Reducing Sugar in Your Family’s Diet: Tips, Swaps & Products

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today, we are going back to basics with some important information, reminders, and strategies around nutrition, lifestyle, and our kids’ development and behavior. You know that I talk about nutrition and lifestyle a lot on the show, but I really thought it would be helpful to remind us all of the reasons why the food decisions we make for our kids and families are so important, especially with coming out of the pandemic, I think it’s a good time to take an honest look at perhaps the current food landscape in our homes, and identify some steps that might be helpful to improve physical and mental health for all of us in the family. So to help us think about this, I have invited Dr. Natasha Beck on the show today, let me tell you a bit about her. She’s a parenting expert and founder of Dr. Organic Mommy, an online resource focused on pregnancy, parenting and non-toxic living. She holds a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, specializing in Pediatric Neuro-psychology and a Master’s in Public Health specializing in Child and Family Health. She’s also certified in leadership education and neurodevelopmental disabilities from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. From how to handle tantrums to mealtime difficulties to helping families live healthier lives, Dr. Organic Mommy aims to help every family make healthy decisions, drawing on her experience as a mom and a parenting expert. Her parenting expertise combines the use of Waldorf, Montessori, and RIE philosophies, all of which we have covered at various times on the show, tied into cognitive behavioral and play therapy. When she’s not working on Dr. Organic Mommy, Natasha is busy raising her three children, and she’s got another, a fourth on the way, and her two fur babies with her husband, and serves on the boards of various organizations. Welcome to the show, Natasha, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Natasha Beck

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So I’d love to start with just a little bit of your background and combining of these areas because I don’t meet too many other clinical psychologists like myself, who really are passionate about and have done advanced training in things like health and lifestyle and public health and family wellness. So I’d just love to hear a little bit of the story of how those pieces came together for you.

Dr. Natasha Beck

Sure. Well, I was diagnosed myself with ADHD and dyslexia, now known as reading disorder, when I was a child, and I noticed the impacts of my environment on me, and when I was older and decided to go to graduate school and was working in a hospital setting over at USC County Hospital, I noticed the impact of diet, especially on kids, when I was working under a developmental pediatrician. They would come in, children with McDonald’s breakfast, and we’d have to test them, and it was just impossible to get them to even stay seated. So that was kind of the start of which I noticed the impacts of diet, and so I ended up applying that to my own education and wanting to further that with a master’s in public health, and ended up researching more and more even when I had children, and then looking into the environmental toxins, and everything else that our children are exposed to, and even when you are pregnant as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Absolutely. I think for so many of us, the way that we sort of came to understanding this was through personal experience, either issues for ourselves or for our children. And it’s so interesting to me how this is still sort of an outlier in the fields of medicine and mental health, when it comes to just the basics of child learning, attention, behavior, I can think back to — just like you like doing my pre and post-doctoral work in a children’s hospital setting, and being called in to do evaluations or do consults in clinics where I’m looking at it, I’m like, okay, fundamentally, if your kids like eating candy bars and ice cream all day long to put on weight because that is what you have been told to do for their physical health condition, we are going to have some learning and attention problems and just how that stuff wasn’t talked about. It was like they needed an evaluation and some kind of treatment, and nobody talked about the impact of what we were encouraging families to feed their kids, on how their brains were functioning. So I think that some of that is changing now, but at least from my perspective, we have a long way to go for that message to make it into the mainstream.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Oh, I definitely agree. I mean, we definitely have a lot more options now, but I don’t think it’s as mainstream as it could be.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So I’m curious because you have children of your own, you work with families, you certainly have a large community of parents that you connect with online — I’m interested in hearing what are some of the biggest knowledge gaps or misunderstandings that parents have about the role of food, nutrition more broadly, even lifestyle kinds of things, as it relates to their kids’ development, their kids’ behavior. Where do you see parents either having misunderstandings or just a total knowledge gap with that?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I think the biggest thing is that parents think that, “Oh, if my child is going to reject the food that I offer them, then that means I have to give them something else.” And they become a short order chef. So I always refer back to Ellyn Satter Institute, where she says “You as the parent decide what and when they eat, and you as the child decide if and how much.” And you should always rely on that. The child, unless they have a medical condition, knows when they are hungry or not, and I think there’s a lot of education that is warranted, especially for parents to understand that you don’t need to be a short order chef.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, I think that is true, and obviously, as you said, in cases with eating disorders and those kinds of things, that is a bit different. But in general, I would agree, and that idea that, “They rejected it, so I need to give them what they want so they will eat”, that really does set up some problematic dynamics then, in terms of not only how we are feeding them, but also what we are feeding them, of parents coming in and saying, like, I want…

Dr. Natasha Beck 

They’re only going to eat bread, they’re only going to eat the buttered pasta off the kids’ menu, or chicken fingers. And you get stuck in this habit and this cycle of eating only certain types of what I call the brown foods, and so you don’t have that variety of colors in your diet, and then you end up lacking a lot of nutrients. Then that ends up having a lot of consequences, and you have got this domino effect that is happening with our children in a variety of different ways in their life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I want to focus in on two of what you and I both agree are big offenders in terms of nutrition for kids, food for kids, and how it impacts their brain function. And that is sugar, particularly added sugars, and then the chemicals that are added to food, whether we are talking about food dyes, or preservatives and things, because I see those two areas as sort of low hanging fruit for parents to understand and make some changes, so let’s start with added sugars first, and just give us a good overview of why we should be aware of and concerned about the amount of sugar that our kids are consuming each day?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I mean, I think sugar is going to become the new hot topic, and it already kind of has been, because we are seeing the impacts now of sugar on our children. I mean, the obesity rates are climbing exponentially, type two diabetes is on the rise in children when it’s actually known as an adult disease. And so we have a big problem on our hands. The problem with sugars is that we don’t realize that it impacts everything. It impacts our sleep, it impacts our behavior, our oral health, which impacts our gut health, our liver, our ability to focus in school, our ability to be able to sit for a certain amount of time. So and then we end up having parents who say, “My kids have got attention problems, we have got to put them in, medicate them.” And there are for sure definitely kids who have ADHD, I’m one of them. But we have got almost 10 million kids diagnosed in the US with ADHD, and so we have got to think about, “Alright, is there something else that we can do to help offset some of those symptoms and decrease those symptoms?” And sugar, artificial dyes, preservatives, those are things that we can kind of try to avoid or lessen.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And one of the misunderstandings or misconceptions that I see out there is that a lot of people think that this is just opinion. I think people, really in general — whether it’s out of preferring not to know the truth about how much research there is, because we can sort of stay in denial that it’s important, or they just don’t realize: There is an entire body of research literature now around the connections between added sugar, preservatives, chemicals, and kids development and brain function.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Oh, 100%. You can easily go search for it right now just on Google Scholar, and find tons of evidence-based studies that are showing the correlation between all of these different behaviors and sugar, and food dyes, and preservatives.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. And I think that is just so important because I think sometimes people sort of go “Oh, that is just kind of woo-woo, oh that’s your opinion.”

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Or “We grew up that way with sugar and we were fine, we ended up fine.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Right? It’s like I didn’t learn about any of this in my clinical psychology PhD program. It wasn’t until I became a parent and started seeing all these connections in the clinic that I started delving into the research, and I felt kind of ripped off like, “Wait a second, there’s this whole body of scientific literature around the connections between these things and mental health for kids, and yet, I went through umpteen years of schooling, and it was not a thing that was focused on.” I don’t know if you had the same experience, but that is how I came to it, it was like I am doing the research myself and seeing, oh, wait, there is a lot of research around this.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I mean, I definitely had it addressed in my public health program, but not in my psychology program, which I was disappointed at. And I’m hoping that we are starting to introduce more of the diet, the environmental toxins just around us, because those all play a role in what’s going on. And when parents say to me, “Oh, well I was fine. I have had those.” Great, not real evidence, but the thing is how do you account for the huge increase in ADHD, the huge increase in autoimmune disorders, a huge increase in obesity, type two diabetes? And I could keep going. Where’s that coming from? And so you have got to figure that there’s something going on in our environment. Our genetics aren’t changing that much.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, that is a great point. And I think to an earlier point that you made about kids and adults having brain-based differences, we know that neurodivergent brains are real things. We are not suggesting that by reducing the amount of added sugar in your child’s diet, that they are not going to be the person that they are. But what we are saying is that sometimes these symptoms are caused by these kinds of things. And even in people with neurodivergent brains, addressing the good foundations of nutrition allows them to feel and function better, right? It’s like, it’s like a win-win for everybody.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

100%. And then you are actually getting the nutrients that you should be getting. You are not getting those huge insulin spikes from consuming all of this sugar.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Let’s talk a bit about — because you have a Master’s in Public Health, and we talk about sort of on a global level, or at least on a US level, what we are seeing as far as these chronic health issues. And I think that people, often with sugar, their brain goes to more to the physiological pieces of, “Oh, I don’t want my child to be obese/I’m concerned about type two diabetes”, which, as you mentioned, didn’t even exist in kids 25 years ago, and now is like rampant non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which we didn’t see in kids, that now we do solely as a through the influence of added sugar. So, break it down for us then. Okay, we need to be concerned about the sugar. Why is this such a bigger problem now? Because you said we kind of grew up eating some of these things. But there’s a difference now, isn’t there, in terms of how much and the type? So it speaks to that, because I think that that is a compelling thing for parents to understand.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

So there used to be only two types of sugar. There was sugar cane and sugar that came from sugar beets. Now, there are almost 200 different kinds of sugars out there and under different guises of different types of sugar, and it’s very hard to figure out what’s in our products. There is refined sugar, where it’s a chemical breakdown, versus unrefined sugars. And back when I was a kid, at least in the 80s and 90s, there was the whole concept of low-fat, non-fat, but what happened? Okay, well, if you get rid of the fat that makes everything taste good, what do you do? Well, you add in a bunch of sugar. And so that was the start of this process of adding in all this sugar. And now luckily, there have been changes where we can actually see it on the nutrition labels, where it shows you the added sugar. By 2020, they have had to address that, for smaller companies it’s by 2021 that they actually now need to show how much added sugar is in there. And the reason why you want to look at the added sugar is because even the American Academy of Pediatrics only recommends about 24 grams of sugar for kids ages two and up, and I would actually look at Dr. Michael Goran’s research over at USC, who even breaks it down further because 2 to 17 is a huge gap. The amount of calories a 2 year old is eating is very different from a 17 year old, So you have got to really be mindful that under 2, they don’t want you having any sugar, added sugar, and after 2, it’s somewhere between 0 and 24 grams of sugar. And that adds up real quick, that is the problem. You don’t realize that sugar is hidden in everything.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

It’s a huge problem. We had Michael Goran and Emily Ventura on the show back last year, when their book Sugarproof came out, so if you missed that episode, go back and listen because It’s really good and it gets into the history of this. It’s really such good information. But let’s talk about that. So we want to keep kids under that amount of added sugar, and yet, as you said, it adds up so quickly. What are some of the practical ways you have found as a mom, as somebody working with kids and families, how can we do that? Because I know that some parents instantly feel like “Oh, now I have to give up everything my kid likes, it is going to be a huge stressor for me, it’s going to be nothing but fights.” They just shut down to it because of an assumption that it’s just going to be too much to deal with. So talk to us about how to make that easier and how to make that feel more doable.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

So I’m going to start with breakfast, because I think with breakfast, if you are setting your child up with having basically their daily amount of sugar in just one meal, it’s really going to impact how they are learning in school. And trust me, you are going to hear from your teachers. They are going to come back and say, “Hey, they are having trouble sitting still, they are really not listening. They are always acting silly. What’s going on? What’s going on at home?” And if you take some of these steps that I will talk about, I really promise you that you will see some improvement. So when it comes to breakfast, I’m going to assume you have got your juice box, which basically has anywhere between 15 to 25 grams of sugar, which there you go, there’s your whole sugar for the day, a muffin, which if it’s a store-bought muffin, yeah, 20 grams of sugar also. And yes, your typical cereal, like your Fruity Pebbles, your Lucky Charms, whatever. And maybe you are doing a honey-nut cheerios. Still has tons of sugar in it. Don’t quote me on this, pregnancy brain, but like 10 grams of sugar in a bowl . So let’s think about simple recipes that you can do in the morning: Granola. And if you can make some granola, even better, because you can control the amount of sugar and you can add unrefined sugar like honey in it as a sweetener, and give yourself some granola that you make with some rolled oats, throw in some flax seeds, chia seeds in there, and I have got a recipe on my page. I make this in bulk once a month, keep it in my freezer, and then put in some plant-based milk, like whatever milk of choice, and that is at least a better option because it’s more nutrient-dense, because those grains have got more protein in them, they have got more iron, fiber, exactly.

The other thing I like to do is oatmeal. Now I think parents are very weary about oatmeal because it just looks like mush. So what I like to do is I like to cook the oatmeal down with cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon, and you can do this the night before or even on the weekend and then just heat it up during the week for your child. And it takes the same amount of time as getting the cereal out to pour it and give the milk, maybe an extra two minutes to heat it. But I like to add in some grated carrots and grated zucchini, because who says you don’t need to have vegetables at breakfast? Zucchini has no taste. Carrots add a little bit of sweetness. and what you can do is make it fun for your kids. Add in a little bit of milk and then give them some frozen wild blueberries, and it turns the milk purple. So it’s fun. It’s like alright, okay, this is naturally purple because of the blueberries. Or add in some stewed apples or some fresh almond butter with some goji berries that are kind of like red raisins. And so it becomes more fun when the child actually gets to add their toppings, and more interactive, and when you start this at an early age, this is at least more of a nutrient-dense breakfast that has tons of fiber and tons of nutrients that you are already getting just in the first meal of the day.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, it’s great. And I think I’m big on helping parents think about, okay, what are you doing now and how can we make some swaps for that? So if your child is eating certain types of cereal now, it doesn’t mean they have to take all the cereal out. But can you swap? Can you make sort of a lateral swap?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Add some fruit to it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, or looking at the nutrition labels, like oh my gosh, I had no idea this cereal that you eat every day has 15 grams of sugar per serving. Let’s experiment. Let’s find some that have way less than that, or kind of just thinking along those lines.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Well, taking baby steps of where you are at. If you are at this sugar cereal, add some fruit in there, maybe some avocado on the side with a piece of sourdough toast to add in some more nutrients. And then slowly phase out that cereal to less sugary cereal, and then eventually move from the cereal to maybe a granola, or then to an oatmeal. And so I think it just comes down to taking those steps, don’t feel so overwhelmed. What’s the lateral progress that you can make? And then from there, my big thing is pancakes. I think those are fun for kids. And you can add them into their snack plate or their lunchboxes as leftovers, but how we make the pancakes is a big difference in what we are using, and what we are using to sweeten. I love to sweeten my pancakes, I use bananas. And what’s great about banana is you’ve got the fiber, and so it doesn’t give you that huge insulin spike that is going to happen with all of your other sugar, all of your other sweeteners, even your low-calorie sweeteners, you are still going to get that insulin spike and your body’s going to think, “Oh, I need to absorb all that sugar.” And then guess what? You are hungry an hour later. You want to know why your kids are constantly snacking all day and asking for food. It’s because you are giving them too much sugar.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That is such a great point. because I think especially during the pandemic, when kids and parents were home together all day, that was a huge complaint, right? And the way that you address that is by giving them food that sticks with them longer, which is what food is supposed to do.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

You want some fiber, you want some fat in there and a little bit of protein. You definitely want to give kids carbohydrates, but just think about the kinds of carbohydrates you are giving them. And so when I think about pancakes, what do I want to add? I want to look at buckwheat flour, I want to look at teff flour. Those are really nutrient-dense grains that don’t give you that huge insulin spike in the beginning. And so it has enough protein in there, and if you throw in some eggs, or you can even make it vegan with freshly ground chia seeds and put it in the water, and you make it a vegan egg if you are vegan, but there are lots of options in there. Throw in a banana with the egg, some flour, a little bit of — I use plant-based milk, I even throw in a little bit of blackstrap molasses for that extra iron and calcium. It has that touch of sweetness, and that pancake is done. You can even throw it into a blender, add in some spinach that has no taste, and then you have got your Green Hulk pancakes, and you can reheat those throughout the week. Use them in your child’s lunchbox. You don’t even have to think about lunch, put in some pancakes right there.   Make it a little bit different. Throw in some sunflower butter, almond butter, in between them, make them a little sandwich. Sandwich pancakes. So if you start to get creative with your food a little bit, and those are little baby steps you can take, your child starts to take more interest in it too. Because if you are interested in food, it will go down to your child, because children inevitably mimic everything you do.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And I think setting kids up right out of the gate in the morning with a nutrient-dense breakfast especially that includes more proteins and healthy fats and those nutrient dense carbs, not the white breads and that kind of stuff, it’s so critical. We have got good studies that show that just making sure that kids get a good dose of protein in the morning, supports focus and attention and all of those things then, as they head off to school. I like that a lot of the things that you are talking about can be made ahead because I do think that is a barrier, particularly in the morning, right? I’m a mom of four, you have three kids, one on the way. We get it. Mornings are not the time for most of us, some of you may be the exception, to be around the kitchen whipping up some four-course fancy thing. That is not what happens in my house. But we look at what we can make ahead. Can we do egg and sausage burritos that we make ahead and then we have those for the week? Or even just sausages, or pancakes, or oatmeal, or those kinds of things to make your life easier, because the reality is most of us are not going to be whipping up major breakfast, especially with kids at different ages that we have to get out of the door at different times. We need to keep it simple for ourselves.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Yeah, I have a chia seed pudding recipe that literally, you just pour a few things and stick it in the fridge, and then the next morning it is ready to go. I have an overnight oats recipe, where you literally put the oats in, pour a few things, and it’s ready to go the next morning. You don’t have to cook anything. And so those are also easy things that you can incorporate into your weekly breakfast menu for your kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Also things that are pretty simple that kids can help with. All stuff that kids can get in the kitchen and help you with. I love that. Let’s talk about some snacks, because it’s funny. I want to talk about breakfast and snacks because these are the two big things that come up where parents are like “I don’t know what to get you for breakfast”, and then the snack thing. So when we are thinking about sugars, we are thinking about added sugars, we are thinking about nutrient density, what are some of the go-to snacky kinds of things that you can find that are really good for families to have on hand?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I’m going to give you my list, but I’m going to start off with this stat: About 80% of snack foods in the grocery store that you will find, have added sugar. So keep that in mind. So that is why I’m going to give you my favorite list, and they are nutrient-dense snacks. So one of my favorites are Skout bars. I think it’s very difficult to find a bar that does not have added sugar, it does not have terrible ingredients in it. These Skout bars have about anywhere between four and six ingredients, typically, and they are sweetened with dates. So the dates have the fiber. And they are all nut-free, which is great, because they are made with sunflower seeds or coconut. And so I think those are a great option for kids, and they really love them. I brought them to my son’s first soccer game this weekend for his friends, and none of them had had them, and they were all asking for more.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That is great. I have not heard of those. So I’m going to look into those, and that is so great that they are nut-free too, because that is an issue a lot of families run into with rules around nut-free…

Dr. Natasha Beck 

And they are the perfect size. They are literally the size of your, my hands are small. My thumb. So it’s Skout.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Awesome. Love that.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Next thing: Seaweed. I think seaweed is the new chip. Most kids are actually iodine deficient because they are not consuming enough in their diet. And so, iodine is a great way to get it through seaweed, and it’s such a fun, salty kind of snack. And I like the brand SeaSnax, and it’s because they use organic olive oil instead of some of the other inflammatory oils. And if you are listening to this, I have a whole pantry list on my blog where I actually write out all the different snacks and where you can get them with hyperlinks.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Awesome. And we will link to that in the show notes too, so people can easily access it.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Great. So my other fun snacks are Lundberg rice crackers red rice and quinoa. They are flat crackers. And what I like to do with them is put some avocado on top, some furikake, which is basically a blend of different sesame seeds. Or you can put on almond butter, a drizzle of honey. There are a lot of different toppings and you can get creative with your kids. You can put on cream cheese or vegan cheese, and you can put some radishes on top, or some microgreens or some fruit: sliced figs, peaches, whatever’s in season, and it becomes a fun interactive snack as well for your kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Right and the things that kids can sort of get their hands in and have choices over and kind of mess around with, that just helps to expand their palate, and they are interested in trying some of these things too. If they tend to be a little bit more on the rigid side about what they eat, just exploring and making different things and playing with it can be a great way to get them interested.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Yeah. The other thing I’d like to swap out is — so typically kids are asking for those Fruit by the Foots.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I was going to say Fruit Snacks.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Fruit Snacks. Okay, so the brand I love is Soley. It’s one or two ingredients: Either fruit snacks, or they are fruit strips. And they have that mango, banana, and pineapple in them. That’s it. And you have got the fiber in it too. So that is what I love, that you are not missing that, versus I would say juice. Juice is my one thing that I actually say please avoid juice, there are no nutrients whatsoever in juice. You might think oh, there’s vitamin C. Actually, the vitamin C gets knocked out by the process of breaking down and cooking down those fruits.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I find that just targeting beverages is often a good way to put a dent in kids’ added sugar intake, because between things like sodas, sports drinks, even the flavored waters and certainly the juices out there, even if parents and families were to start there with just quite frankly not bringing soda into the house at all and with juice and stuff, with watering it down, getting your kids off of the sugary beverage…

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Just diluting it down is a huge point. And once you have diluted it down, you can add fun things to the water. When passion fruit is in season, I scoop it and freeze it so I can have passion fruit all season long, and I make ice cubes. I throw that passion fruit ice cube into the water. I’ll throw cucumbers into the water, I’ll throw strawberries into the water and let the kids do it. They think it’s really fun. But I think we digress from snacks. That is my fault. Another snack I love is called Pan’s Mushroom Jerky. You can do beef jerky as well if you eat meat, but Pan’s mushroom jerky actually uses mushrooms and just a touch of coconut sugar, especially if you just get the plain. My kids are obsessed with it, and I find that all their friends actually really like it. They think it’s beef jerky. But it’s got a lot of nutrients in there.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That is another one that is new to me. I’m excited. I’m learning some new things. And I’ll say that I love the Paleovalley meat sticks. A lot of our families love those. And so I encourage that, again, just clean ingredients. So many of those even in the stores have got added sugar in them. Things like Slim Jims and the other kinds, so you really want to look for products that don’t.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Added sugars. And a lot of them have the dyes and preservatives in there. That is the problem with snacks, are those preservatives. How do you think they stay so shelf stable? And those preservatives impact us. So other things that I like: Freeze dried fruits and veggies. Natierra makes a bunch of different ones. They have got ones that have corn and peas in there, and it’s freeze-dried. So when you are drying them, they are drying them at the peak of when their nutrients are most bioavailable. And so that is another great option if things aren’t in season or if you don’t have farmers markets around you. I also love those for traveling, because they are just easy if I can’t get enough veggies and produce and fruits for my kids. I bring those with me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, that is a great one. And you are right, it keeps it simple for travel. Even just being in the car after school. If you are going between schools, sports or whatever, and you want things that are convenient, those are great options.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Yeah, two things I like are the Skout bars and the seaweed because I can keep them in my car. I mean, the Skout bars, they might melt a little bit, depending on where you are if it’s too hot, but I keep them in my purse just in case. But honestly, just fruit. I’d rather instead of just giving a juice box, I always go for the whole fruit: An apple, a banana, and mix up the fruits. Let your child go to the grocery store and they get to pick one item from the produce section that they get to try, and it could be something fun and new, like it’s a mango, or a dragon fruit or a kiwi, or whatever it might be, and let them get involved in the decision making process, and then they are more likely to even eat it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Let’s remind people of the difference there between a piece of fruit and the juice or a processed food, the fruit in it about why that is important. What are we getting in the whole piece of fruit that is so important? Because fruit does have natural sugar.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

So I think we want to trust nature. When humans take over, we are taking those fruits and cooking them down and taking away all the fiber and all the nutrients. And so you are just cooking it down to the sugar. Whereas if you take a fruit like an apple, let’s say you have got the peel. That has tons of fiber in it. And what you are looking for with that fiber is that it balances out the sugar. So again, you don’t have that huge increase in insulin, and then an hour later, your kids are hungry again, “Mom, dad, I’m hungry and grumpy. I’m hangry.” Come on. And if you balance that out and you take it a step further and pair that apple with some almond butter, even better. Sunflower butter, because then you get some fat and some protein there. So I always like to design my snacks with some kind of fat or protein. So if you got cucumbers, pair it with some hummus. Your kid’s not into hummus? Throw some beets in there, or buy the pink hummus. That’s your beet hummus, and then it’s pink. My girls will eat anything that is pink. Pink and purple, their favorite colors. So I think if you just make it a little bit more fun, and if you are eating it, they will also eat it. That is my biggest piece of advice is to model it for them. And then my second piece of advice is to educate.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, to talk with them about it. And I think snacks are a good place to push the envelope a little bit, like what you were saying earlier about parents decide what is served and when, kids decide whether to eat and how much, and I think snacks are often a starting point that can feel a little more comfortable for parents because sometimes when it comes to meals. There are more issues around, “Oh my gosh, what if they don’t eat?”, but snacks, kids can live without eating snacks. Snacks are sometimes a place where we feel a little more confident to push and to say, “Well this is what we are having today”, or to offer two nutrient-dense options, because if they choose not to eat, you know you have got a meal coming up, and so I found that can be helpful for people.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I definitely agree with that. I would say snacks and lunchtime on the weekends is when I introduce something new, or I try to play with the meal a little bit, because if they are not hungry, that is alright. I know there is still dinner, and they had breakfast in the morning, so they are good to go. But honestly, what I tell parents is to always look at a two-week period. If in two weeks they haven’t eaten much, then you go to your doctor. But if it’s up and down within those two weeks, and there are days where it’s like they ate so much, and then the next day, they didn’t eat anything, that is more normal. Because look at yourself as an adult. One day you may be obsessed with avocados, and the next day, I can’t stand avocados. Your tastebuds change, or you get sick of eating the same thing. Kids are the same thing. And you also have to look at a child’s personality. I always tell parents this, I really despise the word “picky” because I don’t believe that there are picky kids. I think there’s kids who tend to be more cautious, kids who tend to be more adventurous, and everywhere in between. Because if you call your kid picky, trust me, they are going to hear it, and they are going to internalize that. They are going to be like, “Oh, I’m not going to eat that. I’m picky, I don’t like that.” So we really try to avoid that word, and try to avoid thinking, “Oh, my child’s not going to eat that,” try to avoid saying them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I love that. I want to touch on, before we wrap up, because you had mentioned a minute ago, talking about snacks. We have kind of delved into the sugar issues, but let’s talk about those added preservatives and chemicals. Let’s talk about how much of that is in our food. I mean talking about differences between when we were growing up and now and just the amount of these chemicals that are allowed in foods, that appear in foods now, and why that is important for parents to be thinking about.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

So since the 1950s, up until now, we have had a 500% increase in artificial food dyes in our food. And so that is when you can say, “Oh, well, we used to eat that.” Well, not really, we didn’t eat that as much. And now it’s so prevalent, it’s in the majority of our packaged foods. And the problem with preservatives and these artificial dyes is that they impact behavior and sleep is a huge problem. I think that is in my top five questions I get are sleep questions: sleep and behavior. And I’m sure you do too. And those are some of the first questions I ask. I ask about artificial food, dyes, preservatives and sugar, and then I ask about screen time. Those are the things that are impacting our kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Well, and it’s interesting, because here in the States at least, parents will go, “Well, these things must be safe. They are allowed in our foods.” And it’s like, well, wait a minute, we have a very different way in our country of going about approving for this stuff. I think a lot of parents are surprised to find out that food dyes, for example, artificial food dyes, a lot of those that are allowed in our food supply here in the States are banned in Europe. And companies make products differently over there because they are not allowed to put that stuff in, because those countries have looked at the research and have said, “No, actually, these things are detrimental to the brain function and the health and the development of kids, we are not going to put these in our food supply.” And yet here in the States, try to pick up a snack food or a cereal or whatever that doesn’t have that stuff in it, right?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

And it’s not only just our packaged foods that have it. It’s your yogurts. Your salmon is dyed, it’s artificially dyed. Your pickles, your salad dressing, it’s in everything. We have about nine food dyes that are approved by the FDA. Most of those are not approved in Europe, like you said. So if you actually compare the foods, Heinz ketchup in the UK versus here, it’s completely different. It has no high fructose corn syrup, it has no red dye 40 in it. And same with a lot of our cereals and snacks and whatnot. And so that makes you think, “Well, what’s going on here?” And so I think you just have to really pay attention to your labels, and that is what I teach my kids. And I think you should teach your kids too. When you go to the grocery store when they are not hungry — My number one piece of advice: Make sure they are not hungry. Give them a snack plate in the car on the way so they are nice and full, and then give them a job in the grocery store and have them say “Let’s look at this label. What does it say? I’m going to tell you if you can’t read it”, and say, “What’s that word? I don’t even know what that word is.” Do an experiment. Play. Look it up. “Oh, artificial food dyes are basically petroleum, which is what gasoline comes from. That is what’s in it!” So talking about it with your kids helps them question it too.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I’m glad that you raised all of the stuff like condiments and all of that because often parents will say to me “Well I’m pretty health-cautious about that in their snacks or whatever, and yet when I have them go and actually look at the ingredients on stuff they use all the time — yeah, it’s in the dressings, it’s in the ketchup, mustard, relish, the pickles, all kinds of things.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

My girlfriend was shocked it was in her salmon. She was like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this. I put lox on bagels”, and it’s in the salmon.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yep. So what are the things for parents like things you don’t even know what they are, you can’t pronounce them. How about for the dyes? Are they always labeled as Red 5, Blue 40, those kinds of things?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

They are always labeled like that. You have got Yellow 6, Red 40. There’s nine of them. And you can always honestly, I easily can screenshot a photo on the nine FDA approved food dyes, and just take a look at it. Yeah, but honestly, when you look at your nutrition labels, you don’t want to have more than 10 ingredients. maybe more if there’s a bunch of different spices in there, but look and read. If you don’t know an ingredient, I’d put it away.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. And I think the food dye stuff is particularly compelling, from a research standpoint, on kids’ brain development, especially when we look at common symptoms that end up getting diagnosed as things like ADHD, I mean, even Autism Spectrum Disorders, different things like that. But also, it’s been really interesting to me delving into the newer microbiome research on food dyes, and seeing the profound negative impact that these dyes and preservatives are having on the beneficial microorganisms in our gut, and that whole connection to our brain function and just our overall health.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Allergies, to asthma. These are why these things are on the rise.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That is right. Yeah. So I mean, we are talking about it from a brain and behavior standpoint, but getting these food dyes and things reduced or completely out of your family’s diet is going to help with all of the physical health stuff, too.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Yeah, especially your oral health, which is very much tied to your gut health. There are so many kids now that I’m seeing that have cavities. Their teeth are being pulled, they are having root canals at the age of three years old. That is definitely a tough one for me to…

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Which makes me think too, and we don’t have time to get into all personal care products, but I know you have a lot of information on household stuff and all that. But even being vigilant about looking at the ingredient labels on things like toothpaste, when you mentioned that there can be a lot of added sugars and sweeteners. There can be dyes and these things in toothpaste. And you think what in the world, it’s white! And it’s like it’s white because they added a blue dye and something else to it.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Or titanium dioxide to actually make it pure white. Or they put in the stripes of color.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Just being aware of that, yeah, it’s not just in the stuff that we think of as food. But I mean, kids are brushing their teeth every single day or…

Dr. Natasha Beck 

It’s in your beauty products and your tweens, their makeup, everything. It’s in all that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Thinking of it, one of the things that can happen, as we said, is that parents can feel overwhelmed by this, but I really like to reframe it and say look at all the opportunities here. By understanding this, it gives us so many opportunities at whatever pace and level we want to deal with it to make positive changes in our kids’ health, in their brain function, and our entire family’s health. When we understand this, it just gives us so many actionable targets of things that we can start to change and do differently, which I think is really relieving and exciting, as opposed to scary and overwhelming.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

I like to tell parents, look, social toxins can be worse than chemical ones. And what I mean by that is the worry, the being overwhelmed. So I want you to take that into consideration. And then just think, “Alright, not going to freak out about my kids toothpaste right now. But when it’s done, I’m going to look for a different one.” So whenever you are shopping for a new one because you are out of something, swap. So don’t go out and replace everything. It’s not terrible because obviously our body has natural detox abilities, but go and make those swaps as you run out.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Which pairs with the mantra that I love, which is, “As we know better, we do better. And just one step at a time.” Natasha, this has been great. So many great practical reminders, strategies, products that we can be looking at. I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you, the work that you are doing, and the food lists and things. Where can they get all those goodies?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

So on my website, which is drorganicmommy.com and then my Instagram is the @.organicmommy, they can go look there and I have got tons of discount codes, and all the proceeds from my page go to charity and I outline that as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That is awesome. Thank you so much for the work that you are doing around all of this, for educating families around this important information, and for taking the time to share it with us today. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Natasha Beck 

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for doing the work as well and educating. I love always meeting another psychologist who is so aware of the impacts of diet and the environment on our children.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Thank you. There’s not a lot of us. We have got to stick together, right?

Dr. Natasha Beck 

100%.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And thanks to all of you, as always, for being here and listening. We will catch you back here next time.