Everyday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso Read Free Book Online

plead with your little ones to eat even one bite of protein, much less anything that looks like a vegetable. OK, so maybe that description is a little over the top and some folks land somewhere in the middle, but either way, introducing paleo does not have to be another battle. In fact, switching the family to a paleo lifestyle should be the end of any previous food wars, and your food life will eventually become incredibly easier to manage.
    Before I unveil the secrets to paleo kid success, let’s talk about why kids and paleo are important. The health and longevity of your children depend on your decision to feed them a paleo diet. The above statement is not meant to make you feel guilty or wrong, it’s purely factual. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of childhood-onset type 2 diabetes has increased at an alarming rate over the last two decades. Type 2 diabetes was originally called “adult-onset diabetes” because it was typically only diagnosed in adults over the age of forty. Today, one in three children are at risk of developing this devastating condition. Furthermore, if you have not noticed with your own eyes, childhood obesity has been on an overwhelming climb over the last twenty years (seeing any correlation yet between the high-carb/low-fat trend and the certain near-future death of our youth?). With childhood obesity, besides upping the risk for type 2 diabetes, our kids are also facing a much higher likelihood of suffering from lots of other illnesses early on in life, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and depression. In fact, we are looking at a generation of children in which a large majority might die due to obesity-related diseases even before we do! What happened to worrying about our kids’ first kiss, whether or not they make good grades, or how late they stay out with their friends?
    The statistics are frightening, but this happens to be our current reality, so let’s get started together on getting the kids on track.
    Your first concern might be that by switching your children to a paleo diet, they risk the chance of missing out on all the essential nutrients necessary to support a developing body, brain, and immune system. The truth is, with a paleo diet, a child is actually more likely to obtain, absorb, and utilize all the necessary macronutrients essential to health and longevity. By eating paleo foods—remember, the foods our bodies are meant to run on—you and your child will be consuming more nutrient-dense foods than before, and no matter how you look at it, foods that are more nutrient rich always win.
    If one were to compare a standard American meal to a paleo meal, the paleo meal will prove to be more nutritious. And by removing gut-irritating, inflammation-causing grains, legumes, and dairy products from your child’s meals, you will enable your child to adequately digest and use the nutrients consumed through the optimal paleo diet.
    As important as it is to understand why your child should eat paleo, it is just as important to understand how their little minds work so that switching over to the paleo diet is a successful venture. Please understand that kids live for attention. Getting attention, either in a positive or negative manner, is why kids wake up in the morning and why they refuse to go to bed at night. This is totally normal, and how we manage their needs for attention will determine whether or not change, whatever it might be, will result in monumental tantrums or a rewarding journey together.
    When transitioning your family to paleo eating, this is the first fact that I suggest you keep in mind: The more attention you give to the reality that you are changing what you all are eating, the more resistant your kids will be to your efforts. Just as I suggested in the first chapter, you must also make the “fun kid food” and the processed and grain-based foods disappear. Do not make the disappearance of these foods a production.