Restoring Health Through Nutrition: Your Kid's Health Starts at the Grocery Store

I have a personal motto about making a dietary change. My diet has never started on "Monday" or "after the holidays", but my motto has always been that my diet starts with what I put in my shopping cart. Now, it is freeing to have reached the point that I don't need to "diet" for weight loss because my eating patterns have eliminated all the foods that were robbing me of my health and causing weight gain. But still, I "choose" to eat for my health every time I go grocery shopping. Sometimes the bakery department will turn my head. I look, and I keep on going. I don't want that stuff anymore; but as I walk by it, I remember how it tasted. Then, I remember how I used to feel when I ate doughnuts and cookies along with other processed foods. My choice is to find the foods that will nourish my body, make me feel good when I have eaten them and provide me with energy for an active life.

While raising my family, processed treats and snack foods were still around for my kids, even though I knew that I didn't want to eat them. They taunted me from the pantry until the last one was gone. A 2 liter of soda was always stored for company and I believe that my kids would dream up a way to have friends over in order to get into the soda. I baked cookies and made loaded pizzas for "kid" parties. We were just victims of the American deception. Mothers are fooled into thinking that kids need daily "treats", that kids are young and can handle a few extra bad calories, that parties have to be "junk food" friendly. The training begins, in the minds of the kids, that fun is associated with tasting sugar, salt, fat and toxic food additives. There is a not-so-popular direction that parents can take regarding food, and it is imperative to get the message out today! US kids are not going to outlive their parents if the parents don't take the reins and pull this bolting horse back into submission. We can't let our kids eat whatever they want because they will become fat and sick. Don't cave at their complaining. It is easier to hear them whine (ignore it) now than to watch them fall prey to some deadly degenerative disease as young adults.

Start packing lunches, offer a fruit and vegetable tray of snacks between meals, make cooked oats for breakfast with berries and nuts to top, or make a personal box of fresh berries or other favorite fruit as a special reward instead of ice cream. Study the dangers of dairy, share what you learn with your kids and offer some nut milk dairy substitutes at home. With a little more concern on a daily basis, parents could change the direction of this nation's health! Remember: If you buy it, it will be consumed!