When our son Elliot was three we already had a sickly child. He was suffering from his seventh ear infection this year and had severe eczema since his first year of life. We had been to numerous specialists for his raw, itchy skin and tried many medical treatments to no avail. My search for a better solution led me to Dr. Fuhrman. In only two months after changing Elliot’s diet his skin condition has disappeared. To our surprise he never suffered another ear infection. It is not merely Elliot’s recovery that has moved us to write, it is our enthusiasm and gratitude for the knowledge we have gained from Dr. Fuhrman that has given us an incredible sense of freedom and control over our own and our children’s health.
—Leslie and Stuart Raymond
As parents, we want what is best for our children. We would never intentionally harm them—in fact, we make sure to get them the best possible care, read to them, play with them, and ensure their safety at home, at school, and at play. But when it comes to feeding them, somehow we don’t know what’s best. Our kids seem finicky and eat nothing but cheese or pasta or chicken fingers or milk and cookies, and we let them. At the same time, we notice that they are frequently ill—they suffer from recurring ear infections, runny noses, stomachaches, and headaches. We take them to the doctor, who prescribes yet another round of antibiotics. We assume, because we also see it happening with friends and family, that it is par for the course when bringing up children. It doesn’t have to be so.
This scenario may be “normal” for kids today, but it is not normal for humans or any other species of animal that eats nutrient-rich natural foods. Scientific research has demonstrated that humans have a powerful immune system, even stronger than that of other animals, that makes our body a self-repairing, self-defending organism with the innate ability to defend itself against microbes and prevent chronic illness. The system operates at its best only if we give it the correct raw materials to work with. When a young body doesn’t receive its nutritional requirements, bizarre diseases occur. Of late, there has been an increase in cancers that were unheard of in prior human history. Most of these can be linked to improper nutrition.
Despite our very best intentions, today there are health risks that well-meaning parents inflict on their children without being aware of it. Every day in small ways, we may well be causing harm to their precious little bodies through the choices we make about what we decide to feed them.
There is an issue of vital importance that most well-meaning parents are not aware of: the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age. Trying to prevent breast, prostate, and other cancers as an adult may not be totally possible because most risk factors cannot be changed at this late stage. The bottom line is that in order to have a major impact on preventing cancer we must intervene much earlier, even as early as the first ten years of life. In other words, childhood diets create adult cancers. When our children eat junk food instead of fruits and vegetables, the groundwork is being laid for cancer and other diseases to occur down the road.
Additionally, many children today are very often recurrently sick with ear infections and allergies and then, later in life, may develop autoimmune illnesses such as lupus, ulcerative colitis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The major contributor to the development of these illnesses is suboptimal nutrition. Kids become ill not because they just naturally pass around germs or have bad genes, but because their diets are inadequate. Medications cannot prevent these problems—only a diet of nutritional excellence can.
The most recent scientific evidence is both overwhelming and shocking—what we feed (or don’t feed) our children as they grow from birth to early adulthood has a greater total contributory effect on the dietary contribution to cancers than dietary intake over the next fifty years. American children and most children in developed countries eat less than 2 percent of their diet from natural plant foods such as fruits and vegetables.1 American children move into adulthood eating 90 percent of their caloric intake from dairy products, white flour, sugar, and oil. Amazingly, about 25 percent of toddlers between ages one and two eat no fruits and vegetables at all. By fifteen months, french fries are the most common vegetable consumed in America!
Childhood diets are unhealthy, but the issue goes beyond simple nutrition. Recent, compelling, scientific evidence over the past two decades has shown links between precise dietary factors and autoimmune illnesses such as Crohn’s disease and lupus, as well as later-life cancers. This means that we now know what helps to create an environment in our bodies that is favorable for cancers to emerge later in life, and we understand how what they eat now can prevent cancer in our children’s future. While the scientific evidence is in, parents haven’t been informed that what their children eat during their growth years has such a profound effect on their later health and that the first ten years may be the most critical. Unfortunately many parents are unwittingly feeding their children dangerous, cancer-provoking diets. My goal is to inform parents so that they can give their children the greatest gift of all: the opportunity for a long and healthy life.
This book reviews the scientific evidence and explains that the vast majority of adult cancers are avoidable if an excellent diet is begun and maintained from early childhood. Unfortunately, pediatricians and family physicians rarely discuss diet with parents, encouraging the perception that what a child eats does not matter. Parents also are uninformed that following an anti-cancer diet can free their children from repeated trips to the doctor, endless courses of antibiotics, and the curtailed living that comes from being frequently sick.
While the scientific information may be alarming, the solutions are simple. Eating to prevent common illnesses as well as to prevent life-threatening illnesses in the future can be easy and taste good. You and your family will discover that the right foods can protect against obesity, autoimmune disease, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It is my mission and my passion to get this vital information out to all parents, and I am not going to sugarcoat the message. The truth is too important. This book will show you the science and the solution—and you won’t believe how easy and tasty it can be.
I have been a family physician for more than fifteen years. I chose the specialty of family practice because I knew the health of each family member is cohesively linked. I realized that in order to have a major impact on one family member, I had to affect the lifestyle and diet of the entire family unit.
I envisioned seeing everyone in the family and getting to know them all as their doctor and friend and becoming an extension of the immediate family, like in the old days, when everyone in town knew the doctor and paid him in home-grown produce and apple pie. I may not have received the bounty of the family farm, but I have been given the opportunity to care for and help many, many individuals and families. The results have been richly rewarding.
Most families seek me out because they are tired of having a perpetually sick child and have learned of my successes in helping children reclaim their health and stay well. The most common complaint is recurrent ear infections, and at the first visit many parents bring in a list of ten to twenty antibiotic prescriptions given to their child over the last year by their well-meaning family physician or pediatrician. Some of these children are faced with the prospect of undergoing sinus surgery or having tubes placed in their ears. Others are on drugs such as Ritalin for behavioral disorders. Doctors and parents tend to assume that because almost all children suffer from these common problems and frequent infections, they are normal.
When children are repeatedly or chronically ill, today’s doctors treat patients as they were taught to—with antibiotics and other drugs. I see things very differently. If a child is repetitively or chronically ill, with one infection after another, I see that there is a problem with immunity—a problem that likely comes from an inadequate diet. I know that rather than antibiotics and other drugs, nutritional excellence must be the first choice in recovery and prevention. I have seen it work in my own practice. After seeing me and making dietary adjustments, almost every chronically ill child recovered and is able to maintain good health without resorting to more drugs and antibiotics.
I tell parents that if they follow my advice their child will no longer require frequent visits to the doctor. With most frequently ill children, more medical care or medicine is not the answer. Constant and frequent trips to the doctor actually illustrate a serious failure of the physician-patient and physician-family relationship.
A doctor who is concerned about his patient community is not merely concerned with solving an acute crisis that may arise, but also considers it time well spent to teach prevention. I have found, and the medical literature supports what I have seen in my practice, that true prevention includes superior nutrition. Remember, over 80 percent of all Americans die from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, which are all diseases of nutritional ignorance.
More and more evidence emerges each year that the diets we eat in our childhood have far-reaching effects on our adult health and specifically on whether we get cancer. Similarly, there is an abundance of scientific research that supports the need for a dietary lifestyle that protects our children from other serious chronic diseases.
Every day a parent asks, “When is your pediatric nutrition book coming out?” Parents are eager for information. They don’t know what to feed their kids. They know that the diet of their household and of their community are unhealthy, but they don’t know what to do. They are stumped because they want to make changes, but they don’t know how to get their kids to like healthy foods. This book has the answers. Not only will it explain what a healthy diet is, it will show you how to implement the best diet for your children in such a way that they will love it, eat it, and adopt a healthy approach to nutrition that will last a lifetime.
As the father of three daughters and a son, I live the trials and tribulations of bringing up healthy children in our deeply unhealthy world. From bringing candy and doughnuts to soccer games to bringing cupcakes and ice cream to the classroom, many parents are unknowingly contributing to the ill health of their and others’ children.
Although I don’t expect every family to change their eating practices, I know that this book will forever change the way you look at what you are feeding your children.
American children are the heaviest worldwide, and they are getting heavier at a faster rate than other children around the globe.2 This spread of obesity foreshadows an explosion in degenerative diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer waiting to erupt in our children’s future. Together we can stop this tragedy from ever happening.
Because people have a tendency to be comforted by foods they were fed in childhood, changing to a healthful diet can take a good deal of effort. However, time and time again adults report that they like the healthful foods and anti-cancer diet as much as their prior one; it just takes time to adjust. The younger you are, the easier the adjustment. Children naturally love natural foods. Their genetic makeup is designed to consume nature’s bounty without any coaxing or effort; they naturally like fruits and vegetables.
Not only do children like to eat healthy, but once they do they will reject junk food on their own. My medical practice over the last thirteen years has proved to me that children are willing and able to change dangerous habits more readily than adults. When I talk to elementary school students, they are invariably enthusiastic about eating healthy and learning about great-tasting healthy recipes. They often ask me how to get their parents to eat healthier or how their mom can learn to cook with healthy ingredients. In the presence of good information, they are hungry for knowledge, especially as it applies to their health. In elementary school, they readily learn the dangers of cigarette smoking and drugs. Likewise, they can easily learn the most important points about nutrition. If educated in a loving way, they enjoy eating healthy food and are proud of caring properly for their own bodies. My four children are a good example.
When Cara was four years old she brought defrosted, frozen broccoli spears, raw carrots, fruit, and raisins to preschool. Her friends’ cookies, chips, and pretzels did not tempt her. She would brag, “I am never sick, because I eat healthy.” Cara was never sick; she had no ear infections, no runny nose, and besides chicken pox, I only remember one viral illness her first seven years of life.
When Cara was seven years old, I picked her up from her morning summer camp at the local health club. The other kids were eating the snacks their parents had packed for them—chips, cookies, and candy, the usual stuff. We both noticed that all the other children were eating junk food. She asked me, “Don’t these parents love their children?”
I said, “Of course they do, Cara; these parents just don’t know that what they are giving their children will have such a harmful effect on their future health and happiness. That is one of my jobs in the future, to help these people learn how they can disease-proof their children, and maybe you can help me, too.” Much of the idea and motivation to write this book was born in these important discussions with Cara and my other children.
Kids are not stupid; they grasp the simple concept that you are what you eat. Cara is ten now, but by the age of five she had more common sense about brushing her teeth and caring properly for her body than most adults I know.
Children understand that a loving parent makes sure they wear a seat belt, brush their teeth, and eat a healthy diet. Children understand that parents establish these habits and behaviors as an expression of love and that to do otherwise would potentially not only show a lack of caring, but damage their future health.
My middle daughter, Jenna, a thirteen-year-old, loves helping me figure out how to make healthy food designed for children’s taste. I asked her, “How can we get kids-to eat walnuts because they contain so many healthful compounds, including those important omega-3 fats?” She helped me design the Apple Walnut Surprise (see page 204.) That same night all my children ate it for dessert. Jenna loves having her friends who come over to the house help her make healthy recipes. Her favorite is her peach smoothie. She combines frozen or fresh peaches, soy milk, dates, and flax seeds and blends up a delicious yet healthful snack drink. Her friends love it, too. I thank Jenna for designing many of the recipes in this book and testing them on her friends. She is proud of her contribution to helping me get kids to eat healthy.
My four children eat green vegetables every day, even my three-year-old son, Sean. They have been fed them since infancy. By the time they were each five years old they knew lots of information about green vegetables. They learned that green vegetables are essential to create our body’s immune system shield against dangerous diseases, and lead to a healthy life span. They know that green vegetables have more nutrients per calorie than any other food and that at dinner every night we have a salad and a steamed green vegetable. They all like salads and greens and often snack on both raw and steamed string beans or steamed artichokes that sit on our kitchen island as they pass through the kitchen. Children learn the most from what their parents and the rest of the family do or don’t do.
When a family moves to America from Thailand, they still shop for and eat Thai food. People have a tendency to like best what they are used to. Childhood eating habits established by the age of ten years old usually last a lifetime.
My daughter Jenna did not like chopped kale at first, but when she saw all of us eating it regularly and talking about how healthy it was, she tried it a few times. Interestingly, it has now become her favorite green vegetable. We like it best with the cashew cream sauce, a mix of raw cashews, soy milk, onion powder, and dehydrated vegetable seasoning.
My oldest daughter, Talia, who is in high school, is an example to both kids and parents who think that if you feed your children too healthfully when they are young, they will rebel and have an unhealthy relationship with food as they get older. On the contrary, she is not forced to eat healthy she chooses to. She was raised in a loving environment where healthy foods, not unhealthy foods, were present. She also received a substantial education in nutrition as she grew up, so she knows the impact that food has on one’s future health and well-being.
Talia is sensible. She does not eat perfectly all the time, but probably sticks with a healthy plant-based diet for all but a few meals per month. She has also learned that her friends do not want to be preached to or taught about food. She does not proselytize about the way she eats, but merely sets an excellent example for those around her. Without her trying to influence them, because of her example, her friends have started to eat healthier lunches, make better food choices, and ask her questions about her diet.
Combining what I know as a physician and what I’ve learned as a parent, this book brings you up-to-date medical and scientific information along with practical advice on how to use the best of that information in your own home. Chapter 1 reviews a large body of nutritional information that explains the main problem with today’s dietary practices and the key factors that are necessary to make your child disease-resistant. Chapter 2 presents the basis of superior nutrition and applies it not merely to preventing illnesses, but gives clear guidelines to follow when your children are ill or faced with a health challenge. It also describes problems with conventional medical care and how the misuse and overuse of prescription drugs can harm our children. Chapter 3 explains the causes of cancer and autoimmune illness and gives the scientific explanation of why most adult cancer is caused primarily by what we eat in our childhood. Chapter 4 covers the problems people have with feeding their children and gives solutions to childhood feeding difficulties. It explains how to deal with the picky eater and exactly how to make the transition to optimal nutrition with your family. Chapter 5 is your new family cookbook. It gives you the healthy meal plans and easy-to-make, kid-tested recipes that children love.
Being a father to my four children is the most meaningful and pleasurable part of my life. Our children are our most important and loved part of our world. Giving them the potential for a happy and healthy life is one of our greatest gifts to them.