Archive for December, 2007

Some say, “Well, you must just not have picky kids like I do.” In fact, three of my four kids tried out “picky,” and the youngest two would be insufferably “picky” if I allowed it. Only one of my children has happily slurped up vegetables since infancy. But they are, at this point, all very “good eaters,” as the saying goes.

The natural consequences of skipping a meal are hunger pains. It’s not abuse to provide no options to a nutritious meal besides skipping it. I have some childhood health care advice for you. Contrary to the strange traditions you see all around you, you have no obligation as a parent to provide a junk-food alternative to the family meal. The natural consequences of eating a few bites of zucchini are that you then get to eat the rest of the meal that you like better. Trust in natural consequences as a teacher. They’re “natural” if they’re the family rules. Parents have the prerogative to create consequences. Before the mac-n-cheese, junk-food era, agricultural communities had these family rules for thousands of years: one meal was served, and everyone ate it or had to wait until the next meal. You’ll spare yourself grey hair and a lot of irritation and drama if you adopt this simple rule.

You might also incorporate what my mom did: we were allowed to have one food we absolutely refused to eat. One, not two—and certainly not 90 percent of foods, like many of the kids I know. Most of us had the same food we loathed: spinach souffle. (Some of my brothers chose mushrooms as their won’t-eat food.) My mother raised eight children who will eat virtually anything.

Many parents allow each child to eat his or her own separate, customized meal. I believe this is an outgrowth of modern dieticians, pediatricians, and parenting publications always talking about offering your toddler or small child “options.” As in, offer them a bowl of processed mac-n-cheese, or a bowl of steamed broccoli. Modern parenting theory says that you should just keep offering the options, hoping that one day, the child’s natural instinct will be towards the broccoli (while otherwise eating white flour and processed cheese for years). I wonder how many hundreds of pounds of broccoli you will throw away (or eat yourself) attempting to follow this advice.

This theory and advice is worthless on many levels, and I’ll mention just three. First, when we have given children a taste for processed food by serving it regularly, any desires for natural foods change and often diminish. Sugar, for instance, is the most addictive substance on the planet, more addictive than cocaine, according to several studies. Those addictions and unnaturally altered tastes lead a child to make poor choices, most of the time.

Second, a small child does not have the wisdom and judgment to make good food choices. He knows only what tastes good, not what his body needs. Once one of my university students gave a presentation on nutrition and asked the class, “When you were 8 years old, given the choice, would you have chosen a piece of Chuck E Cheese pizza, or a plate of fruit?” One hundred percent of the class, myself included, raised their hands for the pizza. This is why God, in His infinite wisdom, gave children parents.

Third, the past two generations have been the first in history where this idea of “options” came into vogue, especially where junk food is usually one of those “options.” I trust in the wisdom of history and tradition: encouraging children to have tantrums, express an opinion about every food, and demand that parents go running to find something else is unwise counsel.

Catering to every child’s likes and dislikes can be an exercise in frustration and burnout for a mom, and it’s just a bad habit to get into. Young parents may not realize what the fruits of indulging “picky” will be. I may not be popular for saying what follows, but I’m going to do it anyway. If you allow your children to say no to nutritious foods now, you will spend hundreds of hours in your future making separate meals for each of them—preparing several different meals takes so much longer than just one. Do that today, and I promise that your child will absolutely demand it tomorrow. My alternative childhood health care advice is that you will also feel guilty and wonder what the difference good nutrition would have made, should your child encounter any of the many health problems caused by a modern diet of processed food. It’s not worth it.

Nutrition is no different than any other topic, and we have to teach children about healthy.  Would you allow your 9-year old to opt out of her least favorite subjects in school—say, math and science?  Just quit, not participate at all from kindergarten to high school graduation?  Why would we knowingly allow our children to opt out of the most important food groups they need for growth, development, energy, and disease prevention?  Yet this is what most parents do: they leave all food choices to the child, and throw up their hands, saying, “She just won’t eat any vegetables!”

As parents who embrace being in charge, you can certainly be your child’s friend, just as long as you know that you’re a parent-leader first—and sometimes your child will resist the structure you provide and even not “like” you for a short period of time.  I avoid fighting with my children about food, and I use firm but positive phrases, with a smile, such as, “This is what we’re having tonight,” or, “I’m sorry this isn’t your favorite—sometimes we have to try something a few times before it appeals to us.”  Or, “I think you’ll like this better mixed into your salad—you’re welcome to have a small helping.” 

Sometimes I point out that I don’t always get to eat my favorite foods every night, but if I did, they probably wouldn’t be my favorite foods any more.  To drive these points home, and teach about nutrition on a level even a young child will understand, I read two of my favorite books to my children about food choices:  Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, and The Children’s Health Food Book by Ron Seaborn.

I don’t plead, beg, guilt trip, wheedle, cajole, or whine at my children about food, and I don’t reward those behaviors in them, either.  The rules are clear (after you state and enforce them the first 20+ times): they can have what is served or skip the meal.  They rarely, if ever, choose to skip a meal after that initial period of testing limits.  Teach children about healthy!

My next week of blogging will be about one of my favorite topics, possibly the #1 question I am asked—and the one I care about most.  How do I get my kids to eat right?  That is, parenting skills for young children when it comes to food and nutrition.  These blogs are derived from the introduction of my program 12 Steps to Whole Foods.

Taking on the 12 steps in the program is a worthy goal for anyone, and you can make these changes whether or not you have children, and whether or not they live at home.  But one of my greatest passions in life is to help parents understand the importance of excellent nutrition early in life and implement strategies to achieve it.  So if you have children at home (or are close to people who do), this is for you.

I have found dieticians to be largely useless and sometimes harmful in the way they teach mothers about nutrition.  (I’m sure truth-seeking dieticians do exist, however.)  Keep in mind that these are the folks designing the menus in school and hospital lunchrooms.  (Enough said?)  It’s not their fault: they are taught curricula heavily influenced and even written by the wealthiest industries in America: the dairy and meat conglomerates.

My experience is that dieticians feel their main job is to push milk and dairy products, because they have been taught that these products create strong bones and teeth.  I spoke with a dietician recently who had never heard of the ingredients in my Appendix A (whole-food sweeteners and other nutrition products you can find in health food stores).  She taught in a class I attended that getting your child to drink “flavored” milk is a great idea. By that she means hormone- and antibiotic-contaminated milk with pink chemical dye and plenty of sugar added.  Dieticians also believe that to get protein, you need to eat plenty of animal flesh.

I have looked elsewhere for my own nutrition education and strongly recommend you do the same, to increase your nutrition-related parenting skills for young children.  I don’t advocate for vegetarianism, but rather for increasing whole plant foods in the diet.  But the most bioavailable sources of calcium for humans are not found in the milk of other animals.  And protein is manufactured and utilized by the human body very well when the range of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in whole plant foods are supplied as fuel.  We need look no further than our vegetarian cousins, the primates, for evidence of this.

 [more tomorrow]

My friend Lisa just moved out of state and wrote me an email about her kids’ new school that included this:

 ”We’re strongly encouraged to send snacks for our kids, but it must be raw fruit or vegetables, no dips; all bread products are whole wheat, and in the lunchroom, there’s always a fresh fruit and veggie bar available to all students.”

Public schools with leaders who understand the integral role of nutrition in learning and development CAN and DO make changes and set standards.  The results can only be positive—maybe some of the students who are fed nothing good at home get exposed to fruits and vegetables at school.  Yea to Lisa’s school—her daughters are so lucky!

I love this lady, Yvonne Sanders-Butler, principal of Browns Mill Elementary School in Georgia.  When she was hospitalized ten years ago with high blood pressure, she promised God she would “lead a healthier life and educate others.”  She’s setting the standard to stop childhood obesity in schools.

She improved her diet and started exercising, losing 60 lbs.  But she didn’t stop at revamping her own life.  She banned refined sugars and changed school lunches and P.E. classes.  Within a year, student disciplinary problems and visits to the school nurse decreased, and math and reading scores went up 15 percent.  It takes guts to send away a godmother bearing frosted birthday cupcakes, as Principal Sanders-Butler did!  Yvonne, if you ever read this, please comment here on your experience, and write me so I can congratulate you more personally.

Dr. John Maupin, president of Morehouse School of Medicine, is studying Sanders-Butler’s sugar-free school, the first in the U.S.  He says, “Studies show that when you take sugar out of the diet, you will reap the benefits of a child who is more attentive.”

I love my children’s school, an academically rigorous charter school founded by and run by parents and professionals who want only the best for kids.  They give so much of their lives to making sure our kids have only the best curriculum.  Imagine my shock when the PTO instituted a virtually all-junk lunch program, the virtual opposite of Sanders-Butlers’ menu.  One day a week, it’s pizza, cookies, and punch.  The other day the PTO sponsors the food, it’s a little better, but not much—still fast food.

Apparently, at our world-class school, we care lots about what we put in kids’ minds—but not much about what they put in their bodies.  I register my disapproval for the menu, and I’m told two things: one, I’m the only one complaining.  And two, if I don’t like it, send my kids’ lunch.  (Which misses the point entirely, because we always have and always will happily make our kids’ lunches—what I’m pleading for is that we care about ALL the kids’ health, not just my own kids.)

I show up to protest the proposal for vending machines in the middle school.  I show up to beg for a school-wide no-sugar-handed-out-by-teachers policy (birthdays only).  This week, my daughter says the substitute who uses candy as a reward and incentive for everything is subbing in her classroom.

I seem to be almost alone in caring about this issue about childhood obesity in schools and the concrete behaviors that lead to it and other health and behavior issues.  At least, I’m the only one speaking up about it.  I am always SO grateful when another parent takes the time to tell the administration they don’t feel rewarding good behavior with sugar, or making money selling kids junk, are good ideas.  I hope you speak up at your child’s school!

With more than one-third of America’s children overweight, we have TV to thank (more importantly, our choice to indulge in it).  Throw away your television (or at least leave it mostly off) for two reasons.

One, kids are burning fewer calories because they aren’t exercising while they watch hours of TV.  Most parents remember childhood being about riding bikes and playing sports.  Today’s kids spend an average of four hours a day watching TV or videos, almost 2 hours listening to music, and at least an hour on the computer.  Although some of that time overlaps (kids doing two things at once), none of them involve stretching either the muscles or the brain.

Two, while they’re watching all that TV, they’re being bombarded with their favorite characters such as SpongeBob and Shrek selling burgers and fries, Skittles, and Pop Tarts.  Kids aged 2 to 7 see 12 food ads a day—that’s 4,400 per year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.

It’s not that hard to get kids off soda.  And it’s not that hard to control their TV watching, either.  Parents can and should set limits—it’s not exclusively the schools’ job.  We have to compensate for funding cuts that mean that gym classes are becoming the exception rather than the rule.  When they get home from school, they should be moving their bodies, doing something they like so they learn that being fit is fun, not a chore.

A contributing factor to kids’s bones bowing and breaking at skyrocketing rates is that fewer than one-quarter of them are getting enough calcium—and what they do get is robbed by the massive amount of phosphorus in soft drinks.  But also, you need Vitamin D to absorb calcium and harden bones.  And kids certainly aren’t outside getting Vitamin D from the sun.  They’re inside on the computer, playing video games, and watching TV.

Finally, setting an example is critical.  Obesity expert Dr. Bob Whitaker at Temple University says, “’Do as I say, not as I do’ didn’t work with smoking and it won’t work with exercise and eating either.  If you want your children to be healthy and fit, you must live the lifestyle, too.”  We might start with this simple step: throw away your television, or at least turn it off a lot more.

One of the most important statistics, I believe, related to the obesity epidemic, is this one:

Teen boys are drinking three times as much soda as they did 30 years ago, and teen girls are drinking more than double.  I hope parents will avoid soft drinks, because of two critical factors they may not be aware of:

First, almost half of peak bone mass develops during adolescence.  This is critical to development, because by our 30’s, bone is broken down faster than it is rebuilt, making that period of childhood and adolescence very important.

Second, soft drinks are very high in phosphorus, linked by many studies to robbing the bones of calcium.  Kids who drink sodas are four times as likely to break bones as those who don’t drink sodas.

Dr. James Beaty is president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.  He says, “There’s some early data showing that even a 10 percent deficit in your bone mass when you finish your adolescent years can increase your potential risk of having osteoporosis and fractures as much as 50 percent.”

 The first goal of my 12 Steps to a Whole Foods Lifestyle is to get the family to avoid soft drinks and start drinking green smoothies.  That way, you stop robbing your body of critical bone-building minerals, and start giving your body what it desperately needs in childhood and beyond.

Before I go on to list some sobering childhood obesity facts, here’s the one that hits me hardest:

Yale University found that overweight children are routinely teased and bullied by peers and even teachers and parents.  That’s now 35 percent of all kids, half of whom qualify as obese.  The Yale study concludes that “obese children had quality-of-life scores comparable with those of children with cancer.”

Clearly, buying your child a treat every time you’re at the store, eating fast food a couple of times a week, and stocking your home with high-fat, sugary snacks is hurting your kids in more ways than physically.

It’s not “baby fat.”  It’s FAT.  It leads to a lifetime of health (not to mention emotional) problems.  Many of these kids have atherosclerosis—hardened arteries full of plaque.  Overweight children have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight adults.  And I believe that statistic will rise without major societal change, since we haven’t yet tested fully what will happen with this generation of overweight children, never before seen in history.

The U.S. spends $177 billion on obesity-related health care.  That’s $0.83 of every health care dollar.  No surprise when obesity is the primary cause of cardiovascular disease, our top killer.  Then, of course, we have the meteoric surge in diabetes, also related to obesity.  What happens in 10-20 years, when these “childhood obesity facts” are adults in the health-care system?

My next blog: what effect just one factor—SODA DRINKING—has on all this.  Because if you feel overwhelmed by all the ways your child’s health (physical AND emotional) is at risk—at school, social events, and at home—simply having a talk about soda and getting the whole family off it could make a huge difference.

I’ve been reviewing recent data on the phenomenon that threatens to bankrupt us all and damage our quality of life: the well known childhood obesity epidemic.  My web site intends to be nurturing and positive about diet, toward avoiding childhood obesity.  But occasionally, I think a good dose of reality (call it fear if you will) is appropriate. 

My next several blogs will be an appeal to parents to take a cold, hard look at this threat to our children’s well being—and our role in it as parents.  I could take up my gripe with the media (whose job is to entertain and inform), the advertisers (whose job is to sell), or the fast food and processed food industries (whose job is to appeal to our tastes).

The fact that 35 percent of our kids are overweight and headed toward disaster isn’t the fault of any of those entities.  It’s the fault of parents—whose job is to protect and nurture kids.

The media, advertisers, and junk food industries would all shrivel and die if parents would quit supporting them.  We give them life and turn them into the monsters they’ve become by watching, buying, and eating what they provide.

Yeah, I wish the earth would crack open right where all the McDonalds sit, and that they’d all fall into the center of the earth.  At 3 a.m. with no people inside, of course.  But that would not solve our problem.

And I hope parents whose kids aren’t overweight will pay attention, too.  Some kids are being fed a diet that will lead to obesity later, when the child’s metabolism changes or they begin eating more of the junk foods that are their staples.  But a lousy diet may be causing other issues, such as being underweight or having allergies or digestive problems.

Yelling at the media and the fast-food giants won’t help.  If parents don’t solve the problem of avoiding childhood obesity, no one will.