They Are What You Feed Them: How Food Can Improve Your Child’s Behaviour, Mood and Learning

water

protein

fats (in the form of essential fatty acids)

carbohydrates (in the form of complex carbohydrates and fibre)

vitamins

minerals

antioxidants

moderate exercise—yes, this is part of a good diet!

A Long Time Ago

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate a very wide range of nuts and seeds, edible roots and leaves, wild animals (usually small, and very occasionally a big one), fish, shellfish, berries and wild beans.

So: plenty of protein, vitamins and minerals and complex carbohydrates, little saturated fat, and equal proportions of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids.

Agricultural Revolution

Smaller variety of foods eaten, a much greater proportion of cereals (grains), and less fruit and vegetables. Meat consumption decreased as well.

So: decreased vitamin and mineral intake, and a higher proportion of omega-6s than omega-3s.

Industrial Revolution

This began in the late 18th century, so we needed lots of cheap food for workers who arrived in droves to work in towns and cities. New preservation and production methods were introduced, meaning foods could be transported long distances in bulk quite cheaply. The use of vegetable oils, refined starches and sugars rose sharply. Consumption of farmed meat rose by about 200 times per person per year!

So: white flour goods became the norm…and carried less than a quarter of vitamins B

and E, magnesium and zinc than their wholemeal counterparts.

Sadly, most of our children eat diets lacking at least some key nutrients. Even for those of you trying to avoid the obvious junk, some of the dietary advice you’ve been getting from governments and their agencies has been positively misleading. In the US, government agencies offered the so-called ‘Food Pyramids’ as guidelines for planning a ‘balanced’ diet. Nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)1 have pointed out some serious flaws in these—and in the contribution of the food industry in helping to build these dodgy pyramids. In the Appendix you’ll find a more appropriate ‘Healthy Eating Pyramid’ which the Harvard experts have designed. (You may also find it educational to look at their website and play ‘spot the difference’!)

The Twentieth Century

This saw an increase in global food trade, and also discoveries about how to make synthetic vitamins. Foods began to be ‘fortified’ with vitamins and minerals.

The irony was, during the two World Wars, we began to eat more healthily once again! Rationing meant poorer families received more proteins and micronutrients, and richer people ate less fat (from meat and processed foods) and sugar. At the same time, it was discovered how to dehydrate vegetables and eggs, and to produce processed meat.

After WWII, policies were introduced to make sure we could produce our own food, and not rely too much on supplies from other countries. Ready-prepared foods took off.

Buying flour and other ingredients plummeted, and meat consumption rose again. A decrease in the amount of fruit and vegetables eaten began, and there was a dramatic increase in the consumption of hydrogenated (including trans) fats, refined starch and sugar, and numerous artificial additives.

The Twenty-first Century

Where are we now? Well, eating more than ever, and suffering more diet-related problems such as obesity, mental ill-health and behavioural problems. In the last 60 years, there’s been a 34% decrease in UK vegetable consumption, and a 59% drop in consumption of oily fish (omega-6/omega-3 ratios have reached an all-time high).

We are eating far more processed foods (and thus more saturated and hydrogenated fats, salt and sugar, more artificial additives and fewer micronutrients), especially those on low incomes.

If you really don’t feel you need to know about all the details of the different nutrients your child needs, don’t worry. Just use the HSPH guidelines and the plan you’ll find in Chapter 11, and you shouldn’t go too far wrong. But understanding why the different nutrients are so important may help to motivate you, and your child, so in this chapter we’ll take a look at them (and then in Chapter 5 we’ll look at what actually happens to food once your child has eaten it).

Water

Is your child drinking enough water? Fizzy, sweet drinks (or tea or coffee) are not acceptable substitutes; most have undesirable ingredients and may even cause you to lose water. Your body is 50-70 per cent water (and your brain 85 per cent)—but you lose it constantly through breath, sweat, urine and faeces. You can only survive a few days without water, as its remarkable properties help to mediate every function in your brain and body.

Without enough water your child will become dehydrated, which can lead to headaches and tiredness. His concentration and his digestion will be impaired, along with most other functions. Make sure your child drinks enough at home, and that he takes water to school with him if the school doesn’t provide this. Your child can also get water from food, especially fruit and vegetables, or fruit juices (best diluted—by you) or herbal teas. Unfortunately, vending machines that sell fizzy drinks are found in most schools. Most soft and fizzy drinks can upset blood sugar levels, but schools often depend on the income the vending machines generate.

Macronutrients

Macronutrients is the term used for the three main food groups: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Each fulfils a particular nutritional need, and in a ‘balanced’ diet all of them must be present—within limits. It isn’t the overall quantity of protein, fat or carbohydrate that really matters, but the quality. We’ll discuss protein briefly in this chapter—but children’s consumption of carbohydrates and fats is so often ‘wrong’ in quality terms that we’ll look at these topics separately in Chapters 7 and 8.

What’s the right balance?

The most suitable dietary balance of macronutrients depends on your child’s lifestyle, current health and metabolism. Both low-fat’ and ‘low-carbohydrate’ (high-protein) diets have been popularized in numerous ‘miracle’ weight-loss programmes. Most of these are aimed at adults, but each usually claims to ‘cure’ all kinds of ills at the same time. Generally speaking, none of these diets is suitable for children (or you!), unless prescribed for medical reasons.

A ‘reasonable’ balance of macronutrients includes around half of total energy (calories) from carbohydrates, one-fifth from protein and one-third from fat—but don’t even think of spending your time trying to calculate this! Some sensible ground rules about what kinds of foods your child should be eating (and which ones to avoid) should be enough, and those are provided, with recipes, in Chapters 10-14.

The type and quality of proteins, fats and carbohydrates that your child consumes matter infinitely more than the overall quantities.

Proteins

Proteins are the main building-blocks of living things, so a regular supply of protein is essential for brain and body growth and maintenance. The very structure of most of our tissues—like muscles, tendons or bones—depends on proteins. The enzymes that assist or enable almost all biochemical reactions are usually made of proteins; the receptors and other channels for signalling within and between cells are mostly made of proteins. Many of the messenger-molecules that carry information via those channels are also proteins, or fragments of proteins called ‘peptides’.

When we eat and digest proteins, they’re broken down into their component amino acids. There are 20 types of amino acids we use. When we need a new protein, it’s assembled from specific amino acids arranged in a particular sequence (a sequence dictated by your genes). The resulting chain of amino acids then folds up in a special way to achieve the proper structure of that protein. Peptides, which are used as important signalling molecules in many brain and body systems, are simply shorter chains of amino acids.

There are eight ‘essential amino acids’ that we can’t make for ourselves, so they must come from our diets. You can make the other 12 amino acids your body needs.

The eight essential amino acids go by the names of: isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine. Some lists include a ninth: arginine.

Don’t worry about learning the names—just make sure your child eats a range of protein-rich foods.

We need a regular intake of good-quality protein to build, repair and run many body systems, so make sure your child gets enough. Don’t overdo it, though—because too much protein can affect your kidneys—but most people don’t eat too much protein unless they’re on some diet that leaves out much of another food group (like carbohydrates), and that’s not recommended. Your child needs to eat only a handful of protein (a quarter or less of the plateful) at any meal, but just vary the type. This could include lean meat, fish, eggs, cheese, nuts, or beans and pulses.

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Animal and Vegetable Protein

Vegetarians need to be aware of the essential amino acids. Most animal foods contain ‘complete protein’, meaning that it provides all the essential amino acids we need. By contrast, most vegetarian foods contain only some of them,

(#litres_trial_promo) so the others must be obtained by eating the right combinations of legumes, pulses, nuts and grains.

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Protein—Summary of Key Points