After having discussions with a number of nutritionists & dietitians on my podcast, I’ve been thinking of ways we can educate our kids – and ourselves – on certain foods and why they’re important to include them in the diet. It’s no surprises that the majority of the essential nutrients (essential because our bodies can’t make them and we have to get them in our diet) are found in animal products. And they are also found in a highly available form.
We are an animal. It just happens to be that we’re the top of the food chain. And for the majority of the western world we now have a ‘choice’ as to what we eat, instead of having to hunt and gather what we need purely to survive. I believe that this ‘choice’ has led to a great deal of confusion around what is considered to be ‘healthy’ for us and our kids (and for the growing babies inside of us).
What we eat is directly linked to our health. To what degree is very individual and dependent on many other factors too. But nutrition in my opinion is the number one way to either improve or damage your health (not including smoking here, but that is up there too obviously).
I take my job as a parent very seriously. I want my children to understand why I value food so highly in our family, and we spend a great deal of time, money and resources on ensuring everyone in the family overall eats very well.
But now that 3 of my kids are teenagers, the water is getting very muddy with misinformation, dogma and vested interests. It’s not always about the facts when kids are told what to eat by schools. But when you peel back all those layers and look purely at the science, it can help our kids to make choices that will nourish their growing bodies.
Did you know that our children’s brains don’t stop developing until they’re 25? David Gillespie shared that fact in his new book on The Teen Brain. So it’s not just prenatal and when they’re very little where nutrition is important. It’s also super important for their brains and bodies right through these tricky teenage years.
I hope you enjoy these and that they make your job of educating your children around nutrition a little easier.
Tracey xx