Healing Thots Archive, Children & Nutrition

Children and nutrition. This is a subject I'm quite passionate about. When it comes to health and longevity, I consider prevention the absolute best place for everyone to be working from. This means even before conception. Healthy, well-nourished moms and dads, having healthy well-nourished children -- what a great place to start! These are the things a productive life is made of.

So now moving away from my utopia, let's look at some things parents can do to help their children increase the odds of growing into healthy adults (who in turn have healthy children of their own. Yeah, it makes so much sense!).

I'm an advocate of breastfeeding whenever possible. If you do the research, the evidence comes back as a hands down positive thing to do, even if it is just for the first few weeks. If you do choose formula, check them out. There are some better than others -- again, do the research.

When they move to food, encourage good food choices. If you aren't sure what good food choices are, educate yourself. If you don't know, your children won't know. Healthy eating learned early on can have a tremendous influence over a lifetime. Even when they turn to more junk food during the teen years, eventually most will come back to healthier eating habits learned in childhood. Your children deserve your best effort, their quality of food reflects their quality of life, now and in the future.

In addition to prevention, nutrition and supplementation in childhood can help manage, and many times, turn around health and behavioral problems that plague many of our children today. Our children start out nutritionally deficient. Instead of learning to desire a good glass of water, they are given sugary drinks and even soda pop in their bottles? Their diets consist of fast food and food from boxes. Because of these empty calories, their little bodies are craving the vitamins and minerals they need to grow and so they eat more empty calories leading to weight gain, poor growth, inactivity, and behavioral problems. They develop diseases that used to be seen only in older people. Then they get medicated, they get ridiculed, they get depressed..these are the things a painful, unproductive life are made of.

Which cycle sounds best to you?

Blessings,
Priscilla