Review by STACY DONG (www.zainelicious.blogspot.com)
FEEDING BABY GREEN
The Earth-Friendly Program for Healthy, Safe Nutrition During Pregnancy, Childhood and Beyond
By Alan Greene, M.D.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
This is a book by Dr Greene who is also the author of Raising Baby Green. This is not a recipe book for babies and toddlers. This book is about teaching our kids how to appreciate and like real food like fruits and vegetables instead of making commercially-prepared food, like fast food (think french fries), high-sugared desserts (think doughnuts) or sweetened beverages (think soft drinks) their food of choice.
Feeding Baby Green is a “programme designed to provide children the food that is good for them even before they are born, while teaching them to enjoy healthy amounts of wonderful foods throughout their lives”. Dr Greene calls this the “nutritional intelligence”.
Nutritional intelligence would give a strong foundation for building a healthy and delicious future for your child, by teaching them to appreciate the more complex flavours of healthy, unprocessed food.
Dr Greene talks about the eight essential steps for teaching nutritional intelligence. The steps include parents “taking charge”, using the “windows of opportunities”, engaging the child’s senses, choosing the right amount, variety and needs of food, exercising and finally, “reaping the benefits of green” where we help our children “connect the dots about where food comes from, its nutritional and organic purity and its impact on sustaining the future of our environment”.
Dr Greene believes that like the language windows in early childhood when it is easiest for children to distinguish different languages, there are also taste windows – from birth through the end of the baby’s second year - where you can make a deeper impact on future food choices.
These eight essential steps are discussed in-depth throughout this period of time; i.e. during pregnancy, during infancy (from birth to nine months of age) and during toddlerhood (from nine months to two years).
This book gives a lot of information that you would need to know, from pre-natal vitamins for the mother to formulas and nutrition for the child and everything in between.
Dr Greene also includes a lot of eye-opening studies that have been done throughout the years. For example, researchers at the University of Southampton found that there is a positive correlation between hidden colours and preservatives found in commercially prepared food and hyperactivity.
There are also his favourite recipes and baby food throughout the book.
Dr Greene’s passion for helping our future generation learn about healthy food and its sustainability is apparent throughout the book.
This is a must-get book for all parents with kids of all ages. I find this book completely interesting and this in turn makes it an easy read for me.
It has a lot of information but has been presented in a way that you would want to keep turning the pages to find out more. I guess as a mother, it is a natural instinct that I would want to find out more about how to keep my son healthy, not just for now, but for the long run.
As with Dr Green’s signature style, the book is not pushy. Dr Greene simply puts out the information with numerous tools and tips as to how to go about helping our children enjoy and grow to love real food.
Childhood obesity is a true epidemic that is sweeping across the world. It is painfully apparent that what we grew up eating is not going to work for our children. And this book is the perfect book for you to get started making a change in your child’s diet.
Quoting one of the steps to nutritional intelligence - it’s time to “TAKE CHARGE”, parents!