Healthy Kids: Help Them Eat Smart and Stay Active--For Life! Book

In Healthy Kids, actress Marilu Henner guides you to better health for your kids by emphasizing fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, and avoiding sugar, white flour, red meat, chemicals, caffeine, large portions, heavily processed "dead foods," and dairy (cow's milk, she contends, contributes to colic, diarrhea, bed-wetting, allergies, ear infections, and other health problems). "Healthy food equals healthy kids," Henner writes. Henner offers the large picture--how to adopt healthy eating habits yourself and instill them in your children--combined with helpful tips. Your challenges are different in the first years of your children's lives, she writes, when you are basically choosing their foods and modeling behavior you want them to follow, than later, when children are more independent and make more of their own food choices. Healthy Kids offers information and pointers for each stage with chapters on pregnancy, infancy, toddler, preschool, and each stage of school from elementary to college. Henner also promotes exercise, creative games, and health-oriented teaching games (which seem rather heavy-handed; for instance, having your kids put food pictures into the food pyramid). Her 100-plus "Kid-Friendly Recipes" should be a hit, though, with healthy versions of pancakes, muffins, smoothies, soups, veggies, sandwiches, pasta, fish, chicken, and, of course, desserts. --Joan Price Read More