Host: It's important that we keep our kids active. It's great because we get them outdoors.
Female Speaker: Yeah, put them those video games and please pull out the bags.
Liwaza Green: And stop drinking all the sugary sodas and make some food smoothies.
Female Speaker: That's right well you know you are preaching to the choir.
Christine Wood: Facing the issue of kids in nutrition, these lessons have to be started very early in the life, when I talk to my parents when the kids are irritate, I told them look, try not to use a lot of processed food choices at that age. They say that one of the most popular vegetables under the age of two is French fries, so these kids are getting him because their parents are choosing to offer that to them so the more there can expand the fruit and vegetable fresh fruit choices early on those early habits molded early will hopefully stay with them at latest age.
Robert Sears: parents are looking for convenience, when it comes the snack time and the all time. How easy it is to stop by fast food on the way to home, grab the quick dinner instead of cooking on nice home cooked meal for the family.
Christine Wood: Eating out is a huge change in our culture, you know if you look at statistics from like 1950s we ate out probably about once every few months for most families. Today is not unusual for families to eat out sometimes two, three, five times a week , so kids are getting expose to a lot more choice and if you look at the kids meals out there it will kindly note with that typical menus look like and its not always the healthiest things you know mostly fried foods not varying any fruits or vegetables, sodas sometimes on limited sodas, all these things add up so I think parents can do things to try and look at ways that then they to eat out to make healthier choices for their kids sharing meals, trying to see if they can substitute salad or fruit or vegetables for some of the other items on the kids meals.
Robert Sears: Parents are turning towards you know packages snack crackers and cookies instead of bringing a lot of some fresh fruit that parents will just get back to more in naturally eating fruits and vegetables for snacks. Whole grain cereals, whole grain breads natural foods for in breakfast, lunch and dinner then we can say good bye to childhood and adult obesity.
Christine Wood: The other tricks that parents can use is to really model offering the food but that can't forced to kids to eat, so you only have to be a little bit careful about this because sometimes the parents get so hang up on, okay they've got to eat everything on their plate, they have to eat the vegetables and then you create these battles at the dinner table and that's not a good thing so you don't want to broad to ride them, fight with them you know our job is parents is to offer the food pick and choose what's offered that's a big part of it and the childs job is to pick and choose how much of that to eat so that's really the main principles that I think parents have to understand when they are trying to figure out how to start these lessons early.
Liwaza Green: what about the nutritional choices that we made how does that affect a baby's future?
Joe Esposito: That is so important because everytime you and I eat something it become part our body, every time the baby eat something becomes part of their body but then growing so much faster then we are and so if you give them quality nutrients they're going to grow strong and healthy. If you start mixing in things that are less than desirable for baby you can start these adverse effects early on and then also as they get older as well, so what we trying to do is get good foods introduced to that and more foods to child is introduce too, when you are young studies have shown the variety that are going to have in your diet when they get older. So children don't just grow up on hamburger and French fries they start to experimental with other foods, so for smaller baby of course breast feeding is always the best and if were breast feeding you can start adding salad fruits around six months. One of the easiest things introduced to baby is bananas.
Liwaza Green: Beans?
Joe Esposito: Beans are great. Bean are so in expensive and so nutritious and that's a another great thing to introduced babies, take some beans and mash them up you could to refried beans or you can get to any type of beans to mash them up and that's going to give the baby lots of protein and lots of good fat and also lots of fiber. Because you want to get the fiber into the babies diet so that the - starts to work properly early on. Another great thing to introduce is avocados. Avocados are great because there real more - and they had a lot of us called omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, omega-9 fatty acids, you hear about fatty acids all the time. Fatty acids are real important for the baby because that helps to produce brain. The brain functions on fat and as actually made up of fat. As we need to make sure that baby gets a lots of good fat in your diet if you giving them something like French fries to getting bad facts in your diet and so that's going to affect development of the brain.
Robert Sears: We feed our kids foods filled with hydrogenated oils or trans fats and high fructose corn syrup. All that junks simply adds more of fats cells, more and more fat every day to each one of our kids so I think parents really need to take a step back look at what they are buying and they can avoid what I called the terrible twos, you know hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup then that go long way at preventing childhood obesity in their families.
Christine Wood: All the parents are working et cetera, so that makes a big impact on what they can do quickly for their choices. In addition the parents really have to role model it, so they have to be the role models for these kids as far as activity and nutrition and trying to giving those lessons early and that is a big impact also, so really both have a huge influence on our families.
Robert Sears: And the centers for disease control were trying to teach doctors and parents to read a healthier life. And if we don't make changes its estimated that one in three children living today will become diabetic when they are older, we are going to see lots of heart disease in all the consequences of obesity. We really need to make changes now and I'm hoping that parents will less than in start to make smarter choices for their families.
Christine Wood: This whole academic of childhood obesity and child nutrition is really a community effort. I know that parents sometimes feel like well, I'm trying to do the right thing but everywhere else around me my child is offer Junk food or media is advertising junk food or whatever the messages are that your children get so it does have to be about everybody sort of having little piece of the puzzle. If your kids are in a sport team, think about asking all the parents on the team to bring healthy snacks and fruits rather than brining the donuts or the junk food. Again a lot of this is modeling and if the parents are doing this for themselves, the kids may start to learn and take after that we hope.
Working at any environments their involved with church's, schools et cetera any community efforts that there are doing, where kids are involved, think of voice may that may be healthier choices could be offered. You will often find that kids will eat it and its not that they could deal but I think parents have this idea that, what we have to order all the junk because that's what they usually get so we have to change that thinking in that framework little bit and I think it really starts with each and everyone of us and that's the key.
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