I love my school district because they spend money where it is directly related to learning and very little money on nice to have things. Here in the suburbs of Chicago, the very hot weather tends to be over by September and not start again until July, so one thing our school lacks is air-conditioning. That means that on the rare 85 degree days in September, the children have a popsicle break to keep cool.

At home I do the cheap and easy thing and make our popsicles by taking seasonal fruit (or frozen fruit if there isn’t anything good for popsicles in season) and putting it in a blender, tasting for sweetness, adding sugar or stevia till it tastes good and then freezing the fruit puree in molds. It costs less than store bought, is organic, can be made in any flavor, and actually takes less time than buying popsicles.

However, since the school cannot check my home and I might theoretically be eating handfuls of cashews while making the popsicles, they require packaged popsicles. So we buy our own for our son to use on popsicle days.

Unfortunately I have yet to discover one completely safe brand.

Julie’s Organic Sorbet Pops – The company posts the ingredients on the website in a very easy to read way and all flavors are free of the eight most common allergens plus corn. That said, they are produced in the same facility as Julie’s other products so they have the cross contamination warning on the box.

Whole Foods 365 Brand – Has a website that is so irritating that I gave up and went to the store. The popsicles also avoid all of the offensive ingredients except that they are processed in a facility along with dairy products and they have a coconut flavor and coconut is considered a tree nut. Most nut allergic people can eat coconut safely (coconut being genetically dissimilar to other tree nuts on account of it is the fruit of a palm tree), however, school rules often require the exclusion of tree nuts of any kind making this a hassle for room moms everywhere.

Edy’s Naturals – They use corn syrup in certain flavors, so I kind of wanted to hate them, but they are indeed the makers of the safest popsicles around…depending on the flavor and the size. For example, Edys Large Grape and Stawberry pops are gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free and they state that they use sugar which I assume is from beets. The ingredient list makes it appear that they are free of all of the above offending allergens and sensitivities. The small ones appear to be safe IF you get the stawberry, grape, tangerine ones, but that package is NOT certified dairy free which implies a cross-contamination risk. But from there is gets sketchy. Edy’s Pineapple contains corn starch. Mango is not certified dairy-free although it appears not to have any dairy ingredients. This is an improvement on the Coconut one which contains both coconut and dairy cream. This I personally find astounding since coconut milk is my go to dairy substitute and it makes a killer ice cream.

There are a few other brands that are gluten and dairy free but they are made with genetically modified HFCS and artificial colors and flavors. If you are on a tight budget and your child does not react to HFCS or dyes then you may want to consider them.

If you want to try a different brand, be careful. There are also a lot of sorbets and other popsicles that contain dairy. I am always shocked to read the back of the box. Allergies aside I cannot figure out why anyone would add milk to a strawberry sorbet. I can only see it being a culinary detraction that would mute the berry flavor.

So I hope this is helpful to anyone trying to buy popsicles for a large group of children. Once you know the brands, it gets easier, and as of today, Edy’s Grape and Strawberry will work for almost everyone. I am just hoping for more entrants in this area. I am pretty sure we are not the only school doing popsicle day.