If your child stopped eating E numbered food what could they eat?

[Starxx]

...what could they actually enjoy??

Star xx

Hmm. There's lots of lovely, unprocessed food out there, isn't there? Do you mean sweets?

Oh yes, because food without E numbers is so BORING

Meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, pasta, rice..... just normal food.

We do have the odd bit of processed food and DD does enjoy sweets and stuff, but she also eats lots of unprocessed food too.

Ummm proper food??

Not sure what the question here is really- cook it yourself and it'll be E free!

"E numbers" includes lots of natural things like caramel as well as the kinds of additives you are probably thinking of

Can you be a bit more specific about what you're trying to avoid? For example, Vitamin C has an E number and it might be unwise to cut that out.

Someone has listed the obvious. Then there's things like chocolate, crisps, some sweets don't have colourings, etc. in them. Fudge is popular in our house.

Majority of the stuff my son has is pretty much cooked and not processed (i.e. fresh veg, fresh meat, fruit etc etc) .... but we are looking at cutting down on E numbers and having looked into it further, all the 'treat' stuff that he does have (such as Apple & Blackcurrant squash and even popcorn) has E numbers in it. Im sure there is stuff we just cant avoid but still, he LOVES his drink!! Is there an alternative....would fresh apple juice be better for him or is there too much natural sugar in that too??

As I said before, an "E number" isn't automatically a sign of terrible chemical additives. All kinds of perfectly natural things get allocated an E-number, simply because they are added to food. You need to look into each individual one and make a decision about it rather than making a blanket decision. You might find one product has 4 ingredients with E-numbers, but they are all generally agreed to be fine and harmless, where another might have only one, but its associated with problems.

There are loads of natural fruit juices, and natural sugar is loads better than the processed equivalent. Not sure what you're asking tbh.

There is a list somewhere on the internet of the really bad - 12 I think - E numbers which are banned in many other countries except the UK, can't google from here. All are recognised to be very bad for everyone but particularly children.
As I recall bright yellow, blue and red are the top 3. many others are fairly harmless.

You can buy your own popping corn and just drizzle a bit of syrup over if you must have sugar on it, though it's fine as it is.

Squashes are a bit more tricky. Rocks Organic is a good one, though is expensive, and the co op blackcurrant high juice one has no nasties in there. It does cost more, but then squash is probably best served as an occasional treat rather than a regular drink. You may have to wean your son off the cheaper stuff.

Here it is

Thanks all :)x

Bit late in the year, but it's not actually difficult to make your own squash if you can get hold of fruit.

You need to find out what are the azo dyes. Even natural dyes have E numbers. Avoiding all of them I suspect will be difficult.
Particularly bad ones are: E102 (Tartrazine) E110 (sunset yellow)E124 (ponceau 4R) E133 (brilliant blue)

On the other hand you can also have:
E140 (chlorophyls-naturally present in any green leaves and vegetables) E160a (Carotene-orange colour from carrots)
E330 (citric acid-from citrus fruit)
E330-E305 are all different varients of vitamin C.

If you want to avoid these you probably need to avoid all fruit and vegetables pretty much

Nowadays there are planty of options without nasty E numbers, when my brother had problems in the early 80s it was alomst impossible to get sweets (except toffees or chocolates) squash (none at first, then there was one type he could have for ages) jelly, yoghurts (one type only). We had a book called "E for additives" where we could check ones we didn't know.

Instead of Apple & Blackcurrant Squash - Ribena - though in moderation - its not completely additive free, but my DD is intolerant & its doesn't have any bad ones, Roses Lime Cordial is okay too as are all the organic ones

its just a case of reading the labels, there really ISN"T any need to cut anything out these days at all, as there are lots of companies that know parents prefer additive free & that many kids are intolerant & trust me its a LOT easier than it was 9 yrs ago, when I pretty much had to make EVERYTHING for DD -

I agree with AMiS.