Healthy Kids, Happy Moms

by Sheila Kilbane, MD

  WHEN AND HOW DID FOOD BECOME PROBLEMATIC?

  Over the years, I’ve seen many kids whose parents have witnessed drastic changes in behavior after consuming certain dyes and additives. Since it can be challenging to decipher specifically what foods are triggering certain behaviors, I recommend you keep all or at least most artificial dyes and food preservatives out of your child’s diet.

  What makes this difficult is that we have received nutritional advice and heavy marketing that has been driven less by what is the healthiest for our bodies and more by what is available and can be easily mass produced. We are extremely fortunate in this country to have an abundant food supply, but we still have millions of kids who go to bed hungry every night. We have another set of kids who are overfed and undernourished because of what they are eating. Too much of what we call food today isn’t real food, despite the marketing. It is greatly altered from what is found in nature.

  A popular chip was invented in 1964 and on the national market in 1966; the chips include artificial colors (including Yellow 6, Yellow 5, and Red 40) and chemicals the average person cannot pronounce. The ingredients have changed over the years and vary based upon flavor, so read the labels!

  A sports drink was created in 1965 to help the University of Florida football players keep up their hydration, electrolytes, and carbohydrate levels during football games in the extreme Florida heat. It proved to make a significant difference in the athletic performance of these elite athletes. It seems now, however, that our young children play thirty minutes of soccer, maybe break a slight sweat, and then we give them bottles of a rehydration solution developed for elite athletes performing in 80- to 100-degree temperatures. Many sports drinks hit the categories we are aiming to remove: excess refined sugar, artificial dyes, and preservatives. Check out the ingredients of a popular lemon-lime sports drink: Water, Sugar, Dextrose, Citric Acid, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Monopotassium Phosphate, Gum Arabic, Glycerol Ester of Rosin, Natural Flavor, Yellow 5.

  How did we come to this point of eating and drinking such non-foods? World War II created a need for packaged food to support soldiers on the battlefield. In this same timeframe, many American women entered the workforce, pulling them away from the kitchen. Many women continued to work after the war ended, and packaged food became a common commodity in the American diet. Working mothers have often taken the blame for our era of packaged food, and that is so far from reality.

  After World War II, when munition factories transitioned from war production to consumer production, the world was suddenly in need of something to do with all that unused nitrogen. It didn’t take long to convince farmers to grow crops faster and more abundantly by applying nitrogen-based fertilizers instead of the manure and “cover crops” they traditionally used to enrich the soil. Almost overnight, we had a surplus of corn, which we turned into corn oil and corn-based packaged foods. High fructose corn syrup is in so many products—everything from salad dressing and ketchup to cereal, breads, and crackers to sodas and sports drinks.

  Grain crops, such as wheat and oats, also became more plentiful after World War II, often running to surplus. It isn’t difficult to draw a line between grain surplus and the federal government’s emphasis on grains in the American diet. When the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) started recommending dietary standards in 1946, grains got the lion’s share of daily recommended servings and dairy enjoyed its status as an entire food group. Nuts were nowhere to be found.

  Photo courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, September 1946.

  Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

  The food guide pyramid. Food and Nutrition Service, US Department of Agriculture.

  From 1992 to 2005, the USDA represented ideal consumption with a food pyramid that once again emphasized grains. Dairy kept its own food group. On the bright side, nuts got mentioned in the protein group.

  MyPlate replaced the USDA’s MyPyramid guide on June 2, 2011. It gives equal weight to vegetables and grains. Note dairy remains the recommended drink.

  USDA MyPlate.

  As you’ll see in later chapters, the HKHM program emphasizes leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, fruits, fiber (through seeds, nuts, and legumes), healthy fats, unprocessed fats, unprocessed proteins, and plain water.

  While the guidelines have always included agribusiness and the food processor lobby, these interests have been gaining the upper hand over the scientists. This space between science and big business is one I have been trying to understand for many years. But wading through the research details of government food recommendations and who is making them and who is sitting on those committees can be daunting. Imagine my delight when the hallowed halls of Harvard tackled the matter. Using scientific trials, their School of Public Health confirmed what I have seen in my own practice and sheds light onto a topic fraught with gray once I began better to understand food and inflammation.

  Check out this chart, starting with the glass of water in the place where we’re accustomed to seeing cow’s milk. Notice that vegetables dominate the plate, followed by healthy protein. They followed 100,000 nurses and health professionals for up to twelve years and used a questionnaire to track their diets. The results are impressive.2,3

  Copyright © 2011 Harvard University. For more information about The Healthy Eating Plate, please see The Nutrition Source, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, http://www.thenutritionsource.org and Harvard Health Publications, health.harvard.edu.

  Those who most closely followed the US Government’s Food Pyramid guidelines reduced their overall risk of developing heart disease, cancer, or other chronic disease by 11 percent for men and 3 percent for women.

  Those whose diets most closely followed Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate lowered their risk of heart disease in men by almost 40 percent and women by almost 30 percent.

  My HKHM program tracks with the Harvard recommendations. If your gut has been telling you all the milk, pasta, pizza, and mac and cheese that your child eats might not be great for them even though that’s what we serve them in schools and restaurants, your gut is onto something.

  MINI CLEANSE FOR KIDS—MAKE ROOM FOR HEALTHY FOODS

  I recommend a system of eating for your family that involves more vegetables, fruits, and other high-fiber foods such as nuts and seeds, in addition to healthy fats and proteins. The first step in this journey is to make room for healthy foods and drinks that will help reduce your child’s inflammation, which we will discuss in chapter 6.

  Details on how to succeed with the Mini Cleanse are found in section II, while section III includes recipes that will please and appease your child’s taste buds. What follows here is a brief overview of the ingredients I want you to avoid—and why.

  SUGAR AND CHILDREN’S HEALTH

  Almost 20 percent of US children between the ages of two and nineteen are obese.4 Sugary drinks are the leading sources of added sugars in the American diet. On any given day, 63 percent of kids and 49 percent of adults drink a sugar-sweetened beverage.5 The excess sugar intake is associated with the following.

  Weight gain/obesity

  Type 2 diabetes

  Heart disease

  Kidney diseases

  Non-alcoholic liver disease

  Tooth decay and cavities

  Gout (in adults)

  Arthritis6

  Hindered brain function7,8

  By simply removing one sugar-filled drink daily (for many of your children this might be eliminating fruit juices), you can remove an inflammatory, immune-suppressant roadblock that may be holding your child in the sick cycle.

  According to Harvard School of Public Health, “If current US trends continue, more than 57 percent of today’s youth will be obese at age thirty-five.”9 I seldom talk about weight loss in kids, as I prefer to focus on healthy food as fuel for the body and brain. As children begin eating foods that are better for their systems,
they continue to grow taller but stop gaining weight at the same rate they had been. This keeps the discussion away from weight loss and instead about the foods that work best for their systems.

  ARTIFICIAL COLORS AND BEHAVIOR

  Many of you have experienced your child’s behavior shifts with dyes. Avoid FD&C Red No. 40 or FD&C Yellow No. 5. FD&C stands for Food, Drug & Cosmetics. There are many FD&C colors, and they’re found in everything.

  Since 2010 in the United Kingdom, food products that contain artificial dyes are required to have a warning label stating that the food “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” Because of this ruling, certain US based companies voluntarily removed artificial dyes from their products in the UK and Europe, but not in the US.

  The impact of artificial dyes and colors on children’s health and behavior has long been debated in the pediatric world, but cases as far back as the mid-1970s linked food additives—and dyes particularly—to behavior and learning disorders. Ben Feingold, MD, studied 1,200 children and the impact that 3,000 different food additives had on their health and behavior. He shared the results of this study in his book, The Feingold Diet: Why Your Child Is Hyperactive.

  Feingold identified a link between children’s behavior and certain foods (such as dairy and wheat), artificial dyes, colors, and preservatives, as well as compounds such as salicylic acids. Dr. Feingold’s work remains controversial because of inconsistencies in the study results. My stance is that if we can get kids to eat better food with fewer additives, let’s do it!

  PROCESSED FOODS ARE INFLAMMATORY

  Once you become aware of the excessive sugar in packaged foods, you’ll understand how kids’ taste buds are bathed in sugar. These taste buds may then flat-out reject leafy green vegetables or foods filled with healthy fats, including olives, olive oil, avocado, almonds, walnuts, and fermented foods such as sauerkraut, which is rich in probiotics.

  Sugar is everywhere, from organic, non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) “health foods” to highly processed, chemical-laden foods, like packaged children’s candies. The food industry hides sugar under many different names ending with the suffix -ose. The more classic sugars are as follows.

  Dextrose

  Fructose

  Galactose

  Fruit juice concentrate

  Glucose

  Glucose solids

  High-fructose corn syrup

  Lactose

  Maltose

  Sucrose

  Artificial sweeteners should also be avoided. They can negatively impact the beneficial bacteria in the gut.10

  Saccharin (Sweet’N Low)

  Sucralose (Splenda)

  Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal)

  Neotame (Newtame)

  Acesulfame potassium or ace-K (Sweet One)

  If your child has a significant sweet tooth, consider switching to a more natural sweetener, such as honey, maple syrup, blackstrap molasses, or monk fruit.

  PROCESSED MEATS

  Hot dogs and processed meats have become a staple for many children. The nitrates in processed meats are extremely damaging to our heart and blood vessels.11,12,13,14,15

  Hardened arteries are not something we think of in young children, but if you can bring better balance to their processed meat intake, making it a treat instead of the norm, you will make great strides in providing healthier, less inflammatory proteins for your child’s system. Reducing this inflammatory ingredient will lower their cardiovascular risk.

  PROCESSED FATS

  Most processed foods are made with these oils, which are inflammatory in and of themselves. When they are used at high heat, they become even more inflammatory and increase your child’s cup of inflammation. You should try to avoid:

  Canola oil

  Grapeseed oil

  Rice bran oil

  “Vegetable” oil

  Safflower oil

  Soybean oil

  Corn oil

  Cottonseed oil

  TRUE CONFESSION:

  I Used to Eat Candy Bars for Breakfast

  I’ll never forget the winter of 2005. I was a third-year pediatric resident exhausted both emotionally and physically. I wanted an “easy” rotation, where I didn’t have to take any overnight call. I also wanted to spend some time with my family out West. I knew my parents would feed and take care of me while I refueled for my last several months of residency, so I organized a rotation in Seattle at Bastyr University.

  Bastyr is one of four schools in the US that trains naturopathic doctors. The curriculum for a doctorate in naturopathic medicine is roughly parallel to that of traditional medical schools. Students put in the same hours as conventional medical students in terms of course-load, but they also learn about nutrition, herbs, supplements, mind-body therapies, and other natural treatments.

  Part of my interest in natural therapies stemmed from my yoga practice, which I’d started during medical school. Yoga opened my eyes to a whole different way of being. Once I realized how much better I could feel because of this practice, it made me wonder about other healthy lifestyle practices.

  My interest in natural medicine likely originated during childhood. My parents raised my four siblings and me in as natural a way as possible in Avon Lake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. We grew a huge vegetable garden during the summer, which covered almost every square inch of our backyard. My siblings and I grew up eating fresh food.

  My parents later moved to Bainbridge Island, a thirty-five-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle. Since the Bastyr clinic was in Seattle, I’d wake at the crack of dawn, catch a ferry with my brother-in-law, and then take a cab to the clinic in Ballard, a neighborhood not far from the ferry terminal in downtown Seattle.

  Snickers bar and Diet Coke in my backpack, I was naively ready for what I expected would be my easy month rotation of no overnight call and learning what naturopathic doctors do.

  In the morning, the students met to discuss patients in a small, nondescript conference room, cluttered with books and papers, with just enough room for seven or eight of us.

  When I arrived, I noticed that everyone was drinking herbal tea and eating healthy-looking whole-grain muffins. I was too embarrassed to pull out my Diet Coke and Snickers bar. I looked longingly at the whole-grain muffins and mugs filled with lovely smelling teas. I thought, How can I get my hands on one of those muffins?

  By lunchtime I was so hungry I had a headache, and I realized I needed to make a few changes. The first was obvious: I had to give up my beloved Diet Coke. In college, my girlfriends and I would make special trips to convenience stores with the best fountain drinks. A thirty-two-ounce Diet Coke wasn’t out of the ordinary for me. We went so far as to figure out which restaurants had the best crushed ice that made the Diet Coke taste even better. The amount of Diet Coke we drank in those days was impressive. And now, that love affair was about to come to an abrupt end.

  I didn’t touch another Diet Coke that month, and I had a raging headache for most of the month. I’m not one who gets headaches often, so I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. I continued to consume caffeine, replacing my Diet Coke habit with black tea, yet I still was popping three or four ibuprofen several times a week.

  Sadly, that was the first time I stopped and asked myself, What the heck is in this black, carbonated liquid?

  When I finally got the courage to start speaking up in this clinic, I pointed out the complexity of the patients’ cases compared to the more run-of-the-mill patients I was used to seeing. The number of specialty doctors these patients had seen, and the amount of testing they’d endured, floored me. Not to mention the thousands of dollars these patients had spent on medical bills or the time consumed. And for what? They didn’t feel better.

  Throughout the month, I continued to be impressed by how much the naturopathic doctors understood about nutrition and its impact on health, and I often had no idea what they were talking about. Food sensitivity this, food sensitivity that . . . . Your
school has a nutritionist who takes people on grocery store tours? What does nutrition have to do with any of this?

  I laugh now when I think about how easy I thought this rotation would be. In some ways, it was more challenging than any of my previous rotations. I wasn’t on call and having to stay awake every fourth night, but the cases that came into that clinic were extremely complicated. These patients were doing everything their medical doctor had recommended, but they still struggled.

  At Bastyr, it was as if the top of my head opened up and streams of new information poured in. I didn’t realize how that month would profoundly impact my own health, my career, my outlook, and the hundreds of patients I’d eventually care for.

  When I returned to Charlotte, I still had several months of residency, so I tabled all the new information. I had no idea how to incorporate it into the hospital setting, which is where most of residency takes place. The food served to hospital patients would make many healthy people ill. Jell-O, pudding, macaroni and cheese—come on, really?

  I kept my head in the sand for a few more months, but then, when I was finally seeing my own patients in a regular clinic, I started to put everything together. Today, when I’m thinking through a child’s health issue, my brain starts to write a recipe for reducing their inflammation.

  As I’ve told you already, the first part of reducing inflammation is removing inflammatory ingredients. The second part is adding foods and supplements that support the body’s natural healing mechanisms. We will delve into these healing foods next.