Supplements for your kids
Let’s be real. Kids will be kids. Kids make bad food choices. They often don’t have access to good quality food in school, and advertisements for processed food products like cereals, snacks, candy, etc. are all geared towards children. Children are fatter and more inactive than ever. Because of all these facts, it is more important now more than ever before, that children get some supplementation to give them a fighting chance.
Bad nutrition effects their physical health, their emotional health, their immune system, their intelligence, their ability to focus, their ability to learn, and so on. The quality of food in the supermarkets is so poor that even if they are eating relatively healthy choices, they are probably not even getting close to the proper amount of nutrients they really need. Having organic food and meat prices as high as they are doesn’t help the situation either.
For these reasons we choose to give our kids some supplements. Here are the supplements we currently give our children.
We start our day off with a kids probiotic to help their immune system. Fortunately my children have been healthy this winter, have not gotten terribly sick, and have not had to take any antibiotics for anything. If they were on antibiotics I would make sure they had a healthy dose of probiotics after finishing up their meds. That’s where a strong immune system starts, in the colon with healthy bacteria. Antibiotics do not play favorites, they kill both good and bad bacteria. You must help reconstitute the colon with the good bacteria.
A kids multivitamin is next. Read the labels and make sure there aren’t any additives that shouldn’t be there. Things like artificial sweeteners, coloring, fillers, etc. That crap will even make it into vitamins, believe it or not.
Third is a gram or two of lemon flavored fish oil with breakfast, and again at dinner. I’ve been over the importance of this in just about every other article I’ve written so I will not go into too much detail. Just know that research has shown omega 3’s to have a profound effect on children’s attention levels, memory capabilities, and cognitive abilities resulting in better reading and math scores, etc. DHA, one of fatty acids found in fish oil, is the most abundant type of fat found in the brain. I recall reading a study done in New Zealand that involved supplementing some children with omega 3 over the course of the school year. The results were impressive, the children who were supplemented with omega 3 showed an increase in academic scores and a dramatic decrease was seen in disciplinary problems. The info is out there if you need to be persuaded a bit more. It’s funny, when I tell people how much fish oil I try to take per day (anywhere from 10-30 grams/day), they think I’m crazy. “That’s way too much!” Really? People won’t think twice about eating a pint of ice cream, or eating a big mac w/large fries, or 6-8 pieces of pizza in ONE meal (all of which contain much, much more unhealthy fat), but that 10-30 grams of healthy “good for you” fat is too much over the course of the whole day. Interesting!
Next… 2,000 iu’s of Vitamin D3 in drop form in their morning drink which is generally water or homemade juice. I’ll generally juice 2 or 3 apples, 3 carrots, 1 celery stalk, 1 cucumber, some spinach if I can sneak it in, and a chunk of ginger to finish it off. It is delicious, they love making it, and they love drinking it. Back to Vitamin D3. More and more research is showing the importance of vitamin D3 and how deficiencies in this vitamin are being seen in most sickness and disease. The lack of year round sunshine and the nutritionally deficient foods are a huge culprit, especially for those of us who live in the northeast during the winter. Again, the info is out there, just do a little research. The current RDA of vitamin D, 400 iu’s, is believed to be ridiculously low by many doctors and nutritionist. For adults, i have read anywhere from 2,000-10,000 iu’s per day to get blood levels back up into a more acceptable range over a 3-6 month period. You can get home test kits for about $70. I recently had mine tested and I came back in the low-normal range. I could certainly use a couple more rays of sun. One more thing, the darker the skin, the lower the ability to synthesis Vit D from the sun…and if you use sunblock, you won’t be getting any vitamin D either.
We will also try to offer them a protein ”milk shake” which is nothing more than whey protein, water, and sometimes a bannana. If I notice they are having a meal containing mostly carbs and fat with little protein I will usually try and offer the milk shake to balance things out. If it’s between meals and they are hungry it’s a piece of fruit and a shake or at least we try to convince them to eat that. It doesn’t always work, sometimes the goldfish crackers win but at least we make an effort to offer them a healthier option. One more thing, if you buy whey protein, try and find one without artificial sweeteners like Aspartame or Acesulfame K. That stuff is horrible, plain & simple!
Your kids are totally worth the extra effort! Don’t you agree?