We’ve all been victims to the food pyramid’s shoddy science — and its misinformation about ‘healthy’ food has trickled down to our children as well.
The effect of this is now very apparent. Childhood obesity rates have skyrocketed, and are getting worse. Nearly 20% of children, or one in five, are within the 95th percentile of their BMI. The CDC has reported that from 2001 to 2017, the rate of type 2 diabetes in the 10-19 age bracket almost doubled from 34 per 100,000 to 67 per 100,000.
It’s no secret that high levels of obesity are driving up markers for chronic disease. As a heart surgeon, I have observed the average age of my patients getting younger. It’s not unusual for 40- or even 30-year-olds to end up on my operating table, likely resulting from bad dietary habits that may have been built during their formative years.
Our current approach to dietary ‘wellness’ is failing our children and their futures. It’s therefore critical to reset our perspective of dieting and model healthy habits — setting our kids up for success around a framework of metabolic health.
The problem with poor childhood diets
There’s a temptation to think that eating metabolically healthy is less important for children than adults. After all, pre-adolescents have lightning fast metabolisms that seem to sidestep the problems that come from sugary or carb-heavy diets.
Most of this is just an illusion. Metabolic health is just as important for children as it is for adults, although kids do have some dietary leeway that grown people don’t enjoy.
For example, children are far more active than adults and are growing all the time, which takes more energy (i.e. caloric intake) to accommodate effectively. Plus, children also consume a higher amount of carbohydrates without triggering a fat storage response, and enter and exit ketosis just from an overnight fast.
That being said, unhealthy foods for adults are just as unhealthy for children. The damages of poor metabolic health are cumulative, and if we’re not establishing good eating habits now, we’re setting our children up for a lifetime of metabolic problems. We’re also getting them addicted to sugary foods and seed oils right from the beginning, giving their bodies more time to develop chronic diseases.
When you look at infant formulas, for example, you’ll see an ingredient list of high carb foods and processed fats from vegetable and seed oils. The nutritive value may appear high at first, but upon closer inspection, you’ll see they’re not the types of nutrients that support optimal metabolic health.
Children need healthy diets to grow into healthy adults. Even the popular low-carb keto diet was originally created as a lifestyle treatment for childhood epilepsy, resulting in some excellent healthcare outcomes. Contrary to popular belief, low-carb diets are not dangerous for children, and may ensure they grow up to be metabolically healthy in the future.
To summarize: do children have more capacity to hide the bad effects of poor dietary habits? Yes. But does a metabolically unhealthy diet set up bad habits that carry on for years? Most certainly.
Encouraging your children to be metabolically healthy
The answer to promoting metabolic health during childhood is not prohibiting certain foods.
If you genuinely want your kids to be metabolically healthy, don’t force them to do anything. Instead, try to model healthy behaviors in your own dietary choices. They’ll see the benefits, hear your explanations, and understand the science in action, which encourages them to follow suit on their own journey to metabolic health.
Here are some tips for modeling a healthy, metabolically friendly lifestyle for your children:
- Eat whole, real foods. This means a diet rich with animal proteins, leafy greens, dense fruits, nuts, and seeds. Children watch what we eat more than we realize, and are quick to model their guardians’ behavior during their formative years. My kids, for example, order their burgers without buns when we go out for dinner — just because they see mom and dad doing the same.
- Get active together. Whether it’s going for walks, riding bikes around the neighborhood, or getting in the squat rack, being active together as a family goes a long way in building metabolic health.
- Promote healthy sleep habits. A good night’s sleep is critical for optimizing metabolism, and children need even more sleep than adults do. There is no set range that accommodates every child’s needs, but encourage between 8 and 12 hours of sleep per night. Again, modeling good sleep hygiene shows children how important rest can be, making them more likely to copy you in their adult years.
Changing your diet could very well change your family tree. And while the path forward may seem daunting, it’s far less intimidating with the help of a professional coach.
If you’re looking for a place to learn more about metabolic health and get your personal questions answered, you can sign up for group coaching in my private clinic. Space is limited, but you can join my waitlist to see when new slots are available.