Ask The Expert is a weekly column on Littlestomaks.com. The idea is to have a reader-submitted question answered by a nutrition expert or a pediatrician. Feel free to submit your question in the comments section below.
March is the National Nutrition Month with the theme of Nutrition from the Ground Up! I asked Dr. Husbands to share a few tips for parents so they could ensure proper nutrition for their kids and help them establish healthy eating habits early on.
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| Douglas Husbands, DC, CCN, ABAAHP | |
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Question: What does Nutrition from the Ground Up meant to you? What changes, if any, should I consider to make sure my child gets proper nutrition and develops healthy eating habits?
Answer:
Being a role model: Starting good dietary habits starts with what kids see their parents eating regularly. So it’s the parents responsibility to model good eating, healthy lifestyle and exercise habits to their children. One of the most common flaws in the parents diet is: insufficient amounts of fresh vegetables being regularly eaten! Kids pick up on this and they start to not like vegetables because the parents don’t.
Eating On the Run: Many parents allow their toddlers and young kids to take a bite of food, run and play, then take another bite, then run and play. This behavior may seem harmless and innocent enough, but the kids don’t really learn to taste and appreciate all the intricacies of different flavors and textures of foods. Note that you will rarely see kids doing this behavior with cake or ice cream…they want to savor every morsel of the sweet treat! Teach them to appreciate the differences in foods taste and textures by modeling mealtimes as a time to slow-down and really taste their food with sufficient chewing and calm, unhurried, visually pleasant meals. This also encourages proper digestion and absorption of nutrients, so the kids also get more nutrients assimilated!
Drinking Plenty of Water Between Meals: Water is one of the most important nutrients for our bodies, but most people I see in clinical practice neglect this fact. Most adults drink far too little water each day. As a general rule, most people should drink half an ounce of water per pound of bodyweight each day. This poor habit is often passed on to kids. This is also one factor in kids having atopic disorders, that is disorders of the mucous membrane linings and the skin. This includes atopic dermatitis, asthma, and allergies. Adequate water alone is definitely not the only factor in these disorders, but is one of the factors that is easily addressed.
Ensuring adequate vitamin D: Vitamin D is one of those supernutrients and has been getting it’s due recognition lately. The RDA’s for vitamin D are set far too low, often times about 5 to 10 times too low for healthy functioning. Many infants and toddlers, due to various factors, can benefit from 1000 to 2000 IU of vitamin D/day. Also many middle school age to teenagers could benefit from 2000 to 3000 IU of vitamin D/day. Most adults should get a maintenance dose of about 3000 to 4000 IU/day. In cases of acute upper respiratory illnesses (colds and flu), even in toddlers and young children, a short term dose of 10,000 IU of vitamin D/day for a few days until the child gets over the cold or flu is helpful. A sufficiently high dose for adults (approximately 20,000 IU/day) is also beneficial for short term use in adults with upper respiratory illnesses.
Addressing clinical vitamin D deficiency immediately: In any person who has blood vitamin D levels measured below 20 ng/ml, they must take a short-term loading dose to get their blood vitamin D levels in the healthy range of about 40 to 80 ng/ml. For a few weeks, they may need to take 10,000 to 20,000 IU vitamin D/day, have their blood levels re-measured, then stay at a lower maintenance dose. It analogous to having a bucket of water with a slow leak, where by the time you see it, the bucket is almost empty: You have to put a lot of water in to top it off, but after topping it off, you just have to keep putting a little in regularly to keep it full.
Taking care of intestinal microflora: For anyone, anywhere at any age: If antibiotics are used, or if steroid inhalers, or topical steroid-containing creams are used, these drastically reduce the beneficial microflora that should be lining a healthy upper respiratory tract, the GI tract and all the mucous membrane linings. It is always, always, always necessary to replenish the beneficial microflora lining the gut and mucous membranes to prevent recurrent infections and damage to these linings to prevent more side effects, such as atopic associated diseases.
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Disclaimer – Information provided in Ask The Expert column on Littlestomaks.com is intended to give you general guidance on a question related to toddler nutrition. It is not meant to be treated as medical advice. You are welcome to contact this expert for a detailed consultation on your specific situation to determine what actions, if any, you should take regarding nutrition and health of your toddlers. We do not recommend you to take any action based solely on the information presented in this column. Experts have agreed to provide their professional opinion on toddler nutrition related questions on a voluntary basis and no compensation is offered to them by Littlestomaks.com.
