Tag Archives: “Weighty Matters” Yoni Freedhoff

Tuesday…Why I Love My “Virtual Friends”

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Lunch Box

Lunch Box

I am going back to introducing some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs. Over the last five years it has been my pleasure to meet many “virtual” friends through an eclectic collection of blogs.

For me, “working” at home and from home has its advantages and disadvantages…one of the disadvantages is the inevitable loneliness that comes with the home-based territory.

Thank goodness, my “virtual” friends are a click away and provide discussions that some of my “real” friends cannot, since they don’t share my work at home status nor are they taking care of grandchildren and to be truthful, I just don’t have that many “real” friends. Over the years, I have made an effort to have a few good friends than a lot of casual ones.

But now with blogging and social media, I have many casual, virtual friends.

As a grandmother, I am thankful for this. I love blogging and I love visiting blogs and social media. Blogs help me understand the world through my children’s generational lens and the lens of my contemporaries. Since I spend a lot of time with my grandchild, I appreciate the world she lives in and also the world that she will inherit from my generation and that of her parents.

YoniFreedhoff is one of my “virtual” friends, through his blog, “Weighty Matters”.

It is a blog that is both serious and humorous. He is a doctor and I am a nurse so his humor is not wasted on me.

Nutrition is something that continues to fascinate me…it is a field that is ever-changing and has life long implications for each and every one of us. Yoni keeps me focused on the new innovative and the old tried and true approaches coupled with a tongue in cheek attitude.

Here is his latest post on a controversial Manitoba Child Care Lunch Regulation Program. It is humorous to a point but there are also serious implications, too much government intervention into how we feed our families, as well as the “stupidity” of those who are interpreting this new “food policy police policy”!

Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, and founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute – a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I’m more likely to stop drugs than start them, and love going to work in the morning. You can also follow me on Twitter at YoniFreedhoff

 

It’s quite possible that the single stupidest school lunch policy on the planet comes courtesy of a strange interpretation of the Manitoba Government’s Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations (an earlier version of this article incorrectly pointed at the Manitoba Child Care Association as the source of the strangely interpreted policy).

via Weighty Matters: Parents Fined For Not Sending Ritz Crackers In Kids’ Lunches.

Toast Tuesday….a day late!

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I love the blog Weighty Matters written by Yoni Freedhoff…a physician…

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Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, and founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute – a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I’m more likely to stop drugs than start them, and love going to work in the morning.

Sigh.

That’s exactly what I did when I opened the email that contained the photo up above (I think I may have swore too).

It was snapped just a few weeks ago in the London Children’s Museum where for reasons I can’t fathom they have a miniature McDonald’s set up for kids to play in. Here’s another shot that I found online:

via Weighty Matters: WTF? An Insane Parental “No” File from London’s Children’s Museum.

 

What do you think about having a miniature of McDonald’s for kids in your home or at a Children’s Museum?

Disclosure: We have an old miniature Mc Donald’s stand in our playroom…bought at a garage sale, complete with sounds of milkshake mixer and french fry maker. It is a favorite play toy in our house. Does that tell you anything about us as grandparents?

Body fat scales for children….No Weigh!

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Noteworthy Wednesday!

Obesity in children is a rising problem….and the introduction of a scale that  measures kid’s body fat is nothing less than obscene.

Please do not waste your money on this product…instead look for information on nutrition and try to incorporate some healthy measures into your diet and the diet of your children.

Yoni has written an excellent post here and makes some great suggestions as to what parents can do to improve the nutrition of their children.

If it’s a sign of the times, it’s a sign of how truly backwards we are as a society when it comes to weight management.

Scale company Tanita is now marketing a specially designed body-fat/weigh scale for children between the ages of 5-17.

Now I’ve blogged before about how I think body-fat percentage scales are a bad idea to begin with, but to target them at children bring them to a whole new level of horror.

5 year olds don’t need to have their body-fat or their weights measured, they need healthy food and parental role modeling.

So instead of punishing your child by buying them a body-fat percentage scale, may I suggest that if you’re not already doing so you:

– Cook healthy meals from whole ingredients for each and every meal.

– Have sit down family dinners each and every night (remembering they don’t need to be gourmet – kids do love peanut butter sandwiches).

– Involve your children in meal (and school lunch) preparation.

– Track the added sugars in your childrens’ diets and try to limit to no more than 45 grams daily (remembering that some days should be exceptions too – sugar’s part of childhood, it just needn’t be a daily part).

– Ensure that the only fruit they eat is actual fruit – no juices, rollups, chews, or mashes.

– Make their milk white and skim, not brown and sugary.

– Ensure your children eat protein with every meal and snack, and that they start their days off with a wholesome, protein inclusive, breakfast.

– Make restaurant meals and take out (including supermarket prepared takeout meals) exceedingly rare events.

– Engage your family in family based physical activity – weekend hikes, nightly walks, signing up for community races, landscaping, home improvement projects, push lawnmowers, snow shoveling, etc.

Lastly you’ve got to remember – if you’re worried about your kid’s weights, don’t put it on them. It’s not their problem, it’s yours, and if you think you’re going to fix it by yelling at them, weighing them, shaming them, food policing them, etc. – you’re going to be disappointed, and your kid is going to be miserable.

If you want your kids to change the way they’re living, you’re going to have to change the way your whole family’s living – and frankly it isn’t about weight. All of those behaviours up above? Doesn’t matter if your kids are heavy or thin, those strategies will benefit each and every family, though the likelihood is, if weight’s an issue in your family, those changes will help far more than any scale ever could.7

via Weighty Matters: Horrifying new product alert – body fat scales for children.