This sweet little center-fielder is my six year old son, Brody. Like most parents feel about their own "mini-me's", I would do anything for this child. Also like most parents, I fret about all of the choices I make and don't make for him. One day, in the blink of an eye, he will be off in the world making all of his own life choices but it's my job, between now and then, to give him the best tools for understanding his own power and making his own choices. Then he's on his own. Food is one of the areas we talk about a lot.
As I end day five of my Forks Over Knives nutritional program, I can't help but notice how my diet changes have impacted my attention to Brody's. He doesn't know it, but that is probably for the best.
For example, when making his turky and cream cheese wrap this weekend I decided to mash a little ripe avocado into the cream cheese before I spread it. I knew he was going to ask about the wierd color of the cream cheese so I was ready..."I put some food coloring into it. Now it's a Green Lantern turkey wrap!" He had a double-serving.
It's little things like this that can really add up. Small changes that I believe, over time, have a large impact. And if I'm wrong, I'll at least be able to say I had noble intentions. But what scares me sometimes is what I don't know that I'll regret later. Regarding food consumption, I think about things like, "What's this whole thing about GMO's? Will my family be ill later because I didn't pay attention to them now?", or "How extreme should I be with Brody about his diet? He's going to go to college some day and eat all kinds of s**t. Will a drastically healthy diet now really have an impact on him when he's gone?", and "What are these stories I hear about artificial sweetners? They say they could cause cancer. Should I use them or have Brody be consuming greater quantities of sugar/calories?" And now they are talking about milk...it's benefits (well-known) and, according to this diet, not OK (click this link to see their reasoning). I've also heard rumors recently that only in the United States do people consume milk regularly as part of a balanced diet. Most humans are weined from it early in life (so they say). There is so much information out there on food do's and dont's that it's hard to keep up and know what to trust. The onslaught of information sometimes makes me want to remain ignorant.
As I end day five of my Forks Over Knives nutritional program, I can't help but notice how my diet changes have impacted my attention to Brody's. He doesn't know it, but that is probably for the best.
For example, when making his turky and cream cheese wrap this weekend I decided to mash a little ripe avocado into the cream cheese before I spread it. I knew he was going to ask about the wierd color of the cream cheese so I was ready..."I put some food coloring into it. Now it's a Green Lantern turkey wrap!" He had a double-serving.
It's little things like this that can really add up. Small changes that I believe, over time, have a large impact. And if I'm wrong, I'll at least be able to say I had noble intentions. But what scares me sometimes is what I don't know that I'll regret later. Regarding food consumption, I think about things like, "What's this whole thing about GMO's? Will my family be ill later because I didn't pay attention to them now?", or "How extreme should I be with Brody about his diet? He's going to go to college some day and eat all kinds of s**t. Will a drastically healthy diet now really have an impact on him when he's gone?", and "What are these stories I hear about artificial sweetners? They say they could cause cancer. Should I use them or have Brody be consuming greater quantities of sugar/calories?" And now they are talking about milk...it's benefits (well-known) and, according to this diet, not OK (click this link to see their reasoning). I've also heard rumors recently that only in the United States do people consume milk regularly as part of a balanced diet. Most humans are weined from it early in life (so they say). There is so much information out there on food do's and dont's that it's hard to keep up and know what to trust. The onslaught of information sometimes makes me want to remain ignorant.
But Monday morning was one of those eye-opening times where I connected what I was giving Brody with what it may do to his insides. I was putting his lunch together when I saw a funky film on the inside of his stainless steel thermos. At first I thought I hadn't washed it but once I ran my finger around the inside rim, I figured-out that it was some kind-of residue--similar to the picture on the right. "Funny," I thought, "because I don't wash this in the dishwasher so where could this be coming from?" That's when I put together that the only logical place it could be coming from was the sugar-free drinks that I put in this thermos every day. Gross. Didn't see that coming. "If it does this to a thermos, what does it do to the inside of us?" I thought. So I decided no more of those drinks for him and poured his thermos full with fresh squeezed orange juice. I'm not so sure I would have been so observant nor have had a healthy alturnative available had it not been for my current awareness about what goes into my body and how that may impact me.
This all leads me to ask, "If we know or learn a thing to be true...about our diet and the foods we eat...what are the responsibilities that come with that information?" Trust me, I in no way want to get political here but it's hard not to. Let's go back to my thermos example. Since it seems pretty factual that the residue is from artificial sweetners and I see what it does to a thermos that gets washed after every use, it's probably fair to think that the same residue does something funky to our insides...like sticks in there or something. If all of that is true and the residue sticking on my insides is assumed unhealthy, what is my responsibility to Brody? Now let's throw-in a money component. I buy those sugar-free drink mixes so I can make 2 quarts at a time which is cheaper than boxed drinks that tend to have regular sugar in them. So now we have a savings to my bottom line because of those artificial sweetners. Take this single-family scenario and extrapolate it to include big agriculturally-dependent companies. This is a big topic with potentially huge consequences. Who knows where the truth lies? I bet money there are plenty of morally and ethically sound businesses that just want to make good food that people like and make a profit doing it. But I am equally as confident that there are businesses out there whose vision is blurred by the pressure of a healthy bottom line. I wish I knew who they were. Just some "food" for thought.
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