Enter your email address to receive our FREE weekly parenting newsletter
|
May
19
|
|||
This week, the news broke that there might be a link between pesticides and ADHD in kids. Apparently, researchers tested children across the U.S. in the general population and found that those with higher levels of the breakdown products of organophosphates (a type of widely-used pesticide) in their urine were twice as likely to have ADHD. | |||
Archive for the ‘Health, Nutrition & Safety’ Category
Blog Posts by Elisabeth Wilkins, EP Editor
|
May
19
|
|||
 As Americans, we have become an “obesogenic” society. We have seen the consequences of our environment and the media promoting increased food intake, non-healthful foods, and physical inactivity. We know that our kids suffer the associated physical, emotional, and social tolls associated with obesity. Sadly, our kids’ performance in school may be another casualty in the super-sized society we live in. | |||
|
Mar
25
|
|||
Are you perpetually tormented by the “What ifs” like me? I don’t know any parent who hasn’t been (or isn’t) vexed by questions such as, “What if my child becomes severely ill?”, or “What if my kid(s) get in a car crash?”, or one of the most terrifying queries, “What if my child goes missing or is abducted?” Yep, those “What ifs” are tenacious, nasty little buggers. They buzz in my head like sadistic gnats. The ultimate horror of this hypothetical mental hopscotch is that occasionally one of these nightmares ceases to be hypothetical and becomes a frightening reality. Read more » | |||
|
Feb
25
|
|||
What parent hasn’t considered the possibility of postponing or rejecting routine vaccinations out of fear of a link between vaccines and Autism? Over a year ago, and with little fanfare, Dr. Wakefield’s 1998 study indicating a link between the Measels, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and Autism was exposed as a fake. Â At that time, medical personnel worried that calling attention to the inaccuracy of the study could lead to a resurgence of vaccination avoidance and stir up the debate again. | |||
|
Jan
22
|
|||
Ever since I was a little girl, I was taught by my parents that school was a place where you could expand your mind and learn about the potential you have within yourself, and become whatever you wanted to be in life. With the passing of time, these ideals have not changed, but have actually expanded further for our kids than anyone could possibly have imagined. Unfortunately, so has crime and violence; we hear about it on TV and the radio, read about it in newspapers and magazines. And school shootings have sadly become a regular occurrence. | |||
|
Jan
15
|
|||
Teenagers, especially boys, begin talking about driving by the time they’re 15. In some states, a Learner’s Permit is available at 15 and a driver’s license at 16. Statistics show that 16-year-old drivers have more accidents per driving mile than any other age. Generally, about 20 percent of fatal speed-related crashes are caused by drivers between the age of 15 and 19. (More than half of those annual fatalities could be prevented by wearing seatbelts.) Youth with ADHD or ADD, in their first 2 to 5 years of driving, have nearly four times as many automobile accidents, are more likely to cause bodily injury in accidents, and have three times as many citations for speeding as young drivers without ADHD. | |||
|
Apr
20
|
|||
My husband has taken to calling me the Corn Queen after my subsequent manic food label reading frenzy. After reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I learned that essentially, the addition of corn in some form of processed sugar — or as a staple in the diet of the animals we consume — has successfully put to use all the corn over-production that is going on across the U.S. I love farmers, but this might be a stretch even for me to support this corn-crazed dietary system. I learned about corn-filled food creations like yogurt, bread and cereal which I didn’t think contained corn until reading the ingredient labels and seeing all the versions of corn syrup that make the convenient-food-world go’round. I hadn’t recognized that corn can be listed on the ingredients label as High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or plain corn syrup. Often it is called other things like sucrose, dextrose, fructose and is responsible for many more, unpronounceable, unnaturally created ingredients. Mostly, the lesson I learned was about recognizing the need to provide food for our growing children from sources that are nutrient-dense: simple foods that are delicious because they are fresh and not processed, packaged or prepared with 10+ tablespoons of sugar. The interview with Barbara Stitt’s, formerly of Natural Ovens, educated me on the concept that Plain Jane style food is delicious, affordable and will promote well- behaved kids because they feel good fueled with real food. | |||
|
Apr
09
|
|||
It all began with my bookclub that meets on Thursday nights. This time around, we read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, considered light reading for the two food scientists in the group. The appalling revelation in the book is how much corn is part of our diet — as well as the diet of the animals we eat — and a main ingredient (in its various forms) in the processed foods that we eat. I admit, I learned just enough to be considered dangerous. The bookclub host served up a corn-free meal for the group (no easy task) and I had a lengthy conversation with a member who lives in the city and raises chickens for their fresh eggs. One bookclubber confessed that she was going to start feeding her dog a raw diet – just fresh, natural people food- because she had learned that most kibble has ingredients that can cause skin problems and allergies in dogs. That’s when I realized she was feeding her dog better than I was feeding my children! | |||
