So this week on our mission to Transform Children’s Health in Australia, we shared how we were teaching children, parents and teachers in Deniliquin about how real food helps our body, and how to take 5 simple steps to read packet labels in order to make better health choices.
I also shared on our Facebook Page what a 9yr old learnt about the amount of sugar and the preservatives in a popular juice. It’s pretty safe to say that post has gone more than nuts – something I certainly did not foresee. I have been so overwhelmed by the number of people who have shared their experiences of how their children (and them personally) have been affected by different additives and preservatives. Also by those who have expressed an interest in learning more about additives and preservatives, when we’re likely to get to their town or can we visit their school.
This is our goal: To raise awareness of what’s happening to children’s health. And of course there have been a handful of people who have come out discrediting the information about the preservatives the little boy looked up in the Chemical Maze app, some who have accused us of scaring kids, others questioning my qualifications to be teaching this, and some even suggesting we’re going to create eating disorders in kids.
The Root Cause is a 2 person band. Israel and I. We’re parents first and foremost, we’re running our business and we’re travelling Australia taking our mission to Transform Children’s Health around to as many areas as we can.
We simply cannot keep up with new comments and the threads on existing comments, so I decided I would write this post as our FINAL comment on this post and draw the discussion to a close.
We are absolutely grateful for everyone who has added to this robust discussion. It truly shows there is a lot of passion around the foods we’re feeding our children. Thank you, and we trust you also understand why we now need to move on from this post. There are so many other things to do.
The Intention of The Post
This post was never intended to be about this particular apple juice or the chemical make-up of preservatives or the science behind them. I was simply posting out of excitement of what happens when you raise awareness and educate children to look at packet labels themselves.
This 9yo boy had learnt:
- there was important information on the label for him to read
- to look at the amount of sugar on a label and work out how many teaspoons there are
- how to look out for additives and preservatives, and how to look up what they are
And finally he learnt that, armed with this information, he has the choice to say whether he wants to put it in his body or choose something else. That excites me!
What’s Happening to Children’s Health
Our mission is about raising awareness of what’s happening with children’s health. 27.4% of children between 5 and 17 are now considered overweight or obese. In the study done 3 years prior, this stat was only 25.3%. This means these children are more likely to live a life with chronic illness such as diabetes type 2, cardiovascular disease, auto-immune diseases and more. This trend can not continue.
This is the real issue! It’s not what a particular additive or preservative is made of, or its chemical compound, or the science of how it’s made that’s important. What is important is the reaction some of our kids are having to these additives or preservatives that’s important.
The fact that additives and preservatives are affecting children’s health is the REAL issue here.
Our goal is to help parents have peaceful conversations with their children about making healthy food choices, by educating children and themselves in why it’s important to eat real food, and how some packaged foods can contribute to behavioural, learning and concentration issues, plus other symptoms such as asthma, eczema, etc.
Educating The Kids
Personally in a world where there are 80,000 packaged products on a supermarket shelf, I believe being able to read packets is NOW an important life skill. Just as I believe teaching children about real food and cooking is important. It is my intention with teaching kids (and parents) 5 Simple Steps to read packet labels, that they will be able to make a choice about whether they want to eat that product, find another which is better for them or to make one at home in their kitchen.
The Quality of Information
There have been a few people who are clearly very intelligent, have a scientific background, and are perhaps Food Scientists or Food Technicians. They have questioned the information from the Chemical Maze app I use to understand additives and preservatives, specifically the part about the preservatives may be derived from petroleum or being petroleum derived. They have broken down the preservatives into chemical compounds and the chemical reactions they make.
Not once have these people questioned the reactions these additives and preservatives may be causing in children, but that is the real issue here.
However, as soon as these people raised their concerns, I did pick up the phone and talk directly to Bill Statham, the researcher behind the Chemical Maze app. Bill stands behind the information – he spent over 10 years researching it! Then he published a book to share his research, then developed the app which is much more accessible for many than the book.
Bill has very generously offered to provide his scientific research and medical research to back up items which are disputed. Please email me directly belinda@therootcause.com.au and request this if you’re really interested in this.
More Information About Additives and Preservatives
There is loads of other resources about additive and preservatives, and the impact they are having on children’s health. Here are a few great resources.
- FedUp by Sue Dengate – this is an absolutely fascinating read. My mother-in-law gave me her beaten up copy 7 years ago when my daughter was just 2 and her behaviour was going a bit wild. She asked me if I had changed breads recently and suggested I look into preservative 282 which is in many breads. Sure enough after removing this preservative, her behaviour returned to normal. Fedup is a fabulous site with loads of scientific based information about food intolerances.
- Additive Alert by Julie Eady is an eye opening book. I read this years when I was studying to be a health coach.
- Chemical Maze by Bill Statham – I found this book and app after reading Additive Alert, and it really helped me to educate our kids. I used the happy and sad faces as a way of getting them to understand whether we should consider looking for alternatives.
- Choice.com.au – Food Additives to Avoid
- Additive Free Pantry by Tanya Winfield.
- Bendigo, Ballarat and Melbourne – between now and the end of January
- Tasmania – all of the month of February
- Melbourne, Shepparton, Northern Victoria – first 2-3 weeks of March
- Sydney last week of March
- The rest of our rough route can be found here.
Use by Diabetics
There were several people with Type 1 Diabetes who said they use juices like this to bring up their sugar levels quickly, and then there we people who questioned if there were better ways to do this. Where there is a real health issue that requires attention, doing whatever works for your body makes sense. So if this means using this juice, then I believe that is totally your choice.
I do still however stand by my comment in the post that I believe this drink does not belong in a child’s lunchbox (unless of course, they require it for something like tending to their diabetes issue).
My Qualifications
I am not a Scientist, I have had no training in food technology (other than Home Economics at school where we were taught how to make food using real ingredients).
1) I am a Wife and Mum First and Foremost.
My passion in children’s health comes from first hand experience in managing my husband’s post natal depression and daughter’s anxiety for the past 5 years. How? Simply through eating real food, eradicating additives and preservatives that exacerbate their conditions and then making conscious health choices around any packaged food we choose to buy.
I think being a mum is the most important job in the world, and I also feel it’s the most powerful job in the world.
We have a connection to our child like no-one else (no disrespect to Dad’s intended). We carry our child in our bodies, we birth them into this world, we feed them with milk made by our bodies (where we’re able to), we cuddle them, we kiss them, we put them to sleep, we nurse them. In majority of families, mums spend more time with their children than anyone else. I always encourage mum’s to trust their instinct – you know your child better than anyone else. If you think something’s not right, it’s probably not. Dad’s also have this instinct too. They should trust it too.
My gut instinct as a mum is telling me it is not right to be having so many foods with synthetically made chemicals floating around in my child’s body. My instinct is telling me these are not treats or “sometimes” foods (which, because there are now so many “sometimes” foods, these end up being more like “every day or two” foods).
So I have followed my gut, and simply minimise what packets I choose to have in our home. Do I stop them from having these foods at friends homes, etc? For the most part, no. I want them to learn how they feel after eating these kinds of foods. But that’s me. You are the expert in your child(ren). What is your instinct telling you? Go with what feels right.
2) I am a Trained Health and Wellness Coach
When Israel was diagnosed with postnatal depression and I found the connection between food and mood, I became so passionate, perhaps extremist, about wanting to shout what I had learnt from the roof tops. I simply could not believe we could go to a doctor, then a psychologist and walk away with a diagnosis and script without even a question asked about what we were eating.
I decided I wanted to study but our son was not even 2 months old. Our photography business in which Israel was the key man was sort of crumbling around us due to his depression, so I was trying to keep that afloat too. And our daughter had just started kindergarten. I have daily for years said my first priority in life is to be a fantastic mother and wife. I finally got to the point where I realised I could not invest the time required to study a full blown Nutritional Medicine course and still be a fantastic mother and wife. It was then Israel found the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) School in New York.
It’s an online school for integrative nutrition which trains you to become a health coach. I signed up not because I wanted to be a health coach, but because I just wanted to keep learning how I could help my family. This school allowed me to learn at any time of day or night, around the commitments of my family and business. This course exposed me to over 100 different dietary theories and taught me the connection between how primary foods (relationships, career, money, spirituality etc) and secondary foods (what we eat and drink) can affect our overall health.
But most importantly, IIN gave me the courage and support to share out loud what I have learnt. I have put together my 17 years in the Corporate World where I wrote training material, with the knowledge and the information I learnt from IIN, and added my own research to create the programs, seminars, and courses The Root Cause now offers.
3) I am Always Doing Continual Research
I literally spend hours and hours each week researching a host of different health related information that I feel will help us on our mission to transform children’s health. This could be on the internet, in books, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, lectures and films. It’s also from information I am told first hand by people who contact me directly about what has happened for them.
I see myself as your co-pilot – I do research that many parents do not have time for. Then I share the information so you can choose a course of action for yourself which you think will benefit your family. I also educate children in fun and interactive ways, so they will go home and start conversations about healthy food with you.
Of course, I do rely on information others have researched, but I do not accept the first thing I read. In my Corporate World days, the best training I ever received was to ask “Why?” 5 times, in order to get to The Root Cause of a problem. This would then help me to solve a business problem and write training material more effectively. This is just one of the many reasons why I call our business The Root Cause. I apply the same philosophy to my research. I ask “Why?” at least 5 times when facing a problem and I need to find sufficient enough research, from enough different sources, finding the same result, in order for me to feel comfortable to share it with you.
When Are We Coming To Town?
It is so exciting to see all the requests about if we are coming to towns, and if so, when. We do have a rough route already mapped out but we have altered our route a few times to cater for towns which ensure the cost of getting there is covered by having classes and seminars booked. Unfortunately, we cannot get to every town, but we are doing our best to cover this big country as well as we can!
Here’s what’s happening in the next few weeks:
The Lunchbox eCourse
If you’re busy and want to pack healthy lunchboxes which are additive and preservative free, mostly refined sugar free or just want to add more variety, then you may like to look at The 5 Minute Healthy Lunchbox System™ eCourse.
Term 1 of 2016 is now open for enrolment – and Earlybird pricing is still available as of this writing! It’s a 4 week self-paced online course with menu plans, shopping lists and recipes, delivered to you weekly via email. Check it out and join the community of like minded parents who are doing the course this term, and join those who have done it over the last 2 years.
Visit https://therootcause.com.au/lunchbox/ to learn more and enrol.
Wrapping Up
I am so sorry this became so long. What can I say? I am passionate about Children’s Health!
What I have discovered over the past 5 years is this:
There is a lot of money and a lot of strategy that goes into developing packaged foods and drinks. From developing a product with a specific taste designed to make us keep wanting the product, to the packaging (picture, words etc), to where it’s positioned on the shelf, not to mention the advertising too. It’s big business.
Is our children’s health really at the top of big business minds, or it is profit and shareholders funds?
The stats of children’s health in Australia (and being totally real, of adults too) speaks volumes. We simply are not doing very well. I am not saying packaged food is causing this. I believe it’s a very big factor, but so is technology, lack of exercise, not enough sleep and so on.
But it’s impossible to tackle everything at once. I chose to tackle food because that is what changed my family’s health.
I’d love you to keep following our journey around Australia and supporting our mission to Transform Children’s Health, One Lunchbox At A Time. I’d also suggest that if you have time, do what I do – rely on your motherly instinct, do research – use the internet – there is no disputing it is a newer, more accessible encyclopaedia (but do not rely on just one blog), read books, watch documentaries and movies (like That Sugar Film and Food Matters), listen to podcasts, etc.
Just don’t rely on what’s on the front of a packet or in an advertisement.
Let me know in the comments how you get on. And if you have any questions or we can help in any way, please email myself or Israel.
With love & wellness,
Bel. xo
*Note: The link to the Institute of Integrative Nutrition is an affiliate link. This means you don’t pay any extra, but we earn a commission if you decide to enrol in the course. This commission would go directly to helping us stay on the road, and educating more families and children about healthier eating. That’s pretty fair, right? 🙂