Your Child's Nutrition: Part One

There is no beating around the bush in this post! I apologize ahead of time if this just ends up making you angry. On the other hand, I am thanking you ahead of time for taking the time to read yet another opinion on health. This is an extremely controversial topic these days, the foods we allow our children to consume.

I'm going to divide this into two parts; the first being important information you need to be aware of, and second part will give some guidelines and helpful tips on what you can do about it. Allow me to begin with what exactly our children are consuming.

There are many debates going on about the pesticides, chemicals, additives, and hormones added to our foods. Are they harming us? Is it causing behavioral disorders in our children? Are they linking it to the increasing rates of autism, ADD, ADHD, bipolar, and other learning disabilities? Are our food industries concerned of nothing but their profit? The truth is that I can not answer these questions. The budget America has to research such disorders and diseases is being put towards the drugs being used to treat the disorders, such as Ritalin, rather than researching what is being put into the foods we are consuming.

One thing I am certain of, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2007, is that we consume more than 52 gallons of soft drinks and up to 200 lbs of sugar per year! This is an average of course, their are people who consume less which means their are others who consume more than that. The average teen alone consumes about a liter of pop a day, that's anywhere between 200 and 300 grams of sugar! We criticize and judge them for their emotional lows and highs that cause them to make irrational decisions. They have little control of the way they feel when their blood sugar levels are off the charts.

What does this mean to us? To many parents it's just sugar, so what? To be quite honest I don't need a pediatrician or scientist to tell me that there is no evidence to prove that the increase in sugar has no definite link to the growing numbers of people with depression, autism, ADD, anger issues, bipolar, schizophrenia, phobias, and social fears. I see it everywhere and the growing numbers are epidemic! Statisticians didn't even start tracking autism until 1991 and the numbers skyrocketed from 4,000 to 67,000 in just seven years. It is now estimated that every 1 in 150 children suffer from it. This is according to the US Department of Education.

We could say that the diagnostic formulas and procedures have changed making it seem that more children had it and never were diagnosed until recently, or we could take a step back in time and think about what we used to feed our bodies; farm raised meat, fish fresh from the rivers and oceans, fruits and vegetables grown without chemicals and pesticides, milk from cows that grazed the fields, without hormones added. Once upon a time it was rare or even unheard of to struggle daily with depression, concentration, headaches, and a number of other things people suffer from on a regular basis. Our brains were provided with the proper vitamins, minerals, amino acids, omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. There were no televisions for us to lose ourselves in either, we had to breath fresh air everyday and be exposed to the sun in order to gather our food which exposed us to even more vitamins. Our babies lived off of only mothers milk which even today offers more than any infant formula can. We will not be diving into the breast feeding versus Formula today though or the controversy over television, another time. I am targeting things that have changed in regards to our health over the years.

I have witnessed first hand, as have many parents, teachers, and caregivers, the effects that an unbalanced diet has on children and their ability to cope with their emotions and thoughts. I have taken care of many many children over the years and have personally witnessed the effects of their eating habits. I have had little to no control over most of it with only being a babysitter for so many years. Naturally I was mostly just an observer, until I started researching the effects that all the packaged food was having on them. I began asking the parents what their children's average diet was when I wasn't around. On average (aside from the few families I've worked for who fed their children strictly organic), a child eats some sort of sugary cereal for breakfast, usually Fruit Loops, Cocoa Puffs, or Lucky Charms, all having at least 12 grams of sugar (^^per serving?). Lunch is usually peanut butter and jelly, cookies, chips, and fruit snacks. Dinner is more often than not a fast food or prepackaged meal consisting of pizza or hot dogs. Where are the fruits and veggies? How has it come to this and why isn't the food industry or the FDA doing something? They have no reason to care when they are pulling in as much money as they are. That leaves it up to us, the ones in control of what are children are consuming.

I've recently read a book called The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children. This has been the most knowledgeable and resourceful book I've ever read of the effects that todays food is having on our people. It's written by Carol Simontacchi, a board-certified clinical nutritionist and a professional member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists. She provides statistics on where our world has come in the past century regarding nutrition and it's effects on our nation. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to further explore what it is we are being fed. This book has helped me to understand why I have seen such an attitude difference in the children being fed an American diet as opposed to an all natural or organic one.

Let me give you a specific example of one way I have witnessed the affects of nutrition and concentration. Keep in mind that there are many things that contribute to a child's attention span and frame of mind, I am merely presenting one of them. While teaching two four year olds to learn to read there was a very big difference in each of their attention spans. One was able to pay attention to the sounds of the letters and follow my voice and finger as I moved along each letter and word. We could go at this for half an hour before she felt the need to move onto another subject (which is rather good in today's four year old). The second child was distracted within one minute of sitting with me and looking at our books. He would start to fiddle with his pencil or stare out the window. After hearing me say his name a few times, his attention was once again redirected to the book. It would take him a few moments to remember what we were doing. After five minutes of trying to concentrate on me he grew very frustrated with it. In the meantime his friend was sitting at the other desk reading words out loud to herself, glowing with pride. The boy asked me, "Why can she read and I can't?" I replied, "Well, she's concentrating." The child replied, "What's concentrating?" I went on to explain that when she is looking at the letters she doesn't think about anything else, she isn't watching her pencil twirl around or listening to the birds outside. There is nothing wrong with paying attention to the birds or the pencil, but when a child's brain can not focus on one thing long enough to soak up all it has to offer in that time span, then he or she can never truly become professional or great in anything.

I continued to explain to the little boy that he can have better concentration skills if he chooses to eat better, more fruits, vegetables, milk that isn't chocolate, meat (he hated meat), and only choose one sweet a day. This child was fed atrociously by his parents. This was a couple years back and he is now reading much better. The other four year old always had very good eating habits, several servings of fruits and vegetables a day, organic milk and meat, no more than one sweet a day, usually consisting of a whole grain all natural cookie or organic ice cream low in sugar.

I understand that it is impossible to keep all sugar away from your child, lets be realistic. Unless you live on an Amish farm miles away from society than you will not be able to keep your child from being exposed to aisles in the the grocery store where his or her favorite Disney character is on a colorful box of cereal or Pop Tarts. Or where birthday parties and holiday celebrations offer a variety of desserts and chemical infested entrees. It is, however, possible to teach your children the importance of making healthy choices in everyday life. I can offer a few suggestions and ideas that have worked GREAT for me. These will be coming up in my next post in just a couple days!