8 Steps to a Healthier Family Diet Part #2

Here are more of the steps to a healthier family in the article by Dr. Sears we began yesterday.

Step Four:  Feed your family grow foods.

Grow foods are whole foods: fruits, vegetables, legumes; whole grains; nuts; yogurt; eggs; healthy oils. These foods share one important thing in common: they come from nature, not from the factory. Dr. Sears uses the term grow foods with children “because they equate it with things that they want to do: running fast, getting bigger, getting stronger, getting smarter.” He suggests that parents emphasize grow foods in the family diet with what he calls traffic light eating. 

“Green light foodsare go-for-it foods, anytime foods. Those are the fruits, the vegetables: all those grow foods that we find in nature. Then there are the yellow lightfoods – the sweet treats, the desserts. These are sometime foods. Finally, we have the red light foods. They are no-time foods. The red light food says, “Stop! Can you make a healthier choice?” 

Step Five:  Raise a grazer. 

Sears is also a big fan of grazing – “eating small, frequent ‘mini-meals’ throughout the day instead of gorging on big meals,” he explains. “Children are meant to graze. People of all ages are healthier when they graze. Studies have shown that if we break our eating up into five or six mini-meals instead of three big meals, we tend to put on less extra body fat.” 

Step Six:  Start the day with a brainy breakfast. 

Dr. Sears is a huge proponent of a healthy breakfast. “Breakfast sets the nutritional tone for the day,” he asserts. “The brain does not store energy so it requires a steady supply. Sending your child off to school without a healthy breakfast is like driving your car off to work with an empty fuel tank. “When children skip breakfast or have a junk carb breakfast, they simply run out of gas around mid-morning,” he continues. “It’s no wonder children get labeled as having learning and attention problems.” 

Step Seven:  Feed your family lots of fruits and vegetables. 

“Remember how grandmother told you to eat your fruits and vegetables?” Sears asks. “Well, she was nutritionally correct. Fruits and vegetables are natural grow foods. They have the right carbs, the right fats, fiber, protein – they are the total nutritional package.” Sears encourages us to think of fruits and vegetables as “nature’s pharmacy.” “They contain phytonutrients that help make us healthier, so it’s veryimportant to eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that contain a wide variety of phytonutrients.” 

Step Eight:  Take your children to the supermarket. 

Sears sees the supermarket as a giant nutritional classroom. “Take advantage of it by taking your children grocery shopping,” he recommends. “Kids love to be active shoppers. “Start by sitting down with your child and making a shopping list full of grow foods,” he suggests. “When you get to the supermarket, look together for the healthy foods. Go to the cereal aisle and have your child pick out the cereals that have the ‘right’ carbs on the label. Have her (or him) pick up a loaf of white bread in one hand and a loaf of 100 percent whole-wheat bread in the other and compare them.”