My daughter is 8yo and has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, an anxiety disorder, and severe sensory integration disorder. I have witnessed first-hand the powerful impact that diet has on her behavior. Whole, full-fat foods and vitamin and mineral supplements make a big difference in her–even to the point where we’ve been able to greatly reduce her anxiety medication. The problem is that it’s very difficult to get other people to understand that. The teachers at school give candy as behavior and performance rewards (how backwards is THAT?!?). Other people have the mentality that, “oh, she’s a kid…it’s not going to hurt anything.” But it does, and they don’t get that. It’s very frustrating.

It’s not that I don’t understan irony or parodoxes, I’m just Italian and after seeing something like this

http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/heart/cholesterol.html

I considered that cover plausible

Good God. Next it’ll be chewable cherry-flavored statins.

The whole cover is a fake, just making fun of the lousy nutrition advice in the magazine.

Best wishes,
M

I suppose it can’t hurt to send a link to the post. The problem is that when it comes to covering health issues, most of the media immediately “round up the usual suspects” — registered dieticians, nutritionists, or MDs, who all preach from the same gospel.

What’s your take on replacing the sugar with artificial sweeteners?

I don’t think most of them are as damaging as sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (which is probably worst of all), but I’m cutting back on them anyway. I’ve read that for many people, merely the taste of something sweet produces an insulin spike. A Pavlovian response, if you will. And I know aspartame can create real issues for some people. My mom won’t touch the stuff because it makes her fingers feel numb.

I think Mother Nature made sweet taste good to us because she wanted us to eat fruit when we found it. But we only found it in season, and it wasn’t genetically engineered to be extra sweet, like it is today.

Tough to fill the areas around the ad space, however.

My daughter has the soul of a comedian. We told her she has my hair (same color and texture), and later, after looking at me for a bit, she said, “Daddy, do you want some of your hair back?”

I know exactly what you mean about not wanting it to be over. I always have that feeling when I realize I’m nearing the end of a good book or film. I’m flattered you feel that way about Fat Head.

And did you know that temper tantrums, screaming at parents, refusing to obey parents, shouting profanities at parents, etc. is now called “Oppositional Defiance Disorder” and is treated by having parents take parenting skills classes to learn from “experts” how to defuse their child’s ODD, and if their skills don’t improve enough to help their child, then they can try drugs developed for schizophrenia or OCD on their kids?

Good grief … my wife and I call those behaviors “Kids Testing Their Boundaries,” and we treat them without benefit of modern pharmaceuticals.

Apparently if you attach a frightening, multi-syllabic label to any condition, you can sell a drug to treat it.

I went to a doctor once when I had the flu. I knew I had the flu, I just needed a medical certificate for study purposes. She said to me “Well, you probably have the flu. I’ll give you some antibiotics anyway ’cause they might help”.

I basically snorted at the doctor and said “you’re kidding, right?”. She dismissed me, but gave me the medical certificate anyway, so I could get notes for the lectures I had missed, ironically talking about the evils of antibiotic resistance. I never picked up my antibiotic prescription.

One result of researching this film is that I’m less likely to listen to doctors. I suppose I’ll end up with a black mark in my record soon.

A year ago, I had a doctor tell me I needed to go on a lowfat diet because my cholesterol was elevated. When I asked him to put a number to that claim, the answer was 203. I asked for my HDL figure. It was 61. I asked for my triglycerides. They were 62. I told him he just informed me that I have an excellent lipid profile for a 50-year-old man, and my diet was obviously fine.