By Cynthia Myers-Morrison EdD
Board Secretary

The metabolic health of children and families is crucial to progress in addressing Food Addiction. Getting Ultra Processed Food Addiction as a substance use disorder into the DSM, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association, is also essential because that will give adults access to treatment. 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? (Spoiler alert: the answer is a resounding NO!)

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.  Mike came to understand that his mother’s description of him as her Little Angel  was in fact his own sweat on the pillow in the form of a halo. He saw his own sons’ halos only at 6 years of age with their first consumption of sugar and the formation of their sweaty halos on their pillows as their young bodies sweated out the sugar.

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. Sweeteners may not be a perfect solution; however, many agree with incremental improvements.

Do we have to make the process of changing from the huge sugar consumption that we have now to no 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, active lifestyles, and mental clarity to grow into metabolically healthy adults. REAL FOOD for Healthy Families. Your choice. (After all, who buys the real food or the sugary sweetened beverages?) Adults in the household can make new choices today with whatever clarity you are willing to share. Happy New Year.