Gwyneth Paltrow and avoiding carbs for kids - what do you think?

[JaneGMumsnet]

Hi,

You may have read news stories today about Gwynneth Paltrow avoiding carbs for the whole family, including her children aged eight and six:

"Sometimes when my family is not eating pasta, bread or processed grains like white rice, we're left with that specific hunger that comes with avoiding carbs."

We'd be interested to hear what you think about this story.

Does your own diet influence the way you feed your children?

Thanks,

MNHQ

I don't deny my DC eat breakfast cereals (Jordan's or Dorset's) and ham sandwiches. Some meals have to be quick and easy - I don't have a kitchen maid to rustle up fruit salad at 6.30 am or vegetable soup every lunch time. The point is to ensure that over the day their nutrition is balanced. Cutting down greatly on carbs in the evening can be a very good way of ensuring that people don't overheat carbs and also fitting on 5 a day.

When you do switch to low carb it becomes quite something to find things to eat when not at home. Train stations full of sandwiches, biscuits, pastry; the office, cakes practically everyday. Hard to find a lunch place that has nice low carb stuff.

Home is different of course, a home made cottage pie or whatever is great food for children. But it's a bit of an eye opener when trying to find things to eat, especially when travelling. Usually hope for a sushi place.

I would say no snow that's not what most people feed their kids, many yes but not most.

Its not balanced and its not moderation.

I have only recently changed my relationship with food and I firmly believe dieting mothers or 'banning' mothers contribute to children growing up with an unhealthy outlook on food. My brothers and I weren't allowed treat foods very often and went a bit mental at friends. In my 20's I just stumbled from one faddy diet to the next. I was only a size 8, but my mother told me I was big and I believed her. Anyway, I used to cut things out completely then three months down the line binge. Now, I have a better relationship with food, I am in control and don't overeat anything, but if I fancy something I will have it. It is about portion control. When in Italy and at my friends for dinner, he will give me a plate of antipasti (tiny bit of bread with it), then home-made ravioli (three pieces) in a courgette sauce, then we would have steak or lamb chop with spinach on the side and a few potatoes (what equates to one potato each, but cut and sautéed so small it feels like more). You should be able to enjoy food and not see it as the enemy. It ruins everyone's enjoyment if one person starts whinging when out for dinner (restaurant or at friends/family) about butter etc. I know I will get on with somebody who appreciates good food, example, like bonsoir, I know I would have a good time with someone who would have a glass of champagne and tarte citron!

Of course most lunch boxes are not very balanced or nutritious but you only have to see the fuss on here when they are policed by the school!
There is a huge fuss about drinking water-people say they don't like it which is a nonsense -if they were lost in the Outback without any they would give all they owned for a glass of water!
The other fact is that people will insist on seeing it through adult eyes. My DSs were not in the least interested in the content of their lunch box, other than it was quick and easy to eat so they could get out to play. There was no point in doing anything messy, it would come back unopened. At secondary school DS didn't bother eating it at all until he got home from school.
I also don't think that people realise that children may go off with your carefully packed lunch box but another child may be eating it for them!
I think it would be great if every child had to do what they did in my school days and have to have a school dinner or go home but can you imagine the reaction?!

Exactly LittleABear.

I struggle with packed lunches for boys as ds1 dislikes lots of protein.

Tomorrow he is having chicken satay, salad, yoghurt, fruit bar. Some sugar in this but it is really hard cutting sugar from their diet completely.

Yeah very true exotic, at nursery dd had al sorts of fiddly finger foods rice cakes and dips etc. does she want that now at infant school, no she doesn't because its such a far. She wants to eat and run, half the time she's in so much of a rush she can't even be bothered to peel a satsuma let alone open a bag of crisps.

The day's menu I mentioned my be extreme to some but the breakfast is pretty typical from what people have mentioned to me. The lunch box is based on my observations at our "healthy school" and I know people on here talk about cooking a proper dinner but I think a large proportion people don't speak about the freezer tea they feed their kids at 5.00pm and then they cook proper food for the adults.

Maybe I am wrong - i might as quote anedotes as they seem to be accepted as fact in these discussions but I have heard people get very upset about the lunchbox police, people who feed their kids crisps and chocolate and many other processed treats everyday and think their kids have a healthy balanced diet. I think people don't realised how much processed crap and sugar they feed their kids. It's food after all and they are not fat, so what's the problem?

The problem?
Increased rates of cancer
Heart disease
High cholesterol
Diabetes
Growing into fat adults with al sorts of health complications.
And much much more, as I would suspect these people are not exercising either.

Most people are not eating a healthy, balanced diet, snow.

I think that it I were starting again in a career I might well have one with something to do with nutrition. There is so much nonsense spouted; so much ignorance- and then the extremes from those living on chicken nuggets and chips and fizzy drinks to those who think that suitable food for a 2 yr old's birthday party is plain rice cakes, dried apricots and water!
When mine were little there were so many parents who would only give their children fruit juice and I kept thinking 'it can't be good for them' -and now the latest is that it isn't good for them.

Meanwhile are children are just as muddled and clueless.
I was shocked as a supply teacher to go in and do a science assessment with a yr 4 class. They had been learning about healthy eating and one of the activities seemed simple enough-they had an empty plate and had to draw a healthy meal on it. I have done this in the past with no problems, they could just draw a favourite meal-making sure it wasn't a cheese burger etc, and getting some vegetables in. Not one child drew anything remotely resembling a meal! Nearly all had a piece of broccoli on there (so one message had got in!) but then they had the most bizarre collection-the odd lump of cheese, a few rice cakes etc

I think that it is a sorry state that we have got children into when they can't draw a simple meal for fear of getting it 'wrong'.

It's arguably quicker to eat protein than sandwiches, never mind slower.

Depends on the food Xenia, surely. My dd would eat a wrap or pitta (she tends not to have sandwiches as she doesn't like bread) far quicker than a few different portions of proteins. She would find a drum stick far too messy for school and to fill her up I think she would need at least two which would take longer than eating a small wrap filled with meat and salad.

It is no good telling me , as an adult, what is quick to eat. My DSs did not eat yoghurt or anything messy- it came home. Fruit came home. They ate it once they were home. Since they had a balanced diet at home my objective was to give them something quick and filling to eat to keep them going.

There is no way that mine would have bothered with chicken drum sticks - they needed the chicken taken off and put in bread.

I think Snow's description is pretty accurate. It's scarily close to what my DC eat each day and I think of them as healthy. They usually have wholemeal bread toast in the mornings, not white, but they often have cereal instead, and always have juice or a home made banana milkshake.

Their sandwiches are nearly always brown bread, but sometimes they get a white bagel or french bread instead. They usually have smoothies not juice cartons (more fibre) but theyb nearly always have crisps and a frube, then something sweet straight after school.

Evening meal is home cooked, except when it's fish fingers and chips with peas and sweetcorn. They've never been given a smiley face at home, but i guess oven chips aren't that much better.

So on a given day Snow's description could be exactly what my DC eat. But on another day, they might start with eggs or bacon or beans or porridge. Lunch might be a hearty home made soup in a flask with grated cheese to top it, and dinner could be cottage pie made with half potato, half celeriac.
Variety is important.

For every person who advocates low carb there is another who says it plays havoc with kidneys and heart. Balance and a sane attitude is what we need to pass on to our children.

ah but patchy, low carb doesn't necessarily mean high meat. I don't think many (any?) people here are advocating the kind of extreme diet that precludes vegetables and fruit. They mostly seem to be saying that you should avoid eating so much white food -my shorthand for the highly processed starches that seem to make up the bulk of most people's diets.

Take pasta for example- a pasta dish should not to my mind be made up of a huge plate of pasta topped with a spoonful of sauce. A lasagne is closer to what feels like a good balance to me- mostly sauce made of meat and tomatoes etc, with two layers of lasagne sheets.

Also as Xenia said, we don't need to eat anything like as much as we do (and I'm as guilty of this as the next person). When we see what people in many countries survive on in terms of portions, and looking pretty healthy, it's a surprise we are not all dying from over-feeding.

It is moderation in all things. My mother is late 80s, she is the youngest and her eldest sister got to 92yrs, her brother to 87 and her sister to 85yrs, my grandfather to over 100. They grew up on a farm. They had a balanced diet, they were all the right sort of weight , they didn't have to faff about worrying about having bread at lunchtime.
People are obese because they are addicted to processed food and they have no portion control.

You're right dauchesese one of my dcs loves pasta and she still gets it but the pasta is now wholemeal, there's less of it, more sauce & olive oil and some more green veg. And that's the compromise - she is happy and I'm happy. You can make a difference by just shifting the proportions. Lasagna I tend to top with creme fraiche as per Jamie Oliver - no one in this house is fond of a roux sauce, but served with a salad on the side, it's not too bad at all. I am intrigued by the suggestion that carbs make children on the autistic spectrum symptoms worse, I'm toying with things further to see what affect it has on ds.
I've always felt a poor diet is responsible for a lot of poor behaviour but it's only recently I've started to put carbs into the poor diet category.

If she decides not to give a balanced diet to her kids we could put her in the fruit shoots and pom bear category of parenting :)

No point in talking about old people reaching a grand old age because of being moderate. My grandmother died at 58 - no processed food, no smoking etc. my other grandmother died 20 years ago at 86, which was impressive then, she was a 30 a day woman.....my mother is 80, she smokes 30 a day, barely eats. My dad is 80 and drinks half a bottle of whiskey a day...he has diabetes but gets by ok - I wouldn't suggest it's ok to smoke 30 a day based on those stats. You eat your crap food, you smoke your fags and drink your booze, you cross the road with out looking, you take your chances...sometimes you win, sometimes you die prematurely, quoting one person's experience proves nothing.

I would agree generally but when you have 4siblings who all live to an old age on a similar balanced diet, who are not overweight and do not smoke, or drink more than moderately, have never had much in the way of processed food you can draw the conclusion that there is nothing wrong in following it. Particularly if none of you are overweight and most of you take plenty of exercise. Giving them a chicken sandwich, that they would eat, was much better than giving them the chicken drumstick I thought they ought to eat, but they wouldn't.