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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Grandma Was Right, Children Don’t Need Snacks (Pedcast)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Grandma Was Right, Children Don’t Need Snacks (Pedcast)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:10:05
Publish Date: 2019-01-13 16:14:46
Description: Introduction Doc Smo here, your pedcast host. Thanks for joining me today. News flash, life expectancy in the US has fallen for the past three years straight. I am sure there are many reasons for this but I am afraid that this fact may not just be a temporary aberration, but a glimpse of things to come in the future? Could it be that your children's life will be shorter and sicker than the one you are living?  Could the obesity epidemic among American children be teeing up this generation for a world of hurt in the future? I fear so and if you stay with me for a few minutes and I will explain why this is and, more importantly, what you can do today, to protect your children. Musical intro The Number of Adult Onset Diabetics Keeps Increasing One of the biggest adult health problems in contemporary America is adult onset diabetes and its precursor, pre-diabetes. It is estimated that there are about 100 million adults who suffer from one of these disorders. You heard me right, 100 million! Well, there are only 326 million Americans and 74 million of them are children. Some simple math tells me that 40% of adults in the U.S. are now pre-diabetic or full blown diabetics.  And with the diabetes diagnosis comes a whole host of horrible potential tag along diseases, like kidney failure, blindness, heart disease, and loss of limbs, Alzheimer’s dementia and more. But it may all be preventable, especially if we start the prevention in childhood. What is this magic prevention you are wondering... eating like humans have done since the beginning of time and how your grandma told you eat, that's how.   Neither Children or Adults were Meant to Eat Continuously Here's the thing, I don't believe that humans were designed to eat continuously. In fact, until the twentieth century, they never have.  For people living before the industrial revolution there were inevitable periods of fasting like when the hunting was bad, when crops failed, or when the tribe simply had to move on in a hurry.  Our ancestors certainly didn't have access to the wealth of food that we have today and their bodies were adjusted to periodic starvation.  Their bodies and metabolism learned to maintain their health during times of fasting... or even starvation. In fact researchers today, believe that going without food at times, improves our heath. Today's science backs up the notion that fasting is helpful.  Don’t believe that, check out the links in my show notes. Doc Smo's Crunchout Campaign Must Continue! Now, let's fast forward to today and look at where we are in terms of the way we feed children in America. 40% of calories eaten by a child are done so out of the home, 61% of calories are coming from processed foods, snacking is abundant, average sugar intake for a child is about 3X that is recommended. Add to that a marked decrease in physical activity for today's children and no wonder we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic. And here is the take home message...it is exactly these factors that are going to drive serious health problems for today's children in the future. A few years ago, I made the argument that children are snacking way too much in America and that it is hurting their short term and long-term health. I still believe I was right about this point and the recent surge in adult onset diabetes along with the falling life span of Americans reinforces my argument. Somehow, we got the idea that even very limited periods of time without food should be avoided, especially with children. Wrong, wrong, wrong! My original "crunch out" campaign was meant to convince parents not to feel compelled to throw snacks at their kids every few hours. Let me quote from my original post: "So when your little Johnny or Janie has a snack that contains carbohydrates (another word for sugar), especially a snack that has no fiber to slow down the sugar absorption, their little pancreas has to make insulin pronto to unlock the door to fat cells to remove t...
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