kids behaving badly…the flamin’ hot connection
July 23, 2008
if you put ANY food next to a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, any of my four children will choose the Cheetos. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed some really weird behavior around these ultra-fake snackies that are heavily marketed to kids. I don’t like to be a hardcore anti anything, but the events of this past weekend have forced me to place a ban on Red Hot Cheetos in our home.
I’ve come to realize that my kids are acting like addicts around these bizarre little red puffs of who knows what. The last bag I bought was commandeered by my eleven year old and smuggled into the bathroom (gross!), where he could munch freely, or so he thought. When I started to wonder where my son had gone about ten minutes later, my other kids were starting to wonder where the Hot Cheetos had gone, and he was found out. He had enough time to put a sizable dent in the bag. At this point the Cheetos then changed hands, it was now my teenage daughter’s turn for her fix. with her baby brother and sister tailing her, she happily munched away while simultaneously trying to ditch the little ones, who were asking her for some. She flat out told them no, and started getting pretty abusive about it. I often find myself breaking up a fight over a bag of hot cheetos. They just act all stupid around them and this is why I finally had to cut the Flamin Hot cord.
My little ones generally won’t eat hot foods (not many little kids do), but Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are the exception. They will eat them almost exclusively if given the chance. I used to joke about them being on the Cheeto Diet, but now it’s not so funny to me. When I stepped back to take a good look at their behavior around these creepy little red devils, I have to wonder if there really is an addictive ingredient in them. They don’t really taste good, I think they’re quite awful. The most alarming thing on the ingredients is how high on the list the artificial colors are. These dyes are not used in the UK because they are known to cause behavior changes in children (not to mention cancer), I recently read that M & M’s uses artificial colors in the US, but uses natural dyes in the UK. So maybe the telltale red fingers are to blame for my kids acting like little crackheads when they get their hands on a bag. I don’t know.
So wish me luck, folks. I’m going to have an intervention at my house. I’m no longer going to be the enabler to four little addicts with red stained fingers. Things might get ugly, but I won’t back down. Flamin Hot Cheetos are outies!
December 5, 2008 at 10:47 pm
my sis is the same way to i think that they are so nasty
March 15, 2009 at 2:11 am
Thank you for the article. I am constantly battling to remove all foods with artificial anything from my toddler’s diet. It seems like a lost cause sometimes. I am often seen as the bad guy for denying Cheeto’s, Jelly Belly’s and any other thing that has artificial colors, flavors, etc. Thank you again and good on ya for removing this horrible “food” from your child’s diet.