Kids go through different motivational stages. Right now my kids are into things that makes them feel smart or strong and that includes food. For example, if I put something like roast carrots on their plates and they linger uneaten, all I have to say is, “they’ll help you see better,” and they’re gobbled up in a jiff.

All too often, kids (and many adults) aren’t aware of the important health benefits certain foods offer their bodies and minds. Yet when we start to understand the positive effects different foods have on our bodies, we tend to make better choices, and in many ways, start to enjoy eating more.

We’re big Greek yogurt eaters in my house. Greek yogurt is packed with protein, calcium and most contain natural probiotics which are great for our digestive health and can even boost our immune systems. Combine it with two other super foods like blueberries and walnuts, omega-3 and fiber-packed flax seeds, and a few other naturally sweet ingredients like apples and honey and you’ve got a true power breakfast that will give your body and mind a big boost first thing in the morning — when you need it most.

How smart do you feel now knowing that? And to make you feel even smarter, try my Brainy Breakfast recipe.

This week we’re going to talk about breakfast. We all know it’s important, but some times it just sneaks up on us. You would think that for someone who cooks as much as I do, I would have a fridge full of food 24/7. Although I do try and keep my larder well stocked, there are many weeks when I’m running around non-stop and don’t make it to the grocery to pick up our every day essentials.

Still, there are three things that I ALWAYS have on hand; eggs, tortillas and cheese. They’re all relatively inexpensive, last for weeks if properly refrigerated, and combined, make the perfect breakfast meal that will send your kids off to school with tons of energy for their day.

I had originally tried making this Breakfast Quesadilla with scrambled eggs, but when it came time to eat it, huge chunks of eggs kept falling out of the tortillas all over the floor. No one dislikes clean up more than me, so I went back to the drawing board and experimented — this time cooking the eggs like a thin omelet, topping each side with melted cheese and then sandwiching it all between two tortillas (if you want to watch how to do it, here’s a cooking video for this recipe that walks you through the simple process in detail).

My kids love this recipe so much, it’s gone into heavy morning breakfast rotation. That’s good news for me, especially for tomorrow since I just checked and my fridge is practically bare again!

If it seems like nowadays there’s someone in every school classrooms with a food allergy, that’s because almost 1 in 12 kids today have food allergies – and 1 in 32 have serious food allergies, serious enough to have already caused the child to have symptoms like trouble breathing, a drop in blood pressure, or shock, according to a 2011 study of almost 40,000 US households.

Peanuts, milk, and shellfish were the top three foods kids were allergic to at any age. Milk was number one from birth to age 2, peanuts from 3 to 13 years old, and shellfish beyond the 14th birthday. Rounding out the top nine allergic foods throughout childhood, in order, were tree nuts, eggs, fish, strawberries, wheat, and soy.

More than half of those who were allergic to peanuts or tree nuts had experienced a severe reaction. Severe reactions were also found in more than 40% of those allergic to shellfish, soy, or fish. Among the top allergy foods, strawberries were the least likely to have triggered a severe reaction – but it still happened in 1 in 5 strawberry-allergic kids.

Other new findings: peanuts and fish both caused allergies in more kids than previously reported. And among kids allergic to any food, more than 30% had multiple food allergies. As one might guess, those with multiple food allergies were even more likely to have had a severe reaction (makes sense, but not demonstrated before).

Allergies can come and go. Food allergies were common in children of every age, but most common from age 3 to 5. Severe food allergies, on the other hand, got more common with age and were more than twice as likely in kids 14 and over than in those 2 and under.

Gupta RS, Springston EE, Warrier MR, Smith B, Kumar R, Pongracic J, and Holl JL. “The Prevalence, Severity, and Distribution of Childhood Food Allergy in the United States.” Pediatrics. Jul 2011; 128(1):e9-17.

Some of our children’s food choices are made at home – but as they grow, many are made in childcare or at school. We need our schools and daycare centers to be working with us, not against us in teaching children to enjoy healthy amounts of good food, cultivating Nutritional Intelligence.

About half of all middle schools and high schools in the US permit advertising of candy, fast-food restaurants, and/or sodas at school! This practice is most common in Ohio (nearly 70 percent of schools) and least common in New York (24 percent).

Does advertising affect our kids’ food choices? Of course it does! And in more ways that you might think. The Institute of Medicine has found that advertising to children affects their preferences, purchases, and consumption – changing their habits for different food and beverage categories, in addition to specific product brands.

Some estimate that each year, nationwide, for every dollar spent on promoting junk food to our children only about 1/10 of a penny is spent promoting healthy food. Schools are one place where the opposite should be true. At least.

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Children’s Food Environment State Indicator Report, 2011.

IOM (Institute of Medicine). 2005. Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “Fast Food FACTS: Evaluating Fast Food Nutrition and Marketing to Youth.” November, 2010

The only special treatment my young children get when we walk into a restaurant are the crayons and kiddie menu to doodle on. Why in the world would we punish them with chicken nuggets, hot dog, a reheated pizza, or whatnot, when they can be enjoying the fine Italian/Thai/French/Vietnamese/Californian cuisine that the adults are having?

Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t.

There’s this belief that children can’t eat grown-up food. They won’t like it. They don’t eat veggies. They can’t handle complex tastes, yadda yadda…

Same thing happens when grocery shopping at the supermarket. Entire aisles, product lines, and companies are devoted to that beloved niche market – our kids. Granted, there are some products for babies that make sense – a jar of Gerber to keep in a diaper bag for those cases when baby’s hungry and you’re not near the kitchen. But have you had a look at your pantry and fridge to count up all the things you bought because they’re for kids?

Whether it’s Danimals, a sugary cereal, or glow in the dark Mac ‘n Cheese – think about the real reason you bought these items. Is it because your children really need them? Or because of the clever packaging that has led you to believe these are better choice for your little ones?

What you’ll discover in many cases is that you’ve gotten something with more sugar and in some cases artificial colorings. Blue is a fun color to paint with. Not to eat.

If your children are still very young and not subject to too much outside influence other than parents and close family, it should be very easy to refrain from kid branded products. Problems usually arise when a child starts preschool or learns from older friends in the surrounding social circle.

Viewing TV commercials is a contributing factor, too. It would be great if manufacturers would refrain from using kid pop icons on their packaging. But the deal is just too sweet for both Hollywood and the brand manufacturers. Unfortunately, the industry self regulation is very lax, and the government does not and cannot effectively intervene.

So it’s up to parents to figure out a game plan that works for their family. There’s no one right solution.

Whatever you decide, try not to be too extreme. The 80 / 20 rule seems to be effective with many of our readers – if your children eat 80% of their food as healthful as you can muster, but the other 20% more leniently (including junk food and post-modern snacks), then you’re off to a good start. If you deny your children any of the treats that they see their friends consuming, you’ll be in for quite the rebellion once they hit the teenage years.

What food strategies are you implementing with your children?

Any parent who has ever seen the reaction of a 3-year-old to the idea of heading to McDonald’s for lunch won’t be surprised by the results of a recent study reported in the journal of Psychology and Marketing. Researchers discovered that children as young as 3 could not only recognize brands but also associated strong judgments with them.

According to the study, preschoolers (ages 3-5) perceived fast food as “fun, exciting and tasty,” and they recognized cola brands as fun and knew that “lots of people like them.” According to the researchers, “the present findings suggest that children aged 3 to 5 years have an emerging capacity to understand the symbols of brands for which they form part of the target segment. Preschoolers can and do judge others on the basis of brand use. This finding has clear public policy implications in relation to at least two issues: materialism and the formation of eating habits.”

While many may find this news disheartening, I see a beautiful opportunity instead. Since we know that our littlest children are so tuned in to the world around them that they develop brand recognition, we can use this information to  “brand” and reinforce nutritious food! This is the idea behind my latest book, Feeding Baby Green. The secret is to introduce children even before they’re born to the food that will keep them healthy and happy. That’s the branding that will truly make a difference in our children’s lives.

McAlister, A. R., and Cornwell, T. B. “Children’s Brand Symbolism Understanding: Links to Theory of Mind and Executive Functioning” Psychology and Marketing. 2010;27(3):203-228

The more servings of French fries that women had eaten way back when they were preschoolers, the more likely they were to develop breast cancer as adults, according to a Harvard study in the August 10, 2005 online International Journal of Cancer.

We know that diet and cancer are often linked, and that changes in pre-pubertal breasts could lead to later cancer. This study was based on data spanning over forty years from the Nurses’ Health Study, which follows thousands of nurses over time. The mothers of the nurses were asked to describe their preschool. Out of 30 foods analyzed, French fries were the only food linked to higher breast cancer rates (whole milk during the preschool years was linked to a slightly lower than average rate). For every weekly serving of fries the adult risk of breast cancer rose 27 percent! Even though high fat diets have been associated with increased breast cancer risk, in this study the French fry effect is not just the fat. Other high fat foods such as hot dogs and ice cream were not associated with the increased risk.

While this one study is not enough to prove that fries cause cancer, it is consistent with cancer concerns arising from the acrylamide in fries. A survey of the American diet found that for today’s toddlers, French fries are the number one ‘vegetable’ consumed. Fries are the most common side item in kids’ meals. And they are even a top seller in school cafeterias. Breast cancer strikes more than 200,000 women in the U.S. each year.

More than 10 percent of American kids between the ages of 2 and 5 are already overweight or obese, according to the January 2005 annual statistics report of the American Heart Association. This number comes from an analysis of children measured in 2002, and is the latest data available. It’s almost half-again as many as were overweight in 1994, when 7 percent of American preschoolers were already in weight trouble.

Given that most American children are hooked on junk food before age 2, these numbers do not surprise me. But they do alarm me. It’s more than a million overweight kids before they start elementary school. And the number swells to 4 million during the elementary school years. Our kids deserve to be taught to truly enjoy eating healthy amounts of healthful foods, and to enjoy, to revel in, active play – preferably before the bad habits even start. That’s one of the reasons I wrote From First Kicks to First Steps. These healthy habits are easiest for parents to teach before the toddler years, and can even be started before the baby is born!

The heavier kids are during the toddler, preschool, and school years, the greatest the chance they have of developing cancer as young adults, according to a study published in the November 1, 2004 International Journal of Cancer. Researchers in the Boyd Orr Study of Diet and Health in Pre-War Britain measured the heights and weights of more than 2,000 children between the ages of 2 and 14 during 1937-1939. These children were then followed for 50 years, into their 50.s and 60.s – the longest follow-up we have for study like this.

A total of 380 of the people developed cancer (188 men and 192 women). Those who developed cancer were more likely to have been obese as children. Body mass index (BMI), calculated from the heights and weights, is the best measure of obesity. For every standard deviation increase in BMI in the children, there was a 9 percent increase in cancer risk, after accounting for other factors. For smoking related cancers, the risk increased 30 percent for every standard deviation increase in BMI.

Right now, we are raising the most obese, the most sedentary generation in history. Unless cancer risks change dramatically, we are heading for an unprecedented cancer epidemic in the years ahead. Taking action to prevent or reverse obesity in your children is one of the greatest gifts you can give as a parent.

Could it be that fruit eaten in childhood has a lifelong protective effect? Of course, this would take a long time to find out. Thousands of families in England and Scotland were studied in 1937 and 1939 – and the children were followed for more than sixty years! The results were published in the March 2003 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Those children in the top 25 percent of fruit eaters in the study were 38 percent less likely to develop cancer throughout their lives, even after taking other risks such as tobacco into account. As little as 88.4 grams of fruit a day (the size of a small apple) had a significant protective effect.

Does the benefit of childhood- fruit-eating come from establishing good habits? (We do know that adult-fruit-eating protects against cancers.) Or is there a special benefit during childhood of getting the wonderful vitamins, antioxidants, fiber, isoflavones, coumarins, or glucosinolates found in fruits? (We do know that some exposures that occur only in developing children will influence them for a lifetime.)

I suspect that both are true. Either way, each bite of fresh fruit, especially organic fruit, protects against the DNA damage that can lead to cancer. Try berries on cereal or pancakes. Try bananas on oatmeal when the weather is cold. Try blended fruit in freezer-pops when it’s hot out. Dip apple slices in organic yogurt or serve them with organic cheese. Or plop fruit, ice, and yogurt in the blender for a healthy treat. Delicious and health-building at the same time – how fun is that!