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

Dad's 11 siblings are all living to a ripe old age despite being fat. They grew up on a poor diet and were skinny for their first 40 years. I'm not sure I'd draw any conclusion from that other than good genes for ageing , which is an important factor.

A very important factor. DH and I have virtually the same diet. He has high cholesterol and I have very low cholesterol.

I don't get all this fear of 'white' foods. The Mediterranean diet is generally held to be good, but Italians don't eat wholemeal pasta. Asian cooking is with ordinary not brown rice. The English diet has had bread and potatoes as a staple for many many years.

It's lifestyle that fundamentally matters. Eat good food in moderation, keep active, and don't stress about it so much seems like a better way to live to me than endlessly worrying about the latest piece of badly researched science.

I prefer to go with the example of my family than the latest research, which will no doubt be overturned in a few years. Any second hand book shop can chart you through the fads and fashions of the last few decades - meanwhile you are best to ignore it all- eat all in moderation, keep the portions size down and if you look on the packet and it has more than 5 ingredients put it back on the shelf. You can be sure that areas with healthy diets like the Mediterranean and Japan are following family tradition and not reading the latest book. Sensible post from nooka.

exotic, my grandmother lived to the age of 83. She died the youngest of all my grandparents. Unfortunately she could hardly move from arthritis and overweight for the last 10 years of life. Not much quality of life. If she could have been healthy in those last ten years I think she would have grabbed the chance. As it happens I think that my family (from her side) has a problem with carbs. My mother is a little on the porky side, and I am getting there, but we all lose masses of weight on a wheat free/low carb diet.

Great posts nooka and exotic

In that case duchesse you are sensible to use family examples. All I am saying is that I would rather follow my family than some doctor who happens to be flavour of the year, but is quite likely to be toppled by someone else next year.
My eating habits, weight and general health improved after I took all my books to the charity shop and refused to open another one! I now know what suits my body and what doesn't - I can feel it if I eat the wrong thing.
The liberation from it all was to just be able to eat normally without thinking and talking about it. I manage my diet without having to mention it to anyone because it is very simple, don't snack, smaller portions, keep off processed food as much as possible. It suits me, if people prefer food more often then they need to adapt to that.
It is the first time that anything has worked long term. I have kept the weight off so long that it is a way of life. There is no way that I am going back- I love being in clothes shops and trying on clothes size 12, or sometimes 10. ( however I am not fooled- I was slimmer than this when early 20s and could never get into size 10 trousers! Sizes have got bigger.)

That's definitely true, exotic. It's known within the trade as vanity sizing. Keeps customers coming back to your shop if they can get into 'smaller' sizes in your range.

I'm wearing size 8 jeans at the moment, and they are not as tight as when I first bought them - making me wonder if (when I finally lose this last pesky half stone) I might have to buy a size 6!

Even when I was 17/18 and really fit/slim I was wearing jeans that were size 10-12. You never used to see size 8 or 6 in mainstream shops, yet now it's nothing unusual to see them there.

Never in my life have a fitted size 10 trousers before and I have been much thinner. All my 'flavour' of the month diets worked-but once I relaxed I went back. Now that I have changed my eating habits I realise that I could get lower, cutting bread out would be the way to do it, but I am a perfectly reasonable weight for my height and have a weight that is easy to maintain.
I need carbohydrates if I am going out to run 6 miles or more.

definitely agree about size inflation. I used to be the same size my daughters are now (have passed some clothes down to them on occasion). I was a 10/12 back in 1990, they are most usually a 6/8. I am more of a 14 at the bottom now but would probably have been a 16 back then.

Like exotic, I have lost heaps of weight 3 years ago and kept it off, through changing the way I eat and running.

Also like exotic, I eat the way my (Mediterranean) family has always eaten - vegetables slow-cooked with meat and a side serving of pasta, rice, bulgur etc or a slice of bread. I agree that it is all in the portion size, and some slow-burn carbohydrates with every meal are perfectly fine, especially when I plan to run that day.

I run now - am in week 6 of C25K - and have done all my long runs (3 and 4K so far) on a low carb lifestyle. And I run in a fasted state. No problems.

Distance runners need to be fat adapted anyway, you simply can't load enough carbs to provide energy for long distances. I often do 10k runs in a fasted state, it's easy when I've been low carbing but if I've had carbs the day before I can hit a wall of hunger if I go out running without food. Carbs make me need to eat before a run.

I think that you need to listen to your body-I can't do 10K in a fasted state so it would be silly to try. We are all different-it is like everything else-there is no 'right' way-there is only the 'right' way for you.
I haven't read anything about what you should eat when running-I merely know what works for me.

There are some rights, some objective thigns which are true for everyone. Just aout everyone including the 60 % of over weight people in the UK who eat huge amounts of junk food should not be eating a load of products which make up a large part of their diet. Very few people eat one chocolate from the box. Vast numbers of vast people eat vast amounts of junk food, chocolates, crisps , sweets fizzy drink, crisps, donuts etc etc

I agree Xenia.

And the vast majority of processed foods contain mostly carbs- therefore it makes sense to cut down on these foods if you need to lose weight.

"High carb diets have caused the health issues we have in this country."

But how so? Italy is a very high carb diet and although I see the kids as pretty overweight, not the adults?

Perhaps its the junk food we like to eat inbetween meals?

I'm now off all wheat based foods as it's screwed my digestion and hence my health but my ds does get pasta quite a few times per week. I think he needs the energy (but I also ensure he gets enough veg on the side).

Actually I'm not sure Italians eat all that much refined carbohydrate. For a start their pasta course is not a main course. They don't eat anywhere near as many potatoes as us, and although they have bread with meals, it's not the central part of the meal. They eat plenty of protein and vegetables, and don't snack between meals, which means that they are eating a far more balanced diet overall than the average Brit. Having said there are a quite a lot of overweight Italians as well!

Swedes have until recently been considered very healthy and are still far less obese than the British.

Yet nobody who knows anything about the culture could deny that their traditional diet is a high carb one: typically, large helpings of boiled spud, smaller ones of boiled meat or fish, and tiny portions of veg and berry preserves, all washed down with milk. Also, plenty of bread and home-made biscuits.

In recent years, obesity figures have crept up, but the main difference in the diet seems to be that people are eating fewer boiled spuds and becoming more dependent on the motor car.

We live 15 minutes from Italy and have to say that pasta is common as main course (with seafood, especially) and that is after the "white pizza" with truffle or bruschetta that comes as appetizer before the meal.

Lustig found the common factor in diets which are healthy were absence of junk and processed food and in particularly absence of sugar. Japanese fish rice veg, Eskimos 100% fat/meat, Med diet etc etc. They have different balances of carbs etc but all have no processed food and no sugar.

If you eat as man ate for 2million years you don't do too badly.

I don't think anyone said that you can't possibly run if you don't eat carbs.

I can't imagine what you want to achieve by running when fasting, though. Surely not muscle building. Weight loss?

I see that Dr John Briffa's book is called 'Escape the Diet Trap' -my success is due to the fact that I have done just that-the first rule being ditch all books!

Junk food is addictive see here
I don't think that we need to castigate all carbohydrates as evil-they have a perfectly valid place in a balanced diet.