Brain Training for Better Eating

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Elena Moroz: First Lady Michelle Obama has made children's nutrition a priority for the nation, emphasizing the importance of forming healthy eating habits in children early on. A new book by the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler, adds to the rallying cry for improved nutrition by dissecting the neuroscience behind our eating patterns. His book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, investigates how bad eating habits that are formed early on in life affect our food consumption patterns as adults and why unhealthy American food staples such as chocolate chip cookies are so hard to resist.

The irresistibility of such unwholesome foods are due to careful engineering by food scientists, who work hard to prepare the seductive combinations of fats, sugars and salt. Consuming these mind-blowing flavor combinations as children ingrains positive feedback loops in our brains, rewarding unhealthy eating behaviors, according to Dr. Kessler. This circuitry endures from childhood to adulthood, lingering even in well-informed nutrition-savvy adult such as Kessler, at times leaving him defenseless against cookies.

Dr Kessler gives hope for the future, insisting that changing our eating habits through careful self-analysis and planning can be effective in fighting those old habits. However, even with strict self-control and psychoanalysis of eating habits, old circuitry will always remain in the background, claims Kessler. This uncomfortable truth should serve as a warning and as a point of motivation for new parents to make healthy eating a priority for their babies. Consider it brain training for a life of healthier eating.

No matter what age your child is, small changes can lead to large impacts on your family’s health. Consider these extremely easy tips:

• It is essential to put nutrition foremost on our priority lists, using it as a preventative measure instead of waiting to eat healthy when sickness, disease and obesity prevail.

• Plan your shopping and cooking so you make thoughtful food choices. It also saves time over the week if you make a menu and get all your groceries at once.

• Remember to avoid highly processed foods and refined sugars and concentrate on whole foods and a diverse diet.

• Mrs. Obama gives away her secret on how to get children interested in healthy eating: by cooking nutritious meals that are tasty. As long as the food tastes good to the children, they will be cooperative in nurturing themselves with healthier alternatives. Get your kids involved in choosing and preparing the food and they’ll be even more eager to eat it.

• Make family meals a daily occurrence. Bringing the family together for a healthy meal everyday helps create good eating habits and healthy relationships. Rushed snacking, grabbing something from the fridge, or from a vending machine on the way to school or work can result in overeating and malnutrition.

Consider nutrition as an investment in your children’s futures and health. Not only will healthy eating prevent disease, bad health and obesity in the future (which is priceless in and of itself), it will also lower your healthcare costs. Preventative healthcare has been shown to cost an ounce to a pound of healthcare needed post disease. A healthier America starts with your children and their diets.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of Healthy Child Healthy World.

Posted by Elena Moroz on 07/24/2009 at 10:55 AM

Well if your children grow up not eating those cookies in the first place, then they will not develop that circuitry that locks us into craving the cookies. You don’t crave what you haven’t tried. People always grow up having a taste for what they were fed as children- that’s why if you grew up eating vegetables and fruit you are more likely to prefer them, as opposed to someone who grew up eating TV dinners and cookies. Of course, you cannot keep your child in a bubble, and they will go to birthday parties and school where they will encounter all sorts of unhealthy foods. But as long as their main diet that they eat at home is healthy, they should develop a natural preference for those types of foods, and stick with relatively healthy eating habits for the rest of their lives. For example, I am lucky enough to have parents who never let me eat fast food, junk food or carbonated beverages as a child- to this day I still don’t like hamburgers, fast food, and I never drink coca cola, without having to wage a mental battle with myself.

Posted by Alex on 07/23/2009 at 10:47 AM

Hey, thanks for the info. It’s true that sometimes those cookies are irresistible. Need to make sure my kids don’t have to wager that mental battle. Can u give more tips on how to do this?

Posted by Raphael on 07/19/2009 at 03:01 PM

Great article Ms. Moroz. I can’t wait to try some of your tips on my one year old!

Posted by Steve on 07/18/2009 at 09:08 AM

Hi, Elena,

Your article is very well written.

(But what kind of cookies are good for us to eat?)

Posted by Tatiana on 07/17/2009 at 03:33 PM

I think this article is wonderful. It really inspired me to feed my future children healthy foods from day one. It seems like a very important and fairly easy thing to do, considering how much positive impact it’ll have on their futures. Thank you, Elena!!!

Posted by smilinggreenmom on 07/17/2009 at 03:53 AM

Wonderful and inspiring! We have come a long way as a family because of our son’s allergies and Eczema. It has been very difficult but we have learned so much along the way. Our kiddos both really love and crave fresh fruits and veggies now over and above almost any other food. We definitely always read labels, avoiding high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and processed junk. Our son was really helped immensely with his Vidazorb probiotic and now our whole family takes it daily for all of the preventative things that probiotics are consistently being shown to help with! It has been wonderful to see all of the changes that we have gone through- and most importantly that our son has been helped so much.

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