How Healthy is our Childs Lunch?

by Tye Dwyer

What can we do?

High carb snacks that our bodies turn to sugar are addictive. The fast food giants know this, so they spend thousand of dollars to test chemicals that enhance junk food. This creates even more of a mental and physical addiction to their food. The brain remembers “oooh, that felt good,” even though we can become hyped up, and then drop low after the surge of carbs. I like to relate it to a heroin user trying kick the habit of its use. Coming down off the drug feels awful, but the brain wants more; it doesn’t remember the bad of the come-down, only that it felt good when high.

So we make attempts to win this war against addictive carbs. We pack our kids a healthy lunch of a protein, vegetables and complex carbs. The question we all ask then is -- will they eat it, or trade it, or throw it away? Can they stand the finger pointing of the peers saying, “Eew, what’s that you’re eating?”

Are we doomed, fighting a war we can never win? When our children eat these empty foods, their bodies have to sacrifice their own stored nutrients to digest and assimilate them, leaving them more nutrient-starved than before they ate the junk. The fast food giants know this too. Think about it. How many apples can you eat before your body says, I’ve had enough; then think, how many potato chips can you eat? That’s why you can’t eat just one Lay’s potato chip!

Some parents may think, I can substitute juice for soda, and a snack pack for chips. But is this helping? Some juices are just as high in sugar as soda. Snack packs and other processed foods have trans fats that can harm brain function and development. The FDA is aware of the negative impact of trans fats, and we now have a law requiring food labels to list the amount of trans fats found in the product. Don’t be fooled, though -- if you read “0” trans fats, it may not really be so. If a product has below .5% of trans fats, it’s not required to list it; thus the “0” claim is allowable. Read the ingredients, and look for “partially hydrogenated.” Also, the fast food giants make the serving size smaller so they don’t have to list the trans fats. Clever!

The good news is -- I have found a way to fight back! We can make sure our kids have a fighting chance and are getting the nutrients they need by supplementing their diets. You see, our bodies are made up of water and minerals; take away the water and what’s left? -- minerals. Because we are predominantly made of minerals, our bodies’ need for them is large. The more we deplete them, the more we crave foods. Most of us, especially our kids, often don’t have enough food choices around us to choose nutrient-rich foods. Years ago I read a study done with a dozen of pre-school children. For one month during the day they were allowed to make their own food choices. They had a large array of options, from junk to nutrient-rich. Scientists recorded the choices they made. What they found was, when left to their own, the children at first chose some junk, but then balanced it out with nutrient-rich foods.

We must address minerals first because that is what we are made of, and we can’t assimilate vitamins without minerals. When our bodies are deficient in minerals, we crave salt; on a yin and yang scale the opposite of salt is sugar. So if we make sure our kids are getting enough of their minerals we can have a fighting chance. Not all minerals are created equal; you want a complete range of minerals in the right proportion and balance that our bodies need. Using a product with a high amount of one mineral over another causes the body to pull from its mineral reserves to assimilate it. Looks for whole food nutrients.