You're hungry... AGAIN??

Because I am both a nutritionist and mother of young children, I am immersed in the issues of childhood nutrition.  My kids, stories from friends' kids, clients (most of them I meet through school things... so they have young children) and talk I give on kids' nutrition and schools.  Here is something I hear a lot...

"So my kids are always hungry.  I give them lots of healthy snacks, but they could eat me out of house and home!  And they just seem to melt down before meal time."

"Tell me more about the healthy snacks and meals you feed them."  I say back.  Then I get the usual list.  Lots of fresh fruit, sometimes dried fruit, juice, some crackers or carrot sticks.  OK... and you expect them to feel full because....?  Because you are not giving them anything filling.  

This is common.  It is great to offer children fresh fruit and vegetables.  But when your child comes home STARVING and you give him a big banana to eat, he will be STARVING again 10 minutes later.  It's because it's just sugar.  Then you give him a bowl of grapes (more sugar) and then send him outside with a 100% juice popcicle (more sugar).  There is nothing inherently wrong with ANY of these foods.  But you can't expect your child to feel full.  You can expect your child to require continuous feeding of these items until bedtime.

You see, back in the 80's when I was a teenager, I remember when a food was healthy if it was fat-free and/or cholesterol-free.  It didn't matter much what I ate, if it was low in fat, I could eat all I wanted of it.  Most people I know grew up with this message.  Reduce your calories and you will lose weight.  Fat has more calories, per gram, than carbs or protein... so if you eat more fat, you get fat.

The problem is that when you avoid fat and cholesterol, you also avoid most of the high-quality protein foods.  So you're eating low-fat and low-protein and HIGH carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates are not filling. So when you eat them without any fat or protein, you never really feel full until your stomach has stretched to capacity... and by then you've really done it.

AND... even after you eat all those carbohydrate-rich foods (fruit, skim milk, juice, cold cereal, crackers, bread, pasta), you're going to be hungry again really soon.  They just don't say with you very long.  If you had eaten a decent amount of protein (10-20grams) and a moderate amount of natural fat or oil with it, your body would be feeling full for hours.  See, that protein and fat makes your body send 'I'm full' signals out very soon after eating.  So you stop eating sooner and feel full longer.

Another big deal that goes along with all those carbohydrates you are mainlining 18 hours a day is INSULIN!!  See, all those carbohydrates... healthy or not... get turned to glucose in your body... i.e. blood sugar/blood glucose.  When your blood sugar goes up, your insulin level goes up.  If you eat carbs all day long... even just snacking on grapes all day long... insulin all day long.  Never goes down.  Why is this a big deal?  Insulin is a hormone that affects all sorts of other hormones in your body.  But let's just focus on this one.  If you have insulin swimming around in your blood, you are storing that energy and making fat.  Not burning it, storing it.  (It also makes your blood pressure go up, triglyceride levels go up, cholesterol go up, gives you a spare tire, wacks out your sex hormones (PCOS)....)

INSULIN MAKES YOU STORE FAT.  

INSULIN KEEPS YOU FROM BURNING STORED FAT.

I know... it sucks.  So let's go back to little Johnny.  Cornflakes, skim milk and juice for lunch.  Chocolate milk and half a pb and J for lunch, raisins for school snack, fruit and crackers at home, pasta and skim milk for dinner.   High doses of carbohydrates all day long with very little fat or protein.  He's probably hungry all day long, his blood sugar is going up and down like a yo-yo, but he is bathed in insulin all day long.  By the time he is in high school, he'll be buying sodas and chips in the vending machines all day long to keep up his sugar levels, be overweight have fatty liver and nearly diabetic by the time he graduates.  I am not exaggerating.  This is happening at alarming rates now.

GRADUATING SENIORS ARE WELL ON THEIR WAY TO OBESITY, FATTY LIVER AND DIABETES... AND THE SOLUTIONS ARE WITHIN YOUR REACH.

But what?  You've been following the diet advice from your Food Pyramid and Healthy Plate?  Of course you have, honey.  That's why I'm not calling CPS on you.  You're eating the same way yourself with a few more salads (with fat-free dressing on them) tossed in for good measure.  Low in fat, less red meat, more whole grains, fruit and vegetables, less salt.  If you are still thin, it is because of your iron clad will power to control your eating or you exercise like a maniac.  But somewhere in there, you still think that eating 2 eggs a day will make you keel over from a coronary.  No sister, eating fat-free Snackwell cookies every day will be the thing that does you in.  Why didn't they tell you?  Beats me, those bastards.  But do it.  YOU DO IT! Trade the low-fat Ritz crackers you set out for your child after lunch for some slices of cheese, ham and apple slices.  Make some sour cream dip to go with the celery and cucumber sticks, serve some hummus with the pita and cucumber.  Smoked salmon and cream cheese spread on a bagel (OMG, you're spoiling them now!).  Mix peanuts in with the raisins.  Eat full-fat dairy products and make a big pitcher of strawberry-banana smoothie with full-fat yogurt in the fridge for the week of after-school snacks and back-up breakfasts.  Make eggs or oatmeal for breakfast and don't skip the cream on your porridge.  Find a way to make eggs that your kids will like because even really good eggs are a CHEEP (sorry, had to be said) source of protein and other wonderful things.

It may take you a few months to find those protein-rich foods your child likes for snacking and eating at meals.  But it just takes a few.  Try to give your child (and yourself, really) a good-quality protein food at every meal and in their snack after school.  Beans, meats, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, cheese, yogurt... Try it, find it, watch things change.  After they have something decent, THEN tell them to beat it until dinner time.  Almonzo Wilder busted his ASS all day long in the snow after school and he didn't get ANYTHING from his mom until dinnertime and look how HE turned out.  But take a gander at what his mum made him to eat.