Good point about the fruit and fruit juice. I can't tell you how many people think that the sugars in fruit are magically healthy for you because they're "natural". Belladonna is natural too.

Juice and pre-sweetened cereals are only part of the problem. I was raised on that stuff and I didn't get fat.

The other part of the problem is that when I was a kid, playing meant going outside, getting on my bicycle and disappearing until dinnertime. Not sitting at home playing World of Warcraft.

I think you're being unclear about the "corporate" thing. The switch to sarcasm and back can't be tracked.

Juice.

The other part of the problem is that when I was a kid, playing meant going outside, getting on my bicycle and disappearing until dinnertime. Not sitting at home playing World of Warcraft.

For some parents, though, a better diet is all that can be done. Letting your kid ride off on their bike or roam these days can result in a call to the police for child endangerment. Kids still can roam in rural areas and in low-income urban areas. But in "nicer" suburbs? You'll get nailed to the wall with the assistance of your "helpful" neighborhood moms.

But I agree that diet is only half the equation. My cousins' kids eat healthier than I do, but they don't have the coordination or core strength to climb a tree.

Some veggies diced up, sauted in butter till warm, throw in some eggs, top with cheese. Takes 3 minutes. Super delicious.especially now with my home-raised eggs!

I like potatoes occasionally. I like a good beer. Corn tortillas will always have a place here. For me, cutting carbs left room for the ones I really like. Im a nurse and patient families forever bring in Round Rock Donuts. The other day my coworker ate 4. They didnt even tempt me. Flour and sugar: ugh in any form. I had high triglycerides and high cholesterol when i ate a high carb diet. Now, i have super-high good cholesterol, low bad cholesterol and low triglycerides. My blood glucose level the other day, 3 hours after lunch, was 76. It doesnt spike and drop, it stays level. Leafy veggies, cheese, meat, fatty salad dressing. Eggs. Bacon. All so good.

I struggled through Good Calories, Bad Calories, but it was The six Week Cure that got me started on low carb eating. Eight years later, my wife and I still have protein shakes for breakfast from the recipe in the book.

Thanks again for getting us started blogging about low carb.

Sofar, there IS something else the parents can do to keep kids trim - and so many don't. Namely: get them in the habit of "helping" with chores while they're young enough to be fooled into thinking it's just a game. Yes, your chores will likely take twice as long (or longer) that way, but not as long as it would take if you tried to get them to play or look at picture books by themselves (no, screen time is NOT benign), only to find you have to keep them from getting bored and into mischief all the time. Chore-helping will be good practice for later years, when they start complaining there's nothing to do. Even a three-year-old can use a dustpan and brush - or wash floors with a dripping sponge. Or fold small laundry items.

My point, of course, is that chores can be very good exercise if done daily - and too often, even school-age kids aren't expected to do them, for various asinine parental reasons!

(I suspect one big reason is that parents can't stand the thought of being accused of being "mean" if they don't let their kids have more than two hours of screen time a day when other kids probably have six hours, not counting homework.)

Here's a way to incorporate juice into a healthy lifestyle"
Dilute it with vodka!
And hey, give some to the kiddies!5
Works wonders with those pesky behavioral issues!

Blarg! Please excuse the typos.

Sofar, there IS something else the parents can do to keep kids trim - and so many don't. Namely: get them in the habit of "helping" with chores

Agreed. That's what my parents did with me, ESPECIALLY on days I thought I had "nothing" to do. Yard work, especially. Cleaning the garage. Raking leaves. Pulling weeds. Cleaning the basement. Mopping, sweeping. Gardening.

At the same time, though, chores probably occupied 50 percent of my weekday summer vacation days. And, even if you give your kid 6 hours of chores a day to do, there's another 6 hours to occupy. If I didn't have the ability to roam the countryside, I don't know what I'd have done during the summer after chores. Because I know my parents wouldn't have been able/willing to spend the entire day shuttling me around to the kind of "safe," "structured" activities that are now the norm.

But, yeah, chores are falling by the wayside these days, and that's a shame.

So glad, Steamer. Thanks so much for that note.

I didn't get fat on juice, either, but there are individual differences in how well we can handle carbs. All in all, from everything I've read, it makes sense to avoid starchy and sweet carbs (and only take in the few that are in vegetables, dairy, etc.).

I got food poisoning a few weeks ago and had some blood tests. My health stats are wildly, wildly better than when I was running seven miles three times a week back in 2007/8/9 -- wildly stupid and bad for my knees, by the way.

Anyway, I'm as likely to have a heart attack now as I am to be kicked in the knee by a unicorn. And I just spent about three years writing a book and barely leaving the house for the last year and a half or so.

"Kids still can roam in rural areas and in low-income urban areas. But in "nicer" suburbs? You'll get nailed to the wall with the assistance of your "helpful" neighborhood moms."

Starting with the selection of neighborhood. I count bikes when I have to drive through housing, and the number is appalingly low.

I know a couple who WILL NOT buy their son a bicycle "because he might ride it out of sight".

The neighborhood moms have been successfully infected with fear, courtesy of for-profit "news" programs - which, you will note, feature talking heads before and after any actual footage of an event to carefully explain what you should think.

That six week program... July is not a good time to take this on, but it looks like I won't be buying boxed wine come August.

Thank you.

Sorry, but at least 50% (of energy) of our diet should be carbohydrate. After all our brain runs purely on glucose. This is what the science of nutrition tells us. Taubes and Teicholz are dubious sources for nutritional advice. They cherry pick their research data and Teicholz has been accused of plagiarism by Seth Yoder at thescienceofnutrition.com. The best nutrition advice always comes from dietitians for they are the only professionals qualified to give it. Perhaps the best diet going right now is called the DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension.)diet and I am certain that all dietitians would agree on that. Whether or not it is sustainable is another story. Respectfully, Dan Bertini.