Today I want to share a personal story with you about how my son improved his health with intentional eating. Perhaps what I share will help you as well.
About Intentional Eating
As you know, food has always been important to me my entire life. Then it became my work. When we had the bakery, we focused on the ingredients in order to make our products stand out. At the time I didn’t consider that intentional eating. Now I realize it was exactly that. I not only knew every ingredient that went into our products, I understood them. My goal was to use the best ingredients to make the best products so that when others ate them they were transported to a different time. For me, that time was sitting around a table in my grandma’s kitchen. Life was slower and food was better. Indeed, many of our customers identified our products with their own loving family memories the way I did.
You may be wondering what this has to do with intentional eating. Can eating a slice of cake be eating with intention? Afterall, cake cannot be considered healthy no matter how it’s made.
Intentional eating isn’t just about health. It’s being mindful about what you’re eating and why you’re eating it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a slice of cake or a healthy salad. Michael Pollan, a notable environmental journalist, describes intentional eating as starting with “outlining the values you hold around food: such as sustainability, ethics, pleasure, social justice, cost, health or community.” For instance, if you value sustainability you may eat less meat, or eat only organic meat. Perhaps you may become vegan.
Similarly, if your focus is on your health, then you will be tuned into what’s in your food and cook more at home. Instead of a diet of processed foods you may opt for locally sourced whole foods to create your own meals. I wholeheartedly agreed with Pollan’s philosophy that we’ve been tricked into thinking cooking is like “rocket science” by modern food culture. https://fortune.com/well/2022/11/22/michael-pollan-intentional-eating-masterclass/. Cooking at home can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be.
Unfortunately, we’ve been duped by the big food corporations that put a lot of money into marketing their chemical laden creations. These unhealthy foods are everywhere, easily obtainable and taste delicious. It makes eating anything anywhere a lot more challenging, including cooking at home. Your home cooked meals are only as good as the ingredients that go into them. Many of our ingredients are now created in a lab, grown with pesticides or raised unhealthily. They lead to diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
Our world is not yet ready to educate us about the effect these foods can have on our health, nor are we prepared to become unified intentional eaters. The result is a travesty. It’s a necessity we educate ourselves and our children. This recently hit very close to home for me. I realized it’s not enough that I feed my kids healthy or try to protect them from harmful ingredients. Instead, I need to educate them—because no one else will.
My Son’s Story
I have two sons. They are both young adults, a fact that I have to remind myself of often. One of them has always been a picky eater. Perhaps you’ve heard of the rule that you need to feed your child something ten times before they come to like it. That rule does not apply to my son. It doesn’t matter how many times I offer a food, if he doesn’t like it at first, he will never eat it. Unfortunately, he decided long ago that he didn’t like most fruits and vegetables. Just call him king of the snack foods.
Mr. Snack Foods has always been a socially outgoing wild child. When he was young he was often running the neighborhood or sleeping over at friend’s houses. His active social calendar presented grave obstacles for his momma in keeping tabs on what he consumed. In recent years, as intentional eating became more important to me and I gained more knowledge about what’s in our food, I began to rid our home of anything I deemed to be bad. But habits formed are difficult to break. Palates made are just as hard to change. While I may have rid our home of the bad stuff, it did not seem to prevent Mr. SF from buying his own junk food elsewhere.
The food of choice for Mr. Snack Foods over the years was sweet and ultra-processed. In a world filled with highly processed foods made with cheap ingredients one can’t pronounce, or understand, choices are aplenty. All choices leading down a brick road to eventual health problems. In all honesty, it wasn’t all Mr. SF’s fault. Apparently at some point they began making things like crackers, soda and syrup with high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, Red 40, and harmful chemicals. Toxic preservatives, additives and flavorings line the store shelves in the form of edible substances. Mr. SF’s mom (me) didn’t get the memo when things had changed until it was too late and the habits were formed.
I’m a product of the 70’s and 80’s when things were safe. I was busy building a career and family and had no idea food was changing so drastically. There was no global announcement, “HEY WE’RE MAKING YOUR FOOD DIFFERENT NOW”. I went along my merry way, not afraid to introduce my kids to ice cream, syrup or sports drinks. Social influences kept me in the dark. The doctors pushed Sprite and Gatorade when Mr. Snack Foods was sick. Even his school lunch counters lured him with pre-packaged processed delights containing hidden sugars and foods soaked in seed oils. Baseball games and concert venues pushed cheap convenience foods. Vacations meant fast food with little nutritional content. Friends’ houses were a junk food oasis. Their parents also didn’t get the memo.
How was the King of Snack Foods to know that something as benign as a bubbly drink, some crackers and some fruit snacks could be harmful? That a “wholesome” sandwich made with cold cuts or a hot dog on the grill could be bad? That trips to DQ, McDonald’s or even (God forbid) the local bakery may harm him?
You see, over time, that’s what he became used to. All the unhealthy foods packing hidden toxic chemicals and way too much sugar. Maybe one snack is ok. But we’re not talking about just one, are we? You can’t view your diet one snack at a time. You have to look at the big picture—like you’re sitting in the new swanky movie theatre watching it on the huge screen.
Let’s say he sits down with a 16 oz bottle of sprite (54 g sugar), one pack of Fruit Snacks (10 g sugar) and 10 Ritz Crackers (2 g sugar). He just consumed 66 grams of sugar in one snack. The recommended daily allowance of sugar for kids is 25 grams and we haven’t even thought about meals yet. Moreover, the majority of the sugars he consumed in that snack are from processed sugars like High Fructose Corn Syrup, not to mention all the other lab created ingredients the food companies now use to make “food”. His crash brewed just below the surface of a sea filled with harmful toxins, starches, processed sugars and hydrogenated fats.
Over the last few years Mr. Snack King’s glucose levels have been creeping up. The doctor would look at the numbers then talk to him about needing to eat healthy. Wasn’t he? Yes, he loves his sugar. But his mom makes him a nice home cooked meal every day and talks about how healthy it is. Isn’t that enough? They teach the food pyramid in school, not the ingredient pyramid.
The crash happened in May. He went to a concert, missed dinner, then he ate a huge plate of waffles the next morning. He came home and couldn’t get out of bed. For a week and a half. It took two trips to the doctor’s office and one emergency room visit. All of his levels were in the danger zone. He felt horrible and of course, he scared his mom half to death.
Taking Control
I am a big proponent for being our own advocate. Most doctors just don’t have time to sit with you and figure things out. I did that with my son. We studied his records, we talked about his eating habits and we figured out what happened. Then I set about to right my wrong. I needed to educate my son about intentional eating. It was no longer good enough to provide healthy food at home, even home cooked meals with good ingredients. I had to prepare him to take care of himself. I had to teach him about ingredients themselves so that he could make better choices when he was on his own. His pre-diabetic crash was a warning and we may not get another chance. Thankfully, he was motivated and eager to learn.
Over the course of the next six weeks he completely overhauled his diet to create healthier habits. In the morning before work he drank a protein fruit smoothie filled with organic ingredients and real fruit. Instead of snack foods he grabbed pistachios and yogurt to balance his blood sugar. If he had a sugar craving he would make another smoothie. Instead of grabbing snack foods he filled up on whole foods. He replaced sugary energy drinks with water and milk. He learned about fiber and carbs, cheap sugars and food toxins.
This all helped him to reduce his intake of highly processed and ultra processed foods. He ate more at home instead of eating out. If he consumed something sugary he paired it with better food to balance it. He got back to exercising more and practicing his newfound intentional eating. I saw him begin to look at his food as it relates to his health on a big screen, not in a vacuum as we are trained to do.
We began overhauling our food awhile back but I have become hyper aware and more careful since this happened. Now I understand that it’s not enough to live a life of intentional eating. I have to be a better teacher.
My son recently returned to the doctor for a check-up. All of his levels were excellent. In fact, his glucose is the lowest it’s been in years. He has also gained 10 pounds and no longer suffers from the mysterious stomach pains that plagued him for the last three years.
This is the end of an era. My son is no longer King of the Snack Foods. Instead, I now fondly think of him as a brave Warrior. He is willing to learn more about his health and how to take control of it, even going to the extent of giving up his beloved comfort foods. He recently went to another concert and brought along a backpack of healthy food. This momma was so proud.
Creating new habits with food isn’t easy, but it can be very rewarding. Being mindful about what you eat, why you eat and when you eat will help you reach your goals better than any fad diet. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy and ice cream treat now and then. It just means that you see your diet as a whole and balance it out based on your beliefs and goals. Know what’s in your food and what you’re putting your body. Knowledge is power.
