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Health and Children- Nourishing the next Generation
The taste for Sugar
What you feed your children to a large extent determines their good health and dietary habits for life. As a parent, the time you spend nourishing your child properly is the greatest thing you can do for their development.
In today’s snack and junk food culture, in which children and adults are bombarded with snack and junk foods advertising, you have to be strong to resist them and to help your children develop good eating habits and diet. But it‘s really worth it.
The Taste for SugarThe taste for sugar is acquired through eating sweeter and sweeter foods. It can also be lost, usually with some resistance, by gradually reducing the level of sweetness in foods and drink. This can mean replacing sweetened fizzy drinks with fruit juice, diluted half and half with water.
Among fruit juices, apple contains the slowest releasing sugars, while grape juice is the fastest releasing one. Apple juice is therefore the best option. Not many children drink enough water - so you can encourage them to drink more by putting water on the table at mealtimes.
When they are thirsty give them water first and then diluted juice for the second glass if they want one. Do not give sweets, sugary foods, cola and other sweetened drinks as treats. If you do, these drinks and snacks will become associated with something good, and later in life your children may choose to "treat" themselves all the time - and it is a hard habit to break.
Instead give fresh orange or pineapple juice, diluted with fizzy water. Cola drinks are especially bad for their health because most contain caffeine, an addictive drug. It is quite amazing, given that you have to be adult to drink alcohol or smoke, that caffeine can so freely be added to drinks and given to children.
Healthy Meals and SnacksBreakfast cereals are never truly sugar-free. Food manufacturers help to make children develop a sweet tooth at an early age as most processed cereals contain fast releasing sugars and have added sugars. Instead of giving children these breakfast cereals, give them a choice of oats, sugar free cornflakes and unsweetened wholegrain cereals.
Encourage children to sweeten their cereal with fruit such as a sliced banana, apple or pear, some berries or a few raisins. The best snacks are fruit (especially berries) so make sure you always have a load of fresh appealing fruit for your children to snack on and send them to school with fruit instead of money for sweets.
When they get older and have pocket money they may well buy sweets or have them elsewhere at parties. However, if sweets, sweetened drinks and foods are not part of their daily diet, they are unlikely to crave them or develop an addiction.
Another good habit is to get your children to eat vegetables, including raw ones, at every meal. The trick is to find creative ways of preparing vegetables so that they taste good. Vegetables can be overcooked and taste bland. Raw organic vegetables like carrots, peas, parsnip chips (made by steam frying in diluted soy sauce) are naturally quite sweet and are favourites with children.
You should add jacket potatoes or mashed potatoes to meals instead of chips. Serving something raw with a meal, even if it is a tomato or some lettuce leaves, grated red cabbage or carrots, give children a taste for healthful salad foods.
There are many ways of making healthy desserts, but if a child always ends a meal with a dessert, they acquire the habit for life. Instead, restrict healthy desserts as a treat and give a child as much main course as they want to fill them up. If still hungry at the end of a meal they can have some fruit.
Children and AllergiesChildren are very sensitive and can react easily to substances. This is the first stage of a stress response that shows you whether the food or other factors in the environment agrees with them. By paying attention, you can find out early on what does not suit your child.
Many children react to food additives, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, wheat, detergents, house dust mites or exhaust fumes. Some also react to eggs, oranges and some gluten grains like oats. Watch out for the following symptoms :
• Face - Rings around the eyes, “black” eyes, facial puffiness, constant sniffling, frequent colds and earache, tonsillitis. • Skin - Itches, rashes, eczema, puffiness or water retention. • Digestion - Colic, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach ache and excessive wind. • Mental - Hyperactivity, poor concentration, being over-emotional, sleeplessness, bedwetting. • Respiratory - Coughing, frequent sore throats, swollen tongue or throat, asthma, chest infections.
All the above are classic signs of an allergy. The good news is that when the offending allergen is removed, children usually respond rapidly. Try removing suspected foods or environmental allergens for 10 days and see if your child improves. Also, try to make sure that your child’s diet is not becoming too restrictive.
Good health and nutrition can greatly decrease the potential to react to foods. After a few months, a child may tolerate a food that previously caused an allergic reaction, by not eating it so often – like once every 4 or 5 days.
Breast feeding up to the age of 4 months is best to limit a child’s chances of becoming sensitive to milk. In addition to this, the proteins in milk and wheat are hard to digest if they are introduced too early in life. This often results in allergies.
Stress in ChildhoodChildhood should be a happy time – yet trends are showing that something rather sinister is happening to the mental health of many children. Learning difficulties are common as well as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Autism and depression are also on the increase. More and more children are having problems with learning, behaving appropriately and socialising.
According to a survey by London’s City University, a quarter of all children “often” or “always” feel stressed. In the U.S there are now 8 million children on Ritalin, a habit-forming amphetamine with many similar properties to cocaine. That is 10 percent of all boys aged between 6 and 14!
Alcohol abuse is also up too, with one in six 11 year old girls drinking every week. In both the UK and the US hyperactivity is also on the increase. Autism cases range from 3 times to 10 times more in the last decade, with an increase in the late onset of Autism. This strongly suggests that something new is triggering this epidemic.
Possible causes are poor diet, vaccinations, and digestive disorders, including Crohn’s disease and Coeliac disease, both of which are more common in children than they used to be. There is a spectrum of problems from Autism at one end to learning difficulties at the other. Somewhere in the middle is the so-called ADHD.
This condition is not really a disease in that sense that diabetes or depression is. It’s more of a catch-all category into which children with a variety of problems get placed and are then prescribed all too often a drug like Ritalin.
Too many children have symptoms such as poor coordination, inability to concentrate, mood swings, inappropriate emotional reactions, fatigue, depression, digestive problems, writing and reading difficulties, poor eye-to-hand co-ordination and other perception problems in varying degrees. What these all have in common is the brain.
The Diet connection with the BrainThe brain is the most vulnerable organ of the body. Good nutrition and a healthy diet in pregnancy has a profound effect of the brain, learning and behaviour. Yet many of the important nutrients for brain development, such as essential fats and fat-soluble vitamins and zinc, are commonly missing in the average 21st century diet. These nutrients are also essential for the health of the digestive system. They have been replaced by high-sugar foods, highly processed fat, refined wheat and dairy products.
Many children with ADHD have shown symptoms of essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency such as excessive thirst, dry skin, eczema and asthma. It is also interesting to note that males, who have a greater need for EFAs than females, are more commonly affected as 4 out of 5 children suffering with ADHD are boys.
Research at Oxford University has proven the value of these essential fatty acids in a trial involving 41 children aged 8 to 12 years old with ADHD symptoms and specific learning difficulties. Those children receiving extra essential fats in supplements were behaving and learning better in just 12 weeks.
Essential fatty acids need to be converted to prostaglandins to be used by the brain and this process in interfered with by most of the foods that cause symptoms such as dairy products and wheat products. The body also needs various health vitamins and minerals for the enzymes that make the conversions happen in the body.
The vitamins and minerals that is often deficient in children include Vitamin B3 (niacin), B6 and Vitamin C, bioton, zinc and magnesium. Zinc deficiency in particular is common in children with learning difficulties.
The case for Vitamin AResearch has shown that many children with Autism are lacking Vitamin A. Otherwise known as Retinol, Vitamin A is essential for good vision. It is also needed to build healthy cells in the gut and the brain. There is something funny is going on in the digestive systems of children suffering from Autism.
The best sources of vitamin A are from breast milk, offal, milk fat, fish and cod liver oil, none of which is high in the modern diet. Instead, we have formula milk, fortified food and multivitamins, many of which contain altered forms of retinol, which does not work so well as the Vitamin A from fish or healthy lean meat.
By giving cod liver oil containing natural Vitamin A to autistic children, it has been reported that dramatic health improvements have been made, sometimes in as little as a week of starting Cod liver oil supplements.
Toxic Foods for ChildrenA diet high in refined carbohydrates is not good for anyone, but is particularly bad for children. Many parents believe that eating sweets promotes hyperactivity and aggression in their children. Many studies have concluded that hyperactive children eat more sugar that other children. Cutting out or reducing sugar in the diet has been found to halve disciplinary actions in young offenders.
A study of 265 hyperactive children found that more than three quarters had abnormal glucose intolerance. Glucose is the main fuel for the brain and body, and when blood glucose levels fluctuate a great deal all day on a diet of refined carbohydrates, stimulants, sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks, juices and little or no fibre, it is no surprise that children are affected in their concentration, behaviour and focus.
Improving Children’s behaviour and mental performanceThere was a healthy diet experiment conducted where the most disruptive pupils in a class were selected as well as those with learning difficulties. The children were between 6 and 7 years of age. For one week the children and their parents were asked to not eat or drink anything with added sugar or additives.
The children were also asked to eat more fish and put seeds on their morning cereal, seeds and fish being good sources of essential fats. In addition they were also given a fruit juice drink with added vitamins.
Four out of the twelve children showed a dramatic improvement in behaviour, concentration, reading and writing. Some had a remarkable improvement, from being only able to write a few lines on a page to writing one and a half pages. A mother, who had been skeptical to begin with said:
“I thought nothing could calm my child down, we’d seen a psychologist but it didn’t help. He was fidgety, he was hard to get into bed, hyperactive and always on the go and with occasional tantrums. Now he’s a completely different child. He’s a lot calmer and he wants to do more at school. In 2 weeks, his reading has gone up a level. He doesn’t get so over-excited and he’s much nicer to be around. We are definitely going to stick with the diet”
Of course, not everything can be blamed on diet and nutritional deficiencies. As well as adults, modern living is also proving to be stressful for children. Too many children are being pressured to perform well at school, with no time left to do nothing, or to just play. However, combine these pressures with a bad diet and too many children go over the edge into mental health problems. More than ever, our children need love, support, and optimal nutrition.
Supplements for ChildrenThe best time to start supplementing a child’s diet is as soon as they are no longer being breast fed. During breast feeding it is the mother who needs the health supplements. This will probably be when a child begins to rely more on solid food than breast milk – around the age of 6-9 months. Many companies formulate liquid or chewable multi-vitamin and mineral supplements especially for children.
You should ideally give your child their health supplement with breakfast but not last thing at night as the B vitamins can have a mild stimulating effect. Children also tend to be more susceptible to overdoses of vitamins than adults, so don’t be tempted to give more than the recommended amounts unless under the direction of a nutritional therapist.
As long as your child is eating oily fish three times a week and a daily portion of seeds, they should be getting a good level of essential fats to help their brains develop and boost their IQ. However, if they don’t eat fish or seeds every day, you should supplement their diet with an essential Fatty Acid (EFA) formula.
Look for one that contains both GLA (Omega 6) and DHA and EPA (Omega 3) which are the most important Omega 3 fats for development.
Further Reading
More about essential fatty acids and their role in preventing illness here
Traveling on holiday with children as well as other health advice for traveling here.
More about mental problems here
Teenagers have unique nutritional needs and often suffer from emotional problems and difficulties Find out more here about what causes this.
The best ways of cooking to keep nutrients in.
Healthy recipes and diet tips here
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