Your child's school cafeteria is a mecca of junk food and sugar. Vending machines offer sodas and candy, bagged chips, and cookies; and the hot lunch line offers up french fries, pizza, fried chicken strips, and maybe even some soggy steamed vegetables. When faced with the choice between the typical packed lunch and the fried food and sweets, most kids will choose the latter.

Packing a healthy lunch that kids will actually eat and enjoy is no small task. It requires understanding and effort. First, parents must understand the importance of feeding their children a healthy, balanced diet. Today 30% of children in the United States are overweight and 15% are obese. Among the implications of that incredible number is the increasing number of Type 2 diabetes, formerly known as Adult Onset Diabetes. The disease is now appearing with more and more frequency in children, leading researchers to hypothesize that we will soon be seeing an increase in the number of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular risks, hormonal abnormalities, and kidney and liver problems.

Ensuring that your child receives the appropriate amount of nutrients is much easier than you may suspect. With a little effort, your child will understand the importance of eating healthy and will join you in your effort to improve and maintain their health.

Starting with breakfast – here are five easy tips to incorporate nutrition into your kid's first meal of the day:

1. Use soy butter instead of real butter on whole wheat toast or bagels. Most soy butters contain no hydrogenated oils, no trans-fatty acids, and no preservatives.
2. As mentioned above, use whole wheat breads instead of white. Whole wheat contains more fiber.
3. Add fruit, such as berries or bananas to cereals, yogurt, and oatmeal.
4. Make a fruit smoothie with fresh fruits, yogurt, or soy milk.
5. Drink real fruit juices or water instead of concentrated juices that contain high amounts of sugar.


Lunch – 10 simple steps to packing a healthy, enjoyable lunch your child will eat:

1. Talk to your child about the importance of nutrition. If they understand why they should eat fruit instead of french fries, they will be more prone to eat the good stuff.
2. Let your child choose their own healthy lunch.
3. Replace white sandwich bread with whole wheat wraps.
4. Pack 1 to 3 different fruits such as a banana, sliced apples, and an orange.
5. Replace chips with trail mix. Allowing the child to create their own trail mix at the store is a great way to peak their interest while teaching them the benefits of nuts, dried fruits, and grains. Don't forget to throw in few chocolate chips, but make sure they don't eat just the chocolate!
6. Veggies and dip are also a great alternative to chips and dip. Pre-cut carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, ect. make great after school snacks as well.
7. Instead of milk or chocolate milk, try soy milks – they contain less fat, no growth hormones or other synthetic chemicals.
8. Yogurt comes in convenient lunch-sized containers and contains important bacteria and nutrients for internal health.
9. Herbal iced teas make a great soda replacement. Kids can still enjoy the caffeine boost with out all of the unwanted sugars.
10. Hummus and pita wedges can either be a healthy substitute to a slice of pizza or a bag of chips depending on the size.

Snack attacks: After school snacks are an important part of your child's day – they tide them over until dinner and can provide some additional nutrients that may have been left out at lunch.

1. As mentioned above, keep cut veggies handy in the fridge. If they are accessible, kids will grab them on the go.
2. Popcorn.
3. Frozen fruit bars or better yet, frozen fruit!
4. Frozen yogurt.
5. Pretzels.

Dinner – Children learn by example, providing a well-balanced, great tasting nutritious meal every evening will set in motion a habit for life.

1. Sneak cauliflower into mashed potatoes by boiling and then pureeing them. This adds fiber and other important nutrients and you won't believe the taste.
2. Substitute cooked spaghetti squash for spaghetti. Again, this adds fiber and replaces the simple carbohydrates with the more nutritious complex carbohydrates.
3. Use brown rice instead of white rice.
4. Always have a vegetable and/or salad.
5. Serve whole grain rolls, instead of white, with garlic and olive oil.
6. As often as possible, use organic meats and produce to reduce the amount of chemicals and hormones your family ingests.
7. Cook with olive or avocado oils instead of butter.
8. Have fruit salad as dessert.
9. Add chopped tomatoes and other vegetables to tacos and burritos.
10. Grate carrots and add them to cheddar cheese soup.
11. Finely chop fresh spinach leaves to replace basil and add them to spaghetti sauces and lasagna.
12. Load spaghetti sauce with fresh vegetables instead of hamburger.

A healthy, well balanced diet will provide you and your child with the necessary vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that the body requires for an enhanced immune system, endless stores of energy, and achieving and/or maintaining your ideal weight. A healthy, balanced diet for children decreases the future risk of osteoporosis, heart disease, obesity, and other diseases, while positively affecting concentration, energy levels, immunity, and cholesterol levels.

Sources:

What Color is Your Diet?
Stealthy Tricks for Healthy Eating
Secrets of Healthy Snacks for Kids
Children and Food

Alternatives to Ritalin
How to treat the causes of ADHD, not just the symptoms, from home.

Children and adults affected by ADHD have a hard time paying attention and concentrating (inattention), sitting still (hyperactivity) and controlling impulsive behavior (impulsivity). These problems can affect nearly every aspect of life, causing low self-esteem, troubled personal relationships and poor performance in school or at work.

Because so many children go undiagnosed, and many more are misdiagnosed, the actual percentage of children with ADD/ADHD is unknown. However, in 2003 the disorder was estimated to affect two million American children, an average of at least one child in every US classroom.

In a vicious cycle, hyperactive students place stress on teachers who place stress on parents who place stress on doctors, who often prescribe stimulants such as Ritalin, to control the child. Unfortunately these medications simply treat the symptoms rather than the cause, offering no long term relief or cure. And as with most prescription medications, these stimulants carry significant side effects ranging from lethargic behavior to headaches and nervousness, suppressed growth and heart problems to insomnia and decreased appetite.

Yet the use of Ritalin has significantly increased in recent years, even among preschoolers, when the drug is not recommended for children under 6 years of age. With the popularity of Ritalin and other such stimulants, they often appear to be the best method of ADHD treatment. But there are natural alternatives. Although more research and evidence is needed, more and more alternative methods of treating ADHD are being offered, like restricted, additive-free diets.

Based on the parental reports of behavioral changes observed during an additive-free diet experiment, researchers in Britain estimated that "if the current 15% of children thought to have hyperactivity-related behavior problems were to go on an additive-free diet, the prevalence could be reduced to 6%." That is a significant decrease, one that should bring about further developments and more conclusive research.

A well balanced, nutritious diet is necessary for proper growth and development. Eliminating common allergy trigger foods such as dairy, food additives and preservatives, sugar, and wheat and then slowly adding them back into your child's diet, to monitor reactions, may offer clues, or even answers, to your child's behavior. Once you have discovered which foods to eliminate and which foods to continue serving, you can focus on proper nutrition.

Protein contributes to alertness and attention, making protein foods ideal for breakfast and lunch. Complex carbohydrates fuel the brain, yet relax the body, making them ideal for dinners and evening snacks. Organic meats and produce contain no additives or pesticides, making them the best choice for children with ADHD or symptoms of the disorder. A diet composed of lean, organic meats and/or tofu, with nuts and vegetables will provide ample protein, and complex carbohydrates can be found in vegetables, whole grain breads and pastas, buckwheat, rice noodles, and the list goes on and on. Please see the above article, Back to School Lunch, for more specific meal and snack options.

Some other promising alternative herbal and supplemental therapies to try are:

Calming Herbs-

Chamomile
Eleuthero
Hawthorn
Lemon Balm

Brain Boosters-

Vitamins B, C, and E
Magnesium
Beta-carotene
Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Ritalin does not have to be the key to your child's success. Until further research can prove that the long term effects of stimulants on children's mental and physical growth is positive, why not try the more natural alternatives?

Sources:

Foods for Better Concentration
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder-Nami
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder-Mayo Clinic
Foods for Better Concentration
Higher-Learning Snacks
A Time for ADHD Kids to Shine
Food Additives May Affect Kids' Hyperactivity
Pay Attention: Drug Free Alternatives to Ritalin. Frost, Roon. Taste for Life . August 2004.