Tag: nutrition

World Breastfeeding Week

SidebabyWorld Breastfeeding Week just drew to a close. What? There’s a World Breastfeeding Week? Well, yes there is. It’s coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) and began about 15 years ago.

WABA’s core partners are the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM), International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA), La Leche League International (LLLI), and Wellstart International.

This year, in addition to encouraging women to breastfeed, WABA focussed on raising awareness of the links between breastfeeding and Sustainable Development Goals along the following themes:
1)Nutrition/food security
2)Health, well0being and survival
3)Environment and climate change
4)Work productivity, empowerment, social protection, and
5)Sustainable partnerships and rule of law

That sounds lofty and idealistic, but in the US, there’s a huge gap between our lofty breastfeeding goals and our actual practice. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends feeding babies nothing but breast milk for the first 6 months of life. When moms arrive at the hospital to give birth, the majority say they are planning to follow this guideline. Three months later, 43.3% are exclusively breastfeeding and 29.3% are supplementing with formula. By 6 months according to the CDC, the percentage of exclusively breastfed babies has dropped to 21.9% and 35.4% of nursing mothers have supplemented with formula.*

Rates of Rates of breastfeeding declined in the US between 1911 and 1972 when only 22% of women initiated breastfeeding. While the rates have increased since 1972, they remain low in spite of the known health benefits to both infant and mother. So it seems that our tortured relationship with healthy food in this country literally begins at birth and for many of the same reasons adults cite as impediments to healthy habits – convenience, lack of social support, confusing messages from the medical community, and advertising that reassures us a product is healthy (the closest to breast milk).
scream

When it comes to convenience, I feel like we often think of things in a topsy turvy manner. What could be more convenient than always having milk ready and at the right temperature when a baby gets hungry? It becomes inconvenient when women feel they must go back to work quickly to support their families or believe that they’ll get behind in their careers if they take off a few years to raise children. While this is sometimes the reality, other times it isn’t, but the belief has become so ingrained that we rarely challenge it.

We don’t always run the numbers to see if our jobs really cost more than they bring in, especially if we have more than one child in day care. We appear to forget that added trips to the doctor for either baby or mother who has missed out on the health benefits of breastfeeding take time out of our schedule.

Nor is there much social support for breastfeeding in public places in many communities in the US. You may have seen the recent video of a man telling a breastfeeding mother in Target how disgusting she is. This type of experience has been reported by 25% of breastfeeding moms.

This seems kinda crazy to me considering the number of reality TV stars who run around with half of their boobs showing all the time. Is it the addition of a baby that makes seeing a breast disgusting? I guess that could make sense. Babies are kinda gross sometimes.

Almost 20% of US babies receive supplementary formula within the first two days following birth. That means it’s often being fed while mom and baby are still in the hospital. When you combine this with the formula samples and ads that are often sent home with the mothers, it can appear like a medical endorsement of formula. Studies show that leaving the hospital with formula samples reduces the duration of breastfeeding.

While it’s easy to brush all of this off as insignificant as long as our life expectancy remains the same, the rise in chronic diseases is making our lengthy lives of lower quality. Perhaps someday soon, we’ll recognize that quality can be as valuable as quantity. We’ll see that we don’t have to rush to accumulate, achieve, or hit some arbitrary target to bring value to our lives, our communities, and the world.

In the meantime, I wish you the courage and perseverance to give yourself and your children the best nutritional support available even when it’s not as easy, convenient or well-supported as you believe it should be.

monkey hand

*Based on most recent CDC statistics available (2012) https://nccd.cdc.gov/NPAO_DTM/

http://www.bfmed.org/
http://www.ibfan.org/
http://www.ilca.org/home
http://www.llli.org/
http://www.wellstart.org/

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(16)00210-5.pdf
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117395&page=1

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Benefits of Cooking – Part 1: The Food

One of my kids recently asked why we’re called Cooking2Thrive rather than Eating2Thrive? Given how much all of us like to eat, it’s a valid question. Not only that, but say the word cook and lots of folks want to run for the hills ’cause it sounds time consuming and difficult so why would we want that in our name?

Since the question has been posed, I’m going to answer it with a series I’ll call The Benefits of Cooking.

So here goes – The Benefits of Cooking – Part 1

The Food

I like to focus on rewards, and one of the rewards of cooking is having great tasting food to eat. When I say cooking, I am referring to the act of preparing food using basic ingredients like meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, rice, polenta, honey, herbs, spices, milk, cheese, and yogurt. If you grew up eating home-cooked meals, your mouth may start watering just thinking about Sunday dinner. It’s hard to argue that food made from fresh ingredients does not taste better than food that has been processed to stay consistent in appearance through weeks or months of transportation and shelf-life.

I grew up helping my grandmother in the garden. Every time I see a pale, hard, overly trucked tomato in the grocery store, I cringe as my memory plays the contrasting picture of a soft, dark red, full flavored tomato just plucked from the vine. You know, the kind that sends juice running down your chin when you take a bite! It’s the sort of memory that has many of us attempting to grow tomatoes on the porch when we don’t have a yard. I still miss my grandmother’s tomato juice canned in glass and sitting on a shelf in the basement. That tomato juice started with those vine-ripened tomatoes and ended up as a critical ingredient in my grandmother’s chili or sometimes disappeared as I gulped it thick and sweet from a glass when it was chilled.

tomatoes

The juiciness of a strawberry, the brightness of a sugar snap pea, the crispness of a golden delicious apple with tender skin – all are better when ripened before picking and prepared fresh. As a child, some of my favorite dishes were corn-on-the-cob, fried okra, baked sweet potatoes, green rice, and beef & noodles. Oh, and don’t forget the lemon meringue pie. I requested it for every birthday. My sister preferred cherry pie made with bing cherries from a tree in the yard. One year my mother discovered a fresh peach pie recipe. We bought local peaches in season, peeled them, sliced them, and placed them in a sweetened gelatin atop her flaky piecrust. Topped with whipped cream, this cold pie showcased the uncooked peaches perfectly.

These days I’m quite fond of boneless skinless chicken thighs seasoned with jerk spices, seared in coconut oil, and baked in a cast iron skillet with a little chicken broth, curried pork chops and polenta, mashed butternut squash, roasted cauliflower with a hint of crushed red pepper, steamed sugar snap peas, and my own version of my grandmother’s chili. Since cooking is the easiest way to consume my favorites often, I’m happy to spend some time in the kitchen.

Not only does freshly prepared food taste better, it makes it easier to avoid flavor enhancing chemicals, high sodium content, preservatives, and excess sugars. Even if you’re a great label reader, when you purchase processed food products, you may be consuming chemicals that are not required to be listed or specified on the label. Obviously, most of these won’t kill you on the spot or people would be dropping like flies, so there’s no need to be alarmist and say never ever buy prepared convenience foods from the store or eat what a friend is serving at a party, but it is naive to believe that these chemicals do not alter your body chemistry or affect your brain’s response to food.

And it may not take a large amount of an additive to change how you feel. A study cited in the April 2010 “Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise” reported that runners who rinsed their mouths with a carbohydrate solution right before and every 15 minutes during an hour-long treadmill session ran faster and further than those who rinsed with a placebo. The brain senses incoming energy “which may lower the perceived effort,” says Ian Rollo, PH.D. one of the study’s authors.1 Since it appears that a little dab will do it, here in a nation with increasing amounts of chronic disease, more studies of the potential negative effects of chemicals in our diet on long-term health are direly needed. In the meantime, it is up to you to decide how much risk you’re willing to take.

Cooking from fresh ingredients is also the easiest way to avoid allergens, gluten, and lactose or limit sodium, sugar, and starchy carbs. Of course, just because you cook the food doesn’t mean these items will magically be absent, but it does mean you have control over what’s included and it can eliminate the effort of reading and rereading labels.

If the word cooking scares you, remember that many fresh ingredients require little or no enhancement. Zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, lettuce, arugula, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, onion, bell peppers, avocados, radishes, and snow peas for instance can be eaten with just a tiny sprinkle of salt or nothing at all. Fruit may only require peeling.

Even if you purchase water-packed tuna or smoked brisket from a BBQ restaurant and only “cook” a salad to go with it, you can add a tremendous amount of fresh flavor and nutrients to your diet. If that leads you to explore new combinations of flavors and preparations, then you’ll have captured the essence of being a cook. A little curiosity, a bit of practice, and a willingness to sometimes throw the whole thing in the trash are where most great cooks start.

And we all have near disasters or major failures along the way. Most of us burn ourselves, catch a dishtowel on fire, cover the floor in flour, burn cookies, leave out the baking powder, or put too much salt in something from time to time. Often it is from those failures that we learn the most.

I’m going to let this conclude Part 1. As you can see, the benefits of cooking include: Great tasting food and easy elimination of chemicals, allergens, inflammatory foods and lots of label reading. But wait, there’s more! Next up: The Benefits of Cooking – Part 2: The Fun. If you think I’ve forgotten about baking, think again. This is a series, remember, we’ll get to that in a bit.

You’ll find the rest of the series right here at Cooking2Thrive. Look forward to having you back!

Sincerely,
Cheri

1 Rollo, Ian, Matthew Cole, Richard Miller, and Clyde Williams. “Influence of Mouth Rinsing a Carbohydrate Solution on 1-h Running Performance.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: April 2010 – Volume 42 – Issue 4 – Pp 798-804. American College of Sports Medicine, Apr. 2010. Web. 26 Apr. 2012..