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

[IfNotNowThenWhen]

She is clearly a loony. If I was her child I would be locked in a cupboard injecting cake directly into my veins.

[IfNotNowThenWhen]

It would be the good stuff too. French fancies. Not that crap cut with oats and shit.

[pinkandyellowbutterfly]

But won't the forbidding of wheat/carb/treats just make the children crave them even more? Unless you ban them from birthday parties for the rest of their life they are gonna be exposed to cake at some point or another. I'm sure they'll be eating biscuits on the quiet and it might increase the chances of having an eating disorder in later life. Their friends will be smuggling extra cheese sandwiches and cake into their packed lunches cos they will feel so sorry for them!! I don't think a well balanced lifestyle means defying all natural urges to eat sensibly from a major food group, unless of course you are allergic or it genuinely repulses you. It seems a shame that these food issues are being prejected so publically on the children imo.

[BoffinMum]

Daft bint.

[JakeBullet]

Absolutely mad to think you can ban foods......my son loves all manner of refined and processed rubbish and I still buy it for him....but it's a once every now and then thing.

[exoticfruits]

If you have a diet that you can't be sociable with simply isn't going to work ( unless you have to stick to it for medical reasons). You need to be able to eat out at other people's houses, order a meal at a restaurant, manage a child's party etc without having to phone up first with special arrangements (unless allergies or vegetarian etc).
Telling DCs that foods are 'good' or 'bad' is a huge mistake- the 'bad' instantly becomes desirable. You need to eat a healthy balanced diet as a family most of the time and you can relax about odd occasions. If you are controlling your DC's diet when you can't control your own then you don't stand a chance of getting them to stick to it- although, to give her her due she is at least controlling her own too (as far as we know).
One thing is for sure - those children will get a lucrative book deal when older writing about life with an over controlling mother! (Unless she is very lucky and they agree with her).

[Idotry]

What I find irritating from certain friends with eating disorders (to the point where one is on medication for insomnia because she's so freaking hungry at night) is the fruit and veg is CARB commentary. Yes, great, I'm sure it is but why are you so scared of the more filling, other healthy carbs such as whole grain rice, whole wheat pasta blah blah - answer because the petrified of getting fat!
Personally, I wouldn't be able to function on solely fruit, veg and the old legume - my metabolism is just to fast and I'd become an emotional, hungry wreck.

[Panzee]

Best website ever: whatwouldgwynethdo.com/

[HazeltheMcWitch]

Orthorexia, innit?

[StoicButStressed]

Have just looked at full cover of book (here: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/04/gwyneth-paltrows-new-cookbook-recipes_n_2409416.html ) and just have to laugh at it - again, along the 'ze staff' lines...)

It's got a DEF photoshopped pic of a gleaming Gwynie but looking about 10 years younger than she does in other 'au naturelle' current pics BIG photo of GP on full cover; a BIG byline as her as author; and underneath, in itsy-bity font, name of person who probably wrote the book her 'co-writer'.

The blurb in press release also refers to her as a 'lifestyle guru' and her Goop site as: 'Many women's best girlfriend on the web' - Eh I thought that was MN?

In spite of my cynicism, for balance feel I should point out couple of things:

1. Whilst still do NOT agree with notion of cutting out entire food groups for children, she is correct in her obs. re gluten. Could fill a page here as to why, but headline is that even leaving Coeliacs out of it, shedloads of people do have issues with gluten and often find that seemingly unrelated health issues resolve if cut gluten out (that's cut GLUTEN out, not all carbs!)
   
   
2. I have no choice but to loathe her for having free access to shagging Chris Martin. No idea why, but this (from Brit Awards '09 but crushette still going strong four years later!) just made me fancy pants off him[blush (it's the bit at about 02:39.00 into performance... not that I like, y'know, paid too much attention to it... where he had to pull his t-shirt down over THAT naval line going down thing that started it...)

[stopgap]

I'm a gym-going, yoga-doing, organic-buying PITA, but I'm not sure she's going about it the right way. Gwynnie, have you never heard of brown rice pasta or sprouted bread? It doesn't have to be a white Warburton's or nothing, you know.

[coralanne]

I gave up eating bread about 8 weks ago. I LOVE butter and spread it about 1 inch thick. So it was pointless eating bread if I couldn't have the butter.
I don't eat rice very much and when I do it's brown. Same with Pasta. Probably once a month and then it's spelt.

I have lost 8 kilos since I gave up bread and butter. (and pastry of any description.)

[RichManPoorManBeggarmanThief]

Her kids have no chance in life. They have the 'extreme twat' gene coming at them from both sides

[angeltulips]

Didn't she also say they avoided dairy? I'd be more worried about that - gwynnie has already said she has osteoporosis, and now she's doing the same to her kids

[JakeBullet]

If her kids are still hungry after eating then they are doing their low carb all wrong.

[claig]

I admire her for searching for answers to improve health and diet. But I think she has believed the wrong advice. I think she needs to eat meat. However, she has changed diets over the years and I think she will eventually get there and end up with a good healthy diet when she ditches some of teh advice she now believes in and finally gets it right.

She has already realised that sunbathing is important, which goes against the official advice that she has been told for many years.


'?I went on a prescription strength level of vitamin D and was told to spend a bit of time in the sun!

?I was curious if this was safe, having been told for years to stay away from its dangerous rays, not to mention a tad confused.?


I think she'll get it right in the end, when she ditches a lot of the official advice and finds the real answers.


www.express.co.uk/posts/view/181761/Rays-of-hope-for-Paltrow

[claig]

'I was curious if this was safe, having been told for years to stay away from its dangerous rays'

This is her problem. She is too credulous and believeing of "advice".
People worked in fields for centuries without factor 8 protection. She needs to get real and get it right, but I think that she will eventually get there.

[exoticfruits]

I think that the irritating thing is her need to publicise her parenting ideas- from the children's point of view it is much better to keep it, and them, very private.

[exoticfruits]

They appear to be more of 'a project' than children! A shame she doesn't go in for benign neglect.

[StoicButStressed]

That's the rub tho isn't it Exotic - she isn't publicising her 'parenting ideas', she's using all and anything (inc. DC's) to publicise her book and her Goop 'lifetyle' site**. Leaving the awful dietary stuff being imposed on her DC's, just the former turns my gut a bit.

[QuickLookBusy]

Sounds like her dc are eating a perfectly healthy diet.

No one needs highly processed carbs, especially children.

[exoticfruits]

A book she can only sell because she is a celebrity.

[teaandthorazine]

White flour and sugar are not food groups.

I don't like GP. But I do think it' says a lot about our fucked-up relationship with food in this country that she's being called a nutter and a stupid bint for cutting out nutritionally void foods from her kids' diets.

Low (not no) carb is an eminently sensible - and delicious - way to eat.

[exoticfruits]

Cutting out processed foods is the best way - as long as you don't treat them like poison when children do come across them.