INTRODUCTION
Children’s New Health Concerns
We are so excited for you—new parents! There isn’t a more magical time than when you’re welcoming your little one into your life and cultivating a family dynamic around your newest member. Time passes quickly in the first 2 years, each day bringing fresh wonders as his abilities to smile, coo, clutch, crawl, walk, and speak all continue to develop.
We wish you congratulations during this life-changing and memorable chapter in your life. During this time of early parenthood, you too will develop new abilities—those of mother or father, protector, provider, and caregiver. Feeding is one of the most critical aspects of how you will care for your baby, and this book will provide you with the best guidance available in terms of when, how, why, and what to feed, as well as environmental and lifestyle information that can significantly impact your child’s hormonal, nutritional, and overall health status.
New Concerns: The 3Cs
All parents want their children to have optimal health. But today we have more to fear in terms of pediatric health than parents did just two or three generations ago. In fact, back when your great-grandparents were giving birth to your grandparents, the general public had never heard of autism, celiac disease was incredibly rare, and peanuts were synonymous with baseball games and springtime, not life-threatening allergies. Cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and obesity were diseases of the aged. Just a few generations ago, children, by and large, were healthy, strong, and robust. They were able to climb trees, ride bikes without helmets, and play sports without extensive concern for concussions, due to brittle, weak bones built on diets that do not support bone strength.
We see children’s health getting worse with each subsequent generation, each with less robust and rather fragile children. Our children today are at grave risk, and parents’ worries are many and valid. Tragically, the most recent generation of babies is slated to have shorter life spans than their parents. This is unacceptable!
Many of the conditions kids face today are new, so parents can no longer call upon the wisdom of mothers or grandmothers (who have no experience with “stimming” or EpiPens or nebulizers). Parents, perhaps even you, are turning to other parents in support groups and online communities and are becoming researchers, analysts, and metabolic “specialists” themselves in their quest to find help for their children.
As such, we recognize the following illnesses as being Contemporary Chronic Childhood conditions—the “3Cs”:
Autistic spectrum disorders
Allergies, eczema
Asthma
Attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities
Recurrent pain disorders (headaches, abdominal pain, joint pain)
Emotional, mood, and behavioral disorders (anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder)
Digestive and gastrointestinal disorders (irritable and inflammatory bowel disorders, gastroesophageal reflux, eosinophilic esophagitis, and constipation)
Autoimmune conditions (celiac disease, diabetes, thyroid disorders, arthritis)
Overweight, obesity, metabolic syndrome, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes
Tooth decay and orthodontic conditions
Cancer
Many of the 3C conditions are directly caused by our modern world, which is full of toxins and nutrient-poor foods (that are themselves a source of toxins). These toxins and deficiencies cripple many areas of the body, causing multiple symptoms and resulting in a veritable puzzle for modern medicine. Often, highly specialized conventional medical models fail to see the whole, for their strict focus on each of the parts. Looking at the whole child through a holistic perspective is often necessary to piece all the symptoms together when it comes to the 3Cs.
Though conventional medicine claims most of the 3C conditions are incurable, this isn’t the last word. The good news is that most children with 3C conditions can improve. But more important, by following a program of Super Nutrition—the program you’re holding in your hands—these problems can be prevented and often cured.
It boils down to this: Poor health comes from poor foods. Undernourished children are more vulnerable to infection, more susceptible to toxins and cancer, and more likely to develop learning, attention, and behavioral problems.
Because you’re reading this book, we know that you want more for your child than what today’s statistics promise. Instead of worrying about the bad and just hoping for good, you are taking control of your child’s health destiny. Food is one of the most powerful tools you have to protect, preserve, and ensure your baby’s health and well-being. In the coming chapters, we’ll introduce the concept of Super Nutrition and explain how providing foods that are rich in critical nutrients, as well as reducing toxins, will enable your baby’s body to function optimally. We’ll focus on what you can proactively do to create a fundamental base of good health for your baby and significantly increase the odds of your baby living a long, happy, and healthy life.
A Better Way
When researchers and anthropologists study non-industrialized cultures from around the world and throughout history, they find that they are often free of heart disease, cancer, infertility, emotional and behavioral disturbances, birth defects, diabetes, autism, life-threatening allergies, dental anomalies, and other afflictions that are commonly accepted in our culture today. Even in just the last generation, we have seen a marked statistical increase in these conditions that experts believe is not attributable to better testing, awareness, or diagnosis. In fact, the 3Cs were so rare in pre-industrialized cultures that these relatively new conditions are often called Diseases of Civilization.
This is significant. Research corroborates that when we modernize and “industrialize” our foods (and our environment), Diseases of Civilization increase with each generation. This is very important when you consider what to feed your baby because food is the most significant “environmental” component in his life. Diet can make a significant positive impact on your baby’s health and development—or it can be a major detriment to his health.
Though many attest that life was much shorter “back then,” it is actually true that many primitive cultures, such as the Russian Georgians, Pakistani Hunza, and Ecuadorian Vilcabamba peoples, heralded healthy octo-, nono-, and even centenarians. It was once believed that cancer and diabetes developed only because “modern man” was living longer. We’ve since learned, however, that these are not just “adult-onset” diseases (that are inevitable with aging), but rather are diseases of industrialization—as now even our young suffer with them.
Many pre-industrialized cultures held certain indigenous foods sacred; science proves these to be particularly nutritious foods. We’ll show you which foods these are and how to prepare them. Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents also recognized the power of food, feeding their families organ meats and spooning out cod liver oil. Somehow this knowledge has slowly faded away, while the convenience of processed foods has taken center stage.
Even as recently as when our parents were children, they had far fewer toxic exposures. They did not have genetically modified foods or high fructose corn syrup; they had fewer pesticides and far fewer antibiotics given to their food animals (and themselves); they were given significantly fewer vaccines, had no bromine in their bread, less radiation in their skies, fewer chemicals on their skin, no cell phones or laptops, and far more sun exposure, cleaner air, and daily exercise. Their diets were fresher, more local, purer, less processed, and substantially more nutritious.
Traditional wisdom, passed down through countless generations, directed parents to feed their babies the most nutrient-rich foods available, which included the meat, fat, and organs from poultry (including ducks and geese), red meat (including lamb and wild game), and fish and shellfish. Eggs, milk, raw dairy, bone broths, and even insects were also commonly found in pre-industrialized diets. These foods were accompanied by select seasonal fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and occasionally specially prepared grains and beans.
In the early decades of the twentieth century and before, babies were rarely fed industrialized “baby” food; they were fed based on your grandmother’s grandmother’s advice and wisdom, passed down by generation. These were decades in which deathly allergies, asthma, autism, attention problems, cancer, depression, diabetes, and even obesity were extremely rare in children.
It is time to feed our babies differently than our current standard. Instead of relying on the newfangled, overprocessed “Frankenfoods” of industrialization, we recommend going back to the more natural foods of pre-industrialized peoples that did a far better job of keeping the children of our ancestors healthy.
Cutting Edge but Traditionally Sound
Can food really protect your child? Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.” Unfortunately, this ancient wisdom has been lost in the name of food companies’ media storms, advertising blitzes, and continual tsunami of consumer data. Let’s admit it: We’ve been relying on marketers to tell us what is healthy, to teach us how to feed our kids, and even to provide doctors with their “nutritional education” (which is lacking in conventional medical schools). But the truth is, those marketers and their advertisements aren’t motivated to make healthy kids—they’re driven to sell products and make profit.
To ensure the proper health of our children, we must resist being seduced by convenience-based processed foods. Too often parents focus on making sure their children get enough calories, rather than focusing on the nutrients their kids most need. And too often we say we’re too busy for anything but fast food, or packaged food, or “junk” food. Yet, it is whole food that heals, real food that protects, and traditional food that nourishes.
We realize that what we present here is unconventional and … well, different. Yet a decade and a half of working with patients and finding considerable rates of success in improving health and quality of life for babies and young children—and ameliorating root-cause issues relating to the 3Cs—has incited us to spread the word. What we offer—the fundamentals of Super Nutrition feeding for babies—works differently than common baby feeding. It serves to safeguard health and normal development, as well as to restore quality of life in children with modern, chronic cognitive, emotional, and physical illnesses.
In addition to our own practical, personal, and professional application of Super Nutrition, we have extensively researched and studied the findings of world-renowned experts, who have also found remarkable success through such feeding principles. Though our approach to feeding babies is far from mainstream, it is both cutting edge and traditionally sound. Super Nutrition is a way of feeding your child that gives the best nutrition for optimal development, cognitively and physically, and is protective against illnesses and 3C conditions. Do this for your child and you’ll be optimizing his/her health now and for years to come.
Implementing and practicing Super Nutrition is not easy—and we’re saying this right from the get-go, just so there’s no confusion. If you want easy and quick, stick with the Standard American Diet—its entire premise is convenience. If, however, you want optimal health for your baby, then you’ll have to give up some conveniences. Our program is comprised of special foods and purposeful ways of preparing and making meals; therefore, special attention and time are required. We provide some tricks and guidance to make things easier, though, and the more you do it, the easier it will become.
And there’s a bonus: Most of the parents we’ve worked with who start spending more time practicing Super Nutrition find a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that they don’t find anywhere else—it is one of knowing that they are truly nourishing their children, a gift no one else can give.
Although you might be excited to “get going” with Super Nutrition and flip to the age-appropriate chapter for your child, we hope you’ll read this book in full. The chapters have been organized to follow the growth, age, and stages of development of your child, starting with nutritionally rich tips for the nursing mother (which are ideal for both preconception and pregnancy as well) and nutritious formula recipes and then stepping into his first food introduction, all coinciding with our program’s foundational pillars of nutrition. Each age and stage described is accompanied by recipes that include foods appropriate for that age, but these recipes can be enjoyed from that point forward, and by the whole family, in many cases. We also describe food categories that will help you make nutritionally sound selections, and we’ll discuss four fundamental pillars to leveraging protective nutrition.
Throughout each of the chapters, we’ve added tips, tricks, and ideas to help ease you into implementing our program—look for the boxes called “Mom to Mom.” And we’ve provided additional information in the “Deep Dive” sections as we realize many parents appreciate and want the detailed science, research, and information behind our recommendations. Finally, we’ve included a thorough resources section that includes essential where-to-buy information on many of the ingredients we recommend, as well as countless books and websites to turn to for further information.
Super Nutrition for Babies will help you reap the benefits that traditional foods can provide. It will show you how to make better food choices for your baby and how to prepare those foods so that they can be most nourishing. Your baby deserves nothing but the best!