Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘food’

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.

There are some things that make life so easy it makes you wonder why you never thought about them before. I did not think of adding this as a tip until a friend of mine opened my cutlery drawer and found scissors in it.

“Scissors?” she asked me, really surprised, “You keep scissors in the kitchen?”

Since many bags and packages have a little drawing of scissors on them, I assumed the best tool to use was scissors. I thought everyone had a pair in the kitchen too, but I guess not.

“What do you do when you need to open a sealed bag or cut the corner of a milk carton?” I asked her.

“I use a knife”, she said to me with that “Isn’t that obvious?” look, “And sometimes with my teeth…”

Being efficient is every parent’s dream. Time is a limited resource and the faster we do things, the more time we have left to spend with our kids. So when I meet “the girls” for an evening out, we always talk about household stuff and share ideas.

Making dinner is one particular task that takes lots of energy. I have heard many parents saying they come home at the end of a working day and start making dinner. As you know, if you do not buy fresh meat just before you cook it, you may need to take it out of the freezer and wait for it to thaw or spend valuable time to defrost it in the microwave or in tons of running water.

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.

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.

A while ago, I wrote about curing allergies and how you can relieve your kids from pesky breathing problems, rashes and food restrictions by visiting a natural therapist familiar with Muscle Response Testing (MRT) and some basic reflexology (see Curing Allergies). Today, I want to tell you about curing … emotional allergies.

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.

Many times, I have protested against the inflation in ADD and ADHD diagnosis. I believe way too many kids are labeled with ADD or ADHD when there is some other explanation for their behavior. In this post, I want to share with you some things you can do to greatly help kids with learning difficulties and perhaps un-label them.

The good news: changing the kids’ diet can help!

Very often, I meet parents who present their kids as suffering from allergies – nuts, milk, pollen, wheat – the list is long and the kids sniffle, wheeze, develop rashes and are restricted in their access to places and food. This is very unpleasant and even hopeless, because most parents and kids believe that allergies cannot be cured. Well, they can!