Kidney Stones in Children?

You may have heard that diabetes type 2, originally called adult onset diabetes as it didn't occur in children, is being diagnosed in children as young as age 4. But did you know that another supposed disease of adults is affecting more and more children? Hospitals in major metropolitan areas are now reporting children with kidney stones as often as once a week, where they once saw kidney stones in children once every few months. And they are seeing kidney stones in children as young as 5 or 6 years old.

Most all kidney stones are caused by too much salt in the diet and not enough water. There is a difference between water and other beverages. Water washes away excess salt, some beverages, such as Gatorade, soft drinks and some vegetable juices add to dietary salt. Excess salt is found in almost all canned and boxed soups as well as frozen entree foods. Be sure to check out the nutrition label. Any food that lists 20% of more %DV is high in sodium. The DV (daily value) percent lets you know the percent of nutrient one portion of this food provides. A box or can of food is usually more than one serving. So if a can of soup has 2 servings, and each serving is 20% of your daily maximum allowance of sodium, if you eat the whole can you have consume 40% of your sodium allowance for the day.

Other foods to beware of include salted snack foods, including nuts, crackers and baked goods. Bacon, salami, hot dogs and other sliced deli meats usually have a large amount of salt. Also be aware that olives, dill pickles and soy sauce are also high in salt. Small amount over the course of the day add up.

Let's keep our children healthy now and let them start adulthood with healthy bodies. We have the ability to shape their eating habits. Read the nutrition label no matter how healthy the product appears from its front label. Start now.

The Great Candy Give Away

Halloween is the official beginning for The Great Candy Give-Away. It starts after sunset on October thirty-first and goes until February fourteenth. This season spans Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Kwanza, Christmas, Winter Solstice, New Years Eve/day and Valentines Day. This season also coincides with the least availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, the shortest hours of day light, and in most areas of the country the coldest weather of the year. Blended together, this season encourages us to stay inside, visit with friends, and eat lots of sweets. Unfortunately, our bodies don't seem to realize that we don't need to build up an extra layer of fat to stay warm, most of us have central heating and wool socks for that.

So how do we avoid all the sweets this season brings? I recommend a combination of moderation and creating new traditions. Let me show you how this works using Halloween as an example. Instead of passing out candy bars (or boxes of raisins that few kids want) hand out one small individually wrapped candy (like Hershey Kisses or individual Star Bursts). If you are worried about looking cheap add some other small toys or prizes such as key chains, colorful mini tissue packets, stickers or brightly colored markers. You could even eliminate the candy all together and just give out the gifts. When your child comes home with too much candy, let them keep a few pieces and leave the rest for The Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin comes at night while children are asleep and exchanges their candy for a gift.

For most kids, the costumes, decorating and Trick or Treating is more fun than the candy. Create a few new traditions, making a visit to your house memorable. Invest in some reuseable decorations, lights, scarry music or skeletons to place on your walkway or porch. Add on each year until you have the best display on the block. Better yet, have your kids help create a haunted house effect for your entrance way with appliance boxes, tin cans, or anything else you can think of. Stuff old worn out clothes to make people and let your kids figure out how to make them look spooky, place them in your yard with flashing lights around them.

You can have a lot of fun coming up with new, candy free ideas, if you give it a try. Halloween is a great tradition, so lets keep it alive with a heathy twist. Try your hand at moderation and tradition for other holidays. Let me know your ideas so I can share them with others.

Why Don't We Get Enough Vitamin D

The American Academy of Pediatrics just came out with a new policy statement, doubling the amount of Vitamin D they believe children need. The new level is 400IU. To get to this level they recommend supplementation, because to get this much vitamin D from milk a child would have to drink 4 cups of milk. Four cups of milk would provide too many calories solely from milk-- not allowing room for vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and fiber from other foods.

{Four cups of whole milk would also provide 600 calories (approximately half of a child's caloric needs per day) and the maximum advised amount of unhealthy saturated fats. Four cups of 2% milk would provide 480 calories (about 1/3 of daily caloires for a child) and 60% of the maximum advised amount of saturated fats. Most of our vitamin D comes from sun exposure.}

I understand that this recommendation is based on many peer reviewed studies. It appears that Vitamin D is part of the puzzle when looking at a variety of chronic diseases including cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, thyroid disorder, celiac and other autoimmune states. But Vitamin D must only be part of the puzzle, as our bodies work synergistically. Unfortunately our bodies are assaulted every day (even in-utero) by new combinations of man made substances, geneticly engineered foods, and stress.

So all children need to take a supplement? What is wrong with this picture? Aren't a variety of healthy foods, and in this case sunshine, supposed to be able to meet the needs of a growing child? It just strikes me as odd that we now need to supplement food. This is like supplementing air. How did we get to this point? What is wrong with our air, water, food, environment, and bodies?

As science learns more about how our bodies work, we need to stop using products that contaminate our world and damage our own normal bodies processes. If we don't buy it, they won't sell it. So take a stand on pesticides, genetically altered animals and foods, pthalates and BPA in packaging medical supplies and toys, and dangerous chemicals in personal care and home cleaning products. Let's stop damaging our selves and the earth so our bodies and our environment can support us as we support our world.

An Economic Message from a Nutritionist

In an effort to keep my food cost from getting too high I have been changing my food shopping habits of late, perhaps you have too. In an effort to save money on food and maintain your family's nutrition I have one word for you: BEANS. One cup of cooked beans has as much protein as 2 ounces of beef, with no saturated fat. And beans are much less expensive than meat. You can replace beans for all of half of the beef in most recipes (canned or pre-cooked by you). Beans are great in chili, meatloaf, soups, tacos, enchildas, burgers or in a dip or spread. To find some recipes just type in bean reicpes or bean burger etc. at your favorite search engine.

There are many different types of beans and they all have their own flavor, and none of them taste like chicken. Most people, including kids, tend to like garbonzo beans, also known as chick peas. They are larger than peas and smaller than a marble and are a yellowy color. If you buy these dry, they need to be soaked and then simmer for an hour or more. However canned, pre-cooked beans are available at all markets and can be used as is. Garbonzo beans are creamy with a light flavor. These beans are the main ingredients in humus and are often found in minestrone soup.

Another favorite bean is the kidney bean. This is the bean used in refried beans. It is oblong in shape and a dark reddish brown color. It too can be purchased dry or ready to eat in a can. Refried beans are kidney beans smashed into a paste, with some seasoning and sometimes some animal fat added. I recommend the vegetarian refried beans even if your not vegetarian, as they have less fat. Try at least one bean meal a week. You wallet and your waist will thank you.

Stop MIcro Managing Your Child's Eating?

We all want our children to eat healthy foods and there are many ways to allow this to happen. Our first job is to offer healthy foods often. A hungry child will eat, so the more often healthy foods are offered, the more of them will be eaten. But children are sometimes fearful of food, not hungry, or more interested in trying to get you what they want instead of eating. All of these actions can lead to the same disastrous result: a power struggle of over who gets their way. We can avoid this struggle by not over managing how much and what our child eats. Remember, you offer what you would like your child to eat. Then the rest is up to them. They can eat and nourish their body or choose not to eat with the consequence of hunger coming very soon. The beauty of this is that you were not the “bad guy” in this scenario. Hunger caused the discomfort, the result of them choosing not to eat.

But some parents can not let go of this managerial stance and let hunger and fullness do its job. They micro-manage a child’s eating. These are the parents that you see deciding for the child what food should be eaten first. Supposedly this ensures that nutritious foods will be eaten first when the child is most hungry. Perhaps, but a child given a variety of food over time will in fact choose foods that meet their nutritional needs. Telling a child what they need to eat first undermines their need for some independence and their reliance and confidence in their own internal cues that guide them naturally.

I often hear “you need to take one more bite”, as if that last bite guarantees the exact amount of calories or nutrients necessary at that moment in time. Or a parent who requires that a child finish a certain amount of a food. A child instinctively knows how much food they need, the more we trust them the more they will make good decisions.

Interestingly, there have been several studies that show that the more we manage our children’s eating decisions, the more likely they are to become over weight and have emotional problems with foods. The study observed parents eat a meal with their child. Immediately after the meal the children were put in a room without parents. There were activities in the room as well as a variety of snacks. It was observed that the children whose parents had over managed their child’s lunch where more likely to eat again, right after lunch. These children where also the ones who where already over weight.