The most important factor in raising a healthy eater is what you eat. Yes, if you want your children to eat whole foods, you must eat them yourself.

Moms often ask, “How do I get my husband on-board with healthy eating?” This seems to be a universal problem; even the First Lady can relate.

I am very pleased that Michelle Obama has brought healthy eating to the forefront with her campaign to end childhood obesity. The only issue I have with the campaign is that it doesn’t go far enough. There are plenty of children and adults where weight isn’t an issue, but they’re eating junk foods just the same. Picky eaters universally love junk foods.

Michelle recently spoke to the National Restaurant Association. She encouraged them to take unhealthy items off their menus and replace them with healthier options.  While this sounds good in theory, the problem isn’t with the restaurants. We live in a free-market society. Menus will change, when people stop ordering unhealthy items. Restaurants need to make a profit. You can be sure, if an item stops selling, it’ll disappear from the menu. It’s not the restaurants fault we order junk foods…it’s ours.

President Obama enjoying a frozen ice
(Ingredients: water, high fructose corn syrup & artificial colors and flavors derived from petroleum)

A L.A. Times columnist wrote a piece about the First Lady’s campaign for healthy eating and  President Obama’s penchant for junk foods. He took a lighthearted look at the President and the food he regularly eats. The piece was accompanied by 13 photos of the President chowing down unhealthy junk foods like chicken wings, pancakes, cheese-steak, hot dogs, waffles, fried chicken, shaved ice, pizza, fries and cheeseburgers. (To see the photos Click Here.)

I must admit the opinion piece made me giggle, because I didn’t realize that others were noticing the same thing…the President ignores his wife’s recommendations for  healthy eating. But, it’s no laughing matter. Malia and Sasha are watching him (from the opinion piece, apparently so are others). What he does is even more important than what he says or what the First Lady’s recommendations may be for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, for Michelle and moms whose husbands are junk food addicts, there isn’t an easy answer. Many times husbands think that they have eaten (fill in the blank) all their lives and they’re okay. The truth is often that they are not okay, but living in denial.

Daddies (and sometimes mommies)  have a tendency to overlook their health issues or think of them as minor. For many young parents, time is on their side. They are still young enough that their junk food habits have not yet caught up with them. For some, they just don’t care, believing the doctor will have a prescription to fix whatever health issue may come down the road. For others, they don’t make the connection with their health issues and the food they eat.

There is no magic pill. Eating junk foods is feeding an unhealthy habit. Unhealthy habits or addictions can be junk food or a smoking habit, drinking, sugar addiction, or drug habit. The first step is to realize you have a habit and it’s unhealthy. The second is to want to change. You cannot make your spouse change, but you can make it easy for him/her to change by refusing to purchase junk foods yourself and having healthy options in your home. (There’s not much hope for Michelle, her husband eats out all the time. I don’t think she cooks much either.)

To raise a healthy eater, you must be one…your children are watching what you eat.

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Engineered foods are leaving dietary gaps replacing whole foods. Ironically, experts say, our kids are actually missing out on more nutrients than did then children of the previous century. This generation is not expected to live as long as the last. We would improve our children’s health and longevity if we would feed them whole foods.

Tino can ‘B’ helping & funny.

According to a report by the National Cancer Institute, only 1 percent of children between ages 2 and 19 meet all the USDA Food Guide Pyramid recommendations for grains, vegetables, fruit, meats, and dairy. What’s shocking, 16 percent meet NONE of the recommendations.

Your Child Can ‘B’ a Healthy Eater
B-1: Be aware that in most ways our food supply has been defiled. It’s full of processed foods, which taste great, but have little nutritional value. In addition, many times processed foods contain harmful ingredients. Learn to read labels and discern what they say. A good rule of thumb is if you can’t pronounce an ingredient, it’s not a real food.

B-2: Be vigilant in limiting these poor dietary choices. You accomplish this by purchasing whole foods and limiting processed foods in your kitchen. Your child can’t eat it if you don’t buy it.

B-3: Be a teacher and a role model. Teach your child the value of whole foods. You teach by example and by incorporating multi-sensory learning into your child’s experience. Picky eaters are disarmed when you no longer bribe or make vain threats at the table. Teaching a child to enjoy whole foods requires using all the senses, not just taste. Involve your child in the kitchen and always reinforce how wonderful the food tastes.

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“Is child obesity child abuse?” a recent USA Today headline asks. It seems Jerri Gray has been charged with criminal neglect because her 14-year-old son tips the scales at 555 pounds. After failed efforts to convince Jerri to put her son on a diet, he’s been placed in foster care.

With childhood obesity on the rise, this is a disturbing question. Jerri may have pushed childhood obesity to the limit, but she’s not alone. Today, 17 percent of preschoolers and 32 percent of grade school children are overweight.

Certainly a 14-year-old wouldn’t top 500 pounds if his parents didn’t purchase the food. It’s too bad that Jerri didn’t seek help for her son. After all, her son had to be morbidly obese for some time. The American Academy of Pediatrics found only three percent parents of obese children thought their child was overweight. Obviously, most parents of obese children are in denial.

Now the courts are involved and I find this ironic.
Isn’t it the FDA that permits over 3,000 chemicals in our food supply? It took them over 30 years to inform the public that trans fat was detrimental to health. It’s still not banned, but trans fat must now be listed on the nutrition label. MSG doesn’t have to be listed at all. Government schools have soda pop and junk food vending machines and their lunch program is filled with cheap processed foods.

The FDA not only allows Genetically Modified Foods, but insists they are harmless. People are confused because sugar is not listed in teaspoons, but grams on nutrition labels. You’d think the FDA would at least warn parents about the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HCFS) and it’s not just the calories, either. HFCS is directly related to weight gain as it inhibits leptin secretion and never shuts off ghern so the brain never gets the message that you’re full. Advertising junk foods to kids is allowed. It’s a national tragedy parents are encouraged to purchase “low fat” food items for their kids. Not only do kids need healthy fats, but “low fat” items have added sugars to make up for the taste loss that occurs when the fat is removed.

Don’t expect the government to protect your children from obesity, although, they may hold you responsible. Your children eat what you purchase and prepare for your family, even if the FDA is responsible for misleading you about our food supply. Perhaps child obesity is not only child abuse from parents, but from the FDA as well.

What not to do if your child is overweight:
DO NOT make remarks about their weight
DO NOT compare them to thinner kids
DO NOT use food as a reward or punishment
DO NOT allow your child to eat between meals or before bed
DO NOT allow your child to eat school-prepared lunches
DO NOT allow your child to watch TV and eat
DO NOT put a TV in your kid’s bedroom
DO NOT buy junk foods (soda pop, donuts, cookies, ice cream, candy, or chips)
DO NOT purchase fast food
DO NOT make them eat different food from the rest of the family

The last “DO NOT” is essential. If your child is overweight, then it’s a given your family’s diet needs to change…not just your child’s diet. (This of course doesn’t apply to children with a genetic disorder contributing to weight gain.) If your kitchen is loaded with processed foods like boxed macaroni and cheese, microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, ice cream, chips, cookies, crackers, and candy, then don’t expect that your child will have the will power not to eat them.

I don’t believe in diets, especially for children. I do believe in eating only whole foods. When you purchase and cook whole foods, your entire family will be healthy. When an obese child eats whole foods only at meals, exercises, and limits TV watching, then the excess weight melts away.

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This is a growing concern. Experts tell us this generation is the first not expected to live as long as their parents.

Children, today, grow up eating highly process foods loaded with chemicals. Often the first finger food for baby is a fast food French fry cooked in trans fat and flavored with MSG! The average number of vegetables kids eat a day is one…and that’s when French fries and ketchup are counted as vegetables!

Eating black olives from the tips of your fingers is fun!
Leah has no idea that learning to love whole foods involves all the senses. 

5 Simple Strategies:

1. Involve Your Picky Eater
The pickier the eater, the more engaged they need to be in the process of preparing food. Involve your child at every stage of food prep. Begin with grocery shopping. Have your toddler hold an item from the produce department, while you’re shopping in the store. Give older children a job to do, such as reading the nutrition facts on labels. Then get your kids involved not only in setting the table, but in meal preparation and serving. Kids love to cook. Appoint your picky eater as your under-chef. Adjust the task to your child’s age. Even toddlers can help wash vegetables, assemble sandwiches, spread nut butters and cream cheese with plastic-ware, place veggies on top of pizza, and help stir ingredients. Older kids can peel and then mash cooked potatoes, prepare salads and simple recipes.

2. Replace Junk Foods
To be successful in transforming a picky eater, fast food and junk food must replace whole food. If stopping for chicken nuggets and French fries is no longer part of your routine, then your picky eater will no longer eat them. Your food budget will benefit by eating at home and your family will be healthier for it.

Read labels and clean out junk foods from your kitchen cupboards! You’ll be fighting an uphill battle if cookies, crackers, chips, and sugar-filled drinks are found in your pantry. Replace processed snack items with nuts, fruit, and veggies slices.

3. Engage the Senses
Kids discover that veggies are yummy when you engage all their senses with multi-sensory learning during mealtimes. Have your vegetable-resistant child explore all the attributes of the refused veggie. A common misconception is that a veggie is rejected because of its taste. But according to current research, dislike of various foods most often results from the texture, smell, or even the color of what is to be eaten. Discuss the attributes of various foods with your child. Pick up and feel its texture. What color is it? What does it smell like? How does it feel in your mouth? Make it fun and your child will soon be a healthy eater.

4. Camouflage Veggies
Okay, this is NOT my favorite strategy, but disguising veggies is helpful in the short-run for the vegetable-challenged child. Getting kids to love whole foods is your long-term goal. Sneaking healthful ingredients into food has been around since moms first made pureed vegetable soup. Stealth health is especially valuable in the initial stages of transforming your picky eater. Making stews and casseroles often changes the texture and melds the flavor of vegetables with other ingredients. Smoothies (both fruit and veggie) are another easy tactic to add more whole foods in a picky eater’s diet. The texture of smoothies easily disguises veggies, so much so they can be impossible to detect. High performance blenders make fresh veggie drinks far superior nutritionally to the high salt content of canned vegetable drinks. V8 Juice® is often recommended as a healthy veggie drink for kids. One serving (5½ ounces) of V8 Juice® contains one-third of a 3 year-old’s and one-fourth of a 4 to 8 year-old’s sodium requirement for an entire day! It’s not the best nutritional choice.

5. Don’t Give Up
Kids are experts at parent manipulation and parents often give up way too soon. Don’t expect your child will love a new food the first time it’s offered. It can take a dozen times or more of offering a new food, before acceptance. Speed up the process by having them taste and experience a veggie at each meal. When you involve your picky eater in food preparation it pays off. Kids have a vested interest in something they helped to cook. And they get the added benefit of experiencing healthy foods with all their senses, before it ever appears on their plate.

Do your best to hide your astonishment the first time your picky eater tastes a previously refused food and likes it. This is what you’ve been working toward, so expect it! After all “Green food is yummy!”

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What’s wrong with people food? For the most part it doesn’t support health. The sad truth is that most of America’s children don’t eat as well as their pets. That’s saying a lot, because most pet food is highly processed. At least pet food has measured amounts of nutrients for animals.

Only two percent of children meet the U.S. Food Guide Pyramid’s recommendations for a healthy diet. One quarter of children ages 5 to 10 years old have early warning signs for heart disease, such as elevated blood cholesterol or high blood pressure. Type 2 diabetes used to be called adult onset diabetes.

Angel loves fruit!

“Adult onset” has been dropped from type 2 diabetes label, because up to 45 percent of children with newly diagnosed diabetes do NOT have type one, but type 2. Type 2 diabetes is directly connected to the processed sugary foods kids eat and is avoidable. Today, people eat one hundred and fifty pounds of sugar in a year. Yikes, that’s two-and-a-half pounds of sugar each week! Kids consume more sugar than their parents.

We have picky kids because we fill our pantries with highly processed food items and we regularly take toddlers to fast food places. We purchase snack items, lacking nutrients, because we don’t think of snacks as food. Chips, cookies, crackers, and candy take the place of healthful fruit and veggies.

I’ve heard moms say that fruit is too expensive, yet they find the money to purchase junk foods. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost of a serving of fruit or vegetable is 25 cents per serving. I stopped in Safeway today to compare the price of organic fruit (fruit is a cheaper if you don’t purchase organic) to junk foods. Veggies, like carrots, celery and snap peas, would be less expensive than fruit. I didn’t see any savings when purchasing junky snack items.

This is what I found:
One organic banana is about 35 cents.
Two ounces of organic raisins is about 40 cents.
One organic apple from a 3 pound bag is about 55 cents.

A candy bar costs about 80 cents.
A single-serving bag of chips is about 70 cents.
One oatmeal cookie from a box containing a dozen is about 25 cents.
One vanilla ice cream bar from a box of 6 is about 45 cents.

Last year, I researched purchasing whole foods on a food stamp budget. I found that it’s possible on a very limited income to eat whole foods, including fruit and veggies. Obviously, costly processed snacks (chips, cookies, candy) were not included in my budget. Whole foods, like fresh produce, whole grains, and dairy, satisfy hunger and pack a lot of nutrition into a few bites. Each calorie is nutrient-dense with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and essential amino and fatty acids. Whole foods take longer to digest, warding off food cravings between meals.

Your children, even picky eaters, will eat healthy snacks, when all you have in your kitchen are whole foods. Instead of processed snack foods, purchase fruit and veggies. Make hot-air popcorn and smoothie or fruit juice Popsicles. YUMMY! Healthy snack ideas are limitless: Pumpkin or sunflower seeds, edamame, plain yogurt mixed with a mashed banana and topped with granola, apple slices dipped in peanut or almond butter. I could go on, but you get the idea.

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What is pH?

Why is pH important?
According to many experts, a healthy body has a balanced alkaline to acid pH level. Your pH levels are directly influenced by the foods you eat.  The Standard American Diet  (S.A.D.) contains more acid-forming foods than alkalizing foods. Picky eaters many times eat mostly acid-forming foods. Unfortunately, too much acid can cause health problems. 

Parker doesn’t know what his pH level is, do you know yours?

A balanced pH environment allows normal body function necessary for the body to detoxify. This enables our bodies to resist disease. A healthy body maintains adequate alkaline reserves to meet emergency demands. When excess acids must be neutralized our alkaline reserves are depleted, leaving the body in a weakened condition. Acidosis is an over-acidity in the body tissues and is one of the basic causes of diseases. Acidosis forces the body to take minerals, including calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium, from vital organs and bones to buffer (neutralize) the acid and safely remove it from the body. Because of the strain that is put on the body, it can suffer severe and prolonged damage due to high acidity.

“The real problem is one of alkaline deficiency, more than one of too much acid,” states Anthony Sebastian, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco. “People eat plenty of acid-yielding animal protein, dairy products, and grains. The missing piece is an appreciate amount of fruits and vegetables, to produce an alkaline yield. Study after study has shown that most Americans–68 to 91 percent–don’t eat the five recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables.”

Test pH Levels at Home
Your pH levels can be tested quickly and easily right at home. In fact, every home should have pH strips to measure alkaline/acid balance in the family medicine chest, right alongside the thermometer. Both offer vital information on the body’s systems. Purchase pH test strips at a local pharmacy, whole foods store, garden nursery, or even pool supply store. Babies are born with a pH level of 7.4. Levels should be slightly alkaline and a healthy pH level is between 7 and 7.5, although 6.5 is considered in the normal range. The best time to test your pH is about one hour before a meal and two hours after a meal. Remember, that pH levels will vary throughout the day.

Green Food Is Yummy
After a glance at the following two lists, it becomes painfully clear why so many children and adults are ill. The first list contains acidic foods: most processed foods, fast foods, dairy, and meat. They are all acid forming, that is the effect they have on the body, not the taste. Some of these foods should be eaten in moderation, some not at all. Fast foods are acidic and are not part of a healthy diet. If your pH level is too acidic, for at time altogether avoid the foods on the acidic list. Dairy, whole grains, and meat are a part of a balanced diet. After pH has been restored, begin adding them back into a healthy diet.

The second list contains alkaline forming foods. Not surprising, most fruit and vegetables are on this list. These are foods to emphasize every day in your diet and to eat exclusively to bring an acidic level back to balance. Vegetables are alkaline and necessary for health. Unless a picky eater learns to eat whole foods, especially veggies, you can expect a lifetime of health challenges. To maintain a healthful alkaline blood pH at least 80 percent of total food intake should be alkaline foods and 20 percent acidic foods. This is always challenge for a picky eater, who avoids whole foods, especially veggies. The good news is you can transform your picky eater into a healthy eater with the Baby Bite steps.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Research is ongoing.

Shift pH balance:
Acidic Forming Foods
Following are foods to avoid with a high acidic pH level.
Once pH has been restored to a proper balance, include meat, dairy, and grains to about 20 percent of your diet.
All Meat
Dairy: except goat’s milk (Dairy products are a part of a healthy diet, but when pH levels are acidic, avoid dairy until your pH levels are normalized.)
Crustaceans (shrimp, lobster, etc.)
Sugar & Condiments
Coffee & Tea
Some Fruit (When pH levels are acidic avoid these fruits until your pH levels are normalized: blueberries, canned or glazed fruits, cranberries, currants, and plums.)
Most Grains: wheat, pasta, rice (although, brown rice is low acid-forming), oatmeal
Nuts: peanuts, cashews, pistachios
Fast foods
Oils: margarine, corn oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil & hydrogenated oils
Vinegar (except for Raw Apple Cider Vinegar*)

Alkaline Forming Foods
These are foods to include, especially when balancing acidic pH levels:
Vegetables
Beans
Nuts & Seeds: almonds, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, flax, spelt, lentils, sprouted seeds
Sprouts
Oils: flax, avocado, extra virgin olive oil, evening Primrose, borage & coconut oil
Most Fruit: especially citrus (lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, etc.), grapes and raisins, avocado, tomato & melons

*Apple Cider Vinegar causes one’s pH levels to become more alkaline. Apple Cider Vinegar in itself is alkaline because of its ash content. Once the body has burned the apple cider vinegar, what’s left over becomes ash. When you check for the pH of that ash and dissolve it with water, the content is alkaline. For adults the recommended dosage is 1 to 2 tablespoons in an 8 ounce glass of water, several times a day. Adjust your dosage of Apple Cider Vinegar mixed in a glass of water according to your pH level. For more info on Apple Cider Vinegar, Click Here.

Water and Goat’s Milk are neutral

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Sounds like she’s got a great kid. And I say “kid”, because our children grow up way too fast!!! Kids growing up before their time is a cultural phenomenon, resulting  from children’s TV programming and advertising. This recent phenomenon is called age compression.

Sammy says sports are a good way for kids to make friends.

Marketers call age compression, “Kids Getting Older Younger” or KGOY. Kids today are treated as teens were a dozen years ago. KGOY is a parental concern and a marketer’s golden opportunity.

Two-thirds of parents indicate the television is on most mornings, and on 81 percent of the time in the evening. Many don’t understand the power of television and admit they use it as a babysitter. According to Barna Research, kids ages two to seven watch an average of twenty-five hours of TV a week! Advertisers target children, who see about 40,000 television ads per year. Of course the majority of commercials aimed at children are for candy, breakfast cereal, soda pop, junk and fast foods.

In fact, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) found at least 80 percent of the ads shown on Nickelodeon are for junk foods! Dr. Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at CSPI, says, “Although children’s poor diets and rising childhood obesity rates are affected by many factors, one of the most important is food marketing. Studies show that food marketing attracts children’s attention, influences their food choices, and prompts them to request that their parents purchase products.”

Marketers think of children as cash cows and bombard them with advertising, using their favorite cartoon characters. They employ what the industry calls the “nag factor,” and “pester power” so kids will pester their parents to purchase worthless food. Product placement in movies and video games also increase children’s pester power.

Frequently, the manipulation of kids comes from a program or movie, not the commercials. The Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University warned parents the new SpongeBob movie is “essentially a ninety-minute commercial for junk food.”

What’s worse is that our babies and toddlers are now targeted. There is a zero to three market! Two-thirds of moms interviewed said their children asked for specific brands before the age of three. One-third said their kids were aware of brands by age two or even younger.

In addition to marketing to our babies, constant distractions are known to impair children’s cognitive development. Susan Thomas reports in her book, “Buy, Buy BABY,” a study done at the University of Massachusetts “…the seemingly benign practice of keeping the television running in the background at home can be disastrous for toddler’s development because it interferes with their ability to concentrate on their own activities. The study reported that one-year-olds’ focused play is reduced by half when the television is on, even if the children are not specifically tuning in to the programming…focused play is essential for little brains to grow.”

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After a long night of sleep, your child’s engine is on empty. A healthy breakfast, containing protein and fiber, will get his engine going. Protein and fiber will satisfy your child’s hunger and keep him feeling full until lunchtime. In fact, studies show children who eat breakfast do better in school.

Mornings are when even picky eaters are hungry. Don’t miss this opportunity to fill your child’s tank with whole foods instead of processed foods. Unfortunately, the most important meal of the day, usually consists of highly processed foods, stripped of their nutritional value.

Most kids begin the day with sugared cereals, toaster tarts, instant oatmeal, or liquid breakfast drinks. Whole grain boxed breakfast cereals have been heated to the point most of the nutrients have been destroyed. Pancakes and waffles are usually made with white flour and topped with some form of sugar. Even ”health” bars often contain lots of sugar.

“Top of the mornin’,” quips Flynn.

For those mornings when sausage or bacon is on the menu, you can add nitrates to the list of unhealthy ingredients consumed. All cured meats, including breakfast sausage, bacon, luncheon meats, and hot dogs, contain nitrites and nitrates. Once inside the body, they can form nitrosamines, a cancer-causing chemical. These carcinogenic compounds have been associated with cancer. They have also been linked with leukemia and ADD/ADHD in children.

Children, who have small tummies, and the picky eater, who is consuming limited foods, shouldn’t eat meats containing nitrates. Always look for nitrate-free meats. In addition, these products usually are high in fat, and the fat is where contaminates are stored.

So What Can You Make For Breakfast?
A healthful breakfast doesn’t have to take a lot of time. In fact, most breakfasts take only five minutes to prepare. Make rolled oats, not the instant kind. My favorite is with apples and walnuts, but add any dried fruit or mash a soft fruit like a banana into your oatmeal. Prepare enough for two mornings and refrigerate half for later in the week. All you have to do is add a little more liquid, heat, and stir. Hard-boiled eggs are another breakfast item that can be made in advance of your busy morning. Toast is great, when it’s whole grain. Spread a little butter or fruit-only jelly and you have some sticking power. Left-over brown rice from last night’s dinner can be warmed with milk or chicken broth for a nutritious start to the day.  Add a piece of fruit or yogurt. Fruit smoothies come together in a flash right in your blender. And it takes only a minute to scramble a few eggs. French toast made with whole wheat bread and top with applesauce. Don’t forget blueberries, a super way to start your morning.

Grab and Go
Don’t have time to cook? Then grab and go: Hard-boiled egg or cheese with piece of fruit. Who says that you have to have “breakfast” food? Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread. How about an egg salad sandwich or a piece of chicken from last night’s dinner? A handful of nuts, sliced fruit, and a oatmeal cookie (only if you made the cookie yourself with whole grains and honey) will be more nutritious than boxed kids’ cereal.

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