When I was a kid I gave my mother grief in the mornings: I never got out of bed on time and was a fussy breakfast eater.  Remembering those mornings I understand the stress that parents go through, trying to give their children a nutritious breakfast and healthy packed lunch to send them off to school with.  Hectic lifestyles will usually result in parents reaching for the quickest food options available, and this usually comes from a packet.  Which food is picked is usually the product that appears to be the healthiest option, makes the best health claims and which one tastes the best.  Unless you’ve studied nutrition it can be very difficult (and time consuming) to stand in the aisles analysing each product, and then you’ve got to make the final decision – will my child eat this?  So we place our trust in the companies.  Surely they know what they’re doing, right?  Surely they just want to do what’s right?

Food companies know that parents want to do the best for their child, and will market their products based around a ‘health perk’, often hoping that this will distract the consumers from the other nasties in the food, or the lack of other important nutrients such as fibre, vitamins and minerals.  Some of the foods most susceptible to this are breakfast cereals, formulas, and snack foods.  Products that are “rich in calcium/iron/protein for healthy bones/energy/muscles” can sometimes be rich in sugar, low in fibre and/or high in preservatives.  This does not balance out, creating a health food.

Artificial colours and preservatives

Over the last 50 years we developed the ability to travel further and faster. Our diets have changed dramatically, incorporating a bigger variety of foods which are now usually available year round.  More recently, over the last 15 years foods have changed even further with the use of additives to make our foods more colourful, tasty and less perishable.  Some of these additives have been well tested and shown to be safe, while others have been linked to many health problems such as hyperactivity, asthma and skin problems.  The most common problematic ones are artificial colours, such as Brilliant Blue 133, Tartrazine 102, Sunset Yellow 110, Amaranth 123 or Fast Green 143.  Additives like these are derived from petroleum and are not considered safe in other countries such as USA, UK and Norway.

One of the reasons additives are still used in Australia is because it cuts down the costs of making food: for example to reduce the cocoa in chocolate milk while keeping the brown colour they add a little bit of cocoa plus Brilliant Blue 133 and Brown HT 155; to give the appearance of fruit in some yoghurts they add a variety of red, yellow and blue colours.

In many cases the colour is added to make food look more real as manufacturers skimp on quality raw ingredients to save a few dollars, or the colour is added specifically to increase the products’ marketing appeal to young children in particular.

In other countries they use different, safer colouring options based on real foods, and while these are available in Australia they are rarely used because it is the more expensive option.

Added Sugar

When you look at the labels of some foods (not just children’s foods) you may be surprised to see that there is a lot of sugar added into savoury as well as sweet foods.  Some common savoury foods containing added sugar include sauces, salad dressings and muesli bars.

So if 1 tsp of sugar = 4g, you can determine how many teaspoons of sugar are in a meal by dividing the amount of sugar in 100g or a serving by 4.  There can be up to 4 teaspoons of sugar in some yoghurts, 2½ in a tin of baked beans and up to 6½ in a small bar of milk chocolate.

Look at the labels on foods, and check for added sugars.  Sugar comes under the guise of many names: fructose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, glucose syrup, lactose, corn syrup, hydrolysed starch, inverted sugar, or concentrated fruit juice.  The nutrition panel details how much total sugar is contained in a food, but this can include added and natural sugars.

When children consume sugar-rich foods they get an artificial high, rapidly raising the levels of sugar and adrenaline in their bloodstream. This can contribute to hyperactivity, anxiety, and difficulties concentrating.

This rapid rise in blood sugar levels stimulates the release of too much insulin, which causes children’s blood sugar levels to plummet, resulting in irritable and cranky kids.  Regular consumption of these foods can lead to children becoming overweight or obese, which is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes.  It also increases their risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life.

Large amounts of sugar in the diet can also interfere with the absorption of calcium and zinc, important minerals for children’s health and development.

6 teaspoons of sugar a day can suppress the effectiveness of your immune system by up to 25%.  Sugar competes with vitamin C uptake into immune cells.  I often recommend to parents whose children have a cold or ‘flu to cut out sugar while they are ill so as to allow the immune system to reach its full potential.  If your child constantly has an infection, perhaps you should consider reducing or eliminating sugar from the diet.

Frequent consumption of sugary foods and beverages is one of the leading causes of tooth decay in children.

But they’re fun!

Many parents fondly look at lollies and junk food with nostalgia and think that if they don’t give their children these foods they are missing out on a vital experience of childhood.

Now that you know the facts about some of these additives, you may look at your child’s lunchbox or the next birthday party spread through new eyes. Ask yourself if you really want your family to be eating these chemicals in our foods which are not even allowed in foods in other countries. Think about the long term health effects of these chemicals and added sugar and whether or not you want your family to eat real foods or so called “fun” foods filled with additives.

Helpful ways to reduce your child’s additive and sugar intake

• Get creative and make healthy versions of your kid’s favourite sweet foods. Fruits such as berries and bananas are an ideal way to sweeten cakes, muffins, sauces and smoothies.
• Many yoghurts aimed at children contain too much sugar, additives and preservatives.  Make your own by getting a natural full-fat yoghurt and add your own fruits, such as a dollop of fruit puree, or from 9 months on chopped dried fruit (choose unsulphured).
• Instead of giving your child sweet snacks that are high in added sugar and low in nutrients, offer them healthier naturally sweet foods, such as fruit, small amounts of sun-dried fruit and fruit yoghurts.
• Choose whole oats, natural mueslis, puffed cereals (rice, millet, buckwheat) and other wholegrains for breakfast instead of sugary breakfast cereals.
• Watch out for so called health bars and breakfast bars in your supermarket — often marketed as healthy snacks or ‘breakfast on the run’.  You are best-off making your own muesli bars and biscuits for your kids to take to school and for after-school snacks.
• Avoid giving soft drinks to your kids.  Instead mix a little 100% fruit juice with some natural mineral water.
• Avoid using cordials as they are a concentrated form of sugar. Use 100% fruit juice as cordial, diluted with water.
• Keep lollies and chocolates for special occasions such as birthday parties, and try to go for those free from additives and synthetic colours.
• Make it extra special by getting the kids involved in making the sweets at home – they’ll have fun making them with you, and will appreciate the treats all the more because they’ve helped make them.

Resources:

Additive Alert

Chemical Maze

Lunch Matters

Laptop Lunches

Lucy Burney Children’s Diets

Mindd Foundation – Practitioner database of those specialising in paediatric disorders such as ADHD, Asthma, allergies, autism, chronic illness, depression, learning and language delay, and digestive and behavioural disorders.

Children’s Cookbooks:

The post Children’s Health: Food Additives appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

What does organic mean?

The word ‘organic’ is used to describe food that has been grown without the use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, growth regulators and hormones, antibiotics, and livestock feed additives. This means working with nature rather than against it, by recycling natural materials, maintaining soil fertility and encouraging natural methods of pest and disease control, rather than relying on chemicals. Crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, green manures, legumes, organic wastes, mineral-bearing rock, and biological pest controls are used by organic farmers to raise whole, natural foods.

Benefits of Organic Foods

Nutrient content

It’s often claimed that a large number of studies have found no difference in the nutrient content of organic and non-organic crops. It’s true there have been more than a hundred studies comparing the nutrient content of organic and non-organic foods and the results are inconclusive. But this is because the majority of studies are of poor quality, being either agriculturally or analytically flawed.

Official food composition tables, including data compiled by the US Department of Agriculture, reveal that since the 1940s the mineral levels in fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy have declined substantially in conventional foods. Combine this with earlier (pre-ripened) picking, longer storage, and more processing of crops, and it’s not surprising that we may be getting fewer nutrients in our food than we were 60 years ago.

The artificial fertilization associated with conventional crops produces lush growth by swelling produce with more water. On a pound-for-pound basis, organic food has more “dry matter” (i.e. food). Partly because of this (and for other reasons too), there are higher levels of nutrients in organic produce.

We can expect also that phytonutrients, many of which are antioxidants involved in the plant’s own defense system, will be higher in organic produce because crops rely more on their own defenses in the absence of regular applications of chemical pesticides. Evidence is emerging that confirms this expectation. Higher levels have so far been found of lycopene in organic tomatoes, polyphenols in organic potatoes, flavonols in organic apples, and resveratrol in organic red wine. A recent review of the subject estimated that organic produce will tend to contain 10-50% higher phytonutrients than conventional produce.  These phytonutrients have important roles in our body protecting us from disease and promoting healthy aging.

Recent research has showed that:

• Conventionally grown fruit and vegetables in the USA have about half the vitamin content of their counterparts in 1963.
• On average organic foods contain about one-third higher in antioxidants than comparable conventional produce.

Two independent, comprehensive reviews of (around 40) studies that compare the differences between organic and conventional foods came up with similar conclusions showing that there is overwhelming evidence that organic food is more nutritious than conventional food. Heaton stated: ‘On average our research found higher vitamin C, higher mineral levels and higher phytonutrients – plant compounds which can be effective against cancer.’

Food additives

The use of antibiotics, anti-microbials, hormones and other growth promotants are prohibited in organic production. If animals are treated with veterinary chemicals, they are not allowed to be sold as organic. Similarly the use of synthetic chemicals as preservatives, colourings, antioxidants etc are prohibited in the processing of organic foods. There is an increasing body of concern about these synthetic compounds in the diets of humans and animals used for human food.

Research from the University of Hawaii has found that people who consume processed meats have a 6,700% increased risk of pancreatic cancer over those who consume little or no processed meat products. The researchers concluded that sodium nitrite, a chemical used in nearly all non organic processed meats was the cause of the  very alarming cancer rates.

Chemicals

It’s regularly claimed by the mainstream food industry that pesticide residues in foods are known to be safe on the basis of total diet surveys that supposedly find the levels of pesticide residues in our food to be very low and within acceptable safety limits. But monitoring programs consistently show that around one in three non-organic food samples tested contains a variety of pesticide residues, with far lower levels being found in and on organic produce. Conventional-food proponents also claim that rigorous safety assessments show that pesticide residues are no threat to human health. Yet consumers intuitively know this is a false assurance.

Photo by Thomas Le on Unsplash

The problem is that most pesticide-residue safety levels are set for individual pesticides, but many samples of fresh produce carry multiple pesticide residues. Rules often do not take into account the “cocktail effect” of combinations of pesticides in and on foods. Research is emerging confirming the potential for such synergistic increases in toxicity of up to 100-fold, resulting in reproductive, immune and nervous system effects not expected from the individual compounds acting alone.

Israeli researchers have linked symptoms such as headaches, tremor, lack of energy, depression, anxiety, poor memory, dermatitis, convulsions, nausea, indigestion and diarrhoea with dietary intakes of pesticides. Belgian research has found that women diagnosed with breast cancer are six to nine times more likely to have the pesticides DDT or hexachlorobenzene in their bloodstreams compared to women who did not have breast cancer.

The British Medical Association appears to agree:

“Until we have a more complete understanding of pesticide toxicity, the benefit of the doubt should be awarded to protecting the environment, the worker, and the consumer—this precautionary approach is necessary because the data on risk to human health from exposure to pesticides are incomplete.”

Peer reviewed published research has demonstrated that many of these types of chemicals are known to disrupt the hormone, nervous and immune systems. The escalating increase of certain types of cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia, breast, uterine and prostate cancers are linked to agricultural and other synthetic chemicals. Similarly, a good body of scientific research also links these chemicals to the dramatic increases in disease like chronic fatigue syndrome. Cancers such as Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma have gone from being one of the rarest cancers to one of the fastest growing cancers amongst people exposed to agricultural chemicals.

A detailed scientific analysis of organic fruits and vegetables in the USA, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Additives and Contaminants, showed that organic foods have significantly less pesticide residues than conventionally grown foods.

Children’s immature and developing organs, brains, detoxification and immune systems, plus their larger intake of food per kilo of body weight combine to make them even more susceptible to toxins than adults. Research has shown repeatedly that organic food significantly lowers children’s dietary exposure to pesticides, lowering their exposure from above to below recognized safety levels.

The facts show that organic foods have health benefits because of higher nutritional values. They excel in the antioxidants that prevent heart disease, cancers, anti-inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

How to buy ‘organic’

• Look for the certification stamp on the labeling of the products; In Australia, any organic food or product that is sold must display a certification symbol or number by law. The symbol means that the product meets government standards.
• Buy from a reputable retailer;
• If there is no stamp, question the retailer on the authenticity of the products until you are satisfied that it is the ‘real deal’.
• Remember that Organic foods have a shorter shelf life when compared to conventional foods, as they contain no chemical food preservatives as conventional foods do.  This means that you should plan your meals out so that food doesn’t get wasted (which would be a shame, as it’s more expensive).

Organic foods may be found and purchased from your local health food shop, organic fruit and vegie store or farmers markets or online.

Organic Shops and Sites

Abundant Organics

http://www.abundantorganics.com.au/

Bare Roots Organic & Health

Shop 4 7 Ward Place, Dural
02 9651 5561
http://www.bareroots.com.au/

Blue Mountains Food Co-op

Shop 1-2 Ha’Penny Lane,  Katoomba
(under the PostOffice shop)
02 4782 5890
http://www.bmfoodcoop.org.au/

Doorstep Organics

28-30 Meeks Rd Marrickville, Sydney, NSW.
(02) 8399 1666
orders@doorstep.com.au
http://www.organicdeliverysydney.com.au

Green Hills Organics

Shop 4/328 Windsor St, Richmond
02 45885377 or 0412180749
http://www.greenhillsorganics.com.au

Hawkesbury Organic Food Co-op

23 Bosworth St, Richmond
Operates every Thursday evening from 5pm-6.30pm
http://sites.google.com/site/seasonscoop/home

Honest to Goodness

http://www.goodness.com.au/

In Harmony Health Baulkham Hills

Shop 59 Stockland Mall, Baulkham Hills
02 9688 6797

Lettuce Deliver

http://www.lettucedeliver.com.au/

The Organic Grocer

http://www.theorganicgrocer.com.au/

OrganicFood.com.au

http://www.organicfood.com.au/

Penrith Organic Health

437 High St
Penrith NSW 2750

Real Good Food

http://www.realgoodfood.com.au/product-information/

Warrah Farm

Dural
http://www.warrah.org/farm.htm

If you know of an organic shop or site that’s not listed here, please let me know!

The post Organic Food appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Pizza is super easy and fun to make and is a great way to get the kids to eat lots of veggies.  This pizza is high in fibre , vitamins and minerals and low in sodium.  If you’re not going overboard with the amount you’re eating, and your toppings are fresh and mostly veggies then pizza can be healthy.

I made my own base and sauce but you can get them ready made.  Try to avoid the bases and sauces with too much salt, preservatives and additives in them.  Lebanese bread is a good option as a base, or you can buy spelt and gluten free bases from some supermarkets or online. If you don’t want to use tomato sauce, you can use a pesto made with basil and/or coriander (again, avoid preservatives) or make your own pesto – below is the ingredients for both sauces.

Ingredients

To make 2 large pizzas

Pizza Base

1 7g sachet dry yeast

1 tsp honey

3-4 cups spelt flour or strong unbleached flour

Tomato Sauce

1 brown onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1kg tomatoes

Handful basil

Salt and pepper, to salt

1 tsp dried oregano

Pesto Sauce

2 cups packed fresh basil leaves

½ cup packed fresh coriander leaves

2 tbsp sunflower seeds

2 tsp capers

4 kalamata olives, pitted

4 sundried tomatoes

2 garlic cloves

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Pinch of sea salt

Pizza Toppings

Add as many veggies as you can, this is a great way to get some extra veggies into the kids.

Choose from:

Finely chopped kale, Onion, Capsicum, Eggplant, Shiitake mushrooms, Swiss brown or button mushrooms, onion, thinly sliced sweet potato, thinly sliced and chopped radish, olives, chopped green beans, corn, broccoli, spinach, asparagus.

Top with mozarella cheese or a vegan alternative such as tofutti

Method

To make the dough:

Start this at least 90 minutes before.

Dissolve yeast sachet in a glass or pyrex (not metal) bowl with a glass of warm water and a tsp honey.  Add 1/2 cup spelt flour and stir.  Let it sit for about 10 minutes to activate the yeast, it should become bubbly and foamy.

Gradually stir in the rest of the flour until it becomes a good dough consistency (smooth and stretchy, a little sticky but not too wet).  Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes or let your food processor knead it for you with the dough hook.  If you’ve used the food processor, transfer the dough back to a glass bowl and drizzle with a little olive oil to stop it drying out, then cover the top of the bowl with a plate.  Let it sit somewhere warm for at least an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Separate the dough into 2 pieces and pull into a rough circle shape.  Roll out so it’s a few mm thin.  If you’re talented you could throw it around like this guy.

To make the tomato sauce:

Cut a cross over the top of the tomatoes. Blanch them in boiling water for one minute so the skin is easy to peel off. Allow them to cool and then peel the skin off, discard the seeds and roughly chop the flesh.

Gently fry the onion over a medium heat until soft in a little olive oil.  Add the garlic and fry for a futher minute.  Add the tomatoes and oregano and bring to the boil.  Reduce to a simmer and cook for approximately 30-40 minutes.

Puree with a stick blender until smooth.  Season to taste and add the finely chopped basil.

To make the pesto sauce:

In a food processor, combine basil, coriander, sunflower seeds, capers, olives, sundried tomatoes, and garlic; pulse a few times.  Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream with the food processor running.  Stop to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.  Add a pinch of salt to taste.

Assembling the Pizza

Preheat the oven to 200C.

If you are making the dough from scratch and like me you’re not amazing at throwing dough around so it’s crazy thin, you’ll need to precook the dough for 10min so that the dough isn’t soggy.

Once you’ve done that, spread on your chosen sauce, and layer on heaps of veggies.  Sprinkle with cheese and cook until it’s golden brown.

 
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