Do your kids really eat all that…?
Get them hooked to the smell of oven roasted whole chickens or lamb legs. With the side of oven baked onions, garlic, baby potatoes or sweet potatoes. And a whole tray of oven roasted vegetables like carrots, celery, fennel, onions and colorful bell peppers. Get the kids addicted to the taste of fresh milled flour sourdough dripping extra virgin olive oil. Let them split the chewy bread into pieces and meticulously dip each morsel into the gold green liquid oil and let them savor the flavor and texture.
Yes, my kids really eat like this every day and they’re very happy with the food they eat. It is all they know. We do allow special occasions and celebrations. We encourage them to eat the pizza slices and cakes at birthday parties or at school. But on a day to day basis, they do not eat anything that comes out of wrappers and plastic containers, with some exceptions like cheese and yogurt (we do not have a dairy farm… yet). No snack bars. No gummy bears and no boxed crackers. I bake my crackers made from fresh milled flour sometimes. It’s literally just rolling out a sheet of flour mixed with water at 60% hydration by weight and cutting them and putting them onto a floured stainless steel baking sheet and baking them for about 15 minutes. If I don’t have time even for that, I don’t make them and there are many alternatives.
Did you know snacking can be so harmful for teeth, especially for children? When food, especially starches (crackers, breads, rice, baked goods, etc) comes into the mouth, immediately more saliva is produced, together with many digestive enzymes from the salivary glands. One of these enzymes is called amylase, which is primarily responsible for breaking down carbohydrates into simple sugars. In tern, these sugars become readily available to oral bacteria, such as the Streptococcus species and Lactobacillus species, to begin digestion in the mouth. And as these bacteria start to work on the simple sugars, they release large amounts of acids very quickly inside the mouth. The kids don’t have to eat sugars or acidic foods to damage their teeth – the starchy snack foods cause just as much acid (or more) to be released in the mouth to damage the enamel on the teeth. And the lactic acid production happens within 5 minutes of eating. So imagine how much damage to the teeth can happen if you or your children are constantly snacking on starchy foods all day every day without much thought going into it.
Another consideration is the interplay between growth hormones (GH) and insulin depending on when we (or our children) eat. Very simply put, GH and insulin send the opposite message to the body; insulin signals “there is a lot of energy, so store it away” while GH messages “bring out the energy to build bones and tissues”. As soon as we start eating, insulin is released, while GH is released when we are fasting or sleeping. The two hormones are not present in high levels in the body at the same time. So, feeding children a large, carbohydrate heavy dinner right before sleep is really damaging because their natural GH spike is inhibited due to the large amount of insulin soon after they start sleeping, and the presence of a lot insulin during sleep can interfere with their natural sleep cycles.
I understand that in real life scenarios, it’s impossible to nail every meal perfectly every time. But we must try our best for our children to set a good routine, because they are at the mercy of our hands. It’s one thing if late night meals happen occasionally due to special circumstances, but if that’s the pattern of every day living, we must do something. Because it may be costing their teeth enamel and growth hormones!
