WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month

"If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people', you'd better live real close to a real good hospital." 

                      

 --Dr. Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (www.pcrm.org)

Teaching kids to eat better is one of the core competencies of Growing Healthy Kids, Inc., a charitable organization based in Vero Beach, FL.  The goal of Growing Healthy Kids is to teach kids, educate parents and empower communities to prevent obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.   About 1 in 6 (17%) children in the United States has obesity and more than one-third of American adults (36.5%) have obesity.  Obesity is serious and costly.  When kids are overweight and obese, they are more likely to be obese as adults. 

Sweet potato fries are easy to make and kids love them.

September is designated as National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month.  Consider how to best protect the health – and lives – of  your children. As a parent, knowing the consequences of childhood obesity can help you can make better choices for your family.  Here is what you need to know:

• Children with obesity are at higher risk for having other chronic health conditions and diseases, such as asthma, sleep apnea, bone and joint problems, and type 2 diabetes. They also have more risk factors for heart disease like high blood pressure and high cholesterol than their normal weight peers.
• Children with obesity can be bullied and teased more than their normal weight peers. They are also more likely to suffer from social isolation, depression, and lower self-esteem.
• Children with obesity are more likely to have obesity as adults. This can lead to lifelong physical and mental health problems. Adult obesity is associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and many types of cancers.
• Children who are obese as teens are likely to live 17-20 less years than children who are at a healthy weight.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many factors can have an impact on childhood obesity, including what kids eat, physical activity behaviors, genetics, metabolism, family and home environment, and community and social factors. For some children and families, obesity may be influenced by the following:

·         too much time spent being inactive

·         lack of sleep

·         lack of places to go in the community to get physical activity

·         easy access to inexpensive, high calorie foods and sugary beverages

·         lack of access to affordable, healthier foods

Nuts and dried fruits, in moderation, make healthy snacks.

Many people tell me they can’t afford to feed their kids healthy foods so they keep buying cheap, highly processed foods, sodas, and fast foods filled with the bad carbs, added sugars and salt.  

The fact is there are many things you can do to help your children maintain -  and get to - a healthy weight.  Here are a few ideas:

• Make water and nut milks the primary drinks at your house.  Limit fruit juice (no dietary fiber, all sugar).  When babies stop nursing, they don’t need cow’s milk.  Milk from cows is for baby cows, not human babies.
• Provide fruits, vegetables, and nuts for healthy snacks.
• If you have a local farmers markets, take your kids shopping there.  Talk with local farmers.  Buy cool vegetables like acorn squash, jicama, and sweet potatoes and learn how to cook them. 
• Plan meals that are mainly fruits, vegetables, legumes (like beans and lentils), and whole grains. A whole-food plant-based way of eating is good for you AND good for the planet.  
• Reduce consumption of animal products, which contain saturated fats (the “bad” fats), especially fried, smoked, and aged foods.  There is plenty of protein in plant foods. 
• If your child’s school does not provide physical education every day, start a conversation with the principal to change it.  Make sure your kids are active for at least an hour every day.  When I was growing up, we played outside until it was dark and our parents had to drag us inside.  Play should be fun.  Playing on a computer is not the same as playing outside.
• Limit screen time to no more than 1 hour a day for kids ages 2-5.  Limit screen time for kids older than age 5. 
• Most importantly, be a great role model for your kids.  Kids look up to us, especially when they think we’re not looking.  If you’ve always got your hand in a bag of potato chips, kids think it is fine for them to do the same.

Please pass the jicama*.

With love and gratitude,

Nancy L. Heinrich, MPH

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. 

*Jicama is a crunchy tuber that tastes like an apple.  It is great for people with diabetes and prediabetes.  For a delicious snack, use it as a dip for hummus.  

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: Pills vs Food

“If we avoided animal protein and instead increased consumption of fruits and veggies, we could substantially prevent and treat most of the type 2 diabetes we encounter.  This may be in part due to the high fiber in the plants, but it is also due to the reduction in inflammation by avoiding animal protein and fat.” 

                                                               – Garth Davis, MD, author of Proteinaholic (2015)

From the author's recent trip to the New Albany, Indiana Farmers Market

Can you imagine taking 18 medications every day for your diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol but not having enough money for fruits and vegetables? One of the advisors to Growing Healthy Kids asked if I could teach a friend of hers (the person described above).  I said yes and offered to start a conversation about food choices and eating foods full of dietary fiber that can put people on a different path.  

It blows my mind how people accept more and more pills from their doctor and never ask, “What else can I do besides take more pills?” The fact is that most doctors only receive about an hour of nutrition education in medical school.  Instead of being trained how to prevent diseases, they are trained in depth on how to prescribe medications for diseases.

The number of Americans with diabetes (30.3 million or 9.4% of the population) and prediabetes (84 million or 33.9% of Americans age 18 and older) is staggering.  What Americans are spending on diabetes ($245 billion estimated for direct and indirect costs) is even more staggering.  Medications for diabetes are 18% of the total cost.  The cost ($245 billion in 2012) is 41% higher than for the previous 5 years ($170 billion in 2007).  Pharmaceutical companies are profiting so much from people who have diabetes; do you really think they want people to know there is a way to reverse diabetes? 

Thanks to doctors like Garth Davis, MD (author of Proteinaholic), Neal Barnard, MD (founder of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), and Joel Fuhrman, MD (author of The End of Diabetes), there is irrefutable evidence that when people eat primarily plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains), not only do can they control diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol but they can often reverse these diseases and conditions without the use of pills.  

If this article resonates with you and you are ready to take the first step towards better health, especially if you have diabetes or prediabetes, then start by reducing your consumption of meat and animal products (cheese, yogurt, milk, ice-cream).  All foods that come from animals contain saturated fats.  Saturated fat causes inflammation. Do not be afraid of not getting enough protein; most Americans consume too much protein. There is more than enough protein when you eat plants. What do you think cows eat?  The question you should be asking yourself is, "Am I getting enough fiber?" instead of "Am I getting enough protein?"

Pills vs Food?  Pharmacy vs Farmacy?  The choice is clear to me.  Hippocrates said it best:  “Let food be thy medicine.”

Please pass the butternut squash. 

With love and gratitude,

Nancy L. Heinrich, MPH

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. 

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: Reversing Diabetes

"The fact is you're not getting the nutrition you need on a meat-based diet and you're going to get dramatically better nutrition on a plant-based diet."  

       --Neal D. Barnard, M.D., founder of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (pcrm.org)

Every week, someone confides in me that they are scared and asks for help with their diabetes.  Sometimes it is someone who was recently diagnosed.  More often, it is someone experiencing complications such as depression, neuropathy, or diabetic retinopathy.  Teaching people how to control, reverse and prevent diabetes - and other chronic diseases - is central to my mission of making a difference in the childhood obesity epidemic and why I started the charitable organization, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.  No matter how busy I am, I always help when someone asks. 

Nancy buying organic veggies in California

Most people who have diabetes or prediabetes have never been educated about it.  They are given a prescription (or two or three) and told to come back to see the doctor in 3 months.  Drugs are not a replacement for education.  

The ABCs of Diabetes refer to the A1C, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol.  Becoming aware of what affects the A1C level, blood pressure and cholesterol (sugar, salt and saturated fat) is the key to diabetes management.  In some cases, if diabetes has been undiagnosed and/or uncontrolled for a long time, especially when an individual has microvascular symptoms, it is not always possible to reverse it.  

Type 2 diabetes has been referred to as “adult onset” diabetes, in contract to Type 1 diabetes where the pancreas makes no insulin and people are insulin-dependent.  However, due to the childhood obesity epidemic, kids are now being diagnosed with this “adult” disease in rising numbers.  Teens diagnosed with diabetes can expect to live about 20 years less than if they did not develop diabetes.   

The problem…

• Consuming added sugars (such as the high fructose corn syrup found in sodas, fruit drinks, snack foods and cookies) and refined grains (found in most breads, cookies, and crackers) clogs up the blood stream, slowing down the delivery of nutrients. 
• Eating too much salt (found in most processed foods, aged meats, and fast foods) is the major cause of high blood pressure.  There is a direct correlation:  the more sodium you consume, the higher your blood pressure. 
• Eating too many saturated fats, found in all foods that come from animals, is a major cause of high LDL cholesterol. 

The solution…A whole food plant-based way of eating is an evidence-based way to control, reverse, and prevent diabetes.  Fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.  Are you ready?  

With love and gratitude,

Nancy L. Heinrich, MPH

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.