Bright, colourful and yummy additive free children’s parties

ADDITIVE FREE CHILDREN’S PARTIES

Preparing for the special big day:

During the planning and preparation of your parties for your little ones, it can be so easy to let most of the focus go into sorting the decorations, games, gifts, invitations and all of the other gorgeous themed items that will make the party look amazing and set the atmosphere for the big day.

This can sometimes mean that the food is then left til just a few days before the party, leaving that dreaded, rushed run to the shops, where you are hoping you can get all of the items you need without having to visit too many shops or shell out too much money, because lets be honest, there are so many gorgeous decorations and gifts that we would rather be spending our birthday budget on.

When choosing the pre-packaged foods and the recipes to make for your little ones party’s, do you often go for the cheapest and quickest? Or are you a label reader? Does the brightest option appeal to you, or will the more natural seeming option always win over anything else?

Keeping the kids happy:

When discussing additive free foods and healthy options it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that since birthday parties and special occasions don’t happen very often, we should be “lenient” or “let the kids off” for just one day and not worry about what they are consuming.

Thanks to all of the cleaver marketing and misleading labelling it can be very easy to even feel that we are being “mean” or depriving our children of fun if we don’t purchase the more colourful or more popular brands.

After seeing so many children becoming aggressive, violent, wingy, irrational, upset and having melt downs at parties, I am convinced that letting them eat a concoction of chemicals for the duration of a party is perhaps not the nicest thing a parent can do.

Unfortunately in Australia food manufacturers are permitted to put toxic chemicals into our foods, many of these substances are banned in other countries all around the world, yet are still permitted in Australia.

It has been scientifically proven on a number of occasions that many of these toxic additives are known to cause symptoms such as head banging, tantrums, asthma, eczema, insomnia, migraines, behavioural issues, learning difficulties and many other awful side effects, even cancer!

The scariest thing about all of this is that those toxic chemicals have never ever been tested in combination with each other, meaning there is absolutely no way of knowing what may happen inside our children’s bodies when they eat more than one of these chemicals at a time.

How many additives would be found in the foods at your party?

While compiling some information for the release of my recently co-authored book, Additive Free Kids Parties” my co-author and I did some research on just how many chemicals would be found at the average healthy seeming children’s birthday party and we were totally shocked!

In just one sitting, at just one party, children are consuming over 65 chemicals that are either suspected or known to cause unwanted side effects.

What’s even scarier, over ½ of those are known to be so bad that they are not permitted in many other countries and are known to cause serious health problems. Keep in mind; this was a “healthy party” many children are easily eating over 200 toxic chemicals at birthday parties, 3 or 4 times a term.

As parents, we don’t want our children to have to miss out, or to have boring parties because we are committed to healthy living and I totally agree 100% with that, just because we want our children to eat healthy and avoid consuming toxic chemicals, doesn’t mean that they should have to miss out ever! And it also shouldn’t ever mean that they have to eat food which tastes bland or looks boring.

So what can we do to make our party’s less toxic, but still fun?

My goal of this article is to show you some quick and easy hints that will help you lower the amounts of additives consumed at birthday parties, leaving the guests far better behaved and in much better moods, and making a much easier party for you to deal with on the day.

A few hints and tips:

1: Instead of purchasing pre-popped or microwave popcorn, you can avoid a few very nasty additives by simply purchasing the popping popcorn and popping it the day before the party. Even the “natural flavoured” microwave popcorns tend to have nastys in them, so are best to just be avoided all together. Save yourself some money and pop it yourself. To add some flavour to it you can sprinkle over some icing sugar or some salt and butter, but most children will eat it plain too.

2: Frankfurt sausages and most shop bought sausages are little chemical cocktails. The Frankfurt sausages are known to contain a combination of the worst kind of artificial colours and preservatives, these chemicals have been linked with causing asthma, learning difficulties, behavioural issues and much more. “Normal sausages” are also commonly found to contain more fillers than meat, as well as artificial colour, preservatives and MSG. My advice when purchasing sausages in to find your local wholesaler and purchase gluten free and organic, this can be a little more expensive, but if you buy in bulk you will save lots of money and they are much healthier.

3: At every single party I create, I always make sure there is either a fruit platter or some fruit skewers. These are so bright, colourful and healthy and are always the first thing to be eaten off the table.

4: Fairy bread can either be a relatively safe food, or one of the most toxic items on the table, depending on which ingredients you purchase for it. Your fairy bread will be perfectly safe as long as you buy preservative free bread, butter NOT MARGARINE and instead of buying the brands of sprinkles which are coloured with coal tar dyes that are derived from petrol, choose the brands of sprinkles that are coloured with natural ingredients, from food. Or simply grate some organic chocolate over the top. Yummy!!

5: Instead of purchasing cordials and soft drinks which are generally coloured with coal tar dyes and have artificial preservatives added, why not purchase preservative free fruit juice and natural mineral water? You can create your own fizzy drinks by simply pouring two drinks into a jug. I also always serve water at my parties, children can get dehydrated very easily while running around at parties so they should be encouraged to drink as much water as possible.

6: When purchasing lollies it is very easy to source the natural options, most supermarkets now sell the natural coloured and flavoured options, many shops even sell organic lollies and chocolate too and they are very affordable.

7: If you are buying corn chips, there is no doubt that the better tasting ones are the ones coated in MSG, but you need to remember that MSG and all other forms of MSG are like a magical powder, they are colourless, odourless and flavourless. They are simply a chemical that has been created in a lab to make your taste buds believe that what you are eating is yummy. Food manufacturers choose to use MSG instead of real flavour because it is cheaper and highly addictive. You will notice that if your children eat a lot of products with MSG in them, they will start to refuse to eat “blander” foods, as their taste buds are no longer being satisfied with the chemical they are used to. When purchasing corn chips, I always choose the plain ones, or the certified organic brands, they are a little blander but they are safe and they are what real corn chips taste like.

I wish you many, many fun, bright, colourful and yummy additive free children’s parties to come!