A Pediatric Specialist on Processed Foods

I know very well that a whole-foods plant-based diet is the ideal everyday-for-life diet. Hubby and I cook and enjoy a vegetarian meal about three or four nights a week, sometimes more. Heck, we get excited about things like brussel sprouts and broccoli rabbe. 

But our kids’ diet is not as ideal. Somehow, somewhere along the line, we created a boy who lives for bacon, and a girl who begs for bread with butter. 

No, Babygirl has never, ever, in her entire five-and-half years of life on this earth, ingested meat. (It’s been an inherent aversion since her infancy; who knows why.) Yeah, they also love fruit and yogurt, so we shop accordingly, and push the produce. 

Despite these healthy tendencies, our kids get a fair amount of processed foods: Babyboy and cured meats; Babygirl and white (can’t be wheat) bread. 

While I wish we could eliminate those unhealthy foods, we… just haven’t. 

We console ourselves when we see them snatch an apple as a snack; snarf the slices of orange/ peach/ mango that we set before them; grab grapes right from the grocery cart; or reach into the bag for handfuls of frozen blueberries. 

Still… there’s plenty of processed food regardless. So it’s nice to read a post by a respected physician writer and fellow mom Dr. Deborah Burton, titled The Processed Food Epidemic: 6 Ways to Counteract the Effects. She’s a pedi ENT who knows of what she speaks! Her blog is full of interesting and useful material, check it out!