Keeping Our Kids Sweet Without All the Sweets!

On the heels of this evening’s story on 60 Minutes about the toxicity of sugar, I thought it would be fitting to reprint this story I recently wrote for my son’s elementary school magazine, due to be published later this week. I figure it’s worth sharing, especially if you do not maintain an absolutely sugar free household. Perhaps someday I will be there, but I’m not now. This article is dedicated to all the other parents out there who are straddling their desire to indulge in the earthly delights of sweets and also maintain the health of themselves and their families.

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One of our biggest daily challenges is to find new and interesting ways to feed our children in a healthy manner. I am lucky that my son loves all different kinds of foods, including vegetables, fruits, meats, cheese and fish. He actually counts broccoli as one of his favorites! Still, I often find myself staring at the refrigerator shelves, wondering what the heck I can conjure up for dinner.

These days, there are a lot of opinions as to what constitutes a healthy diet. Some people espouse a vegetarian or vegan approach, while others focus on fat intake. Some people swear by a high protein diet, while others stick more to lots of whole grains. While I am not a dietician or a nutritionist, I did work in the holistic health field for nearly twenty years, and I have tried to carry a spirit of moderation into my outlook on cooking and eating. Although I know that different diets work for different people, one thing I believe is central to good nutrition is the need to cut down on refined sugars.

It doesn’t take a medical degree to be able to recognize what happens to our kids when we sugar them up. We’ve all lived through enough birthday parties and holidays (especially the big candy fest, Halloween!) to have observed our kids running around like lunatics, only to collapse in tears of frustration hours later when they come down off their sugar high.

The thing we need to recognize is that candy, cake and cookies, while obvious sources of sugar, are not the only culprits. Breakfast cereals, sweetened yogurts and processed fruit snacks and drinks can also be responsible for negatively affecting our kids’ moods and energies… not to mention their ability to focus and be productive in school as well as in their hobbies or other leisure activities. Moreover, we are seeing increasing links between the national rise in sugar intake and corresponding levels of childhood obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions.

Sadly, like many other substances, sugar is pretty addicting. Unless you want to deal with a major withdrawal reaction, I wouldn’t suggest suddenly banning sugar from your household in one day. (Do the words “cold turkey” mean anything to you?) I recommend a more gradual approach, without fanfare, to help your family, and their palates, slowly adjust to a new way of eating. I’m pretty sure you will find that over time, moods will improve and energy will balance out a little, and as a bonus, you will be helping yourself and your family to maintain a healthier weight and guard against preventable forms of diabetes, heart disease and other inflammatory conditions.

Wanna see if your children are addicted to sugar? Try this simple test. Take a quick look at your daily diet. If you are in the routine of serving something sweet at every single meal, with juice or soda to drink, and dessert to top it off, try eliminating one of those elements. Just one. If you find that your child begins crying and having a tantrum at the suggestion of not serving dessert one night, you might have a bit of a problem.

I realize it may seem pretty radical to eliminate sugar altogether. It takes a lot of concentrated effort. Some have done it, but of course it’s easier for those who have raised their children that way from birth, so their kids have never really had a chance to develop a sweet tooth. While I started out that way, by the age of three, it was no longer possible to keep all sugar away from my son, because there is just so much of it out in the world! Birthday parties and holiday gatherings were the first places he began to sample sugary goodies. It became hard to limit them completely after that, especially since I have a bit of a sweet tooth myself!

Still, I do find that we all do better when we limit the really sugary treats to these special occasions. It makes us all appreciate them more, and I really do perceive a difference in our collective energy. I will share some of the choices I’ve made that seem to have a positive effect. Maybe they will be helpful to you, as well!

1) No soda in the house. I just don’t buy it. We drink flavored seltzer, water, milk, and fresh apple cider or other juices.

2) Candy, ice cream and cookies. Once in a while, I crave some chocolate. I buy it. Same goes for cookies and ice cream. However, I don’t make them regular items on my shopping list, and I go for long stretches without having any in the house.

3) Fresh fruits. I like to make sure there is always some kind of fresh fruit in the house. Our favorites include mangoes, apples, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, oranges and cantaloupe. Whenever possible, I buy at a farmer’s market or choose organic. Personally, I believe locally grown is more important, and most of the local farms are pretty chemical free anyway.

4) Vegetables. I experiment with vegetables all the time. I chop them up small into my spaghetti sauce. I bake them, steam them, stir fry them… I get my son involved in helping me buy and prepare them. They say when it comes to veggies and fruit, you should eat the rainbow – every different color offers different vitamins and other nutrients. We try to mix up the selection every time we go shopping.

5) Shopping and cooking together. The more we share these activities, the more excited my son gets about eating well. Of course it helps that I love to cook, so I’m pretty sure that my enthusiasm has rubbed off on him. However, even if you don’t love spending a Sunday afternoon puttering around in the kitchen, you can still find some easy recipes on the internet that are sure to please the whole family. Things like soups, stews and pasta dishes are fun and easy, not to mention delicious and good for you!

6) Concentrating on the savory instead of the sweet. I get very excited about the prospect of a big tray of lasagna, or a yummy roasted chicken, or some new vegetable dish. The more we focus on the main meal and savory snacks like cheese, pickles, olives, veggies and dips, the less attention we pay to dessert and sweets in general. I think shifting the focus is the first step towards lessening the feelings of deprivation associated with cutting down on sweets.

Some of you may feel that I am preaching to the converted. Fantastic. You don’t need my advice, you’re already there! Some of you may think I am being judgmental or implying that it’s really easy to make these changes. Hardly. It’s a constant balancing act, and I don’t always do as well as I’d like. Luckily, I’ve started to develop headaches whenever I eat too much sugar… and since it’s very hard to eat just a little, I’ve been tending towards not eating it at all, just so I don’t end up feeling crappy.

The more we support each other by serving healthy foods to our kids and their friends when they come over, experimenting with non-sugar options for parties and other gatherings, and sharing recipes with one another, the better we all do as a community. I really believe this is one of the best gifts of having children – the opportunity to do things better for them than we have done for ourselves. And when it comes to sharing healthy meals with them, it’s something that benefits us all!

For more information, here is a great online resource: http://family2table.blogspot.com/ – a wonderful blog focusing on fresh meats & fish, dairy, vegetables, fruits and grains as the mainstay of a healthy, family centered diet by Chef and Mom, Emily Duff.

Photo courtesy of  rick

Surgery, Life, Health and Courage

Apparently, like so many women, I herniated my belly button during childbirth eight years ago. At first, I thought it was just that usual, “I used to have an innie, but now I have an outie,” thing. But over the years, that outie popped out further and further. Not so cute.

I admit, I was told by more than one doctor that eventually, I would have to get it fixed. But what really made me understand that something had to change, and fast, was that I was incurring increasingly frequent bouts of lower back pain. After an acute, two-day, flat-on-my-back episode several weeks ago, my astute chiropractor, Dr. Loretta French, explained to me how the lack of abdominal muscle strength caused by the hernia (i.e. no core!) was causing me to overuse various muscles in my lower back. Hence, the weakness and vulnerability there.

I can’t tell you how happy this made me. Seriously. I have not been able to sustain a workout regimen for longer than a few months without injuring myself since I had my son. I went out the next day and scheduled an appointment to see a surgeon. Finally, an explanation for the chronic problems I’d been having since giving birth! I had just thought, OK, I had a baby, now I’m broken… But no! It did not have to be this way! Now I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. So I expedited the process, and this past Tuesday, I had the outpatient surgery. It went well, and I’ve been slowly recovering at home, gradually getting back to my regular work…

Of course, the experience brought up a few things, and of course, I want to share them with you.

First of all, I have to say, it’s very different being on the receiving end of medical services than it is being the care partner of a patient. I fulfilled that latter role for over twenty years with my husband Ivor, before he finally passed away in October of 2009, due to complications of his lifelong, chronic illness, sickle cell anemia. During our decades together, Ivor and I logged countless hours in emergency rooms, intensive care units and regular hospital wards. We crossed paths with untold numbers of nurses, interns, residents, specialists, technicians, assistants, pharmacists, therapists… I found most of them to be caring, dedicated and skilled, although over the years, we did have the misfortune to meet more than a few who were plagued by cynicism, overwork, negative presumptions about Ivor or his illness, or just plain battle fatigue. We learned to be pro-active, articulate and self-protective.

We were a team.

Now my surgery was no where near the harrowing, life-threatening, repeated incidents Ivor had to endure over the years. Having not let my condition progress too far, the procedure was still at the semi-elective stage, and besides that one problem, I’m basically strong and healthy, so I had no other risk factors going into surgery. Predictably, there were no complications. But things did get a little weird for me when, a half hour before the procedure was to begin, the anaesthesiologist described how he would be putting me to sleep with some medication via my IV, and then inserting the tube down my throat for the general anaesthesia. The what? THE WHAT? How had I missed that??

Intubated. The thing that happens when you’re so weak from pneumonia that you can’t breathe on your own. When one of your major body systems can’t function and you need mechanical support. When you are near death. Tube down my throat? I acted calm, but inside I was filled with all of the most negative associations. So much so, that when it came time for them to administer the first injection, the anaesthesiologist asked me if my heart always beat that fast, or was I just nervous. I said, I’m very nervous. My kind surgeon, Dr. Sas, offered to hold my hand. I squeezed it hard. But honestly, when the medicine began to hit, I remember saying, “Oh yes, this will work just fine.” And the next thing I remember, I was waking up in recovery.

Surgery is a kind of miracle of faith and trust. You put your life in the hands of doctors and nurses who cut into you to change your body, so you may live a better life. You have faith that when you go to sleep, you will in fact, wake up better than before. That you will, in fact, wake up! That you won’t wake up attached to some metallic, wired apparatus in a hidden room somewhere, with alien creatures performing strange sexual experiments on your helpless body (yeah, I went there). Or that you won’t end up at the end of the tunnel of light with your dear, departed husband (I love you honey, but I’m just not ready to be dead yet). All these thoughts and more were crowded out of my brain by the flood of endorphin producing chemicals that do whatever else it is they did to mercifully blank out my consciousness, allowing those talented and caring professionals to exert their skills on me.

I feel grateful that I don’t have to do this on a regular basis, and I feel awe and respect for those who do. Living with a chronic or life threatening illness enters you into an ongoing ride on the faith, trust, courage, strength, and fear train. Repeated challenges to one’s inner fortitude take almost as much, if not more energy, than the physical toll of the medical condition and its treatment.

The sacred bond between patient, doctor and all members of the support team (including the care partners) is one that I will always honor. I have lived many sides of it, and know of its profound impact on the souls of all who are involved. Being part of this circuit has given me an appreciation for the preciousness of each moment of life and good health. I am deeply grateful for my experience.

And yes, I have an innie again…

Photo courtesy of otisarchives 1