Tuesday, July 07, 2009

The Fourth of July with Feingold

Working the Feingold Program to eliminate artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and salicylates is as enlightening as it is challenging. We’re motivated by our desire to manage our child’s severe ADHD symptoms, of course, but we’ve gained some unexpected benefit from our efforts.
It really is a lifestyle decision, when I think about. On the Fourth of July, many of us like to barbecue, and we’ve enjoyed many a meal cooked on the grill that our daughter could eat. This year, however, we chose not to cook out. Instead, I decided to go with a Mexican theme and make homemade tortillas and refried beans. It was a brave choice for me. I’m a lazy cook, I might as well admit it, and homemade tortillas and refried beans is the most labor-intensive dish I make besides spanikopita.
The first thing I discovered as I studied the recipe is that I had no acceptable shortening. The popular name brand shortening I had in my cupboard had TBHQ on the label, so I knew my daughter couldn’t eat the tortillas I’d planned to make. I had acceptable tortillas from Trader Joe’s (I also find acceptable tortillas at Whole Foods Market) so my daughter wouldn’t notice the difference. She claims she doesn’t like them anymore, so I wasn’t concerned. Out of curiosity, I checked the Feingold Foodlist and found two brands of shortening I can buy when I run out.
I used several cooking tools to make this dish—the KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook to work the dough, a potato masher to mash the beans, a rolling pin to roll out the tortillas (I can never seem to make them come out perfectly round), and a griddle to cook them. I use the recipes for Refried Beans and for Flour Tortillas from Joy of Cooking. Joy is an excellent resource because the recipes are all from scratch and they don’t call for processed ingredients.
The hardest part is getting started, so I jumped right in and prepared the dough. While I let the tortilla balls rest, I prepared the beans. My husband started the rice in the rice cooker as soon as I announced my intention to make the meal, and he kindly grated the cheese, chopped the tomatoes and avocado for me.
Tomatoes, by the way, are to be avoided in Stage One of the Feingold Program because they are high in natural salicylates. Fortunately my daughter responds well to tomatoes so she can eat them, but in this dish, a corn salsa made with lime juice and cilantro makes a nice substitute for tomatoes or even a nice addition to the dish as a whole.
Cooking from scratch does take more time and effort than preparing convenience foods. However, much of what we make from scratch—from salad dressings to easy cakes—doesn’t take that much more effort since we’re in the kitchen preparing a meal anyway. We’ve gotten comfortable with our style of cooking, it tastes better, and we feel that it’s worth it.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

The Feingold Foodlist

Today, I’m preparing to go grocery shopping. Buying food, not cooking it, is at the heart of making the Feingold Program work. The Feingold Foodlist is the cornerstone of the program, the grocery shopping Bible of those who follow it. I keep my Foodlist in my glove compartment so I don’t have to worry about forgetting it at home.
What is the Foodlist, anyway? Most of the food available in grocery stores is processed with artificial colors and flavors, as well as preservatives to keep it from spoiling on the shelf. Simply reading labels while I shop won’t help me much because food companies are not required to list trace amount of products used to prepare the food. The packaging may claim that the product is “all-natural” with no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives, but if the product is not on the Foodlist, it is not acceptable.
The wonderful folks at the Feingold Association of the United States patiently research all the products in our food supply, and if a company won’t release all of the ingredients used in a product, that product won’t go on the Foodlist. The booklet is divided into categories such as beverages, baking products, deli meat, convenience foods, snacks, and soups. I am restricted to buying only the products that are on the list, but with patience and determination, I’ve become familiar with the list and created shopping habits that support the program.
What does this mean for my shopping excursion, practically speaking? I make a shopping list that identifies specific flavors of specific brands of specific products. I write down which flavors of which brands of soy yogurt I can buy. The same goes for potato chips, cookies, cooking oil, pasta, bread, and deli meat. I don’t have to be concerned about items such as flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and fresh meat. For fresh vegetables and produce, I need only be mindful of which high salicylate items I’m avoiding. My list includes berries, peaches, plums, and peppers, to name a few.
This seems like a lot of effort, figuring out what to buy. Yet all of us make shopping choices all the time. We have certain brands of certain product that we prefer, mostly as a result of advertising. The difference is for me is that the behavior of my child and her academic and social success are at stake.
I don’t rely on product preference as much as I rely on food companies to produce foods without harmful additives. With our growing awareness of the perils of eating American food, I can only hope that food companies will read the writing on the wall and make my job easier. For now, however, I’m relying on the Feingold Foodlist.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Experiments with Medication

Yesterday morning, my daughter pulled off half her clothes and ran around the backyard drenching herself with the hose. By evening, she had peed on the bathroom floor without telling anyone about it, thrown a screaming fit over her punishment for the morning’s antics—not going swimming, and jumped fully clothed into the baby pool when we went to pick her sister up from the pool. You could say that all of the above behavior resulted from a lack of supervision on my part, but is that the behavior of a typical six-year-old?
Yes, my daughter has severe ADHD, which means that she has a devil of a time sitting still, paying attention, and thinking before acting. For the past couple of years, we have controlled her behavior with nutrition, eliminating artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and salicylates from her diet. This strict nutritional regimen, known as the Feingold Program, has worked wonders. Ana is not nearly as hyperactive and impulsive as she had been before we started the program, but she still has such difficulty paying attention that it affected her schoolwork. So we decided to try medication.
The first medication we tried had none of the offending ingredients we work so hard to avoid, but it caused alarming side effects. Now we’re trying another med that is only manufactured with artificial colors in pill form and artificial flavors in liquid form. We’re trying it anyway.
Why? Why would we give our child something we know is not good for her? Perhaps the medication will be strong enough to counteract the effects of the dye, or perhaps not. We’ll never know unless we try, and with her academic and social success at stake, we feel obligated to try. Such is the adventure of raising a child with ADHD.