The publishing house “Alpina publisher” has published a book by the journalist Svetlana there “Love and broccoli. In search of the children’s appetite.” Svetlana spoke with experts in nutrition, pediatricians, nutritionists and parents to learn what approaches to baby food there are. “Pravmir” publishes a Chapter “With flavors — I bet” about sugar in children’s food.
- Feed the baby on demand or on schedule?
- Director of the cancer Institute: Cancer often causes Smoking and poor diet
- The post should not be for punishment
- How our brain creates habits
- Where the child has diabetes and what to feed student – 6 questions to the endocrinologist
Svetlana There
“Around us too much sugar shit!” — emotionally said Jamie Oliver in his movie “Sugar rush”.
Many experts agree with him. Studies show that our daily food — not only fast food every year really is getting sweeter and calorie.
In General, according to Pierre Dukan in his new book, “Sixty of the most important days of your pregnancy,” in the entire history of our species we’ve never had access to so many artificial (that is, refined and concentrated) and fast utilizable carbohydrates, as in the last two generations.
I discuss this issue, phoned via Skype with writer Bee Wilson. Her book “the Food. Starting point: What we will become in the future, unless we change ourselves in the present?” I had to read out to the holes.
Wilson is the most famous in England, a food critic, a columnist for the Guardian and Telegraph, the mother of three children.
Citing numerous studies, B. Wilson writes in the book that sugar is present as additives in 80% of the products that you can find on the shelves of modern supermarkets.
On the recommendations of the British Scientific Advisory Committee on nutrition (SACN), the daily amount of sugar for children and adults should not exceed seven teaspoons, or about 30 g, which corresponds to only a glass of fruit juice from a package or serving of sweet yogurt. Children four to six years are advised to consume no more than 19 grams of sugar per day, and at the age of seven to ten years — not more than 24 g. thus, according to Jamie Oliver, the average adult today daily “eats” as much as 40 teaspoons of sugar!
Bi explains to me that loyalty to the sweet taste we get from nature. Someone’s craving for sweets is stronger, someone- less. The role played by a range of factors: individual characteristics of taste receptors, genetics, the diet of mothers during pregnancy, nutrition in childhood and so on.
But, anyway, the sweet taste familiar to all of us from birth, because they have breast milk. (Especially that of women’s milk contains a particularly high concentration of lactose, and therefore it’s sweeter than, for example, cow, goat, sheep or camel.) And even more generous dose of formula milk substitutes. Therefore, sweet milk, the strongest taste “imprinting”, which remains of each person for life.
The tycoons of the food industry, especially in the UK, realize the brilliant marketing, says Wilson. For example, fashionable now fruit bars are marketed as health food, though in fact they contain a lot of sugar.
Particularly vulnerable, according to her, children for whom the last decade has launched an entire industry fun food, that is “food-entertainment” and, as a rule, high in sugar, salt and fat: all of these boxes of sweet cereal, sweet yogurt and curds, candy bars and ice cream packaging which is decorated with images of favorite cartoon characters, etc.
Parents who in the childhood ate rice pudding, don’t want their children to have an aversion to food, as once they are in childhood. Modern products for children to impose the idea that if you’re a child, it is unlikely that natural foods will give you pleasure.
Baby food in supermarkets are loaded with sugar and accompanied by uplifting images. She teaches kids that have to entertain — a sort of package of fun that you can carry always and everywhere.
Photo: Unsplash
Before, on the contrary, parents and caregivers’t tried to make baby food in some entertainment, they did not think about fun, considering almost a virtue when a child suffers and eating tasteless food.
Bee Wilson
I ask Bee Wilson about ways to cure a sugar-rush, primarily in children.
My companion responds with a short phrase:
— Unsweeten their palate.
What does it mean?
You need to help children develop the taste palette, showing that delicious may not be just sweet. And the best age to do this up to six, at least up to ten years. This is especially true getting used to bitter and sour tastes.
In his book, Bee Wilson describes in detail the project Tiny Tastes (“Tiny pieces”), which after several years of research and experiments developed by her compatriot, doctor of medical Sciences Lucy Cooke, in conjunction with leading nutritionists from University College London.
Dr. cook is not shared by the who guidelines regarding what infants until at least six months should be fed exclusively breast milk. She is convinced that the sooner children receive complementary foods (and most diverse), the more loyal they will later refer to the same vegetables and other “adult” food. (This is the “window of tolerance” — the age from four to six months, about which I was told in Moscow, Professor Makarova of Scientific center of children’s health.)
And better that it was not moderate sweet taste, which have, for example, carrot or squash puree, and a rich, bitter: broccoli, spinach, cauliflower.
For older children — is another strategy.
You choose with your child some vegetables that he refuses to eat. It is important that this product did not cause obvious disgust. And then regularly for 10-15 days, try to offer it in minimal doses — a piece not larger than a pea. And to do this you need NOT meal.
Remember: the child does not have to have a new product, he can just lick it to taste it. And then he gets a little encouragement such as a sticker. The reward in this case is justified, experts say. First, this is not some kind of “treat” like candy or ice cream, and secondly, children sincerely believe they deserve it, especially since the product they’ve chosen.
Bee Wilson. Photo: unitedagents.co.uk
Bee Wilson tried this method on my youngest son when he was four and a half years (he is now eight). At that age he ate very selectively, without appetite, and constantly begged sweet. The method gave results in a few months the boy is already quite willing munched on salad and other healthy food. And a much calmer attitude to sweets.
— I put a small saucer of tiny pieces of vegetables. But not during lunch or dinner, and about half an hour before a meal. Most importantly — no pressure. The son knew that all this is completely optional. But what if he tries, you will get a sticker. And he tried, especially when he was hungry. Gradually the boy began to ask for pieces more — got a taste. Then I immediately canceled the reward system.
Bee Wilson finds that most approaches to feeding children are too short-lived. “We only care about what will happen in five minutes, and not what will happen in five years, she writes in her book. — When you force a child to eat a plate of vegetables, you teach him to love vegetables, and along the way — and myself. If you convince him to try one little bite (and repeat this tomorrow and the day after, and two days later), there is a chance that in the end he will love vegetables.”