Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘diet’

My friend said to me, “Look around you. There are more sick people than there ever were. The food we are eating is not nutritious enough. There is too much antibiotics in meat, too much processed food and too much cancer. People are dying because of extra use of chemicals in their life. What’s your opinion?”

I had to make a decision on the spot. I knew she wanted me to support her for her kids to recognize it as something “all mothers think”, not just her being fanatic. The problem was that it was just her being fanatic.

I said, “Really?! I am looking around and I’ll tell you what I see. My dad is 77 years old and he is a pretty healthy person. My mom is 71 years old and loves doctors and medication. 6 years ago, she came to visit us and we travelled around the North Island of New Zealand for 12 days. We spent most of the day on our feet and even trekked (with then 3-year-old Noff) for about 6 hours. My mom did very well and she was 65 then. My dad did even better than she did and he was 72 years old. I am looking around and what I see is that those sick people who eat junk, food that is not nutritious enough, consume too much antibiotics with their meat and gobble up cancer-inducing processed food, those people live longer”.

Ouch!

Before you think I am crazy, here are the facts.

Healthy kids are every parent’s hope and prayer. I remember during my pregnancy, while everyone was talking about the sex of our baby and our plans and wishes for its future success, the older people said, “The most important thing is that you have a healthy child”.

I am a very good example of a parent who thinks we can do something to change our kids’ health, although I did not grow up with that thinking. My mom raised 5 sick kids and she still thinks medication is the cure for everything. To her, “doctor” is a kind of god that must be obeyed, even when her doctor keeps her waiting, ignores her symptoms and gets things wrong. She has been sick all her life and she does not have any health strategy.

I believe that kids’ health (and their parents’ health) is an important part of parenting. I am in a constant search for tips and tricks to keep my kids healthy, so I decided to ask the Top Parenting Bloggers about their attitude towards ensuring their kids’ health.

We happened to watch a TV piece on top models’ body image, eating habits and self-inflicted damages.

Top model Jessica Gomes (24) said the pressure on models to be slim was enormous and that models are afraid to miss out on work opportunities in the highly competitive fashion industry, so they use some excessive methods to keep themselves trim. She said models run for days on a mix of lemon juice and maple syrup, which also “cleanses”. To keep their energy up and be able to work, they drink coffee and use Cocaine.

The article mentioned Ana Carolina Reston (see her in the pictures), a famous Brazilian model who died from Anorexia at the age of 21, weighing 40kg (88lbs). Her mother told the press Ana had eaten nothing but apples and tomatoes for 2 months before she died.

Although the article did a very good job showing models who decided to eat normally and still got excellent jobs, Ronit and I were left with a very painful question:

Where are those top models’ parents?

Last week, I wrote about some things that make our world seem to be operating upside down, including relaxing to accomplish more, exercising to have more time, giving to receive, listening to be heard and praising your kids so they will do better.

But life is so weird and wonderful, there are other examples of its topsy turvy ways and I just have to share them with you, because they have helped me and will likely help you too.

Is the sun bad for you?

Should you eat lots of protein?

Should you lose weight?

Should you be perfect?

Maybe this will help you choose, be happy and be a great parent too.

From time to time, I get frustrated watching my youngest daughter Noff (8) eating junk. Inside my head, I hear the scream, “Help!” I am sure many parents feel like me when their kids eat junk.

This morning, I had a revelation!

You see, in our family, she is the odd one out. If you ask the older kids what is the best sandwich in the world, they will say, “A multigrain roll with tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, avocado and alfalfa”. If you ask Noff, she will say, “Nutella (chocolate spread), Jam or Fairy Floss (Cotton Candy)”.

It is scary for me as a mother to watch her eat.

“Why would you put this poison in your body?” I ask her.

“Because it tastes great”, she says with gleaming eyes.

This morning, Noff opened the freezer, took out frozen blueberries and ate them in the car on the way to school. Then, I had a revelation.

Have you ever heard something over and over again from different, unrelated sources and you have said, “Wow, what a coincidence. I read about this yesterday” or “I got an email about this just last week”?

Well, when I get so many “coincidences” like that in a short time, I think the Universe is trying to tell me something.

One particular coincidental chain started a long time ago, when I was a kid. I listened to a “pirate” radio called “The Voice of Peace”, which played one commercial over and over again, saying “Water. Drink only water”. While they still played sponsored commercials for coke and other soft drinks, they ran this one more frequently than anything and did not get paid for it.

I loved the idea of that radio station, which promoted peace, and I loved the fact that they encouraged people to be healthy, unlike other stations that were selling air time to the highest paying advertiser.

When I was 18, I attended a workshop for girls about the world of cosmetics. Our presenter told us that if we wanted to have soft skin (“like a baby’s bum”), we needed to drink plenty of water, regardless of the price of the moisturizer we bought. Well, 3 of us experimented with this and, just like she said, after only a week, everyone commented on our wonderful, glowing skin.

But these things alone did not seem like they were going anywhere yet.

Many studies have been done on the influence of TV on viewers (in fact there have been 4,000 studies on the effect on children alone, which you should not read if you love watching TV). Excessive TV viewing raises concerns in five major areas: Health, Behavior, Outlook on life, Relationship and Education

As an author, people ask me about the origin of my stories. Almost every person who has read my stories has asked, “Are they real?” Maybe this is a good opportunity for me to write how I came up with them, because some of the stories are so real it was painful. All my characters are based on real people whose personalities I borrowed without their knowledge, but some parts of the stories are twists I created to convey a message.

Many parents around the world are having to deal with something they call “ADHD”. This behavioral disorder is socially unacceptable, thus creating embarrassment to the family on top of the challenges of handling a hyperactive child. From my experience, many ADHD parents believe this problem is genetic or otherwise unchangeable. Well, I am here to tell you there are many causes for ADHD and they are all things parents can control.

Last week, I wrote about the natural treatment of ADHD through diet. Today, I would like to talk (well, actually write) about a research done by Dr Feingold, an allergy specialist who found in the mid 70′s that 30-50% of hyperactive kids improved when they switched to a diet free of artificial colors, artificial flavors and a group of substances called “Salicylates”, which occur naturally in many fruits.