A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally (4 page)

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Authors: Sue Frederick

Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Women's Health, #test

BOOK: A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally
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Page 14
A Typical Snack List
·
Organic baby carrot sticks and dip
·
Whole-grain crackers and low-fat cream cheese
·
Organic broccoli florets and dip
·
Organic apple slices and peanut butter
·
Tofu burgers and tofu hot dogs
·
Yogurt
·
Fruit smoothies
·
Nachos made with whole-grain corn chips and low-fat cheese
·
Organic blueberries
Your eating habits send a strong message to your children. Seeing you fill up on potato chips does not encourage your child to eat carrot sticks. If you steam a head of cauliflower and enjoy it immensely, however, your child will be interested in trying it. (Maybe not now, but in the future.) Good dietary habits are formed during childhood. Children do what they see others doing. In the long run, they will choose what you choose.
Serving Meat: A Warning about E. Coli
Most experts agree it's best to base your child's meals on a plant-based diet. Dr. Gordon, the American Cancer Society, and Benjamin Spock, M.D., in his recent revision of
Baby and Child Care,
recommend raising children on a vegetarian meal plan. This doesn't mean you should never feed your child meat. If you base your meal plans around a main dish of meat night after night, your child will not get enough vegetables and whole grains. If you base your meals on rice, beans, whole grains such as quinoa, vegetables, and soy-based proteins such as tofu, he will receive all the nutrients he needs.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to serve "clean" meat to your child. Superstrains of
E. coli
bacteria have been found in hamburgers (the most dangerous form of meat, since it is ground up and handled, allowing any contaminants to spread) and have caused numerous deaths. When meat is taken from an animal carcass, it is often contaminated with deadly
 
Page 15
E. coli.
In most cuts of meat, the bacteria remain on the top of the meat and are killed in the cooking process. In ground-up hamburger, however, the contamination can be spread throughout the meat and may be hidden in the very center. If the patty isn't thoroughly cooked to precise temperatures (at least 170 degrees), there is a chance that the burger will harbor
E. coli.
Numerous bacterial pathogens such as
Salmonella
and
Listeria monocytogenes
can be found in all meats, but don't forget about the antibiotics, growth hormones, and a variety of pesticides and other man-made chemicals that can be passed from the animal to the meat to your child. Above all else, if you serve meat, make sure it is organic.
Packing a Healthy School Lunch
A healthy school lunch? Sound improbable? It can be done! Keep it simple. Make tiny sandwich squares, accompanied by tiny rice cakes and hummus. Provide fresh fruit or vegetables such as baby carrots, apple slices, or blueberries. Ask your children to help you pack their lunch so that they can choose the healthy foods they'll eat.
I always offer my child several choices: Your lunch choice today is a tuna sandwich with carrot sticks, or hot noodles with string cheese and blueberries. She'll gladly choose one and help me make it. Pack cold cooked pasta in fun shapes such as corkscrews with a tasty dressing to dip them into. On cold days, a thermos of hot lentil soup or vegetable soup, along with some whole-grain crackers, makes for a healthy, nurturing lunch.
Favorite Lunch-Box Foods
·
Sliced organic turkey
·
Vanilla yogurt with fresh blueberries
·
Baby carrot sticks with dip
·
Apple slices with peanut butter dip
·
Whole-wheat crackers
·
Tuna sandwich (cut into small squares)
·
Organic low-fat popcorn
 
Page 16
Fruit Juice and Your Child's Health
My daughter drank breast milk, water, Rice Dream, and goat's milk almost exclusively until she was about a year old. After that she continued to nurse but often asked for fruit juice. By the time she was three years old, she was drinking about 16 ounces of juice per dayespecially in the summer. Colorado has a very dry climate, and she was always thirsty but rarely drank water. It was also her first year of preschool, and she was catching lots of viruses. I began researching the effects of fruit juice on children's health and discovered that the natural fruit juice she loved so well was making her more susceptible to viruses because of its high sugar content. Indeed, digestive problems, diarrhea, failure to thrive, chronic congestion, and lowered immunity top the list of health problems being blamed on the excessive sugar found in fruit juices, even "natural" juices.
"It takes eight apples to make an eight-ounce glass of pure apple juice, and that's a lot of sugar," reports Molly Linton, N.D., of Emerald City Naturopathic Clinic in Seattle, Washington. Children are drinking far too much fruit juice, she adds. "There's so much sugar in fruit juices, it's like giving your kids ice cream all day long."
In fact, it has become the norm to see toddlers and even infants drinking bottles of fruit juice instead of milk. The
Journal of the American College of Nutrition
reports that over 90 percent of all infants in the United States consume fruit juice by one year of age, and that children under the age of five drink approximately 5 to 7 ounces of fruit juice daily, with 11 percent drinking more than 12 ounces per day.
"From all the research on juice and children's health, it's clear to me that as a parent who often used fruit juice, I was naive about the question of how simple sugars in the diet impact digestive health," says Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., an international authority on human biochemistry, nutrition, and health. "Many parents complain about diarrhea in their young children, or they complain that their children won't eat. These problems may be caused by excessive juice consumption, which causes the child to feel bad from gas and bloating. These symptoms severely diminish the appetite."
These digestive problems stem from the presence of sorbitol in juices, according to Bland. Sorbitol, a naturally occurring but nonabsorbable sugar
 
Page 17
alcohol present primarily in pear and apple juices and used extensively in "sugar-free" mass-market products, is not well absorbed and creates lower digestive disorders like diarrhea.
The American College of Nutrition concurs. At a recent conference on fruit juice consumption and children's health, researchers concluded that the amount of sorbitol, pectin, and fiber of each fruit juice determines its digestibility, and that some juices, such as white grape juice, which doesn't contain sorbitol, are better tolerated than others. The researchers also expressed concern that some juice drinkers might be substituting juice for more nutritious foods, while others might have problems digesting sugars such as sorbitol. "Both of these factors could adversely affect growth, contributing to the development of decreased weight and/or height," they concluded.
The major problem with fruit juice, however, is the sugar's effect on the immune system, reports Janet Zand, who has treated children at her clinic in Santa Monica, California, for twenty years. She sees numerous children with symptoms such as chronic sore throat or congestion, which she attributes to the sugars in fruit juices: "The excessive sugar in fruit juices, no matter which type of sweetener is used, causes susceptibility to yeast overgrowthspecifically
Candida albicans.
This can manifest as chronic nasal congestion, eczema, or throat and ear infections."
Linton also treats numerous children with this problem. "Children get too much sugar from juices. Any sugar reduces white blood cell count [an indicator of immune strength] for four hours. That's why kids get sick after Halloween or birthday parties. The viruses have a heyday after all that sugar consumption."
Wean your children from fruit juice by using a formula of one-third juice to two-thirds unsweetened herbal tea, suggests Linton. "Rose hips tea combined with white grape juice is delicious. You can slowly reduce the amount of grape juice until it's mostly tea."
Zand, the mother of a three-year-old, dilutes her son's fruit juice with water. "I've diluted it so much that now he doesn't even like fruit juice and prefers water. I carry water with me all the time. When he's thirsty, it's what I offer him, and he drinks it," she explains.
Just how much fruit juice per day is healthy for your child? The American College of Nutrition recommends less than 12 ounces per day.
 
Page 18
Natural is Better
Your natural foods retailer offers an array of 100 percent fruit juices such as white grape juice. The term
natural flavors
on the label usually indicates substances such as cassia, a natural oil from the flowers of the acacia faresiana tree used to give "body" to raspberry juice. Mass-market juice products using the term
natural flavors
often contain refined sugars, preservatives, and other chemically derived substances, yet under Food and Drug Administration definitions, they still qualify as natural flavors.
Another advantage of buying from a natural products store is that several juice manufacturers test for pesticides, sulfites, and other contaminants. Sulfite detection in grape juice is important. Although sulfites are listed as Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, some people are sensitive to them.
Natural foods stores also sell numerous brands of organic juices, free of pesticides and other harmful chemicals. Children under the age of five should not ingest alar; organic foods protect a child from having to eat or drink something with that chemical in it.
When reading juice labels, note the sweetener used. If you find corn syrup, a popular sweetener in mass-market juices, consider looking instead for a juice sweetened with white grape juice. Corn syrup has little nutritional value, is high in fructosenaturally occurring but still a sugarand can cause reactions in people with corn sensitivity. White grape juice is easier on the digestive tract, less refined, and provides vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, potassium, iron, and magnesium.
Jeffrey Bland advises, "Parents should pick 100 percent juice for their children with its natural balance of flavonoids, instead of giving them partial juices with flavorings and sugar added, which is the same as giving your child soda pop."
I was fortunate because my daughter understood why I didn't want her to drink so much juice and she cooperated. Together, we decided on white grape juice diluted 50 percent with water. Sometimes we combined chamomile tea and white grape juice. Eventually, her favorite blend became 30 percent white grape juice, 70 percent water, and a dropperful of ginger extract. It tasted like ginger ale and contained the added digestive benefits of ginger. It's easier than you think to limit your child's juice consumption, and the sooner you begin the switch, the healthier your child will be.
 
Page 19
Chapter 3
Immunizations
After your baby is born, the pediatrician may give you a card listing a "schedule" for your baby's vaccinations. A brief look at this list reveals that your baby is due to receive thirty-four doses of ten different vaccines in his first years of life, starting with a hepatitis B vaccination when he's only twelve hours old.
If you grew up in the 1950s, you witnessed the polio epidemic sweep across America, to be stopped (apparently) by the Salk polio vaccine. If you haven't seen any news reports on the dangers of vaccinations, you may not be as concerned about immunizations as you should be.
However, if you're a parent of one of the estimated 140,000 children injured each year by vaccinations, you're already well aware of the dark side of immunizations. These include immediate reactions such as fevers, anaphylactic shock, convulsions, and even death, as well as the long-term permanent effects of epilepsy, paralysis, optic neuritis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, arthritis, deafness, encephalopathy, multiple learning disabilities caused by brain damage, and mental retardation. There is also evidence linking childhood vaccines to cancer, AIDS, and chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and lupus.
"With vaccinations, we're suppressing the childhood diseases, but what is the trade-off in the long run?" asks Kathi Williams, director and cofounder of the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Virginia. "Are we trading childhood diseases for chronic illnesses later in life? Why has there been a dramatic increase in learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, autism, and autoimmune illnesses such as lupus and multiple sclerosis that coincided exactly with the introduction of mandatory vaccinations?"

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