vacations and food

[kppy3]

hi all,

we just returned from a soccer tournament my non- adhd daughter was in.

usually, going on vacation can be disasterious for my son (adhd) the change in routines, sleep and food stuffs create a major imbalance and lead to a lot of behavior problems.

since we began the feingold and supplements, we've managed to minimize some of the problems on our trips.

this last trip was the best so far! i packed snacks that were acceptable and tried to find the "least of all evils" when we did eat out. guess i should have posted here to ask what other's know about fast food and/or other restaurants!

we had pizza one nite with the team and ate at an applebees another. for the most part, he did fine afterwards. i noticed more irritability after the restaurant tho.

anyone have suggestions for fast food/restaurants? these cannot be avoided altogether and i was wondering what other members have found.

thanks and i misssed reading/posting here while i was gone!!
kppy

[finnmom]

Hi Kppy3
Gongratulation´s for your trip gone well Trip´s are always difficult, all those impulse´s. lacj of some rule´s etc. Nice to see you had a good time.

Sorry that I cant help you with the fast food question, since I´am not familiar with feingold at all, but I bet there are some other´s that can help.

[rosyred45]

If we eat out, it doesn't matter where, my kids always get some type of chicken. They really don't care for fast food hamburgers or even ones in diners and such.

We do the least of the evils sometimes, and mostly Mikey gets whiney if we are out and about.

Other than that, it depends on the enviornment we are around. We rarely do the playgrounds with lots of othjer kids because Mikey and Tara get wild

[catatonic]

In restaurants, they're usually really nice about helping you get something safe if you tell them your child has food allergies.

For my ADHD son, I usually opt for a piece of plain grilled meat (the type doesn't matter so much, as long as it is plain meat, not a sausage or hot dog type, just regular meat like chicken breast or steak or pork chop, whatever sounds good). Also, pasta served only with butter and garlic is a safe choice, as is rice. For vegetables, salads and plain vegetables are fine. It's usually the sauces and dressings that are a problem. Since my son has to be incredibly careful to avoid all corn, I've even taken my own salad dressing along (like when we eat at Souper Salad).

Fast food is much harder...although not as hard if you don't have to avoid corn syrup. Fried items are tricky since the frying oil often contains BHT. (That means no french fries or chicken nuggets.) Hamburgers are your safest bet, particularly if you get them without cheese and without any "special" sauces. If you have to avoid corn syrup, then just get the meat patties with no bun. Avoid hot dogs. The salads are a pretty good option, too, though again you may want to provide your own dressing.

For Mexican food, we usually get grilled fajitas for Challenge Boy. Chinese is hardest of all! Last time we went to a Chinese restaurant, my son ended up with plain white rice with beef and broccoli, and a bowl of egg drop soup. No egg rolls. Even so, he got a migraine from the MSG.

Pizza is bad...BHT in the pan spray, salicylates in the sauce, artificials in the pepperoni...We order at least one pizza that has no sauce (or alfredo sauce if plain is out of the question) and extra cheese. That's it. Boring but safer than the other options. If that's too dull, ground beef topping is about the lowest risk, and you can add pineapple, mushrooms, or other non-salicylate veggies.

On our last trip, we mostly ate from our cooler. Saved a HUGE amount of money and were able to do more fun things as a result. That's how I stopped the other kids from complaining about skipping Mr. Gatti's Pizza and Sonic...told them the extra things we'd be able to do with the money we saved.

If you're doing Feingold, do you have the Fast Food Guide? It's very helpful with the larger chain places. We go to Olive Garden a lot because the food overall is pretty wholesome and the staff is incredibly nice about helping us select something likely to be safe.

[AustinsMom]

What is the absolute most difficult thing for us is sporting events. We are huge Cardinal and Rams fans, and go to probably one game a month during seasons. And here we are all in a festive mood, and I get to be the big wet blanket because of food choices....and of course it's not fair for the rest of us to eat things when he can't have them.

So I take a modified approach. First I put a couple of No Fenol enzymes in my pocket to try to minimize reactions. Then I pick the lesser of two evils, i.e. popcorn vs. nachos with the glo in the dark cheese--go with the popcorn. From experience I have found that the nachos are not a good thing. Peanuts in the shell are usually fine. We don't have corn syrup issues, so we choose Sprite over the caffeine in coke. And if we cheat on a food coloring, we pick blue (i.e. sno cones, etc.)

And I tell him we are making exceptions, so ask him to work hard on his control. My experience is that he is more cooperative over the long run if I allow some controlled cheating when the situation warrents it.

In eating out, salad bars tend to be ok for us--he likes carrots, peas, eggs. Also baked potatoes if you can get real butter. Our issue is not the salycilates, so we have an easier time with fruits and veggies.

[rosyred45]

LUCKY DUCK
We do the same thing, the controled cheating every once in a while is actually making Mikey less sneaky. I told him before that if sneaks, there will be no way on earth that I'll LET him have somethign that is a favorite no-no.

Actually Mikey isn't too bad with caffene(sp). He's not really better per say, but more cooperative.

[catatonic]

We have season tickets for football, and Challenge Boy can't eat or drink anything at the stadium. So I put acceptable food and drink in a backpack for my husband to carry with him. They do NOT allow this! The first time they told my husband he couldn't take in the food, he said, "I'm a diabetic and my lawyer says I can." The second time, he told them our son has food allergies and unless they wanted to be legally liable for him going into anaphylactic shock and dying, the backpack was going in. (He's a wise *ss, in case you can't tell.) It seems like most of the time, if we just explain the problem, people are willing to be flexible. I mean, how big a threat is one family carrying some water bottles, a baggie of Cheese Nips and half a dozen cookies?

[AustinsMom]

So catatonic, what team are your rooting for at these football games??

[catatonic]

I can't tell you, because you would laugh SO HARD that you'd fall out of your chair and injure yourself. I can't be responsible for harming you, Dottie.

[rosyred45]

Wait waait, is it the colts?