Humans have made incredible advances in understanding the human body and the cause of many modern diseases. Yet, despite our progress, we seem to be in the midst of a growing number of health epidemics that are increasingly affecting our children.
Despite a significant drop in childhood mortality rates in the past 100 years because of advances such as improved sanitation and antibiotics, children in 2023 face new threats to their health. Some of the culprits are an increasingly toxic environment, pollutants in our water supply, electromagnetic fields, an ever-increasing number of childhood vaccines, lack of physical exercise, and chemical-laden food.
Although the decline in our children’s health is a complex topic involving multiple factors, eating a healthy diet is one way we can prevent, reverse, and improve many diseases.
At a recent conference in Orlando, Florida, Mandy Blume gave a lecture on the powerful ways that foods can heal us.
Ms. Blume has a Master of Science in nutrition and has spent the past 15 years volunteering in foster group homes, helping children regain their health. She’s also the mother of an autistic child. She founded Real Food Recovery and is the author of the best-selling GFCF (gluten-free, casein-free) cookbook by the same name, “Real Food Recovery.” Ms. Blume practices nutrition at Docs Outside the Box, an organization that offers holistic, urgent, and primary care in St. Petersburg, Florida. She spoke at the Documenting Hope Conference representing the Weston A. Price Foundation.
The Weston A. Price Foundation is a resource for information and research about nutrition based on the research of Dr. Weston A. Price—a dentist who lived from 1870 to 1948. In his quest to find the cause of dental cavities and physical degeneration, Dr. Price traveled the world and discovered that people living on traditional diets had straight teeth, free of decay, and excellent overall health. Dr. Price also observed that when modern diets, which included processed foods such as refined flour and sugar, were introduced, cavities developed and health declined. He’s the author of the book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.”
To illustrate the problem, Ms. Blume shared statistics on various diseases in children. One of which was that 32 million children (43 percent) in the United States have at least one of 20 chronic health conditions. Additionally, 45 percent of children with any one of those 20 conditions had more than one condition. This means that 19.6 percent, or one in five of all children up to 17 years old, have at least two chronic health conditions. These statistics were taken from the journal American Pediatrics in 2011, meaning the numbers are likely much higher now given significantly higher rates of conditions such as obesity and autism.
Ms. Blume explained that food—something we put into our bodies every day—represents the best way to strengthen our bodies and reclaim our health. The foods we eat can heal us, and conversely, can make us sick. Many of our modern diseases can be attributed to lifestyle, which is something we can control by making informed, healthy food choices—vital to keeping ourselves robust and disease-free.
Sugar: The Sweetest Killer
Added sugar is ubiquitous in the standard American diet. It’s highly addictive and detrimental to health—especially the health of children. It’s also implicated in numerous chronic health conditions. A 2023 study published in the British Medical Journal found that eating too much sugar significantly increased the risk of 45 disease states including gout, asthma, depression, high blood pressure, obesity, heart attack, strokes, and cancer.Ms. Blume discussed the dramatic increase in sugar consumption in the past century. A century ago, people ate an average of 25 pounds of sugar per year. Americans now consume an average of 14 pounds of sugar a month—or 168 pounds a year. And although some people aren’t eating nearly that amount of sugar every month, others are consuming far more than the average.
Sugar stored in the warehouse at a sugar mill and ethanol manufacturing plant in Minas Gerais, Brazil. T photography/Shutterstock
Even our healthiest beverages have become denatured in ways that make natural sugar more problematic. Ms. Blume uses the example of orange juice, which most people think of as a healthy choice because it contains vitamin C needed for healing and a strong immune system. Most orange juice contains the equivalent of about 13 teaspoons of sugar (when the maximum we should have daily is nine teaspoons), and the beneficial fiber of the orange is missing—so a far better option would be to eat an orange and drink a glass of water for the equivalent of 3 teaspoons of sugar.
For healthier alternatives to white sugar, Ms. Blume recommends raw local honey, pure maple syrup (grade B), molasses, and stevia to satisfy your sweet tooth.
It’s also vital to read the ingredients on products you buy because sugar is added to many products that you might not associate with sugar, such as condiments, salad dressings, and prepared foods.
Healing With Foods
The good news is that even though many foods we eat can lead to disease and debility, choosing the right ones can detoxify and heal us. Diet has been shown again and again to prevent, reverse, and improve many diseases. Food can be a powerful medicine, if we make informed choices.Eating a healthy diet is particularly important for children’s growth and development. Optimum nutrition has also been shown to have healing effects on children with health challenges such as autism. In a systematic review, a GFCF diet was shown to benefit children with autism spectrum disorder. The diet was shown to reduce stereotypical behaviors associated with the condition as well as improve cognition.
In another meta-analysis, a high-protein diet was found to improve risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease in those with Type 2 diabetes.
Ms. Blume recommends limiting or avoiding processed foods as they have high levels of sodium, chemicals, and processed sugars. She also notes that companies use the cheapest ingredients to maximize profits and spend millions researching how to use chemicals to stimulate the brain to make their products more addictive and manipulate appetite so you eat more.
The recommendations Ms. Blume shares are ones she uses in her home and at the group homes where she works with sick children—saying she sees noticeable results after about two weeks. Her philosophy is to keep your food as close to the way God made it as possible and:
- Read the ingredients on any packaged food.
- Buy local—from farmers or farmers markets.
- Shop the perimeter of the grocery store (where the fresh food is).
- Try to shop at grocery stores that support local farmers/growers.
Shopping at the farmer's market is a great way to eat fresh foods that are local and in season. Sharon Vanorny/Courtesy of Destination Madison
Ms. Blume went on to discuss the foods that benefit our health. An abbreviated list of her recommendations includes:
- Leafy green vegetables.
- Fats: Animal fats and fats from milk, cream, butter, yogurt, and kefir (if they are tolerated), coconut milk, and avocado.
- Soup stock: After dinner, simmer your leftovers overnight and make soup in the morning with the stock—it’s very healing.
- Water: A good way to start your day is to add a pinch of mineral salt to a glass of water.
- Protein: Fish, beef, poultry, cheese, and nuts.
- Meats and animal products: Grass-fed animals contain more omega-3s. Beef; poultry; eggs; and wild-caught fish such as salmon, mackerel, and haddock, have the most Omega-3s; organ meat is the most nutrient-dense and can be added to other foods, or you can make it into pâté.
- Fermented and cultured foods: Yogurt, cheese, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi.
If you have a child with health challenges, knowing where to start can be overwhelming—excellent websites to explore are Ms. Blume’s Real Food Recovery and the Weston A. Price Foundation to help get your little one on the road to recovery.
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