Dilute Your Carbs

When you reach for a snack for yourself or your child, make it a balanced one. So many snacks today, even 'healthier' options, are carb-heavy (almost exclusively carbohydrates). Crackers. Cheerios. Goldfish. An apple or banana. A glass of juice. And that piece of banana bread.

With meals, it is usually easier to balance it out - to get some fat and protein into your body. But with snacks, it is harder. Let's face it: carbs are convenient, crunchy, and shelf stable.  

At Eat the Butter, we love the idea of diluting carbs with fat and protein, even at snack time. It is not a new idea - bread and butter - crackers and cheese - peaches and cream. And it still works. So, when your daughter reaches for those apple slices, offer her a slice or two of cheddar to go with them. When you are munching on whole grain crackers, grab a hard boiled egg to accompany them. Or, let nature do the balancing:  skip the carb-heavy snack altogether and grab a handful of nuts. It may seem like more calories, but your snack will keep you full longer, reducing future grazing or perhaps reducing what you eat at your next meal. This will also help keep you off the blood sugar roller coaster, as the protein and fat in your snack will slow the rise in blood sugar that follows any snack or meal with carbohydrates

A Diet That Works As We Age

Most mothers teach their kids to eat a diet that is relatively high in carbohydrates... We emphasize whole grains when we can.  Is this the right message?

One of the cruel tricks nature plays on most of us is that our systems tolerate a high-carb diet quite well for a while... Most (though sadly, not all) 18-year-olds can get away with eating lots of sugar and starch. But, just as we cannot expect our eyesight to get better and better as we age, our ability to tolerate the USDA's recommended diet does not get better and better. In fact, it declines. By the time our kids turn 30 or 40, most will be struggling to remain lean and healthy with the very diet that seemed to work when they were in our homes eating corn flakes at our breakfast tables. This is a rude awakening... just as our children take on the responsibilities and pressures of careers and families of their own, the diet we taught them was 'healthy' begins to cause their health to deteriorate.

Why teach your kids to eat 'wrong' -- to eat in a way that will not stand the test of time? The USDA's diet clearly does not work for most adults. If you do not believe this statement, drive to any mall and look around at your fellow shoppers.  So why bet on the diet that has been in place for over three decades and has proved to be an epic failure? Why bank on the notion that your kids will be among the lucky few who can eat a carb-rich diet into middle age without health issues? The odds are stacked against your kids.

Skip the USDA's recommendations, and instead serve vintage food that has stood the test of time. Build habits now that will actually work for your kids when they are your age. Eat vintage. Real food. More fat.

A Universal Law

Most of us would rather buy a used car from the little old lady down the street than the 24-year-old drag racing dude from around the corner. Why? Because we know that the drag racer has been slamming his foot on the accelerator every chance he gets... and the little old lady? She has been using her car with great care. So her car will last longer.

When you wake each morning and consume a carb-heavy breakfast, low in protein and fat, YOU are that dude slamming your foot on the accelerator. Your blood is quickly flooded with the glucose from the sugar and starch in your fruit, breakfast cereal, and skim milk (or your oversized bagel, low-fat cream cheese, and orange juice), so your pancreas scrambles to pump out insulin to keep you from slipping into a hyperglycemic haze. Your blood sugar spikes, your insulin levels spike, and you begin a roller coaster of a day, slamming on the accelerator and the brake from a blood sugar perspective. This is not easy on your body - your pancreas, your tissues, your teeth - high blood sugar and high insulin levels are just not good for any part of you.

Look here for a graph of blood sugar levels after two very different breakfasts...  eggs vs. cereal.

Take it easy on your body. It is your home. Use it gently.  Eat real food.  Eat more fat.

Rethinking the American Diet

It is time to step back and reevaluate our national diet. Chronic diseases, which are closely linked to diet, are at an all-time high. Perhaps we should reconsider the dietary guidelines that influence our choices in the grocery store and restaurants.  

As New York Times bestselling author, Nina Teicholz, puts it, "What if the very foods we've been denying ourselves -- the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks -- are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?" What if, indeed?  

We are a results oriented culture. The low-fat dietary paradigm has been an epic failure. There are other ways of eating... As mothers, it is time that we say, 'Enough.' It's time to take back our grocery carts and our dinner plates, and go back to ways of eating that have stood the test of time. Vintage eating. Here are some options.