Ingredients lists are often overlooked, however they provide a wealth of information about what your kids are eating.  Ingredients are listed in decreasing order (i.e. from highest to lowest) by weight.  Thus if you're concerned about sugar, you want to insure it's not one of the first few ingredients.  In addition the components of complex ingredients (such as chocolate) must also be listed in parentheses so make sure that you can also see what these are made out of.

I once read a quote from an athlete in which he said that if he couldn't pronounce the ingredient on the list, then he didn't eat the product.  That sounds pretty basic and yet is actually good advice.  If you don't know what the ingredient is or how to say it, you probably don't want your kids to eat it.  The more simple the product, the less processing and refining.  That then translates into more easily digestible food for your kids.  Moreover the easier it is to break down, the less gets left behind to be stored by the body.

Food additives are the result of trying to keep food production costs down and making the manufacturing process easier to control.  Many times they are less expensive than higher quality ingredients and they also increase the lifespan of a product, allowing for wider distribution.

Since there are typically a lot of ingredients that are not readily recognizable, here is a list of common food additives with their purpose and examples of each:

Acids, bases and buffers
Purpose: Improve flavor and preserve food
Examples: Citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum phosphate

Flour bleaching agents
Purpose: Lighten foods, oxidize grain to develop gluten
Examples: Nitrogen oxides, chlorine, chlorine dioxide, benzoyl peroxide

Colorings
Purpose: Enhance and preserve color
Examples: Annatto extract, caramel coloring, sulfur dioxide

Dough conditioners
Purpose: Strengthen texture
Examples: Ascrobic acid, ammonium chloride, DATEM, calcium salts

Emulsifiers
Purpose: Keep liquids and solids from separating
Examples: Monoglycerides, diglycerides, egg yolk, sugar ester, soy lecithin, calcium stearoyl di laciate

Flavorings and flavor enhancers
Purpose: Improve taste
Examples: Monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium inoinate, guanylic acid, disodium guanylate, maltol

Leavening agents
Purpose: Make batter or dough rise
Examples: Yeast, egg whites, baking soda, baking powder

Nutritional additives
Purpose: Improve nutritional content
Examples: Vitamins and minerals

Preservatives
Purpose: Keep foods from spoiling by either antimicrobial or antioxidant ability
Examples: Benzoates (like sodium benzoate, benzoic acid), nitrites (like sodium nitrite), sulfites (like sulfur dioxide), sorbates (like sodium sorbate, potassium sorbate), vitamin E, vitamin C, Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), polyphosphates, EDTA

Sequestrants
Purpose: Improves stability of food
Examples: Ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA), potassium gluconate

Stablilizers and thickeners
Purpose: Preserve a foods texture
Examples: Algin, xanthan gum, modified food starch, gelatin, pectin, agar

Sweeteners
Purpose: Sweeten taste
Examples: Sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, granular fruit sugar, sucrose, lactose, isomol, amlitol, mannitol, sorbitol, maltose, xylitol, malt, honey, maple sugar, maple syrup, molasses, rice syrup, aspartame, saccharine, sucralose (Splenda)

I know that reading ingredient lists at the grocery store is both tedious and time consuming.  You're infringing on nap time, your infant is about to have a break down, or your three year old won't stay in their ever-shrinking spot in the cart.  The last thing you have time for is reading the long list of ingredients in painstakingly small print on the side of the box.  What I recommend doing is getting to know what your kids are really eating gradually.  Buy your groceries as normal, then check out the ingredients when you get that item out to feed your kids or when you have some extra time.  Gradually phase out those products that are chalked full of processed goods and replace them with more natural products

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