This month is National Child Abuse Prevention month and so with that, I wonder at the number of people who love their children but don’t show it through nutrition. I mean, they do whatever they can to deliver temporary happiness to their kids with toys, video games, gadgets and junk food but, in the long run, they are setting their children up for a greater likelihood of poor health and unhappiness, all because they unwittingly ignore their children’s nutrition. They think nothing of feeding them out of a box, a can, or a drive through so they can afford their cable bill, a vacation to Disney World, or box seats at the stadium.
The sad fact is that if you aren’t making strides to ensure that your children are receiving the very best nutrition, they are suffering. It’s an abuse of their long term health that is easily overlooked because they have a home, clothing, are obviously loved and appear to be well fed, but in reality they are starving. Though their bellies are full, it with Genetically Engineered corn & soy products, white refined sugar & flour, the meat of animals that were fed much of the same along with a daily dose of antibiotics, and then not to mention all the artificial preservatives, flavorings and “nutrients”. Too many parents accept what is labeled on a food package as truth and never consider what they are feeding their children. We as a people have subsisted just fine and quite nicely with what God blessed us with. He gave women breasts to provide her babies with the very best food there is to start life eating. He gave us plants that bear seeds of their own kind and grow in soil enriched with natural humus from the decomposed matter of other organisms, moistened with water from the heavens and fed by the sun. He gave us animals that harvest their food from the plains, prairies and pastures of grasses, herbs and forbs.
Now parents see breast feeding as inconvenient and uncomfortable and think nothing of feeding formula to their baby. Because fewer than 10% of Americans garden, nearly all children never experience full flavored vegetables and will not eat a vegetable unless it’s a pesticide laden potato, fried in GM vegetable oil, and coated in sugar/HFCS in the form of ketchup.
Now that animals raised for meat have been shuttered away in massive barns on factory farms where they never see the light of day, never breathe fresh air or eat a blade of grass; kids today gorge themselves on nitrite filled hot dogs and bacon, chicken nuggets, hamburgers and other meat products which convey more harm than nutrition; and to top it off, these kids are never taught the moral or ethical implications of the fact that animal lost it’s entire life so they could satiate their hunger with a minute portion of that animal’s flesh. So let’s make an extra effort to express our love for our kids. Let’s stop focusing on the price tag or convenience when we make choices about what we feed them. Let’s take them by the hand and show them how we can bring forth nutritious and delicious food from the earth with a little hard work in our yard, or even in a container on the back deck. Let’s teach them the a lesson in the value of life by taking them to a family farm that raises meat animals so they can understand that there is a greater price that is paid in blood in order for them to eat their flesh.
