What's eating my Children - or am I going mad for real now?

Ok, please someone - help me out over here.

Last summer I wrote about my thoughts on day care (and school) food to the children. I had come to realize that this wheat flour, sugar dense, low fat (milk), margarine filled food wasn't maybe the optimum ingredients to bring up a healthy child. At that point I was still only guessing, being philosophical about the subject. But the further I go in my food journey, the more I am convinced that the food received at daycare is doing no good at all. In fact, after a disasterous November, and now new indications of similar outcome in January, as far as flues are concerned, I can nothing else than wheap.

Those of you who do not think about what is served at daycare and trust the city dietists for their recommendations probably find that I am overreacting. Flues and daycare go together, you might think. Well, I dont'. You also might think that I am turning into a bacteria-hysterical Michael Jackson, wanting to live in a closed steril bubble just me and my family for the rest of my life.  But actually it is just the opposite. I want us to be part of this society, kids being socially integrated at daycare, and we making no fuzz about what is served here or there. But still, I cannot, CANNOT, trust what is currently served at daycare: breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack. Why? I'll tell you why.

1. Margarine. Margarine is an industrial product, chemically extracted from rapes seed, soy, corn or sunflower plants. To make a long industrial process short: it is heavily manipulated on the way to the butterlike substance spread on bread (including petroleum extraction, bleeching and other highly questionable processes). These oils used are rich in omega 6 fats, abundantly available in our western processed diet. The human body needs fats containing omega 3, and omega 6. If it gets more omega 6 than omega 3, there is a risk of inflammations and different sorts of cancer. Considering that our body is made out of mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat and only 3% is polyunsaturated fats (rapesseed and alike), it is not far fetched to understand that in order to keep our cells renewing themselves, we better feed them with what they are asking for. Beside, feeding the kids with this highly questionable margarine instead of real fat, does not keep the hunger away. Instead they will be craving quick carbs (sugar and wheat) and that brings me to my next concern.
Read more about this topic here: Wellness mama: Why you should never eat vegetable oil or margarine
And if worried about cholesterol, read this: Huffington Post: Cholesterol myth

2. Sugar. Sugar is linked to obesity, diabetes, behavioural disorders (ADHD, dyspraxia, autism, dyslexia), and of course cavities (a topic of its own, btw). Only that should be enough to keep it locked up far away from small children. Add to this that some kids are extremely sugar sensitive (apart from having serious mood swings when eating sugar) and will develop a taste for sweetness if sugar is present in their daily diet. Now, someone would probably argue that sugar (as in pure white refined sugar) is not part of the daily offering at daycare. I argue that these people are wrong. What is among the most common afternoon snack at daycare? Berry creams, yogurts, buns, and bread with juice. If this sugar injection was accompanied by bloodsugar-stabilizing real fat, then it wouldn't maybe be so disasterous. But it isn't. If there is bread to go with the cocktail, then its margarine that covers the bread, not real butter. Besides, bread is not doing any good either, and that is my third concern.
Read more on sugar and kids: Nancy Appelton: Sugar 'n Spice and Everything is Nice, or NY Times: Is Sugar Toxic., or 141 reasons sugar ruins your health (next time the health center nurse asks me why I eliminated sugar from the kids diet, I'll know what to say...).

3. Wheat. If sugar is bad, then wheat is even worse. Wheat (white and whole grain) raises the blood sugar faster than pure sugar. There you have it; all the deseases of sugar are then of course also linked to digestion of wheat. And, if we are to believe the bestseller Wheatbelly author William Davis, wheat is a lot nastier than this. Modern wheat contains high levels of gluten, the "sticky" ingredient, and part of this gluten is a protein called gliadin, very effective appetite stimulant (and there we say welcome obesity and all those other deseases related to obesity!).  Without knowing it, many people are sensitive to wheat (symptoms: excema, astma, headaches, mood swings, abdominal pains etc). Furthermore, just as sugar, wheat has next to no nutrition value, it is only a filler.

Wheat and sugar are also VERY bad news for those that have a gut depleated of good bacteria. And considering the amount of antibiotics given to children these days, I dare to say that healthy guts are a rarity at daycare. When the antibiotics kills all bacteria, bad and good, it gives way for other parasites to take over the gut. It destroys the gut linen, creating a leaky gut, which allows toxins enter our bloodsystem and travel up to the brain and other parts of the body (and there we say welcome to a bundle of psychology related symptoms, allergies, fatigue... ). To restore a healthy body, the gut needs a break, but the beauty of these parasites is that they will create cravings for more fast carbohydrates, because that is what they live on. For small kids this is a real disaster, they will not agree to eat real nutritious healing food but demand anything sugary to even eat at all. And many parents, being so worried that their little tots won't get enough to eat will happily feed them pasta, ketchup, bread, spinache pancakes and even sugarfilled (fatfree) yogurts just so that they open their mouth. This is wrong! If the gut is to heal, the kids should be on a strict diet avoiding all starchy foods, sugar and in some cases even milk (which I'll get back to in a second), otherwise the inflow of toxins will only get worse. How exactly is daycare helping here? The damaged gut does not show on any conventional allergy testing. And without a medical allergy certificate, the kids will not get any special diets at daycare.
For more reading:  Wellness Mama: Grains are killing you slowly or Wheatbelly Blog or Healing the gut


4. Low fat milk. The last holy cow is the milk. Milk is an institution in our society today. It is very hard to critize the consumption of milk, and even harder when it involves growing children, who assumingly need the calcium to grow. Could be. But the body will not be able to make use of the calcium if it is not accompanied by some very important ingredients; one of them being fat, which helps the body to absorb also other vitamins and minerals from the milk. Many kids are also allergic to casein, the protein in milk. And again, it is an allergy that not necessarily show up in tests instead what happens is that the child get other symptoms such as astma, reocurring ear infections (gimme the antibiotics, destroy the healthy gut bacteria and create a life long misery with all kinds of deseases!), constant runny nose, diarrhea etc.  So could you tell me exactly how low fat milk is useful in the body of my children?
For more reading:  Wellness Mama: Dairy is it healthy?, Natural News: Understand the Calcium Myth


Based on these moderate concerns that I have about what is served at daycare everyday, I really do not know how to move forward. If I turn to a medical doctor, the most likely outcome will be negative allergy tests (already tried Kidone and this was the result). This means that if we want to continue living a normal life, we have to accept all the risks above. But frankly, I am sick and tired of coughs, runny noses and ear infections. I am tired of trying to feed nutrious, health strengthening food here at home, food that very often is rejected because the sweet tooth and the (what I believe) unhealthy gut bacterias are craving something far different from this... Really I need a break! Either I quit believing in what I read or I do something about what my children eat. Since at this point I can't quit believing, the only option left is to do something to what they eat. But how? My hands are tighed! And I can't tell you how frustrating it is!