The nutrition seminar was this past weekend and the topic came up, as always, of what to feed the kids. Our answer is always the same…what you feed your kids is just as or even more important than what you eat. Now you know that you have to lead from the front and they won’t do what you aren’t doing so expecting them to eat better than you is insanity so I won’t go into the importance of you eating clean but will give you information and maybe some questions to get you thinking about your kids food.
We concern ourselves with the quality of their education, the school they are going to, the safety of the buses, the classes, their fellow students. We pay for tutoring when they fall behind or to help them have a leg up for grades or sports. Phones, computers, T.V.s. Helmets to go with bicycles, gear for football, elbow pads for skateboards, lessons for pools, hand and head gear for martial arts. Protect their teeth and skulls and knees and elbows. Our cars need airbags every where and anchored in car seats, seats to boost them so the shoulder straps fit. From the day we bring them home from the hospital we utilize baby gates and cabinet locks and monitor their sleep in their safe baby beds. These kids are padded from life and protected from harm in every way but one.
When it comes to what they eat, to what they are building their bodies with, we give them what is convenient for us and not necessarily what is best for them. This isn’t with intent on our parts but it is what happens based on “conventional wisdom”, what our doctors guide us to, what parenting magazines sell and big agri-business marketers tell us is, at the minimum, okay to do. It’s not okay.
What more and more studies are finding is that the imbalance in fats and the inclusion of modified foods to our food supply is negatively effecting our kids in so many ways that if we gave it premeditated thought we’d be sick at the thought of feeding our kids anything that would harm them. Literally thinking about what goes into their mouths, what their bodies are built on and what we’re NOT feeding them takes some time and the effort to build the base of acceptible food sources but it is doable. Just like what you and I need to eat, our kids need clean, basic foods with plenty of healthy fats. I will be adding more and more articles to back this up but a lack of fat in the diets of our kids is leading to a giant problem with kids today in their emotional and cognitive development and bigger problems down the road for them in everything. A start in that direction is this article discussing the food changes at a high school in Appleton, WI and the resultant behavioral and grade improvements that followed.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/050520schooldietchange
More information is better and you know what needs to and should be done. Raise them up in the direction they should go. You’re the parent.
Well said. I remember being in the gym one day and seeing Mia walking around eating an avacado with a spoon and I thought that I can’t wait to bring my child up the same way.