By Cynthia Myers-Morrison
Board member
The metabolic health of children and families is crucial to progress in addressing Food Addiction. The work we do to get Ultra Processed Food Addiction as a substance use disorder into the DSM as a substance use disorder is also essential because that will mean treatment access for the adults in the family. These adults can then model healthier behaviors of abstinence from their trigger foods/substances and behaviors. With fewer foggy brains in households, workplaces, and society, better choices will be available. The next frontier: Revolutionize what we provide as food to children and families. Make it real food.
Many parents, grandparents, and other relatives in recovery have said, “Wait! I don’t want to limit my children’s access to the things I enjoyed as a child.” How many have said, “I don’t want to cause mine to be anorectic or a binge eater by limiting the choices they have for food items when other children have those items”? Does any child need sugar to survive?
Alternatively, how many have seen the Mike Collins YouTube episode about his children’s fetal development and the first six years of their lives with no sugar and limited carbohydrates? Their intellectual, physical, and relational development flourished while unimpaired by sugar. His mother had described him as her Little Angel. When his twins first put sugar into their bodies at 6 years of age and went to kiss them goodnight, they had little halos of moisture on their pillows. He understood the Little Angel description was in fact their young bodies sweating out the sugar and its deleterious impact.
Alternatively, have you seen Agnes Bora describe her own food recovery and desire to change what her teens were eating? Use of alternative sweeteners in vegetables increased the consumption of them for her children. They’ve continued eating vegetables over their lifetimes and have passed on to their children the delight of eating vegetables.
Do we have to make the process of changing from the huge sugar consumption that we have now to less sugar consumption a stark black and white? Is it possible to make the changes more gradually with the alternative sweeteners? Harm reduction anyone?
Listening to Andrea Tarka White speak about the challenges of her child and his sugar consumption and what she did to markedly change what he was eating may offer hope. Even in the face of doctors who were opposed to changes in her child’s eating, she persisted. Listen to her story and the outcomes.
If parents can change their consumption patterns, why wait for another generation of impairment before the children change? Let us support them with the knowledge and goal setting of health, well-being and active lifestyles to grow into metabolically healthy adults. Real Food for Healthy Families. Your choice.