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BABY FEEDING FUNDAMENTALS
Nutrition Is Necessary for Health
Other great healthy-baby feeding books will tell you to choose organic produce, alert you to choking hazards, urge you to make your own baby food, encourage breastfeeding, and provide you with some developmental expectations for your child. We’ll tell you all of this too, but we’re also going to provide you with much, much more.
Our recommendations are quite different from mainstream advice—this is because how we currently feed children isn’t good enough. We’ll tell you why and offer you much better options—what we call the Super Nutrition Baby Feeding Program.
These feeding guidelines will not just provide your baby with the ability to survive but will ensure she thrives. We recommend feeding your baby in a way that coincides with how her body works, considering her unique nutrient needs as a growing baby.
Our Super Nutrition program builds super-healthy babies. And today a healthy baby is not a certainty, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of children with chronic health issues. But diet and nutrition can make a tremendous difference.
A Tidal Wave of Disease
Chronic childhood illness has been on a steep rise over the last thirty to forty years. We call this scourge of Contemporary Chronic Childhood maladies “3C” conditions, and they include autism spectrum disorders; allergies, eczema, and asthma; attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities; emotional, mood, and behavioral disorders; recurrent pain disorders; metabolic syndrome, obesity, and autoimmune diseases; digestive and gastrointestinal disorders; tooth decay; and cancer.
We consider the 3C conditions contemporary because they are relatively modern illnesses that were exceedingly rare in past generations and, in fact, nonexistent in pre-industrialized populations. They are chronic because they aren’t an acute problem, like pneumonia, but instead chip away at health every day and are often considered incurable. They are designated as childhood conditions because they affect children or are increasing in prevalence in childhood. For instance, type 2, or non-insulin dependent diabetes (formerly known as adult-onset diabetes), metabolic syndrome, depression, dental problems, heart disease, and high rates of cancer are new to childhood, as previously they predominantly affected adults.
In fact, not only are the 3C conditions on the rise in children, but many, such as obesity, autism, and diabetes, are increasing quickly enough to be called epidemics. Current, common baby feeding practices have not safeguarded our children. Children born today face the following unfortunate statistical realities:
One in 21/2 (40%) have allergies, compared to 30% of adults.
One in 12 have food allergies; 1 in 6 of those have experienced anaphylaxis (life-threatening symptom of allergen exposure).
One in 10 people in North America and Europe have one of 80 autoimmune conditions; that’s nearly 25 million people, with a 2012 study by NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) showing that more than 32 million have autoantibodies, the precursors to full-blown autoimmune disease.
One in 8 have asthma.
One in 3 have ADHD, allergies, asthma, or autism.
Almost 1 in 10 show signs of depression.
One in 59 were diagnosed with autistic spectrum disease (ASD) in 2014, per the CDC, up from 1 in 68 in 2012.
One in 36 (2.76%) are, at some point in their lives, diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.
Developmental disability diagnosis went from 5.76% in 2014 to 6.99% in 2016, with an increase in diagnosis of “other developmental delays” from 3.75% in 2014 to 4.55% in 2016.
One in 3 children in the United States are currently overweight or obese.
Assuming the diet and environment of children remain as they are now, the future for those born this century is bleak:
Nearly 1 in 2 will become obese or overweight.
One in 3 will eventually suffer with diabetes.
By 2025, 50% of boys born in the United States will have some form of ASD.
What’s worse is that these disease rates have been progressively increasing over the years. “If these trends continue,” fears William Sears, M.D., pediatrician and author of more than forty books on children’s health, “America’s children face a future filled with sickness rather than health, of weakness rather than strength, of sadness rather than happiness.”
Introducing Super Nutrition
With this book as your guide, we will empower you to put the odds in your favor for preventing your baby from developing such 3C conditions, despite the statistics. Our way to do that is with Super Nutrition. Super Nutrition is the term we’ve coined to describe a purposeful way of selecting, preparing, and combining foods; using specific supplements; and purposefully avoiding other foodstuffs in such a way as to be protective of health. Ideally, these choices will result in the prevention of chronic and degenerative disease in your child. This means that by feeding your baby following our Super Nutrition method, you can protect her from the very real, very scary, and very tragic 3C conditions.
How does the same feeding program protect against such a wide array of illnesses? It turns out there are significant commonalities in the underlying causes of many of the 3C conditions. So even though they seem different, the 3C conditions actually have two very important things in common: They are caused or made worse by nutrient deficiencies, and they are caused or made worse by toxic overload.
These contributing components are environmental factors of diet and lifestyle. Unfortunately, most people don’t give much credit to the role environment plays in health. Perhaps you think that genetics or luck will determine the state of your baby’s health. Previously, even experts hypothesized that health was equally determined by nurture (environment) and nature (genetics). But due to the findings of the Human Genome Project and the scientific field of epigenetics, we now know there is a difference between our DNA (with which we are born) and what actually comes to be (how the genes are expressed)—and that difference is often our environment.
Professor Jose M. Ordovas, Ph.D., director of the Nutrition and Genomics program at Tufts University and a recognized expert in the field of nutrigenomics, attests that no more than 25% of health is actually because of hard-coded genetics. This means at least 75% of health is up to environmental factors (and many experts think their influence is even greater!). Environment—because it influences genes—plays a far greater role in our health than does just “genetics.” Restated another way: Your diet and lifestyle influence your health more than your genes.
This is great news! It means that you hold most of your baby’s health in your hands because you have significant control over his environment. Even if he has “bad” genetics (or genetic susceptibility) that sets him up for autism, diabetes, obesity, learning disabilities, or emotional disorders, it is most often not his genes, but rather his environment that will determine whether he actually ever develops any of these conditions.
The impact of epigenetic changes, such as those caused by environmental changes on genes, can be passed down through generations. If a toxic exposure turns on genes that contribute to autism, those turned-on genes can be passed down to one’s children. Additional contributing factors in subsequent generations, such as toxic exposure, stress, or poor nutritional status, might be enough to express these turned-on genes and thus explain the epidemic rise in autism. Unfortunately, unless these environmental factors are corrected, the trend will continue and/or accelerate.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, pediatrician and researcher, reviewed biological, genetic, and environmental factors as contributing factors to autism in Current Opinion in Pediatrics (April 2010). A summary of his conclusions states, “Expanded research is needed into environmental causation of autism. Children today are surrounded by thousands of synthetic chemicals. Two hundred of them are neurotoxic in adult humans, and 1,000 more in laboratory models. Yet fewer than 20% of high-volume chemicals have been tested for neurodevelopmental toxicity.”
We agree more research is necessary. However, research is not needed to know that reducing toxic exposure is important for reducing its epigenetic impact, and therefore 3C conditions.
We also know that nutrients combat toxins, either helping to clear them or reducing their ability to do harm. A diet that is nutrient rich, therefore, can directly protect your child from toxins in his environment. This is empowering information and is critical in the hands of concerned and caring parents. For more on how nutrients remove and deactivate toxins, see chapter 5.
IMPACT OF DIET AND LIFESTYLE ON HEALTH
For babies, diet is one of the most important environmental factors when it comes to influencing health. The foods selected, their source, their preparation, their timing of introduction, their quality, and their combination are all important in the protection of health (“good” gene expression) or the development of disease (“bad” gene expression). Simply put: Good food keeps good genes turned on and keeps bad-disease genes turned off.
Enemies and Allies in the War on Children’s Health
Truth be told, we see modern food and conveniences as an attack, or veritable war, against children’s health. In this war, we have identified “Allies” and “Enemies.” Your Allies are the diet and lifestyle choices you make. They include not just what you choose to put into your baby’s mouth but also what you include in her life to bolster her internal defenses, such as good bacteria, sunshine, clean water, fresh air, and loving embrace.
ANTI-INFLAMMATION. One of the fundamental problems seen in children with the 3Cs is underlying inflammation of various tissues and organs, most notably the brain. Calming this inflammation is a key factor in preventing disease. To tame the flames of inflammation, it is important to support intestinal health, minimize toxic overload, optimize nutrient balances, and bolster immune function—all of which are key to the Super Nutrition program.
PROPER DIGESTION AND DIGESTIVE AIDS. Children with the 3Cs often have digestive problems (including allergies). Therefore, it is critical to aim for complete protein digestion as well as adequate stomach acid to ensure proper nutrition is obtained from foods; it’s also essential to prevent a variety of tummy troubles, from constipation to diarrhea.
HEALTHY GUT ECOSYSTEM AND INTESTINAL WALL. Proper nourishment will ensure that your baby’s intestinal tissue is healthy and capable of protecting her from undigested proteins and pathogens that could otherwise gain access through a weak intestinal lining to the bloodstream and brain.
CLEAN WATER. Your baby’s growing body is, in part, built based on the caliber of water you provide. Using filtered water, when your baby is ready, will help ensure that the water functions appropriately as a cleanser and source of alkalizing minerals, rather than a source of toxins.
VITAMINS AND MINERALS. Trace quantities of certain minerals enable the body to run complex biochemical processes. Vitamins and minerals are also called coenzymes and act as critical helpers in making most processes in the body function effectively and efficiently. In addition to ensuring the body “works” properly, nutrients are the building blocks for your baby’s tissues, bones, and organs. Small nutrient deficiencies can cause big problems. Whole foods are your best source of nutrients.
DETOXIFICATION. Toxins are more likely to overwhelm a body that lacks nutrients; a well-nourished body fortunately can cope far better. By providing nutritious foods, you will support your baby’s ability to detoxify and thus minimize the effects of these toxins.
HEALING (“SUPER POWER”) FOODS. Certain foods provide optimal nutrition to support immunity, detoxification, and the formation and function of organs and of many systems in the body. These foods have been shown to protect and preserve pristine health. When abandoned in the diet, their absence has been associated with an increase in chronic disease, deformity, and degeneration. When replaced, these foods have the power to actually restore health. Thus, we have categorized these protective, nutrient-rich, healing foods as Super POWER foods.
REAL FOODS. Real foods—as we define them—are those that are as Nature designed them. They do not have refined elements or unnatural ingredients, such as additives, preservatives, colorings, flavorings, or texturizers. Real foods come from animals who naturally graze on pastures, enjoying fresh air and sunlight, and who are never given pharmaceutical drugs or synthetic hormones. They are grown in organic soil, free of pesticides, chemicals, and nitrates, where nutrients are replenished through natural sources such as manure and crop rotation rather than chemical fertilizer. While real foods are much more than just “organic,” organic is a great place to start. Real foods are pure, are worthy of your baby’s body, and support health, strength, character, and intelligence.
SUPPLEMENTS. Supplements are ideally just that: “supplemental” to a nourishing diet. Food provides nutrients in their most absorbable form, acting synergistically to provide the best support for the body. However, supplements are often beneficial to fill a nutrient void or to support a metabolic blockage.
ANTIOXIDANTS. Antioxidants are nutrients that protect your cells against free radicals, which cause damage to the body, resulting in inflammation and other problems. Antioxidants reduce the damage of today’s free-radical onslaught from processed foods (predominantly from plant and seed oils) and our toxic environment.
PROBIOTICS. Probiotics is another term for beneficial bacteria, which serve untold health functions in the body. Maintaining healthy gut flora will protect against a damaged or “leaky” gut, thus minimizing the risk of allergies, mood alterations, nutrient deficiencies, digestive distress, and illness from infection.
STRONG IMMUNE SYSTEM. The immune system has several levels of protection that it invokes to maintain health, as well as prevent illness. Our baby-feeding regimen provides the best possible support for your baby’s immune system troops. According to the National Institutes of Health, endorphins are being studied for their amazing immune-strengthening abilities, including “antibody synthesis, lymphocyte proliferation, and natural killer cytotoxicity.” Note: Holding your baby releases endorphins, both comforting and immune boosting.
SUNSHINE, FRESH AIR, AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. It is a different world for the youth of today than even when we were children. By encouraging sun exposure, movement, and fresh air, you will improve immune function, detoxification, and your child’s overall health.
The Enemies That Attack Your Child’s Health
Supplying her body with Allies will help your baby be stronger, but there are Enemies lurking about that can overwhelm them rather effectively. What makes Enemies particularly powerful is that they are insidious—part of common diet and lifestyle for kids—and they’re increasingly prevalent. It’s impossible to avoid all Enemies, but becoming aware of them and reducing exposure to them will minimize their impact on your baby.
TOXINS. Toxins include pesticides, pollution, heavy metals, medications (including vaccines), industrial waste, chemicals (found in common items from cleaning and hygiene products to foods to tap water), dyes, artificial ingredients, preservatives, and even animal foods (such as arsenic and fluoride in poultry from chicken feed, mercury in meat from cattle’s grain-based feed, and glyphosate in wheat and oats). Toxins accumulate in the body and disrupt normal metabolic activity, leading to multiple issues. Many children suffer from a reduced ability to eliminate toxic elements entering the body—due to digestive problems or insufficient nutrients to help enzymes do the job. Toxins then accumulate, crippling various organs and systems. At high enough doses, many of them are lethal, but even at lower doses, toxins cause trouble with normal function and development.
SUGAR AND REFINED GRAINS. Sugar and refined grains make up a (conservative) 50% of caloric intake! Both sugar and refined grains wreak havoc with health in myriad ways. We’ll discuss sugar’s detriments in chapter 7.
ANTIBIOTICS, VACCINES, AND OTHER DRUGS. The overuse of certain medicines—such as antibiotics and steroids, both in our children and in the animal foods they consume—can lead to imbalances in the endocrine system, the immune system, and in gut bacteria, all of which negatively affect the whole body. Keeping immunity strong will create less need for such drugs. Choosing higher-quality animal foods will also reduce exposure to such toxic drugs. Vaccines are injected into our systems with dangerous adjuvants that can cause systemic, and particularly brain, inflammation and a cascade of autoimmunity linked to many 3Cs, including autism.
PROCESSED FOODS. Processed foods are devitalized and fake, containing multiple harmful and damaging man-made ingredients, including growth hormones, excitotoxins, dyes, rancid fats, and genetically engineered components. These kinds of foods deplete the body of precious nutrient stores and give nothing back but calories and toxins. They are also difficult to digest, and can lead to gut problems, food allergies, and autoimmune conditions.
WRONG MACRONUTRIENT RATIOS AT MEALS. When babies and children are fed typical “kid-food” diets, often they become reliant on refined, processed carbohydrates and don’t get adequate healthy fats and protein. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is at least two-thirds carbohydrate based. Even the new 2015–2020 USDA MyPlate portions are three-quarters fruits, veggies, and grains—all of which are carbohydrates. SADly, though, almost all of modern carbohydrate intake is sugar and refined grain, with very little nutrition to offer. Nutrient density of food is more important than is macronutrient ratio (the proportion of fat, protein, and carbohydrates), so long as sugar and refined flour are omitted and proteins and fats are from pastured sources. The false sense that sufficient calories alone will enable proper growth and development has excused the poor-quality food used to feed children for too long.
Super Nutrition Builds Super Health for Your Baby
With our Super Nutrition Baby Feeding Program, you will gain the skills to strengthen and protect your baby, maximizing both her mental and her physical health potential, and reduce her chances of developing 3C conditions. What you feed your baby now will impact both her immediate and her lifelong health.
In the foreword of the book Healing Our Children, Sally Fallon Morell, author, researcher, traditional-foods advocate, and founder and president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, compares fortifying your child’s body to building a house. Well-built houses can withstand a storm of onslaughts, whereas weakly constructed houses built on subpar materials will crumble under little to moderate distress. “Most children growing up today live in the latter type of [weak] house. Throughout life, in order to be healthy, such individuals will need to pay very careful attention to their diets at all times. Their houses will likely be constantly springing leaks—allergies, digestive problems, fatigue, behavior abnormalities, etc.”
Super Nutrition ensures that you’ll build the strongest “house” (body and mind) possible for your baby, optimizing the support of children’s health Allies while minimizing exposure to Enemies.
The Pillars of Super Nutrition
We’ve built our Super Nutrition Baby Feeding Program on the foundation of protective nutrition. On this foundation stand four pillars, which are scientifically and clinically sound. We have incorporated medical research, experts’ findings, scientific evidence, and our own clinical experience to focus on those factors that most influence children’s health when it comes to 3C conditions. To prevent the 3Cs from taking hold, you must carefully select and prepare your baby’s foods to be the most digestible, pure, immune bolstering, and nutrient rich.
PILLAR #1: DIGESTIBILITY. FACILITATE DIGESTION AND SUPPORT INTESTINAL HEALTH.
You can make digestion easier for your baby if you provide her with the right foods. Acknowledging that an infant’s digestive system is different than that of an older child or adult is important in determining when you can introduce certain foods. How you prepare the food also makes a significant difference in digestibility. We will guide you in choosing and making easy-to-digest foods for your baby at each stage.
Natasha Campbell-McBride, M.D., focuses on the neurologic- and psychiatric-based 3Cs (autism, depression, ADD, etc.) in her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS). Dr. Campbell-McBride, a neurologist, nutrition expert, and autism specialist, suggests that because the digestive system impacts immunity, availability of nutrients, protection from toxins, and detoxification of toxins, it directly affects the health and functioning of the brain.
But there’s more to it, as Dr. Campbell-McBride writes, “The gut-brain connection is something … many modern doctors do not understand.” There’s actually a “second brain” in the gut; though it doesn’t “think” conscious thoughts, it does affect behavior. It is not only the master of digestion, but the gut also conveys massive quantities of information to the brain. In addition to impacting nutritional status and immunity, intestinal health also influences mood, behavior, mental health, and emotion.
Digestible foods are those that:
Have had their digestive irritants neutralized (soaked, sprouted, or leavened)
Are predigested (fermented or cultured)
Contain enzymes (as in raw animal foods, tropical fruits, and fermented or cultured foods)
PILLAR #2: PURITY AND FRESHNESS. REDUCE TOXIC EXPOSURE AND IMPROVE DETOXIFICATION CAPABILITIES.
Our program will suggest foods that are least processed and least toxic. Avoiding even a few ingredients will go a long way in reducing the toxic burden your child carries. Purity and freshness are criteria we hope you’ll begin to apply to feeding choices for your baby.
In light of the toxic reality babies face today (see chapter 5), detoxification is crucial. Luckily, your baby has built-in systems for detoxification—based on natural mechanisms that are designed to protect her. Unfortunately, this detoxification ability is often decreased due to nutrient deficiencies and toxins that can further block detoxification pathways. Consequently, optimizing nutrition and reducing toxin exposure are critical to detoxification and thus, good health and optimal development.
Ideally, pure foods meet the following criteria:
No additives, synthetic nutrient “fortification,” preservatives, or other chemicals
No artificial sweeteners, colorings, or flavorings
Organic—sustainably grown in nutrient-rich soils, without the use of chemical pesticides
From animals that have eaten their natural diet and have lived a natural life (pasture fed and raised)
No growth hormone, antibiotics, or other drugs given to farm animals
In whole form—not refined, isolated, or concentrated
Minimally processed with a short “shelf life”
Not genetically modified
Fresh, vine-ripened, recently and locally harvested
Consumption occurs quickly after harvesting, picking, or gathering
No chemical or high-heat treatments (pesticides, pasturization)
PILLAR #3: IMMUNE BOOSTING. STRENGTHEN AND SUPPORT NATURAL IMMUNITY.
You can foster a stronger immune system through nutrient-rich feeding, proper digestion, and purposeful microbial exposure (more in chapter 6). In particular, healthy bacterial exposure and colonization is critical to a healthy body and strong immune system.
Getting or being sick with viral or bacterial infections, while ultimately immune strengthening, still can cause more than just the uncomfortable symptoms. Infections—when they take root—excessively burden the body, cause inflammation, and use up priceless nutrients and enzymes, as the body works to regain a healthy balance. The proper functioning of your baby’s immune system is important to the big picture of health because staying healthy is easier on the body than getting health back once infection sets in.
Surprisingly, the best way to prevent infection isn’t to avoid microbes. It is actually to fortify the immune system from within. The vast majority of microbes are good—and those few that could make us sick don’t always do so when we’re exposed to them; it’s the state of our body’s health and immune capabilities that determine whether we will actually get sick.
Immune-boosting foods are those that:
Support the immune system with critical nutrients
Supply living immune cells (as in mom’s milk and raw mammalian milk)
Provide probiotics
Supply enzymes
PILLAR #4: NUTRIENT RICH. PROVIDE OPTIMALLY NOURISHING FOODS.
Our program will educate you about what makes a food truly nourishing (see chapter 6). Part of this pillar also includes avoiding foods that rob your baby of nutrients or contain nutrient blockers (see chapter 5). Nutrient worth is an important way to judge foods—they should be “worthy” of supporting your baby’s growth and development.
Focusing on nutrient-rich foods is worthwhile because they have been shown via extensive research to build healthy, robust babies. Revolutionary nutrition researcher and dentist Weston A. Price, D.D.S., studied health among cultures across the six inhabited continents of the globe during the 1920s and 1930s. He used saliva, food samples, observation, medical and dental examinations, interviews, skeletal remains, and photographic evidence to do his research. He reported his findings in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which has remained a seminal work on nutrition and health.
Dr. Price conducted his studies at a unique time in history, when many primitive stocks of people had yet to be touched by modern industry. He specifically chose peoples who were living and eating off their land as they had for thousands of years. At this time, he was also witness to the building of roads, the coming of boats, and the arrival of missionaries who brought “industrialized” foods such as jellies, jams, canned meats, and white flour. In his studies that spanned two decades, he saw that the generation eating “modern” foods got sick far more than the same genetic stock not eating modern foods and also gave birth to unhealthy babies! He later documented that a return to the traditional-foods diet would restore their health.
Dr. Price found that lack of proper nutrition was causal in physical degeneration and most chronic diseases. He concluded that optimal nutrition was key to both physical regeneration and the prevention of degenerative disease.
Foods with high nutrient worth are those that:
Are nutrient dense, containing rich amounts of nutrients per calorie
Do not contain antinutrients (chemicals that block mineral absorption)
Do not contain sugars or refined salt that strip the body of pre-existing nutritional stores
These four pillars of Super Nutrition guide each and every recommendation in this book. By focusing on them, you can expect your baby to have the best overall health on many levels—including but not limited to strong immune system functioning, emotional control, focus, dental health and orthodontic positioning, metabolic functioning, and countless other facets of well-being. With Super Nutrition, you will be helping your baby become the smartest, happiest, and healthiest he can possibly be.
In our recommendations, you may question foods such as organ meats, including liver or raw (fresh, unpasteurized) milk. We include such foods and, in fact, make all of our recommendations to use them because of their impressive ability to nourish, protect, and grow optimally healthy children. For more, see Deep Dive into Raw Dairy.
Super Nutrition Food Categories
These Super Nutrition food categories illustrate which foods are most important to avoid and which are most critical in your baby’s diet. We’ve grouped them in accordance with the four pillars and categorized them as CRAP, OKAY, PURE, or Super POWER foods. We’ll refer to these categories throughout the remaining chapters as a helpful tool for you in meal planning, purchasing, and preparation. The handy acronyms will help you understand why each of the foods belongs in its category. Eventually you’ll come to recognize whether a certain food incorporates elements of Super Nutrition.
CRAP FOODS
Stated purposefully in such a vulgar way, CRAP foods contribute to the toxic burden your baby must carry. They do not provide proper nutrition and detract from the nutrients your baby needs for growth, development, detoxification, and immunity. Refer to the acronym CRAP to help you remember why you want to eliminate, or at least minimize, these foods in your baby’s diet.
CRAP
Chemical
Removes body’s nutrients
Addictive
Processed
Foods that are in the CRAP category do not meet any of the criteria within the pillars of Super Nutrition: They are not digestible, they are not pure or fresh, they are not immune boosting, and they are not nutrient worthy. Most processed foods fall into this category.
Counter to being protective, CRAP foods are most often harmful. When you feed them to your child, not only are you not supporting proper health, growth, or development—you are likely hindering these processes, adding to your baby’s toxic burden and reducing nutrient abilities. We realize that all children will have some CRAP foods, but we also want to be sure you understand how important it is to reduce them as much as possible. CRAP foods include the following:
Fast food and prepackaged meals (especially microwavable)
Foods made with white flour (crackers, pretzels, bagels, and bread)
Most food served through school lunch programs
Margarine/any kind of oil-based spreads
Vegetable, plant, and seed oils refined and high in polyunsaturated fats (cottonseed, corn, soy, and canola)
All boxed breakfast cereal
Candy and other white-sugar-containing foods
Cookies, snack bars, cereal bars, and protein bars
Nonorganic lunch meat
Soda pop or any sweetened carbonated beverages and store-bought juice
Most soy products, including soy formula
Nonorganic, low-fat, rBGH-containing, pasteurized dairy
Organic ultrapasteurized dairy
Genetically modified organisms/foods (GMOs) (soy, corn, canola, beet sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and cottonseed)
Refined white salt, refined sugar, and other sweeteners
OKAY FOODS
Although these foods aren’t the very best available, they are often part of the Standard American Diet. They are convenient, easy to come by, inexpensive, and found in most grocery stores. Truthfully, it is hard to have a diet that doesn’t include OKAY foods. A diet of only OKAY foods won’t be adequate to provide Super Nutrition, but they can be okay as part of a healthier diet. If your baby’s diet is made up of some OKAY foods, some PURE foods, and some Super POWER foods, you will be doing very well by her.
OKAY
Ordinary
Knockoffs of real food
Adequate, not optimal
Yield subpar health if fed exclusively
OKAY foods include the following:
Whole grains (unsoaked, unleavened, unfermented, or unsprouted)
Nuts and seeds (unsoaked, unleavened, unfermented, or unsprouted), including hemp, chia, and pumpkin seeds
Dried fruits (sugar and sulfite free)
Grocery-store eggs
All-natural and organic grain-fed meat
Farmed fish
Pasteurized (not ultrapasteurized), organic, full-fat dairy products
Fresh-squeezed juice
Nonorganic vegetables and fruit
Low-polyunsaturated oils (high-oleic safflower oil and olive oil)
Nut butters
Non-cold-pressed, nonorganic, non-virgin, refined plant and seed oils, such as olive oil, walnut oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil
Organic, nitrite-free lunch meat
Legumes (including edamame, peanut butter, hummus, and beans)
Fermented non-GMO soy (miso, natto, tempeh)
Whole-foods sweeteners (raw honey, rapadura, maple syrup)
PURE FOODS
These foods are clean, digestible, and offer improved nutrient richness. They are important to incorporate into your child’s diet as much as possible, as they support the serious nutrient needs of the body, aiding in cognitive, neurological, immune, and physical development.
PURE
Pasture based
Unadulterated
Rich in nutrients
Enzyme containing
In a perfect world, the ideal diet for your child would consist of only PURE and Super POWER foods. Yet more realistically, if we consume some OKAY foods but we are sure to also include Super POWER foods and rely mostly on PURE foods for our baby’s nutrition, we’ll improve the 3C disease statistics that come with average baby feeding. PURE foods include organic versions of the following:
Soaked or sprouted whole grains and legumes
Soaked or sprouted nuts and seeds (and nut butters of such preparation)
Organic, local, seasonal, fruits and vegetables
Organic tropical fruits
Eggs from free-range chickens eating an omega-3-enriched diet
Pastured/grass-fed meats, poultry, and pork
Wild-caught fish and seafood
Sea vegetables (kelp, nori)
Unrefined, animal fats such as duck fat, lard, tallow, and ghee
Unrefined, cold-pressed oils (olive oil, avocado oil) and tropical fats (coconut and palm)
Low-temperature (VAT) pasteurized, organic, grass-fed, non-homogenized dairy products
Unpasteurized, commercial fermented condiments and beverages (for example: trace-alcohol-containing kombucha [fermented tea], Bubbies brand pickles and sauerkraut, kimchi, Gut Shot brand sauerkraut and pickle juice, raw apple cider vinegar)
SUPER POWER FOODS
These foods are digestible, pure, fresh, immune boosting, and nutrient rich—and as a result, they can protect and even regenerate and restore health. They are absolutely the “superheroes” of the diet, found by researchers, nutritionists, historians, and anthropologists to be traditionally honored as “sacred” foods.
POWER
Protective
Optimal nutrition
Wisdom of the ancients
Enriching
Regenerating
Super POWER foods have qualities most other foods don’t:
Complete, whole, real, natural foods
Nutrient dense and uniquely able to heal
Part of traditional wisdom and used by ancient cultures for healing
Free of toxins
Packed with a wide array of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals
Supply inflammation fighters
Often a source of the all-important, fat-soluble mineral activators
Many also contain probiotics and enzymes
What can Super POWER foods do that other foods can’t? They are heavy-hitting, healing foods. They are the “strongest” against pre-existing problems and act as preventive measures in the diet. Due to their super nutrition, they are the best to support the body, build the brain, bolster gut integrity, heal tooth decay, grow optimally healthy babies during pregnancy and after, and fortify mom’s milk. Few foods have this kind of résumé.
We give much credit to researchers and nutrition pioneers who’ve studied pre-industrialized peoples to understand their natural and traditional eating habits. It is from such research, like that of Dr. Price and Dr. Pottenger (whose studies demonstrated that fresh foods, likely due to enzyme content, are potent health protectors), that we’ve learned what should be held sacred in our diets. Science has corroborated that these sacred foods are the most nutrient dense available and therefore confer the most health benefits.
Dr. Price’s research particularly highlights the importance of fat-soluble activators, which allow minerals to be used in the body. Fat-soluble activators are the mortar, and minerals are the bricks, of the healthy house you’re building for your baby; they need each other to work effectively. Many of our Super POWER foods are classified as such because they contain these mineral-activating vitamins (A, D3, and K2). Minerals are critical to health, and as Dr. Price warned, “It is possible to starve for minerals that are abundant in the foods eaten because they cannot be utilized without an adequate quantity of the fat-soluble activators.” Super POWER foods include the following:
Mom’s milk
Liver and other offal (organ meats) from pastured, organically raised animals
Cod liver oil
High-vitamin butter oil, grass-fed and/or organic butter, and ghee
Raw, grass-fed, organic dairy and cultured dairy products, including yogurt, kefir, cheese, and milk
Pasture-raised animal fats
Bone marrow
Mineral-rich, bone-based soup stock
Eggs from organic, pasture-raised poultry
Oily, whole seafood (e.g., sardines) and shellfish from clean sources
Fish roe
Probiotic-rich and unpasturized condiments (chutney, salsa, sauerkraut, natto, kimchi)
Lacto-fermented and homemade, fermented foods and beverages (yogurt, ginger ale, kombucha, kefir)
Unrefined salt, such as Celtic sea salt and Himalayan sea salt
At first you might think your child won’t like these foods. Yet parents whom we’ve seen in our practice are often surprised to find that their babies love them.
Putting It All Together
Some of the foods we recommend may seem strange to modern tastes and habits. But they are the most nutrient-dense foods on Earth; for almost all of human history, they’ve been the source of nourishment for adults and children alike and they improve your child’s health outlook in an era of ever-increasing health risks for children.
Though you might be motivated to provide a 100% Super POWER diet, realistically we expect that your child will be fed a diet made up of a mixture of CRAP, OKAY, PURE, and some Super POWER foods. But even simply recognizing and reducing CRAP foods, increasing PURE foods, and offering some Super POWER foods when you can will significantly contribute to your child’s health.
Your Baby’s Health Is in Your Hands
Literally, as it’s in this book! We agree with the January 2018 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) publication stating that nutrition, particularly in the first 1,000 days, is critical to proper optimal brain development. Indeed, the first 2 years of feeding your baby are substantial in setting his or her health trajectory. The AAP states, “Child and adult health risks, including obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, may be programmed by nutritional status during this period.”
They go on to state that particular nutrients, specifically protein, zinc, iron, folate, iodine, retinol (vitamin A), and vitamins D, B6, and B12, along with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (for example, DHA), are vital for neurodevelopment. “Lifelong deficits in brain function,” they state, are a consequence of failing to provide such key nutrients, even if such nutrients become plentiful after 2 years of age.
The AAP goes on to clarify, “Although neurodevelopment continues throughout the life of a healthy person, by age 2 years the brain has undergone tremendous restructuring. Many of the developmental changes expected to occur during this period will not be able to occur in later life.”
Relative to these recommendations, our program ensures all critical nutrients required (for not only avoiding lifelong neurological and neurobehavioral problems but also for optimal development) are sufficient, digestible, and bioavailable.
Even if you follow just some of our recommendations, you will improve your child’s odds for achieving and maintaining optimal wellness. We realize our suggestions are often off the beaten path and take significantly more effort than just opening a jar or reheating in the microwave. We know what we’re asking of you is significant—in terms of time and effort; we know this firsthand because we’ve been there as mothers as well as practitioners and have guided countless patients through this process.
Put Super Nutrition in place by following our guidelines and recommendations. You will create the strongest foundation for your baby, maximizing her current and long-term health. We know that as a parent, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
In the following chapters, we’ll walk you through the ages and stages you’ll cherish as your baby grows. Along the way, we’ll guide you and educate you about development, nutritional needs, and the best way to nourish your baby, supplying “Allied” reinforcements to keep her safe from “Enemies” in her diet and environment. We are so happy that this book has reached you—so that you can follow these guidelines toward optimal health for your darling baby.