Artificial Colorings in Pudding and Gelatin Cups
by Shereen Jegtivig
I’m getting into back-school-mode (or maybe my bored kids are getting on my nerves – not sure which) so today I was thinking about things to pack in school lunches, both good things and bad things. Small, one-serving pudding and gelatin cups are popular for school lunches. They’re convenient, properly portioned and they taste good, so kids love them. Of course, most of them are crammed full of artificial colors and other additives your kids don’t need. So what do you do?
One thing you can do is to pack something else for dessert, like dried fruit, but if you want to send pudding or gelatin cups to school with your kids, be sure to do your homework first and find one that contains the least additives. I’ll warn you, it isn’t easy. I looked up coloring free gelatin and pudding cups because more than a few experts believe artificial colorings trigger behavioral problems in kids and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to add artificial colorings to a school lunch, when your kids need to be at their brightest. Of all the varieties of puddings and gelatins, only one has no added colors, the Kraft Mega Cup Chocolate 126 Oz pudding.
Sadly it’s kind of a super-sized snack, which means extra calories, plus it has artificial flavorings. It also contains partially hydrogenated oils, the main culprit for adding trans-fats, granted, it has less than 0.5 gram trans-fat (because the label shows ‘0 trans-fat’) but I don’t want any trans-fats, if possible.
So I looked at Jell-O Ready To Eat X-treme Chocolate, which is only colored with vitamin A palmitate and not artificial colorings, but a peak at the label shows artificial flavorings, and more partially hydrogenated oils. The only good point is this brand is smaller in size than the Kraft Mega Cup. In either case, I wouldn’t make a habit of sending these things to school with your kids. Send raisins, fruit cups or trail-mix instead.
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