THE AMERICAN GROCERY SHOPPER—
Building a Healthy Future for Our Families

By Jane Fredette

We have a phenomenal influence over our children today more than ever before. As adults, the realization of this may not surface until we start teaching our offspring what is best for them.

For one, we can give them the right tools to work with and that includes choosing the proper foods needed to get them through life. In doing so, we will create healthy-minded adults capable of making positive decisions including the foods they eat. Studies are beginning to show a direct connection between the foods our children consume and such things as hyperactivity. Proper nutrition education, I believe, can lessen the incidence of hyperactivity (and even aggressive behavior in children). With proper diet, they can be more present and productive in the classroom and in our homes.

Fast food and chemically-laden foods seem to dominate our food choices these days. When children are small we make sure they play sports, dance, use proper manners and use proper hygiene. An education in nutrition is missing in America that goes beyond the four food groups. It is getting back to the basics of natural foods, which are so beautifully put here on earth for us, that we can and should share with our children.

I recently visited the home of a hyperactive child and asked the parents if they would be so kind as to let me look in their cupboards. It did not surprise me to see sugar and boxed foods everywhere. Pop, juice, Popsicles, chips, candy, macaroni and cheese (in the box), cereal (in the box), pudding cups, cookies, and some old moldy fruit and vegetables. Yes, these foods are convenient and, yes, kids may even beg for them, but they are not foods that build health, nor are they nutritious.

Marketing robs us of being creative in the kitchen. By creative I mean even something as simple as a chicken dinner with a fresh green salad (other than iceberg lettuce, which has no nutritional value at all), and some raw or slightly cooked veggies and fruit for dessert. Cooking healthfully doesn’t have to be wildly creative—just reflect common sense.

Who is buying the groceries?

If you are your family’s grocery shopper, you are the one who will influence the future of your family’s health and well-being. Of course, we all fall off the track (as seen in the family above)—it is only human nature—but the education of what to come back to would be there if we took measures early on to learn what is good for us and our bodies. Is it that we trust the industry too much to take care of our nutritional needs, or that we are too lazy to look beyond boxed and canned food and fast food restaurants?

Please feed your family the way they deserve to be fed. Physicians are wonderful when needed, but we can head off future disease by eating more of the good foods. You cannot tell the health of a human being from a simple physical. The disease process does not happen over night. It takes time to manifest and become visible. We have to take care of the invisible by insuring the best nutrients for our families and ourselves. Now.

Contact your local nutritionist for an evaluation. It is not expensive, only very informative and educational. Abraham Lincoln said, “If a man wants to empty his purse into his head, so be it! An investment in education always pays the best interest.” Why not an education in nutrition?

As a country we deserve better. We, as its people, need to initiate now what the future of our children will be, both physically and mentally for a brighter future for all of us.

Jane Fredette is a Certified Nutritionist and autoimmune (Lupus) deficiency survivor currently working with Pharmanex, the top rated supplement provider in the world (according to consumerwatch.com). Jfredette7@comcast.net