Food Coloring Allergies & Natural Food Colorings

My husband and kids are allergic to food coloring.  My husband's throat swells and breathing becomes difficult if he eats anything with red #40.  My kids all have different reactions.  One throws up whenever she eats yellow #5 and gets a violent headache when she eats yellow #6.  One gets whiney, one gets hyper,  and one has a Jekyll/Hyde reaction.  So, probably needless to say, we are hyper-vigilant about reading labels and we hardly ever go out to eat.  Even eating at family or friends houses is difficult. Sometimes people think we're crazy because we choose to live such a "natural" life when it comes to food.  Those people haven't seen the results when we slip up!  Believe it or not, children do survive childhood without KoolAid and Jello. 


We've discovered a few things that help to make us feel a little more "normal".  I love to make birthday cakes for my kids.  When they were very little, I learned to decorate cakes.  I never got very good at it, but I really had fun so they became an outlet for my creativity.  The one problem with cake decorating is that most cakes have colorful icing.  I have found a few places that sell natural food coloring but it is very expensive and the colors are not true.  Here are a few things we've used instead:
   Lavender---blueberries
   Pink---raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, pomegranate juice
   Yellow---tumeric
   Green---liquid chlorophyll (supplement) or green food supplement
   Orange---carrot juice
I haven't found a good source for blue or brown or deep red but I keep trying.  The most important thing to know about these natural coloring is that they do flavor the icing a bit so be careful about how much you use.