Children are our future, our prosperity and our most precious treasure. As parents we can choose to nurture and protect them and provide them with the means to grow up healthy and happy. Or we can choose to cut corners and sell them short: to surrender their health by blindly following and passively accepting what our dollar driven society forces on our children.
What is Health?
Health means so much more than avoiding illness. It means having the ability to use all of one's being - the imagination, the intellect, the senses and the physical strength - to one's greatest potential. A child who is buoyantly healthy develops an enormous vitality and an affinity with everyone and everything around him. True health is about nurturing a child's whole being and it all begins with what the child eats. How the child is nourished day after day and year after year. At no other time in a person's life is food selection more important than during these formative, growing years. It is during childhood that powerful messages are absorbed and eating patterns and food preferences are formed.
Simple wholesome, "full of life" foods support the energy producing functions of the body and allows for vigorous health through which the child's greatest potential can shine. Total and true health cannot be supported by a diet made up of highly processed, convenience foods that are as far from nature as it is possible to go. Preservatives, chemical additives and inappropriate fats and sugars have a hugely detrimental effect on our child's body and his behaviour and is one of the greatest risks to our children today. Feeding our child on such foods degrades the natural order of his body and mind, lowers his immunity and creates an imbalance, mentally, physically and emotionally. Many people would not consider putting adulterated petrol in their car and yet fill their precious children with both empty and harmful foods.
Where Does It Begin?
How do we ensure our children eat well and their bodies receive all the nutrients they need each and every day? The best place to start is with ourselves. Ultimately our children live by example and a diet of natural foods is one of the most valuable legacies parents can pass on. Keep only health promoting foods in the house and be careful not to give mixed messages and convey double standards. If we try to teach our children that wonderful, wholesome food will have enormous benefits for them and they see us eating junk food, then they will become confused. The message will not get through! When shopping remember to buy only food that is as close to its natural state as possible. The further removed it is from recognition, the fewer benefits it will have for our child. Read all labels with care - just because something is sold on a supermarket shelf does not mean it is beneficial to our bodies. The best foods are wholefoods.
Fresh, natural, preferably organic foods which children naturally love and are the easiest to prepare. Fruit, vegetables, wholegrain breads, sugar-free cereals, nuts, seeds, eggs and legumes. Wholefoods retain all the nutrients children need and have none of the harmful, health degrading additives. The closer a food is to its natural state the more it will help our child grow and allow her body the freedom to be strong and healthy.
Children naturally love good food, especially if nothing else is offered. Many parents make the mistake of giving their children processed food in an attempt to seduce them to eat and in the belief that that is all the child will eat. If the child is only ever given pure food, she will eat it, even if it does take time to re-train the taste buds. It won't happen overnight, but with persistence and consistency, it will happen. It is also helpful to remember that if children's bodies are free of adulterated foods, they can learn to listen to what their bodies really need. They can recognize the difference in how their bodies feel after they have eaten well and after they have eaten "dead" foods. This knowledge will serve them well through the difficult teenage years, when a whole new set of circumstances comes into play.
The Junk Food Culture!
It can be a constant battle to keep at bay the unceasing bombardment of propaganda from the multi-billion dollar food industries. The exploitation of parents, by preying on fears of inadequacy and imperfection, is deliberate, as are the ploys used to influence the impressionable minds of our children. In our highly commercial society, we are made to feel powerless, children helpless, as convenience foods have very little capacity to nourish and yet are becoming more and more the norm. Processing food destroys essential nutrients which cannot be adequately added afterwards in the form of synthetic vitamins and minerals, no matter how much the food manufacturers would have us believe to the contrary. Our bodies cannot utilize these chemicals in the same way they benefit from pure, unadulterated, healthy food. It is essential to always maintain the awareness that the main purpose of food manufacturers is not to serve your or your children's health, but its own interests.
Sometimes it can also be difficult to stand firm in the face of the junk food onslaught in our children's everyday lives. Convenience foods are permeating our increasingly busy lives and processed foods are becoming the more readily accepted way to feed ourselves and our children. This has proliferated to the extent that it is very difficult to go anywhere, be it school, parties, restaurants or the homes of friends and family and be offered pure, natural foods. Such a sad indictment on our society.
What Can We Do?
As parents we can ask ourselves what beliefs and values we hold in relation to our children's diets. Do we believe an adult has the right to produce ill-health in children by feeding them nutritionally poor foods? Do we believe that inappropriate food is acceptable for our children because we unquestioningly believe what manufacturers tell us? Do we think it is desirable to bribe children with unsuitable food, use it as a reward or withhold it as a punishment? Do we recognize that nutritionally dead foods have a detrimental effect on our children's behaviour and health, or do we put it down to some other factor and then find ourselves fighting our way through the medical maze?
We can learn to take control of our children's nutritional welfare and protect them from the social and economic forces that encourage the junk food culture. We can stand firm and resist the onslaught of advertising and propaganda. We can recognize our capacity to be instrumental in developing strong future generations. Above all else, we can accept responsibility for our children's health and reclaim our power to make uncompromising choices in how we protect, provide for and nurture our children.
Children's Food Educator
Jacqi Deighan, founder of Natural Kitchen Strategies,
has many years experience in working with young children and in the hospitality industry, particularly as a chef in the corporate sector.
She successfully ran her own catering business and has a Diploma of Applied Science in Hospitality Studies and an Associate Diploma in Child Care. Jacqi, a mother of three, and a passionate believer in the importance of natural foods, has spent many years researching children's health and experimenting with healthy cuisine, recipe conversion and ways to tempt children's jaded palates.
Jacqi Deighan, a member of Speaker Direct and Booked-Out Speakers, educates parents in the importance of providing a sustaining and nourishing lunch to children, what to avoid and why, and gives lots of simple lunchbox ideas that can nourish and sustain their child throughout the day.
Jacqi gives motivational presentations to a variety of groups such as mother & baby groups, school parent associations, community centres, clubs, Maternal & Child Health Centres, etc. She also gives personal consultations and empowering group talks in private homes.
Jacqi Deighan is a founding parent and member of the steering group of the Parent's Jury, a web-based network of parents who wish to improve the food and physical activity environments for children in Australia.
She has appeared on television, been interviewed on the radio and has been quoted many times in the press with her innovative ideas for children's health.
NKS ~ ARTICLES
Children are our future, our prosperity and our most precious treasure. As parents we can choose to nurture and protect them and provide them with the means to grow up healthy and happy.
Fresh, natural, preferably organic foods which children naturally love and are the easiest to prepare. Fruit, vegetables, wholegrain breads, sugar-free cereals, nuts, seeds, eggs and legumes. Wholefoods retain all the nutrients children need and have none of the harmful, health degrading additives. The closer a food is to its natural state the more it will help our child grow and allow her body the freedom to be strong and healthy.
has many years experience in working with young children and in the hospitality industry, particularly as a chef in the corporate sector.