Saturday, July 26, 2008

Fruit and veg diet 'danger for toddlers'

Here is a report from the Guardian about poor nutrition at pre-schools in Britain


'We expected the study to show nurseries were serving children food that was too high in calories, fat, saturated fat and salt, and low in vegetables and fruit. Instead, we found that the majority of nurseries had gone to the other extreme and appeared to be providing food that was too low in calories, fat and saturated fat and too high in fruit and vegetables.' This situation was putting children at the risk of developing nutritional deficiencies, she said.

Note that they mention that they expected the food to be high in fat yet not high in carbohydrates. I would expect the food to be high in flour and sugar in the form of bread, cookies, cakes, fruit juices and sweets. Imagine if they were feeding the children whole milk, butter, cheese, eggs and meat – now that would be high fat but surely it would be much better than what I was expecting. Instead the children are expected to thrive on slices of apple and carrot sticks. We are setting up our children for long term health risks exposing them to these crazy healthy diet ideas. It is especially dangerous now that in so many families the parents both work or there is only one parent at home and the children spend the working week in day care.
I’m going to try and feed my children a lot more milk, cream and butter from now on. I grew up on it and even ate fish and chips cooked in animal fat as an afternoon snack on the way home from school.

Here is an interesting link to an article extolling butter that also has a link to a very interesting Scandanavian study that had this result:

Eating milk products -- specifically fatty milk products -- was associated with lower BMI and waist circumference (meaning less of the dangerous visceral fat), lower triglycerides, and higher levels of HDL (known off-hand as “the good cholesterol”

Many thanks to the Food is Love Blog.

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