At age 30, Mike Adams was fifty pounds overweight. He suffered from chronic back pain, depression, high cholesterol, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The son of a Pfizer contractor and a clinical trial tester for some of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, he had grown up trusting conventional medicine. Extensive research led him to the truth about health: the vast majority of all diseases can easily be prevented and even cured without drugs or surgery. Within months he had cured himself of diabetes and he quickly achieved optimal health. The founder of Natural News.com, The Consumer Wellness Center, Better Life Goods, and Truth Publishing, he is known today as Mike Adams, The Health Ranger.

OLM: Tell me about what’s going on with the FTC and the FDA these days.

Mike Adams: The biggest issue that affects your readership is the irradiation of the food supply. Many people choose organic foods because they want the increased nutritional potency of those foods. Everybody knows that organic fruits and vegetables have more nutrients, more vitamins, more minerals than conventionally grown. But when you irradiate those foods you destroy the delicate phytonutrients and phytochemicals that are responsible for protecting us from chronic degenerative disease. So by irradiating the food supply, the FDA and the USDA are in fact depleting the nutritional potency of the food supply. And on top of that, they don’t want anyone to know the foods are being irradiated. They want to be able to label foods as “pasteurized” if they’ve been irradiated. Louis Pasteur would be rolling in his grave to hear his name was being associated with irradiation of foods. But it’s a symptom of what’s happening in our nation. Even this financial fiasco that is going on is all about just sweeping things under the carpet, misleading consumers, and trying to pretend these problems don’t exist. It’s what the FDA is doing as well as Wall Street.

OLM: How do they irradiate food? Do you know what the process actually is?

Mike Adams: Yes. There’s an irradiation machine. It’s a lot like the conveyor belt at the airport where you put your luggage through. There’s a tunnel and there’s a belt and the food is already packaged so it’s usually already wrapped in plastic. And then it’s just fed through this machine and it simply radiates it for a few seconds with a very high power radiation machine, higher power than what they use at the airport by the way, and then it comes out, and that’s it. It’s been irradiated, and from that point forward it’s been altered. The genes, the DNA of the plant have been altered, and so have the nutritional properties.

OLM: I know they are doing this with spinach. Are they doing it with any other produce?

Mike Adams: Well, they do it with spinach. You’re right. They are considering doing it with green onions, peppers and tomatoes. And it’s only a matter of time. You know how these things go. They will expand this effort to include other veggies. Because, you see, our federal government, in my view, would rather destroy the food supply than to try to make farmers and ranchers more accountable for the cleanliness of their own operations. You see, E. coli contamination of foods is not caused by plants. It’s caused by upstream cattle factories. E. coli doesn’t grow in plants. It only grows in animals. So the contamination of lettuce or tomatoes or anything along those lines with E. coli is really caused by upstream cattle operations. And rather than clean these up they’d rather just irradiate the food supply.

OLM: And my understanding is that the E. coli that can hurt us is actually manmade. The E. coli has to survive acidic conditions and antibiotics before it mutates and becomes dangerous.

Mike Adams: Well yeah, exactly. By Industrial Farming pumping those cattle full of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, they are breeding in, essence, E. coli superbugs. And that is what gets into the food supply when they don’t have clean operations. The problem here is upstream. And again, this is very typical of what is happening in the U.S. today, which is to ignore the root causes of the problems and simply treat the symptoms or try to mask the symptoms in some way.

OLM: Do you know of any E. coli or salmonella outbreaks with organic produce?

Mike Adams: No, I don’t know of any. I’ve heard of some organic almonds being contaminated. But they were all contaminated during the shipping or transportation phase. Organic almonds are never contaminated at the source. It’s only distributions, shipping, that kind of thing, because they don’t clean the containers. You know, the big trucks. They might ship some other contaminated food first and then they don’t wash it out properly and then the almonds get contaminated.

OLM: And what they are doing with spinach they might be doing with organic spinach, as well as conventional, right? There’s no rule that says they can’t irradiate organic spinach, correct?

Mike Adams: Well, I think there is a rule that you can’t label it organic if it’s been irradiated but I’m not actually sure about that. I’d have to check on that. Regardless, what’s happening is a trend towards irradiation of more foods and a weakening of the definition of organic. And that’s where institutions like the Cornucopia Institute, which I consider to be good friends and good allies, are working very, very hard to protect the integrity of the word organic, the definition of organic.

OLM: I’ve just recently looked at their website pretty extensively and I am pretty pleased with them. I just found out about them from… I think it was one of your emails.

Mike Adams:They represent small farms all over the country. That’s their constituency, so to speak. They are trying to protect those small farms and doing so requires the protection of the definition of organic. Because if you can let big business come in and put chemicals on the crops and chemicals in the animals and then still call it organic then, of course, the small farmers can’t compete.

OLM: It seems that they are what the FDA should be.

Mike Adams: Yeah. Yeah. (Laughing wryly) It’s very clear that the FDA and the FTC and even the USDA no longer work to protect the people, not by any wild stretch of the imagination. They work to protect the interests of the corporations that control this country. The people are protected only by the non-profits. It’s organizations like the Cornucopia Institute that are suing the USDA  or organizations like the Organic Consumers Association, which  I also support , that are suing the so called organic deputy operations. These non-profits are doing the job that the regulators should have been doing but are refusing to do.

OLM: Yeah, and you know a lot of people have a really hard time swallowing the idea that there are people in Congress, the FDA, and the FTC who want us to be sick.  But it does seem like that’s what they’re doing. That’s certainly the end result.

Mike Adams: It’s a well known phenomenon that every regulatory agency eventually becomes the marketing branch of the very industry it’s supposed to regulate and the reason is because all the people working at the FDA, or most, used to work in the industries they regulate. And the people who leave the FDA go to work at those companies. So it’s a revolving door policy is what it’s called. So it’s all the same people and they’re just pretending to be on two sides of the fence when in fact they are all working in the same direction which is more drugs, more power, more profits for the corporations.

Now none of these people actually want Americans to be sick. They don’t fall asleep at night dreaming of a nation full of sick, diseased people.  However, they are willing to look the other way while this happens.  We’ve seen the lack of integrity in Western culture where people are willing do anything to make money. We saw it with Enron. We’re seeing it right now with the big financial fallout on Wall Street where people are walking away with billions of dollars in profits while causing taxpayers to foot the bill for all the debt and fraud that they created. People in positions of power will almost always compromise the safety or the health of the public if it means more money or more power for themselves. And that’s just a basic human law.  People are inherently selfish. And there are some individuals who have high spirituality, who have learned ethics, who can overcome that basic human nature of selfishness. I think you and I are certainly among those people; however, we are in the minority. Most people think about themselves and their own financial gains, and that’s it.

OLM: The FTC is suing companies that are trying to help people, companies that say they can cure cancer or companies that say they can treat or cure disease. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike Adams: The FTC is joining the FDA in running what I call a campaign of terrorism and oppression against companies offering legitimate cancer solutions. There are many, many anti-cancer plants and herbs and natural medicines that exist. And this is widely acknowledged everywhere in the world except in the United States.  The FTC has now taken it upon itself to insist there is no such thing as an anti-cancer nutrient and anyone who says there is, is automatically guilty of a serious crime.  And they are now suing and threatening prison time and threatening bankruptcies to these companies that offer legitimate scientifically validated anti-cancer solutions. This is being done, of course, to protect the highly corrupt, fraudulent cancer industry that depends on the continuation of cancer in the population in order to stay in business. The truth is we could cure 90% of cancer right now, using what we know right now.

OLM: And the 10% we can’t cure are just people who are so far gone.

Mike Adams: Right. Those would be the 10% who got chemotherapy, who suffered freakish radiation events or things like that, that are just very, very difficult to reverse.  But 90% with confidence, we can reverse. And certainly we can easily prevent 98% of all cancers. We could live in a world without cancer. But the cancer industry absolutely does not want to see that happen.

OLM: Well, cancer, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, anything that requires continued care, is just too profitable.

Mike Adams: That’s it. And realize a full quarter of our national economy is now invested in the business of disease and sickness care. What are you going to do? Give the cures to the population? Then you will have a 25% unemployment rate. You’ll have trillions of dollars in losses, because there’s been so much investment in hospitals and clinics and oncology centers and medical schools and all of these things that are based on people staying sick and diseased. Sothey don’t want the population to be free of cancer. It would cause too much economic devastation.

OLM: Speaking of that, I think it was in one of your newsletters I read that talks about where our taxpayer dollars go. And a big chunck of that is health, or lack thereof.

Mike Adams:  Yes. The three biggest areas where our tax dollars go right now, and I believe it’s 96% of our tax dollars—that’s war, disease, and debt. If you just go look at the numbers, that’s what it’s paying for. War, which they call security. Disease, which they call health care. And debt which is just interest payments on the national debt, which is now, as of the recent financial situation, 10 trillion dollars.

OLM: And you know not one of these three could really last forever. I just don’t see how a country can spend the majority of its money on any one of these three and be profitable forever. It sounds like a house of cards.

Mike Adams: It’s absolutely a house of cards. And its ultimate outcome is not in doubt by anyone who can do math. That is the complete—the complete collapse of the United States government and a re-booting of the global economy. The USA as we know it today will not exist in a few more years. It cannot. It is mathematically impossible. Even if you could pay off all the debt. If aliens showed up with money, just paid off the debt of everybody in the world, you still have a nation that’s diseased. And you have a generation of children who are diseased and are being raised on junk food, and pharmaceuticals, and vaccines, and toxic chemicals but not getting sunlight and not getting nutrition. You don’t have a future. No nation has a future if the health of its children is compromised. So the future for the United States of America looks very, very bleak in my opinion. And it may be several generations before people learn these hard lessons and realize that if you want to have an abundant future you must invest in health rather than investing in disease.

Subscribe to Natural News, at naturalnews.com for free. This is one of the best sources for alternative health and alternative news available anywhere.

To learn more about Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, go to healthranger.org

Amy gave birth to Isaac in July of 2004. Though she wanted a drug free, natural delivery, hers was not. When Isaac was three days old, Amy and her husband, Joel, rushed him to hospital. His lips, hands, and feet were tinged with blue and neither his parents nor the paramedics could wake him. In the ER, he choked on vomit and could not breathe without intervention. He was admitted for overnight observation. Naturally Amy was anxious. Later that night, home without her baby, she experienced a panic attack.

When Amy told her home health nurse about the panic attack, the nurse told her that her attack was a sure sign of impending post partum depression and advised her to start on medication as soon as possible. The nurse called and made an appointment for Amy to see her doctor. When Amy saw her doctor, she tried to tell him what had happened, but he interrupted her, asking only what the home health nurse had advised. He started her on samples of Zoloft, telling her it was imperative they treat her post partum anxiety aggressively as it would get only worse, possibly dangerous without medication. She asked him to check her thyroid levels as she was taking Synthroid. He refused. Within hours Amy felt detached from her baby, her family, her emotions. Within days, the nightmare began.

“As I…walked past the stairs to our bedroom to lay the baby in his bassinet, I hallucinated – I saw myself standing about half-way down the stairs, throwing the baby down.” Thoughts of killing the baby and killing herself continued. Terrified to be alone with her child or alone by herself, nine days after the baby was born, Amy voluntarily checked herself into the psychiatric ward of the hospital only to be committed on an involuntary hold. It was there that she first read a circular that listed the side effects of Zoloft. But when she questioned the doctor about the obvious correlation between her symptoms and possible side effects, she was told it was impossible for the drug to cause her symptoms since she had been on it for such a short time. Instead of taking her off of Zoloft, her dose was increased. Amy was released from the hospital when she pretended her symptoms had abated, with the agreement she would stay on the medication.

After her release, the thoughts of killing her baby and herself continued. Each time the dosage of Zoloft was increased, the violent thoughts got worse. Every object became a way to kill the baby. That knife? She could stab him. Ribbon? She could choke him. Amy was so fearful of these horrific thoughts, she refused to be alone with the baby. Either her mother (who was staying with them) or her husband were with her at all times. In time, her homicidal thoughts grew to include her husband, her parents, and the family pets.

The thoughts never abated. In time, with each increase in dosage, the only difference Amy experienced was an eerie emotional detachment. Her mind chatter told her it was only a matter of time before she chose the means and killed her baby. Against her doctors’ advice, Amy finally made the decision to discontinue taking Zoloft. She titrated down and stopped the medication four months after starting it.

“Since I stopped taking Zoloft, I feel normal. I take care of Isaac by myself and stay socially active. I never feel out of control like I did on Zoloft, but the memories of losing my grip on sanity will never go away. Never again will I subject myself to drugs to ‘heal’ my mind.”

Zoloft and other anti-depressants are associated with homicidal and suicidal ideation. Increasingly, we hear stories of teens and adults who kill themselves or others while on these drugs. And though the accompanying literature clearly states thee horrific side effects as a possibility, doctors Amy Philo who prescribe these do not always listen to their patients’ concerns or dismiss them as the primary symptom rather than a side effect as they did in Amy’s case.

Amy’s anxiety was understandable and clearly caused by lack of sleep, the stress of childbirth, and a terrifying episode with her son. Her anxiety was also heightened by her prescription medication for thyroid as her blood levels were much too high.

Amy launched UNITE, an online information resource about the dangers of psychiatric drugs. On her site you will find personal stories, information about current and proposed laws, and links to additional resources.

Amy wants everyone to be aware of the Mothers Act. This legislation has passed the House with only three “no” votes and is now awaiting a vote by the Senate. This is dangerous legislation that will set up a nation-wide screening and “education” campaign to encourage the use of anti-depressant drugs and other psychiatric drugs for pregnant women and new mothers. Drugs like Zoloft. For more information on the Mothers Act and to learn more about UNITE, visit Amy’s site www.uniteforlife.org.

Chiropractic care is becoming popular. If you don’t believe us, just look around. In a big city like Atlanta, everywhere we turn we see a chiropractor’s office. It’s enough to make you wonder if chiropractic offices and nail salons are a prerequisite for a permit to build a strip mall.

In years past, conventional medical doctors were quite vocal with their distrust and lack of respect for chiropractic care. Rather than view chiropractic as an alternative treatment modality, they called it quackery and did their best to dissuade their patients from trying spinal manipulation, even when chiropractic was the treatment of last resort before spinal surgery.

There seems to be a shift in perception. Today more doctors will support or even recommend chiropractic care in cases of injury, though few agree with the true tenants of chiropractic care.

At the heart of chiropractic practice lies the belief that a perfectly aligned body will heal itself of disease or injury. For many years the belief was that subluxation (the spine being out of alignment or “out of place”) was the only cause of poor health or disease. Dr. Kelly tells us,” There was a study done at a medical university back in the 1920s, I believe. They looked at a thousand people who had died and traced the nerve fibers from the organ that was the cause of death all the way back to the spine and the spinal connection. And in 96.4% of the cases the organ and nerve that was related to the cause of death was always misaligned. And for those that weren’t misaligned, the one above or the one below was misaligned.”

Our bodies are electrical. Nerves branch from the spinal column to every organ in the body. If the nerve is impinged, the electrical current is affected and function of the organ suffers. Conversely, if the organ is suffering, it can affect the spinal alignment. Dr Kelly says, “The vertebras are almost like the circuit breakers in your house. If you overload the circuits, yes, that circuit will trip. If someone has a severe allergy and they ingest or inhale that allergen, their top vertebrae will usually rotate. The spine will just shift.”

The majority of chiropractors today are no longer the purists of yesteryear who restricted treatment to spinal manipulation believing subluxations to be the only impediment to the body’s ability to heal itself. The majority now embrace a holistic approach to health and they recognize poor nutrition, toxicity, and a sedentary lifestyle as major causal factors in disease. Many employ various methods beyond spinal manipulation including supplementation and nutritional, detox, and lifestyle counseling along with massage, hydrotherapy, hot and cold treatments, and orthotics. Their choice of practice may, however, be restricted by their license as each state sets its own treatment parameters.

One major criticism of chiropractic is that adjustments don’t hold and patients return again and again for realignment. Many critics claim there is no real progress made and that chiropractic care is no more than a “feel good” treatment with no lasting value.
When chiropractors do not take a holistic approach to treatment, this can be true. If the patient does not exercise and strengthen the muscles that hold the spine in place or continues to abuse his/her body through poor nutrition and exposure to toxins, adjustments do not hold. Dr. Kelly says, “I try to get people to look at, ‘What will best suit me to help me from needing to get worked on over and over again?’ You have to exercise. You have to eat right. You have to rest properly. But there are people who have been hit by cars or have fallen out of trees. People like that need ongoing care to some extent.”

Dr. Kelly has found orthotic shoe inserts to be invaluable in his practice. “Make sure your foundation is stable. I wholeheartedly endorse orthotic shoe inserts simply because they help people stay more balanced. You can put some custom fitted shoe inserts in somebody’s shoes and immediately their unlevel hips or their unlevel shoulders straighten back up. When you’re walking around lopsided and you do something that causes you to straighten out, it’s simple bio-mechanics. It’s going to change how long your adjustment will last.” Dr. Kelly jokingly tells us that high quality custom orthotic shoe inserts are going to put him out of business because they drastically reduce or in many cases eliminate the need for regular spinal adjustments.

Stabilizing the spine and improving the diet are essential. But we also need to remember that the muscles and ligaments provide the structure to hold the spine in place. Muscle tone and strength are essential. But people begin to lose upper body muscle strength in their 40s and 50s. Dr. Kelly recommends we combine aerobic and anaerobic exercise (weight lifting/body building) as we age. “Each each year as you get into your 40’s and your 50’s you should increase your anaerobic exercise. That can be as simple as having a two or three pound weight on the coffee table to pick up when you’re watching television to do some arm, shoulder, and wrist stretches because people get to a point when they’re elderly when they can’t even pick up a can of soup or a pot to put it in because they just don’t have the strength.”

The main issues Dr. Kelly tries to endorse or teach are as follows:

• Make sure you digest your food. Chew your foods thoroughly because if you rush your meals or drink fluids when you eat, you are not going to digest your food properly and you will not receive its nutrition.
• Balance your omega 3s and omega 6s.
• Cut back on grains. We weren’t meant to eat grains year round or to eat so many grains.
• Increase fruits and vegetables.
• Choose your proteins wisely.  Increase fish and wild game over conventional grain fed animals that are diseased, acidic, and too high in omega 6s.
• Get rid of irritants in your diet. If a food makes you tired, lethargic, or gives you a runny nose, avoid it.
• Get custom orthotics to balance you out. (Foot Levelers is the best company he has found).

At OLM we recommend you choose a chiropractor with a holistic approach. Find one who carries the highest quality supplements. Beware of any health care practitioner who lacks an understanding of nutrition and only uses supplements as the “quick fix” for acute health care problems. Don’t just treat symptoms. Work with your chiropractor to achieve your optimum health. Dr. Timothy Kelly’s treatment center is located in the Buckhead community of Atlanta, Georgia. He is available for phone consultations. Check out his website at www.drtimkelly.net.

Binging on candy and other sweets during the holidays seems almost as inevitable as death and taxes. Pick your poison. Do you prefer the chocolate Easter bunny? The heart-shaped box on Valentine’s Day? The red, white, and blue cupcakes of Independence Day? The green and red sugar coma that comes with Christmas? Or Halloween smorgasbord?

Perhaps Halloween is the worst of the bunch since the primary tradition is to send costumed children out to scam candy from the neighbors, while the other holidays do provide some ability to say, “No.”

Halloween originated as a pagan holiday. It was both a harvest festival and a day to remember the spirit world that lurked just outside your door if you were dumb enough to walk at night. The healthy, communal meal of whole fruits, vegetables, grains, beer, and animal protein, if not hoarded by the local lord, was made from the best produce in the village.

The villagers’ practice of dressing up as whatever most scared them was viewed either as a cathartic release of fear or as a sound way to be passed over by the spooks. This practice led to “trick or treat” when dressed up kids hit up the neighbors for bribes to keep evil from the door. This was all well and good when the treat was an apple or a pear.

Somewhere along the line, sugar entered our diet. For years no one knew sugar kills. But now that we do know, how can we protect our children’s health and still participate in the biggest candy holiday of them all?

The first decision you have to make is, “What do we give out from our house?”  Knowing sugar is bad, don’t get caught in the ultimate hypocrisy: withholding sugar from your kids while you poison the neighbors’ offspring. Your first thought might be to revert back to the traditional Halloween fare of apples or some such whole fruit, but we’ve all heard variations of the urban myth about razor blades or injected drugs in apples. These days kids are taught to throw away anything that doesn’t come in a package, so fresh apples will get tossed. Fear not! There are plenty of inedible gifts that are almost as cool as candy and most can be found at the 99-cent store.

Balloons are a great gift. A child given a pack of balloons will be almost as happy as the child coked up on Snickers bars. They might even like it more since you’ll be arming them for the water balloon wars that rage every Halloween.

Kids like lots of things: pencils, pads of paper, and small toys. Glow bracelets and glow sticks are favorites. Kids love them, especially if they get a cool color other than that standard DayGlo green.

Glow sticks are cheap. You can find them and other novelties online.

Checkout flashingblinkylights.com.

So what do you do with your own kids to keep them from experiencing a sugar coma?  You could host a Halloween party or have the coolest haunted house in the neighborhood and have your kids be part of the act. But if your kids want to go door to door, it seems a bit cruel and wasteful for them to collect a big bag of candy for you to throw away. At the very least, make an agreement about how much candy they can eat. But a better alternative might be Trick or Treat for UNICEF.

If they Trick or Treat for UNICEF they’ll collect change, mostly pennies, instead of candy. The money goes to needy children around the world. If you aren’t familiar with Trick or Treat for UNICEF, ask your parents. Chances are, they did it when they were kids. Back then many schools handed out little orange UNICEF boxes right before Halloween and the kids would bring their filled boxes back to school. Those pennies added up.

You could ask the PTA if they want to participate, but if they don’t your kids don’t need to be part of a group to help UNICEF. You can go online to order boxes or to download and print a wrapper to tape on a can. Your children can have the fun of trick or treat and take pride in helping others at the same time. Trick or Treat for UNICEF also gives older children an excuse to go trick or treat without being teased about being too old. Check out UNICEF online.

If the fact that sugar is poison is still new to you, it’s time to educate yourself. Please read the August issue of Organic Lifestyle Magazine, then educate your children. If they don’t understand what sugar and sugar addiction will do to their bodies, they won’t make good choices when they are out of your sight. Talk about nutrition and tell them how sugar helps cause very serious illnesses. Be sure to include these high points:

• Sugar is empty calories with no vitamins, minerals, protein or anything else healthy.
• Sugar is addictive, requiring that you come back for more.
• If you eat more than you can work off, you will gain weight.
• Sugar suppresses the immune system, which makes you sick more often.
• Sugar contributes to acne.
• Sugar can contribute to falling asleep in class or after meals.
• Have your child read labels with you in the grocery store. When given a choice between products, choose the one with less sugar. Better yet, teach them why you aren’t buying that canned or boxed processed food.
• Consistently remind your children that they will feel better when they don’t eat sugar.

Don’t be afraid to make changes in your family’s diet. Start by telling your children you love them too much to feed them foods that make them sick. Maintaining good health is

Are you using non-stick cookware? Are you aware that non-stick coating is made with chemicals that the EPA has found to be cancer causing or likely to cause cancer? 

Overheating non-stick coatings releases dangerous toxic gases that cause flu-like symptoms in humans and kill birds. However, DuPont is quick to assure us that this poses no health threat to us. In addition their website tells us, “DuPont non-stick coatings on cookware are formulated and quality tested to resist peeling or chipping which will occur if cookware is misused. However, in the event that particles from DuPont non-stick coatings are accidentally eaten, there is no danger. These particles are harmless. They are nontoxic and inert. If eaten, they pass directly through the body and are not absorbed. The FDA has stated that eating particles of non-stick coating poses no health threat.” 

So why does the EPA say one thing and the FDA another?    

And if these particles “pass directly through the body” why does a new study of 45 nursing mothers (research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) reveal that the breast milk from every woman tested was found to contain perflourinated compounds (PFCs) used in non-stick cookware and stain resistant fabrics?    

Do you really want to breathe and ingest these chemicals? 

If low-fat cooking is your goal, try vegetable or animal broth instead of fats or steam your food. If a non-stick cooking surface is essential, properly season a cast iron pan. You’ll be surprised how well it works!

1. Stock Up On Alternative Healthier Choices For Sweets

Refined sugar wreaks havoc on your immune system and acidifies your body. The less refined the sugar is, the less damage you will do to your body. See our sugar alternative page at www.greenmagazines.com/organic/alternative-sugars.php for some ideas. There are lots of sweets that are made with better sugars than the white refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup most candy manufacturers use.

2. Educate Your Kids

Remind them what it felt like the last time they got sick. Prepare them ahead of time. Prime them to be ready to make better decisions with you.

3.   Limit Your Sweets Consumption

Even Agave nectar and raw honey should be limited. Stevia is not a sweetener you need worry about, but any others, even unrefined sugars, should be eaten in moderation.

4.   Do a Trade—Negotiate

When they get back from their trick or treating expedition, offer them a trade. Make it a game. Teach them how to negotiate. It can be fun! You may also want to keep healthier alternatives with you while trick-or-treating in case you or your kids get the munchies during your adventure.

5.   Cook With Them

Bake healthier choices (organic cookies—stevia, raw honey, or fruit juice sweetened treats).

6.   Offer Your Kids Money For Their Hard Earned Candy

You can always bribe them. Hey, it’s better than making them sick! Just make sure they don’t go and buy more candy.

7.   Offer Your Kids Toys Instead of Candy

Try squirt guns, games, movies, anything they would rather have than candy. And you can give them toys that will last, as opposed to candy that will be gone quickly.

8.   Offer Trick-Or-Treaters Toys Instead of Candy

They get enough candy from everyone else. Try squirt guns, glow bracelets, or jacks. There are a lot of inexpensive small toys you can give away.

9.   Make Your Own Costumes

You can make your own costumes out of items you don’t need, and you can do it with your kids and make it fun. Reusing is even better than recycling.

10.   If All Else Fails, Set a Time Limit

If healthier sweets are not an option, you can give them a time limit. Let them know they have one day or x-amount of hours to consume as much junk as they want. Throw the rest away.

Both of my sons were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and severe learning disabilities. No, they weren’t victims of the current tendency to diagnose the majority of active or misbehaving children with ADHD; my boys truly met the criteria and then some. But much to the dismay of the physician who diagnosed my eldest, I was unwilling to put a preschooler on Ritalin. Instead, though the doctor said I was wasting my time, I experimented with dietary management. 

Two weeks later I visited the doctor and reported an amazing change in behavior. I also brought pictures my child had drawn—pictures so advanced from the ones he had been able to draw during testing, they were irrefutable proof that the diet was working. But the doctor had no interest in being proven wrong. He had decided diet management didn’t work, and he wasn’t about to consider changing his mind. 

Artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, and MSG had a dramatic effect on my child’s attention and behavior. I became one of those militant mommies who cleaned out her pantry and stopped buying packaged, processed food. I began cooking from scratch. I packed healthy lunches, and from preschool years through grammar school told all of the teachers not to feed my kids candy or junk. I never questioned the diet. My sons’ behavior validated the diet every time they ate anything forbidden!    

I’ll never forget the day my husband took the boys to the movies and fed them “plain popcorn.” Soon after their return I heard a rhythmic thumping. I found my eldest bouncing on his bed, flying three feet into the air. But he wasn’t jumping. Like a scene fromThe Exorcist, he was lying flat on his back and somehow propelling himself into the air! I called the theatre to find their plain popcorn was dusted with a powdered flavor enhancer—a seasoning full of additives including yellow dye number 5, my son’s worst nemesis. 

A few teachers who liked to reward kids with food were supportive, buying special treats for my boys or asking me to bring in acceptable handouts. A few didn’t believe in diet management. One teacher, in an attempt to prove to us wrong, bought our son school cafeteria lunches every day for more than a month. Not only did his behavior immediately deteriorate and continue to worsen, he learned how to lie. He became so unmanageable, I considered medication. And then the teacher began complaining about his behavior, through she was still feeding him cafeteria food! 

Even knowing how important their diet restrictions were, I felt guilty when Halloween, Easter, or Christmas rolled around. Having been raised on Kool-Aid, Pixie Sticks, and Twinkies, I was filled with an unreasonable fear that I was denying my children a “normal” life. Initially all bets were off for those holidays and we all suffered the consequences: atrocious behavior for a week or more and often a cold or flu as well. Over time I realized if I filled Christmas stockings and Easter baskets with their favorite healthy foods, acceptable treats, and toys, the children were happy. Halloween remained the big stumbling block.    

I made a deal with my kids. I told them they could stuff themselves with all the candy they could eat for that one day. Anything left over, we trashed. One day of eating all the food coloring, sugar, and artificial crap they wanted was still followed by at least 3-4 days of out of control behavior, but at least they experienced Halloween. 

Looking back I wish I had handled it differently. I wish I had taken my eldest son’s later approach. He raised my granddaughter on organic foods. Though she had no symptoms of ADHD, he packed her lunches for preschool and limited her exposure to anything artificial or made with refined sugar. She preferred the taste of healthy wholesome foods and could taste the difference—even in treats. 

When Halloween came around, her father left nothing to chance. She was allowed to trick or treat, but she was never allowed to eat the candy. Instead Daddy traded the “bad stuff” for the “good stuff.” He didn’t just trade one bag for another, they negotiated. One piece of organic chocolate candy made with raw sugar was worth at least five pieces from her bag. She so wholeheartedly agreed organic candy was better tasting and better for her, she threw away the “bad stuff.” When asked if she wanted to give the candy to her friends at school, she said, “No,” with a scowl. She knew it was bad and she didn’t want anyone else to eat it either.

I wish I had been half as ingenious. I wish I’d never felt conflicted about denying my boys the foods other children ate. If I had it to do over, my sons would have known they deserved the best possible diet for the sake of their health and well-being, regardless of the challenge of ADHD. They would have understood the damage refined sugar and additives do to their bodies. And maybe, just maybe, they would have skipped Halloween altogether… Nah, maybe not.