Every parent wants good things for their children: a positive outlook on life, a healthy respect for authority, a strong sense of self, a disease-free body…a healthy body weight. Despite our best intentions, a recent report suggests that for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children may have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. With all the advances in medicine, how could this possibly be true? The blame falls squarely on today’s toxic food environment.

In short, your kids are eating too much junk. And who can blame them? Junk food tastes great. The good news is that healthy food also tastes great. Take these simple tips and transform your child’s diet into one that is packed with good health.

1) Add Color
Adding bright and colorful fruits and veggies to your child’s plate will get their diet on the fast track to health. Fresh fruits and veggies are filled with fiber, vitamins and minerals that are essential to good health. If your kids are resistant then make it fun. Serve veggies with salad dressing as a dip. Cut fresh fruit in the colors of the rainbow and place them on a skewer. Serve a color themed meal – all green, all red or all orange. Use your imagination and you’ll come up with an endless number of ways to make fruits and veggies fun to eat.

2) Think Whole Foods
Processed foods are the biggest problem with our modern diet. Packaged and refined food products are devitalized and filled with empty calories that quickly lead to weight gain. Unfortunately, processed foods make up a large portion of the diet of many children. Train your kids to opt for whole foods, rather than packaged ones. Whole foods are foods that are in their natural state. An apple. A piece of sprouted grain bread spread with natural peanut butter. A piece of hormone-free chicken. A bowl of beans. You get the idea.

3) Use Wholesome Sweeteners
Refined sugar and corn syrup are packed into many of the foods that your kids love. There are more wholesome sweeteners available – sweeteners that add vitamins and minerals rather than empty calories. Use the following rather than white sugar or corn syrup:

Sucanat: This pure, dried sugar can juice retains its molasses content. Use it to replace white sugar in baking.
Pure Maple Syrup: Forget the “fake” syrups containing corn syrup. Pure maple syrup contains potassium, calcium and some amino acids.
Brown Rice Syrup: Use this dark syrupy sweetener instead of corn syrup. It takes longer to digest and won’t spike your blood sugar like refined sugar.
Dates: Throw a few seeded dates into your blender to sweeten your smoothie rather than adding white sugar.

4) Make Smart Substitutions
Kids love pizza and pasta and peanut butter sandwiches, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Rather than fight your kids on their favorites, try making smart substitutions to make their favorites more nutritious.

Pizza: Up the nutritional content of your pizza by opting for wheat crust over white, adding veggies to the toppings and sticking with lean meat toppings.
Pasta: Use sprouted grain or whole grain pasta rather than traditional white pasta. Add veggies to your pasta sauce. Stick with red sauce, since white sauce is so high in fat.
PB&J: A PB&J, made with white bread using sugar-filled peanut butter and corn syrup-filled jelly, is fairly void of any real nutritional value. Try the PB&J Makeover recipe below instead for a sandwich that will provide real wholesome fuel for your child’s day.

5) Ban Sugary Drinks
One of the best things that you can do for your child’s good health is to instill in them a love for water rather than sugary drinks. Soda pop and juices are filled with empty calories that encourage weight gain. The easiest way to do this is to stock your house with lots of pure, filtered water. Don’t have fruit drinks or soda pop readily available so that they grow accustom to drinking only water.

Men’s Health is great for providing common sense diet tips. So if you plan on spending some time in the mall, here is my advice.

#1.  Please don’t bring my wife with you!! Unless you have at least 7 hours to burn.

#2.  Learn what NOT to eat, and what are suitable substitutes.

#5. Worse Slice Of Pizza

Sbarro Stuffed Pepperoni Pizza-1 slice packs 890 calories, 42 grams of fat, 3200 mg of sodium. That’s more than a days worth of sodium and 2/3 of your daily fat intake.

If You Must Eat at Sbarro’s, Then Eat This Instead:

Sbarro New York Style Fresh Tomato Pizza-450 calories, 14 grams of fat, 1040 mg of sodium.  As a rule of thumb, go for the thin slice with nothing but healthy vegys on top.

#4.  Worse Chinese Meal

Panda Express Orange Chicken with Fried Rice-970 Calories, 38 grams of fat, 1540mg of sodium.  I know, and you thought that making a choice for Chinese food was a sound one.

But Chinese Food IS Good For You, if you do this instead:

Skip the rice altogether: choose more vegys instead and opt for the lean mean, steak, fish, chicken breast (better than the thigh meat).  This switch will save you an average of 500 calories per Chinese meal.

#3.  Worse Sandwich

Panera Bread Full Chipotle Chicken on Artisan French-You know I am generally very hard on the negative health consequences of bread, but when you start with a triple layer of white bread, the nosedive happens pretty quickly thereafter. Then they pack on a canopy of cheddar cheese, the most fattening of cheese choices, and you end up with a surprising 990 calories, 56 grams of fat, and 2370 mg of sodium. Assuming we should target a sandwich mean to land around 500 calories, this “whopper” skids off the runway.

Eat This Instead:

Panera Bread Full Smoked Turkey on Country Miche Bread-560 Calories, 17 grams of fat, 1960 mg of sodium.  But here is the best part, it tastes better too.

#2.  Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo’d (22 oz)-Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised when the title of your food evokes the sound of a Cow, but you could consume half of your days calories, by the time you finish this thing.  770 calories, 20 grams of fat, 108 grams of sugar.  This smoothie has the same amount of sugar as 6 packs of peanut M&M’s.  With Jamba, choose the drinks in the “All Fruit’ and “Light” categories.

Drink This Instead:

Jamba Juice Mango Mantra-150 calories, .5 grams of fat, 27 grams of sugar.  You have just saved 620 calories and 20 grams of fat.  If you made this switch 2 times a week, it would save you 15 pounds a year.

#1. The Worst Mall Food In America and It Isn’t Even Close!!!

Cinnabon Regular Caramel Pecanbun-1100 calories, 56 grams of fat, 47 grams of sugar, 141 grams of carbs.  But at least it has some nuts on it?!?

I’m not even going to give you all the numbers, just rest assured that starting wit 1100 calories, and 2 1/2 times the daily amount of unhealthy trans fat is all you need to know.  You are better off eating 6 White Castle Hamburgers.

If the Hypnotic Smell of Cinnamon is Just To Much For You:

Go for the Cinnabon Stix-save 721 calories and 35 grams of fat.

If you have additional questions about diet and nutrition, feel free to email me at DrBooker@Capitolrehab.com

To read the Mens Health article in its entirety, click here.

If you’ve been following our “Amanda’s Challenge” you know that for most children, including Amanda, the most challenging part of changing dietary habits is getting good information about food, and especially, food choices.

Diane Sawyer does a short but informative interview on Healthy Lunch Choices For Your Child.

(Not to digress, but Diane Sawyer is 64 years old, maybe she needs to tell the rest of us her secrets for maintaining such a youthful look.)

Click Here to see the video and article in its entirety.

For parents who are serious about making good breakfast and lunch choices for your children, here are the three foods your child should try to avoid:

1. Bread and Bagels-Doesn’t matter if it is the “high fiber” type, bread and bagels are very high on the glycemic index, which means they are going to spike blood sugar. This leads to an increase in blood insulin, something you want to avoid.

2. Breakfast cereals: Again, high on the glycemic index. What you always want to remember is the higher on the glycemic index, the more likely it is to produce excess fat.

3. French Fries-Arguably the worse thing. The combination of the high glycemic index from the potatoes, combined with the oil they are fried in, is a recipe for disaster.

If you must have potatoes, opt for a sweet or baked potato, and if you must have a cereal, choose oatmeal, preferably, steel cut.

You best choice is to side with proteins like eggs, omelets or sandwich wraps, all of which are easy to prepare and not that time consuming.

If you would like more information on nutrition or diet, please do not hesitate to email me at DrBooker@CapitolRehab.com and enter “Nutrition” in the subject line.

Dr. Booker’s advice to Amanda via email … being shared here to benefit anyone in a similar dieting journey …

You may have noticed that the hardest part of the first phase of your diet was overcoming your yearning for the usual bad carb breakfast: toast or bagel, pancakes or waffles. For the last 5 days, your breakfast has consisted of eggs and a protein such as Canadian bacon or turkey bacon. The initial goal has been to wean you from the customary morning dose of carbs, but the ultimate goal is to begin reversing your body’s inability to process sugars and starches properly, the condition at the root of most weight problems.

To accomplish this, we must cut off all carbs but the healthiest ones, those highest in fiber and nutrients and lowest in sugars and starches. Additionally, we are getting you in the habit of eating breakfast! We find that skipping breakfast has become all too common in our society, and the results are damaging. When we skip breakfast, it allows blood sugar to drop and hunger to increase over the course of the morning, eventually we reach for the first available food to satisfy our hunger pains, usually those bad carbs guaranteed to keep us overweight.

Understanding Phase One (taken from The South Beach Diet)

“As you know, this phase is the strictest phase of the diet. It’s meant to last for 2 weeks only-just long enough to resolve the insulin resistance that was brought about by eating too many bad (mostly processed) carbs. Phase 1 does not have to be low carb if you eat the right carbs. It is designed to allow ample portions of protein, good fats, and the lowest glycemic index carbs needed for satisfaction and blood sugar control. These glycemic index vegetables, which also contribute fiber, important nutrients such as heart-healthy folate, and other vitamins and minerals. Many salads and vegetables are unlimited. You will also have your choice of proteins from a variety of sources.

By the time this phase ends, your unhealthy cravings, especially for sweets, baked goods, and starches, will have essentially vanished. You’ll notice that each day includes six different occasions to eat. So you should never feel hungry, and if you do, it’s possible that you’re being too stingy with the portions. The South Beach Diet doesn’t require you to measure what you eat in ounces, calories, or anything else. The meals should be of normal size-enough to satisfy your hunger, but no more that that.”

Terms to get familiar with:

Glycemic Index:
The glycemic index or GI describes the difference in carbohydrates by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Low GI carbs – produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels, while the carbohydrates higher on the GI produce larger fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels. Lower GI carbs have been shown to reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes and are the key to sustainable weight loss.

Insulin Resistance:
Insulin is a hormone produced by special cells in the pancreas. This insulin is released into the blood stream and travels throughout the body. Simply put, insulin acts to control the metabolism (breakdown) of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Insulin resistance (IR) is a condition in which the cells of the body become resistant to the effects of insulin, and the breakdown of carbs, fats and proteins, doesn’t occur as it should. Your body responds by producing MORE insulin to achieve the desired results. This can lead to Type 2 Diabetes and/or heart disease.