretty much all they've ever gotten.  And I only serve them skim milk.

Yesterday my youngest was in tears after school.  He wanted a snack.  I offered him fruit (we had blueberries, red apples, green apples, grapes, oranges, and bananas), toast with peanut butter, baby carrots, or nuts.  He wanted a specific granola bar that is one of his stand-by snacks.

Here is a list of ingredients: coating (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa processed with alkali, whey, non-fat milk, soy lecithin, sorbitan monostearate, salt, artificial flavor, polysorbate 60), soy protein isolate, peanut butter (peanuts, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, salt), corn syrup, inulin, fructose, sugar, rice starch, polydextrose, rice cereal (rice, wheat gluten, sugar, defatted wheat germ, salt, high fructose corn syrup, whey, malt flavoring, reduced iron, ...  That's only about half of the listed ingredients, but I'm tired of copying them!  TBHQ and BHT are added as preservatives.

I didn't give in.  But I did offer him a scrambled egg (a co-worker of my hubby gave us some of her free-range chicken eggs).

I know this month will be full of wailing, tears, and gnashing of teeth.  In the end, I hope I will still be here to blog, and that my kids will find out that eating a healthier diet can be enjoyable.  Wish me luck!