"Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying"

Photo courtesy of Josh Pesavento under the Creative Commons License

"Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying" is one of my favorite quotes from the movie The Shawshank Redemption.  When I cry in frustration at the obtuseness of those in charge of disseminating dietary advice to the masses (doctors, the government, companies touting "healthy" products, etc.), I have to take a step back and realize that all I can do is throw a stone into the water with my thoughts and hopefully cause a ripple.  As a CrossFit Kids coach and as a human being, I care about the health of our kids!

Childhood Obesity

Why is childhood nutrition such a hot topic?  Childhood obesity is on the rise.  Here is an interesting article on 10 Frightening Facts About Childhood Obesity. Their list is below.  For more detail on each, please check out the full article.

1. Only 2% of kids in the U.S. eat healthy.
2. Fast food consumption is rising.
3. About 25% of kids don’t do any physical activity.
4. Kids spend up to 5 hours daily watching TV.
5. Obese children make poor students.
6. The risk for heart disease jumps.
7. Half of diabetic children are overweight.
8. Sleep apnea is a growing threat.
9. Health care costs are triple what they are for healthier children.
10. Obese children will live shorter lives than their parents.

For many overweight kids and adults, junk food and sweets aren't the only cause: it's starch.  One reason is that high fructose corn syrup is in EVERYTHING, even starches like bread.  Check the labels--you'll be horrified.  Why we need to sugar everything we consume is another post, but for now, take it on good authority that high density foods like bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes give too much energy, and the excess carbohydrate turns to fat.  In reality, it isn't fat that makes us fat, but carbohydrate!  The old advice to eat a low fat and high carbohydrate diet hasn't gotten us out of the obesity epidemic; in fact, the epidemic has gotten worse.

I just got back from a talk given by Dr. Lustig of "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" fame, but I can't write up that smorgasbord of info at the moment.  Next time, Gadget, next time. Right now, the focus of this post is:

Step 1: We need to work toward the goal of replacing that starch AND SUGAR with vegetables and fruit--i.e. REAL FOOD.

How to Change

My advice is to start adding more vegetable and some fruit to a child's diet in a number of ways:

• Start with Breakfast: eggs are a million times better than cereal to start the day. Other options: unsweetened full fat yogurt with fruit, or a chicken apple stir fry. Here are my breakfast recipes from previous posts:
• Apple-Cinnamon Chicken Skillet
• Pancakes from Heaven
• Cinnamon, Smoked Salmon Kale and Eggs
• Sausage and Egg Muffins
• Hot Apple Berry Cinnamon Breakfast

• Veggie Hunt: Let your kids run wild in the produce section.  Anything they find, they can learn how to make with you.  Find a recipe and cook it together.  This gives kids a chance to be creative and try something new.

• Make It a Family Affair: 
• Eat vegetables as a family: make sure you are all eating the same healthy diet so you are a role model for healthy eating. 

• Cook Together: make your kids a part of the process so they feel more connected to their food and the hard work it takes to prepare it. 

• Pile in the Veggies: Incorporate vegetables into sauces, soups, chili, ragout, and anyplace you can add more vegetables without really noticing them.  Some parents find success pureeing vegetables into textures kids like better than when they are raw or cooked and whole. 

• It's No Big Deal: Don't make a big deal out of dinner, just make it and serve it.  Don't highlight the changes you've made, just make it completely normal and natural to eat whatever you've prepared. 

• Easy Favorites:
• Tacos: Try taco night with lettuce leaves and have shredded cabbage, onions, and other vegetables as the toppings.

• Pasta: Try pasta night with spaghetti squash or vegetable noodles: it's delicious, really filling, and even better than pasta!

• Don't Forget the Healthy Meat and Fat: Don't be afraid of meat and fat--it's those dense, high glycemic starches that we have to worry about.  Healthy fats are avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, pasture butter, nuts, and seeds.  Healthy meats are pasture-raised, wild-caught, and grass-fed. 

• Label Hunt: Spring clean your pantry and fridge so it's free of unhealthy temptations.  Read labels--more than five ingredients?  Chuck it.  Something you can't pronounce/don't know what it is or where it comes from? Chuck it.  Added sweeteners?  Chuck it.  You can make this a family affair--kids can practice reading and get a kick from throwing away the crap. 

• Drink Water: Water is the ultimate thirst quencher.  Anything with sugar, even if it's a "sports drink" or 100% juice, is no better than soda. To transition off the juices, try watering them down.  Unsweetened herbal teas are great and add a burst of flavor to water hot or cold.  

• Be the Boss: You are the boss when it comes to food in your house.  Use your choices to nourish, not harm.  

• Cultivate an Appreciation for Healthy Food: Eating healthy is a positive feedback loop--you feel better and better.  Eating poorly is a negative feedback loop--you feel awful, BUT it positively effects your desire for those poor choices.  Break the cycle and eat healthy choices to get yourself back on track.  Substitute your sugar cravings for fruit--such as a decadent, healthy snack: Berry Bowl--and slowly cut back by adding more veggies.  

• Reward Excellence: You can give a reward for the family's effort--perhaps a once a week cheat meal at a restaurant or ice cream for dessert one night. Some people don't like a reward, but for me, if I can stay healthy all week, I have earned a cheat meal or dessert and feel pride that I earned it.  You can also make your "cheat" meals really not so much of a cheat if you buy or make homemade treats still low in sugar and starch and gluten-free--they'll definitely make you feel better than a blow-out gluten cheat.  On the other hand, you can also just forgo the cheat altogether and make it family plan to get healthy and stick with it. 

• Help!  Here are some helpful resources:
• Get Your Kids Off the Crack--my soapbox stand against sugar and refined carbs. Check my sidebar and browse my label cloud for more topics of interest. 

Parenting Blogs:

• Everyday Paleo: a mom with it all going on--easy paleo recipes for the whole family, functional fitness, and her own book!
• Organic Thrifty:
• Transitioning a Child to a Gluten Free/Sugar Free Diet. This is a really great post from a mom who decided to transition her family to gluten-free living. 
• Primal Kitchen with amazing lunchbox ideas, recipes, and pictures!
• Joyful Abode: a very professional smorgasbord of information and recipes
• The Paleo Child: with the title "A Paleo life from birth to breastfeeding and beyond."
• The Cave Kitchen with a great Learning to Cook section categorizing the tasty recipes.
• Enjoying Healthy Foods Says Lindsey: "I started this blog to share my experiences (recipes) good and bad through our major change. I am not scared to share my FLOPS with you... as this is a learning experience for me."
• Paleo Mama "I am not a professional chef.  I am not a doctor or a nutritionist. I am a mom who is cutting through the propaganda of the American “healthy” diet, to create REAL natural meals for myself and my family."
• Primal Mama Cooks...and dishes on life "Seeing the positive changes in my health and strength led me to explore creating healthy, paleo-style recipes to share with you."
• Paleo on a Budget "How a family of three eats frugally while following the Paleo Diet."
• Life as a Plate: amazing, beautiful recipes and posts
• Paleo Parents: delicious and colorful recipes and some helpful parenting tips.  I like their sidebar intro: "A practical approach for modern day families to eat from the Paleolithic period. It's not about a diet. It's not about "no" grains, dairy and sugar. It's about eating healthful, wholesome food for your family to look and feel their best. It sounds hard and overwhelming, but one (easy) step at a time you can get there, too."
• Paleo Chronicles: 
• Part 1 Says Patty: "In this series I plan to get down to the nitty gritty - what's worked, what hasn't, where I'm going and where I'm at with my own children."
• Part 2 Says Patty: "Like I said in my first post, any child over the age of 5 is gonna resist if their food options are suddenly changed.  I took a different stance and gave my kids the same time, education and choice that I had when I chose to eat healthier."

So I hope I helped give you some starting ideas and support for choosing this path to nutrition and health.  Life's a journey--you just have to take the first step and if you fall off the path, just pick yourself up and get back on.

If you write or know of any other parenting blogs to share here as a resource for others, please write a comment and I'll add them to the list.  Please let me know how your journey is going for you!

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

I apologize in advance for being wordy lately.  You are forewarned.  Truth is, I am passionate about nutrition, so much so that I am often screaming on the inside with frustration at the world.  Today is no different, but I want to share my frustration and the sunshine of hope for change.  Some people are on the right track, we just need to enlist more!

Today I attended a luncheon to highlight author and sociology professor Jan Poppendieck and her new book, Free For All: Fixing School Food in America.  To be honest, I haven't read her book yet, but let me report on my experiences today.  If you are a parent or just a concerned citizen like me, please read this and help!

The Big Picture

First off, I totally agree that school lunch is a problem, a serious problem and it needs fixing.  There is a problem when tater tots and pizza are still on the menu even at "progressive" school districts like those in Santa Cruz.  Looking at the menu for elementary school lunches shows only 3 days out of 18 without cheese.  Pasta and bread are present every day.  Further digging into the website shows fat-phobia (low-fat everything is promoted) and misinformed juice and smoothie recommendations.  We won't even go into the "healthy" whole grains.  For instance, as a snack idea, Katie Jeffrey-Lunn, MS, RD, CDN, LDN recommends combining at least two of the five food groups into a healthy snack.  Try to imagine the effects of cereal and fruit, both high glycemic, without any satiating fat or protein to balance that sugar intake.  Talk about sugar high, binge eating, and inevitable crash.  Bet that is satisfying.

Okay, no argument that there is a problem with school lunches.  Jan Poppendieck recommends attacking the problem at a systemic level.  She wants universal school lunches available to every student--no more selling food to kids.  Among the benefits, she listed a relaxing, enjoyable, shared lunchtime experience similar to that she remembers from summer camp.  No one has to stress over food or money or the social stigma attached to kids who can and can't pay for their lunch.  I can relate to this as one of the "weird" kids who brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every. single. day.  I never had the money to supplement my lunch with snack foods until high school and then the cookie and snack cake options were a daily regularity for me. The fact that ubiquitous junk food in schools has not improved and has only gotten worse is disturbing to say the least.  Is that how we want to be fueling the minds of our youth?

Next, Jan went over her ABCs of the school food crisis.  "A" is for a la carte food items that undermine the nutritional integrity of the lunch program.  She asked how schools can offer a healthy menu while still offering junk food on the side.  School lunch should be an extension of the nutritional education, not in direct contradiction with it.   "B" is for business and bottom-line.  Kids are unable to make informed, responsible decisions because they have been bombarded with multi-billion dollar ad campaigns targeting them as junk food consumers.  She advocated for school leaders to say NO to the junk food vendors; that money from junk food is not worth the health (I would add "or moral") price.  "C" is for the chilling culture of compliance.  The current three-tier system of free, reduced-price, and full price is an administrative nightmare.  A universal school lunch program would be more efficient and save money in the long run, although its start-up would be very costly.  She asked for school leaders to see the educational potential in making school lunch part of the curriculum, practicing what we preach.  To fund this bold plan, she introduced the plan to tax soda and use the revenue to fund school lunch programs.

So here are the issues I want to tackle.  Doubtless there are hundreds more, but let's just start somewhere.

Sugar Here, Sugar There, Sugar Everywhere

Problem #1:  The public (this includes educators and those making policy) does not see the sugar in grains or grasp the full extent of sugar infiltration into our food products.  

Grains are a hidden sugar.  Heck the the American Diabetes Association doesn't see the sugar in grains.  They list whole grains among their Superfoods and of course fat-free milk and yogurt, without a distinction of source, so you can get a nice, healthy dose of grains from those grain-fed cows.  ALL carbohydrate breaks down into sugar, and sugar spikes blood sugar.  Fiber and fat mitigate the situation, but processing grains makes them high glycemic and no amount of fiber is going to fix that.  And don't tell me about all the vitamins and minerals we are missing out on by not consuming bread, pasta, and rice.  It's called vegetables, people.  Go to the source.

We all know that sugar is bad for us, so we don't eat candy.  Problem solved, right?  Wrong.  What the public doesn't understand is that sugar is in nearly everything.  And I'm not talking about the hidden sugar of grains (which I might add are in everything too!); it's real sugar and its guises as high fructose corn syrup, honey, agave, maltodextrin, splenda, xylitol, glucose, fructose, etc.  Sugar is in your condiments and tomato sauce, your dried fruit and frozen meals, and especially in your ranch dressing on top of your healthy salad.  It's in your chips and dips, sauces and spices, and baby foods.  It's in your sandwich bread and processed meats.  It's in your bottled beverages, even sports drinks and vitamin-enriched water.  Need I go on?

When Oprah Talks, The World Listens

Oprah recently had a show devoted to diabetes.  Through showing actual diabetics and voicing their stories as well as the science behind the disease, the message is clear: Diabetes is preventable.  You just have to want to change and make the effort.  Fortunately, the show also highlighted hidden sugar in common foods like ketchup and ranch dressing.  Hopefully the public will get a bit more label-savvy and think more about their food choices.  There is a startling figure circulated at the show:

Women who drink one can of soda a day, increase their risk of type 2 diabetes by 83%.

Now this really gets scary when you couple that with a statistic from a 2009 study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy: 

41% of children (ages 2-11 years) and 62% of adolescents (ages 12-17 years) in California drink at least one soda or other sugar-sweetened beverage every day

OMG!  Isn't that a wake up call?  How can we allow schools to sell such poison in the cafeteria or vending machines or to allow kids to bring it from home?  What are we doing to our kids?

Problem #2: A revolution in school lunches requires funding, lots of funding.  

One way proposed by Jan was a soda tax.  The revenue from taxing soda could fund an overhaul to the school lunch program.  But my god, we couldn't even agree on a soda tax!  Most people were for it, but the naysayers were scared of overregulation and losing funding if soda consumption actually decreased.  Isn't it worth the risk?  What makes soda any different from tobacco?  Does it have any redeeming qualities?

Do As I Say AND As I Do

Problem #3: If educators and educational planners cannot serve themselves healthy food, how can they expect to serve students healthy food?

Our menu at the luncheon consisted of mixed green salad with a choice of soybean-red wine vinegar herb dressing or miso dressing, beets with red onions, cooked herbed carrots, cooked broccoli, whole grain rolls, corn crumb-breaded chicken, and some sort of cheesy pasta.  Okay, you know by now what I would say about the whole grain rolls, miso dressing (it's soybean based and likely sweetened), pasta, and corn-crusted likely factory farmed battery cage chicken.  But soybean oil--are you serious?!?  Vegetable oils including soybean oil and canola oil are highly processed, often partially hydrogenated (yummy trans fat!), and too high in omega-6 fatty acids (remember, we want to decrease the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, since omega-6 are associated with health problems and omega-3s are much more beneficial).  I had the veggies sans dressing and felt like an alien.

In addition to the lunch buffet table was a table (a whole table!!!) devoted to cookies.  Here we are trying to fix school lunches and we can't even go a meal without a freakin' cookie!  Are you serious?!?  How can we expect to feed kids the right way when we can't even feed ourselves healthy foods?

The biggest problem: NO ONE (except my paleo friend and I) took issue with this meal.  It was praised by all.  Can you hear my inner voice screaming with frustration?

What Is Healthy Anyway?

Problem #4:  If educators don't have the information on what is healthy, how can they teach nutrition to students?

There is no consensus about what is actually healthy food.  I have my take and I believe it is backed by solid scientific studies, but I know that Nestle and Kraft and General Mills are all funding research to back their products, to find data to support their "high fructose corn syrup is okay in moderation" ideology.  Want to be sick?  Check out the Corn Refiners Association's Sweet Surprise website showing how "natural" high fructose corn syrup is because it comes from corn, a natural grain.  We'll leave out the discussion of GMOs and how corn production is anything but natural, requiring fifty gallons of oil for pesticides and fertilizers to produce an acre of corn on land totally unsuited to large-scale agriculture (read The Vegetarian Myth for more brain-food).  

But really, what is healthy?  Will my knowledge be turned on its head a few years down the line?  My suggestion is that we stick to what makes the most sense and is the simplest solution, Occam's Razor.  It makes sense to eat what we have eaten for millions of years: meat and veggies, nuts and seeds, some fruit, and little starch.  Our digestive tract is built for this and our bodies thrive on this.  We can force dairy, grains, sugar, beans, and processed foods into our lives, but are we better off when we do?  The archeological record shows healthier people before agriculture, not after.  Our medical prowess is keeping us alive longer and saving more infants and children from a premature death, but civilization also brought the modern Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and stroke.  While perhaps not the simplest solution for the changes it requires, it is the simplest nutrition and makes the most sense.  At least to me.  N=1 

Why Bother?

Problem #5: Why me?  Why should I care?  Who am I to do anything about this?

Why can't we just keep feeding our kids the same old crap and have some other generation clean up the mess?  Why should it be us?  Why doesn't the government care about us and eliminate the poisons in our food?  Why do we actually have to be adults and do something about it?  Why, why, why--who does this sound like?

Here's why: The benefits of a universal school lunch program overwhelmingly defeat the costs.  Jan lists the camaraderie of the children who get a stress-free, healthy lunch.  Kids wouldn't have to spend money on food or drink, stigmatize themselves for their ability or lack of ability to purchase items, or rely upon their skewed sense of what is healthy from years of advertisement bombardment and relatively little nutritional teaching.  School food can illustrate health lessons by introducing kids to unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, improve their eating habits, and help them integrate their learning with practical applications. Changes taken now might be costly, but they'll pay for themselves in reduced healthcare costs down the line.  It'll be cheaper in the long run to eliminate the administrative burden of the three-tier system.  It'll reduce the cost and waste of preparing meals that go uneaten now since student participation is voluntary.  It'll create healthy bodies and fuel young minds.  

In Santa Cruz, we are in a unique location to support our schools through our rich agricultural and meat production resources.  There are local organic farms, grass fed cattle, and free range poultry all at our doorstep.  Why don't we take this opportunity to support local business and supply local, healthy foods to our schools?  Remove the junk!

Am I just spouting insanity or do you want to help make this happen? As Willy Elliott-McCrea from Second Harvest Food Bank said today, "It isn't a matter of can we do this, but will we."  

For more information about Jan Poppendieck, here is an interview with Jan at salon.com.  Her book is purchasable through Amazon.  

For more information on Fixing School Lunches check out the Go For Health! initiative at the United Way, UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, and Santa Cruz Education Foundation.  

Representative Sam Farr is sponsoring the Children's Fruit and Vegetable Act to provide more funding for school food.  

Ask Speaker Nancy Pelosi to support the Child Nutrition Reauthorization 2010 to invest in child nutrition programs through this Second Harvest Food Bank form.    

Get Your Kids Off the Crack

A healthy start to your day.

Yes, that is what sugar is to our bodies.  It's addictive as crack and packed with a slew of health detriments worthy of being called a drug.  So today I am going to help any parents out there by providing some useful information and case stories to help you get your kids to eat healthy (and you yourself if you haven't taken the plunge!).  By healthy I mean: meats and veggies, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and NO sugar, NO grains, NO legumes, and NO dairy.  Difficult mission?  Not really as difficult as you may think.  Cue Scrooged voice over: "Your life might just depend on it."


Why bother?


Here are just a few reasons to change your children's diet:

1.  Their health.  Equipping your kids with the most healthy digestive system you can will help them fight off bugs that kids so frequently catch.  You are also setting up their bodies to resist disease and such prevalent problems plaguing our children as obesity and even cancer.  Check out all those healthy veggies I have been describing.  Antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals are necessary NOT optional.  Kids need protein, fat, and carbohydrate at every meal to help balance their hormones and avoid highs and lows in blood sugar.  Changing your child's diet can also help existing conditions such as asthma, MS, autism, and diabetes.  Check out Robb Wolf's site like this post for more on diabetes and read up on Loren Cordain's research on his website for more details and case studies.  If you knew you had a possible remedy for these conditions or could protect against them, wouldn't you give it a try?  

2.  Their body image.  You are setting your kids down the right path when you care about what they eat.  You are showing them how important good food choices are and how they are an important part of a healthy lifestyle.  Eating healthy will inevitably lead to a healthy-looking body.  No, they won't be paper thin models and no, they won't be obese.  Neither is okay or healthy.  You are showing them that food is fuel to help maintain bodily systems, build muscle, and allow for growth.  Along with exercise (like CrossFit!), your kids will develop healthy, toned bodies that are useful for reaching their fitness goals.  The perks of looking good in a bathing suit for your teen are just that: perks.  The real goals should be getting one more pullup, climbing the rope faster, finishing a workout faster with heavier weight and better technique, and achieving that difficult skill for the first time.  A healthy body comes from exercise and nutrition.  You can't have one without the other.

Check out this Dove commercial showing a model's transformation and how our perception of beauty is distorted.  Every young girl (and boy) should watch this.

Here is the take from a diet.com reporter on the photoshop extravaganza in our media: Part 1 and Part 2.

3.  Their well-being and mental clarity.  Giving the kids the tools to balance their diet with healthy protein, fat, and carbohydrates is like teaching them math or reading.  With these tools they can soar.  Their mental clarity will be pronounced.  No more highs and lows as their blood sugar roller coasters from the last sugar-laden meal.  Many teachers have reported remarkably better concentration at school from children following these dietary guidelines.  Here is evidence of improved test scores, better discipline, and improved health from a principal who banned sugar.  Balancing the nutrients and fueling the body with what it needs also protects against rapid mood swings and depression.  I am not saying that your teenagers will be angels, but if you can help them gain more control over their mental state, wouldn't it be worth it?  Eating healthy just makes you feel good.  Give it a try!

4.  Their values.  By cleaning up your children's diet, you are showing how much you care about your children and value their health.  By changing your diet to eliminate most processed foods, you are changing their value systems to respect local, organic sources for their food and to care about the process foods undergo to get to the table.  You are making them think about where their food comes from and to better connect with it.  Each trip together to a farmer's market and allowing your child a free-for-all to find fruit and veggies of his/her choice can be like a trip to the toy store or candy store.  Cook and prepare your meals together as a family activity.  Let these new experiences help define for your child what is healthy and fun.  Help your children respect the environment and their foods by making the right choices yourself.  Lead by example.

5.  Their future.   You have the means to send your kids down the right path right now.  The decisions you make now will echo throughout their lives.  If you give a kid childhood obesity, he will battle it throughout his adult life.  The same goes for the other side of the coin.  If you give your kids a healthy childhood, they will grow strong and be buffered against the not-so-wise decisions they may make later in life.  Imagine if you had a healthy diet and CrossFit when you were growing up.  What kind of a beast would you be today?  Check out CrossFit Kids HQ for examples of said beasts growing up with the benefit of CrossFit and healthy nutrition.  They are the role models we want for our kids.

If you could raise your kids so that they have the tools to lead a long, healthy life, wouldn't you make the effort?  Right now, by throwing away that leftover Halloween candy and purging the house of all high fructose corn syrup-laden foods, grains, and sugar you can make a difference.  It isn't that hard when it comes right down to it.  Some discomfort, yes, but time will win this war.  If you can hold up your resolve, soon the kids will stop asking for that candy bar or trip to McDonald's.  Instead, allow them to pick their meals and treats from healthy choices at the store or restaurant.  You will be surprised not by the limitations, but by the opportunities and bounty of real food that is out there.  Let your children's lapses into their old life and diet come from outside your control and soon your kids will realize that the sugar/grain hangover they feel after a sleepover binge isn't really worth it or at least definitely not something they want to do everyday.

Most importantly, you are their parent.  You can do this.  The rewards speak for themselves.


How Can I Get Started?

Here are some amazing resources to help you make this change as easy as possible.

1.  If you are just going to read one source for curiosity's sake, this is it.  This blog post at Organic and Thrifty is about how a mom got her kids to follow a gluten-free diet.  While gluten-free is a step in the right direction, it is best to give up ALL grains and sugars and even dairy since it is just concentrated grains (unless you switch to raw 100% grass-fed milk).  Sometimes it takes a celiac child to force this issue, but imagine what you can do if you make this change voluntarily and don't wait for such a problem to force your hand!  I love her thorough article detailing her personal experience and how to make it happen in your own life.  Please read this!

2.  Another great read is a father's experience and recommendations for how you can do the same at CrossFit California City.  He is straightforward, and the advice he gives is effective.

3.  Here is CrossFit Norcal's answer to how to get kids to eat paleo.  Simple and straightforward.

4.  The CrossFit Journal has a free article called "Getting off the crack" by Nicole Carroll.  This is an adult's perspective of embarking upon the zone diet.

5.  More brevity needed?  Here is CrossFit Kids nutritional advice:

Sane nutrition for kids in 150 words

Our goal with kids isn't to get them on the zone, but to get them to think and make good choices about what they eat. Our goal is to teach them very basic concepts, sugar is bad, protein is good and you need to eat some in every meal. Nuts and seeds are good fats. Eat them, don't avoid them. Pasta, white bread, and white rice are not that good for you, stuff that's red, yellow, green and found in the fruit and vegetable aisle is good for you. Eat a lot of it.

Look at your plate, make a fist, eat that much meat every meal; turn your hand over and fill it with nuts and seeds, eat that much good fat, fill the rest of your plate with stuff you found in the fruit and vegetable aisle. Fill your plate this way at every meal, don't eat more.

6.  Still have some arguments against the big change?  Here are six reasons NOT to eat paleo and why they DON'T hold up.  Let this be your ammunition when others question your "insanity."

7.  Robb Wolf chimes in with Kids, Paleo and Nutrient Density with a scientific approach to show that paleo is good for kids, and NO they will not miss anything vital to their nutrition--in fact, they will be far healthier!  

The First Step: Breakfast

Many people say the most important and effective first step is changing breakfast.  Throw away those high glycemic, sugary breakfast cereals and exchange them for real food.

My go-to breakfast is eggs (farmer's market or omega-enriched) and sausage (Aidell's varieties that are sugar, grain, and soy free) with either some bread or an apple (microwave it for a minute or two for a great warm apple breakfast suitable for this chilly weather!).  I also sometimes change it up and have leftover chicken or turkey sauteed with apple and cinnamon for a quick skillet breakfast.  I also used to go crazy with the omelets and veggies, which is probably preferable to the fruit.  For example, simply toss in some spinach, mushrooms, and summer squash for a hearty meal with your eggs.  Leftovers are also an option (mmmmnn  reheated spaghetti with meat sauce), as are Egg Cupcakes 2.0 courtesy of CrossFit Norcal for a more portable breakfast.  Breakfast is also the easiest meal to eat out in restaurants with omelets abounding any breakfast menu.  Just exchange the toast for a fruit cup.

For more on healthy meal ideas, check out my post Lunch Time for some simple lunch and snack ideas.  I have already posted some tasty dinner ideas and will post more in the future!

Are You Inspired to Make the Change? 

Let me know what else you need to help you get started and I will try to help in any way that I can! If you have already taken the plunge, let us know how you accomplished it!