Healthy Food, Healthy Kids

Before I had Riley, I was a nurse and worked in a family practice office. When I had Riley, I decided to stay home and did a lot of reading on nutrition and healthy eating. I made a decision to only feed Riley organic , healthy foods and to teach him to have healthy eating habits. I love to cook and I have had to become incredibly inventive because I have the pickiest eater on the planet. When Riley was little he would eat everything and it was easy to sneak in veggies. But when he was about 10 months old he got rotavirus and stopped eating meat and cheese. I've read that sometimes when children have an illness that they will associate the foods that they were eating at the time to feeling of being sick. So my son refuses to eat any meat or cheese still to this day. So I now have this addiction to healthy kids cookbooks. I probably have about 100 cookbooks all together. Yes, I know that's crazy. I wanted to share some cookbooks that I love and some of the information about nutrition that I have learned over the last few years.

We have a major problem with children and obesity. Over the past 30 years , obesity has doubled in children ages 2-6 and 12-19 and tripled in ages 6-11. In my office we saw children as young as 8 with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. To me that is unacceptable. Children should not have to deal with these diseases. It is because of what is in our food. In Europe, they do not use trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, food dyes, and preservatives. Some of them are actually banned because they know it is unhealthy. Instead of Red# 40 and yellow # 5 they use beet concentrate or carrot for color. Food dyes have been linked to hyperactivity. It adds nothing to the food. Food preservatives such as TBHQ and Sodium Benzoate have also been linked to hyperactivity and headaches. And MSG has been known to cause headaches, palpitations, and some people have an allergic reaction. And then there are my 2 favorites, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. Lets start with HFCS. It was created in 1970 and has become the most used sweetener in processed foods. Why, because it is cheap and mixes well with food. Fructose is the same type of sugar found in fruits. The problem with fructose is that it does not stimulate insulin secretion, which keeps blood sugar levels under control. Insulin also stimulates the release of a hormone called Leptin which gives us the feeling of satisfaction and tells us to stop eating. Diabetics can eat fruit even though it is fructose because fruit also has fiber. The fiber slows the release of sugar into the bloodstream. So when you eat something with HFCS your blood sugar shoots up and then you crash. Unfortunately HFCS is in everything. Check your labels when you shop. After time when you eat lots of food with HFCS, your body is used to not secreting insulin to lower blood sugar levels and this is why they are linking it to diabetes.

Trans fats are another great creation. This is something that is man-made. They hydrogenate oils so that when put in food it can have a long shelf life. It acts as a preservative. But it is a very dangerous one. It is used in almost all processed foods. Check your ingredients list on the package. If it says hydrogenated oils it has trans fat. They are allowed to market it as 0 g trans fat just by changing the portion size to equal less than 1 g trans fat/per serving. Trans fats are toxic to our body. I think I read somewhere from Dr. Oz that it takes our bodies about 2 weeks to break down 1 gm of saturated fat and it takes 58 days for our bodies to figure out what to do with 1 gm of trans fat. That's scary. Where is it all going? It disrupts the normal metabolism. Normally your body pulls nutrients from food as it goes through your intestines and then converts them into energy. When your body tries to use hydrogenated oils, your cells become hydrogenated and fat is not converted to energy. It just gets stored as fat. So , you gain weight and get fat. This is why it is such a problem for our children. Trans fats are banned along with HFCS in Europe. It's really sad that our country allows this stuff to be put in our food. This is why I buy organic. USDA organic certified foods do not contain food dyes, food preservatives, HFCS, or hydrogenated oils. And they also don't contain any GMO's , which is a whole other post. So enough ranting let's talk about cookbooks.

I have 2 favorite cookbook authors, Missy Lapine, and Annabel Karmel. Missy Lapine has 2 cookbooks called the "Sneaky Chef". Her recipes are so good and sneak a lot of veggies in. The only thing I would change is that when she cooks the veggies to puree them, she boils them. When you cook vegetables in water they lose nutrients. So I would recommend steaming or roasting them. Annabel Karmel has about 30 different books. All really yummy. She also has quite a few on making your own baby food. You can find all of them on Amazon .

I also came up with quite a few recipes myself. One is my rainbow smoothie. since Riley won't eat veggies but loves fruit I decided to make smoothies. Vegetables have a strong taste and smell when they are cooked, but when they are raw they are very mild and have more nutrients. So here it is:
1 banana
3/4 c orange juice
1 c organic strawberries
1c frozen organic blueberries
1/2 c shredded organic carrots
2 handfuls of organic spinach
1 T of honey or agave syrup

Blend in a blender and add a little ice.
makes 2 smoothies

It sounds gross, but the blueberries hide the taste of the spinach and the color.
They are really yummy.
Riley and I used to make them with a couple pieces of broccoli too.
My in-laws were even surprised at how you couldn't taste the veggies.


So those are the cookbooks.
Thank you for listening to my ridiculousness. I am very passionate about keeping children healthy. They shouldn't have to worry about their health. I hope you all try the rainbow smoothie.