The Nourished Kitchen

Just a quick–super quick–update for One Local Summer.  This past week we enjoyed zucchini stuffed with apricots and lamb, quinoa pilaf, a simple salad and apricot-honey ice cream.

Animal Foods

• Grass-finished Lamb: Parker Pastures, Doyleville (40 miles)
• Milk: Parker Pastures, Doyleville (40 miles)
• Pastured Eggs: Parker Pastures, Doyleville (40 miles)
• Honey: Madhava, Lyons (200 Miles)
• Cream: Wholesome Milk Products, Brighton (250 miles)

Vegetable Foods

• Apricots: First Fruits, Hotchkiss (45 miles)
• Onion: Abundant Life, Hotchkiss (45 miles)
• Zucchini: Raincrow Farm, Paonia (40 miles)
• Quinoa: Uknown Farm, Crestone

Not from These Parts

• Salt
• Flaxseed Oil

Tags: one local summer week 7

I failed to participate in last week’s Nourishing Frugal Foods carnival, though I had intended to. Things have kind of slipped away from me lately. They just have. This week’s carnival is hosted at Keeper of the Home and focuses on Sides, Salads and Desserts.

Though many will disagree with me, I don’t think eating a wholesome diet based on traditionally-prepared food needs or should be expensive; rather, proper kitchen management and a being mindful of crops, harvest and using every bit you can will help minimize the cost associated with buying grass-fed meats, pastured eggs and poultry, raw dairy or local and sustainably grown fruits and vegetables. You can read more of my take on food and money here.

On to the food:

• Simple Salad for Those Who Burn Water: Approximately $0.89 a serving!
• Herbed Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes: Approximately $0.93 a serving!
• Blueberry Clafoutis: Approximately $1.23 a serving!

Tags: blueberries, budget cooking, dessert, Food and Money, frugal food, nourishing frugal foods carnival, potatoes, salad, side dishes, traditional food

The American Academy of Pediatricians recently released new recommendations to combat the ever-growing problem of childhood obesity and hyperlipidemia.  It is, undoubtedly a problem as nearly one-third of children in the United States are either overweight or obese.  Obese kids become obese adults with all the health problems associated with their condition.

Clearly, the issue needs to be addressed.

This is where the AAP comes in with their new recommendations structured to monitor the cholesterol of children as young as two and to provide statins (cholesterol-reducing pharmaceuticals) to children as young as 8.  Other guidelines include nutritional counseling with a focus on high-fiber, low-fat foods.  Indeed, there’s even a recommendation that children as young as one receive only low-fat milk rather than whole milk.

It makes sense, right?  If the problem is diet and cholesterol, put kids on cholesterol-lowering drugs and keep them on a “healthy” low-fat diet.

Only, those drugs can pose enormous health-risks including memory loss, nerve damage, kidney damage, muscle pain and weakness.  Not to mention, there has not been a major study investigating the effects of statins in a pediatric population.   And that healthy diet?  Well it’s not as healthy as you might think.

Our bodies need fat.  Children, specifically, have a critical need for fat including cholesterol.  After all, their first food–breastmilk–is high in both fat and cholesterol as both are critical for brain development as well as cognitive functioning.  To deny toddlers whole milk on the premise that it has too much fat is foolish; children left to wean themselves as they did for eons of human evolution will usually wean at age four though some will wean earlier and others later.  That means that our babies have naturally evolved by drinking whole (human) milk with all its fat, cholesterol and other nutrients.

The problem, you see, isn’t fat at all; rather, the culprit is largely sugar though other aspects of diet certainly play an undeniable role in the grossly rising epidemic of childhood obesity.

Sugar consumption has risen from 26 lbs twenty years ago to a staggering 135 lbs today.  Now consider that the average person consumed only 5 lbs of sugar annually at the turn of last century.  Sugar is clearly linked to disease: immune system suppression, reduction in HDL (”good” cholesterol), increase in LDL (”bad” cholesterol), hypertension and of course weight gain and obesity–to name a few.

So rather than address the issue of overconsumption of refined carbohydrates in our children, the AAP is simply recommending a reduction in dietary fat with a push toward passing out prescriptions of drugs that are poorly studied in children.

It’s ashame, really, when a solution to this growing problem is simple: eat real food and feed real food to your children.

Tags: american academy of pediatricians, childhood obesity, high cholesterol, statins