CHILDREN SHOULD VEG OUT
Derby Evening Telegraph 19th May 2003 . This Is Derbyshire Website
"I became a vegetarian in 1979. The idea to give up meat came to me after I'd spent a day rescuing an injured pigeon. That night, my parents offered me chicken. It occurred to me that this was hypocritical. We went out of our way to be kind to some animals - and ate others. I might as well have eaten the pigeon.
Parents all over Derbyshire face daily battles over healthy food. But what can you do to stop children turning up their noses at a nice plate of steamed pak choi? Tony Martin (42), of Borrowash, knows the answer. Tony has had custody of his son, David, since he was six. Since then, Tony has encouraged David to eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables - with amazing results. Here, Tony explains his approach.
In 1986, I went one stage further and became a vegan (someone who eats nothing derived from animal, including milk). I'd just a watched a video about what goes on in the dairy industry and I felt horrified and just stopped. I had no idea what to eat at first - on the first day, I lived on tomato sandwiches. Now I've found vegan substitutes for almost everything and I don't miss out. I love my food - as my 91 kilos will testify.
When my son, David (now aged 11) came to live with me, at the age of six, he loved convenience food, sweets and crisps. I wanted to introduce him to a healthier, vegan lifestyle but it was important not to force him. I just used incentives, set a good example myself and encouraged him to give things like lettuce and French beans a try - children are fond of saying they don't like something they have never even tasted!
The one thing which really worked as an incentive was the counter pot. Every time he tried something, or opted to have fruit instead of sweets, we'd stick a counter in the pot. Once the pot was full, I'd give him £5. I also said that, if he refused to eat unhealthy sweets and crisps offered by classmates, I'd give him some additive-free treats later on and pay him three times the value of the sweets he'd turned down. That was very popular.
Which is how he's come to love fruit and vegetables. Take tomatoes. He arrived here saying he disliked them but he agreed to give them a try and now he can't get enough - he eats sauces made with tomato, he puts puree on home-made pizza and he likes them sliced and raw dipped in houmous.
Familiarising him with healthy food gradually paid off. After a few months, he understood that it was better to just eat half a bag of crisps because of the high salt content. Like most children, some days he is really hungry and wants snack food but I offer healthier alternatives, like bananas - he once sat and ate four bananas, one after the other.
David loves lettuce, cucumbers, avocados and almost every vegetable but he's also a typical child in other respects. He would still choose sweets over fruit (but not all the time) so I find it's important to keep healthy alternatives on hand and I buy healthier sweets and snacks in bulk from the wholesalers. I've also bought things, like dairy-free Mars Bars, on the internet or from local health food shops.
It's important to stress that everyone has likes and dislikes and I'd never force something on David just because it's good for him. Like most kids, he hates cabbage and sprouts.
On the whole, David eats very well. For breakfast he'll normally have porridge oats made with soya milk and sweetened with a little maple syrup. He also likes organic breakfast cereal. David will also have some fruit and pure fruit juice - he likes freshly-squeezed as he enjoys helping to juice the oranges himself. I remember seeing an advert for a fruit juice drink once boasting "Now contains real fruit!" and I had to laugh; what is it supposed to be made from?
David takes jam sandwiches to school made with wholemeal bread and pure fruit jam. Or he has vegetable pate on crackers and, if he wants sweets, he'll take in a healthier alternative like an additive-free liquorice stick, halva (full of calcium and protein) or a soya yoghurt.
In the evening, we'll have pasta and homemade sauce or rice with sunflower seeds and nuts. He also loves things like veggie burgers, chips and beans. We usually have a treat like ice cream, a choc-ice or yoghurt based on soya, but we'll always have a couple of portions of fresh fruit too.
David eats at least two pounds of fruit a day. I eat around six and both of us sometimes have a lot more as we juice various fruits.
I believe David has benefited both mentally and physically from having so much fruit and vegetables in his diet. For one, he's incredibly well-behaved. On his school report the head teacher wrote "What a super year's work. David is an asset to his class and the school. He is always polite and helpful." David looks set to get a high Level Five in maths and science in this years' SATs. I don't believe that his diet makes him more intelligent but he has better concentration as he doesn't waste time behaving badly.
But, if he does has some sweets from a friend or relative and it's full of chemicals, then he is noticeably naughtier, he finds it harder to get to sleep and will wake up tired and grumpy at school time. Does this sound familiar to other parents?
He keeps in amazingly good health too. Both his mum and I suffer from psoriasis and David used to suffer from it quite badly. Within a few months of eating more fresh food, it had started to clear up and breaks out only very occasionally. He also had warts all over his hands. They are caused by a virus and having a depleted immune system allows them to spread. After a few years on his new diet, they vanished completely and have never returned.
He rarely gets colds. He was off for five days from school once but this was after he'd been to stay with relatives and I discovered he'd only had two portions of fruit in five days. Another time, he bashed his arm and the doctor suggested Calpol for the pain - neither of us knew what it was. After being here five years, he wanted some tweezers and I said: 'look in the medicine cabinet'. He replied: "We have a medicine cabinet?" He just knew it as the cupboard where the plasters are kept.
David loves sport and is very fit. He spends much of his spare time climbing a cherry tree in the garden. He's into football, basketball and judo and, even though he's only 11, he can lift me clean off my feet and I weigh nearly three times his weight!
I would be very concerned if David was one of the children who didn't eat fruit and vegetables. I've read a lot on the subject and so many of the foodstuffs aimed at children are full of artificial chemicals and colour.
I would urge all parents to go to the supermarket and have a look at some of the breakfast cereals aimed especially at children, as most are around 30 per cent sugar.
If David ate a lot of junk food full of chemicals, animal fats and sugar, I would definitely be worried about an increased risk of him contracting cancer, heart or other diseases.
About 80 per cent of the vegetables we eat are raw, as we eat them in salads, freshly-squeezed juices and vegetable crudit??s. It's the healthy way to eat it - cooking destroys some of the vitamins and alters the structure of the proteins. No other animal cooks food and I'm convinced that encouraging children to eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables will prevent many health problems in later life.
I know some people say he could rebel when he's older but I believe that bringing up children is a damage limitation exercise - no-one can really know what's going to happen in later life but your job as a parent is to give them the best start, which includes making sure they have a healthy diet and lots of exercise - and trying to be the best parent you possibly can.
Think about your car, would you put cheap and nasty petrol in it? Then why do that to your child?"