Written by Jason Phillips
The American diet is notoriously full of overprocessed junk food, and has been for some time. However, Aspire Rejuvenation Clinic founder Tomo Marjanovic is noticing a novel and disturbing trend. “New generations can’t even recognize real food,” he says.
That’s not an exaggeration. Marjanovic points to a TV clip where a chef holds up a cluster of vine-ripened tomatoes and asks elementary school children if they can identify them. The kids can’t. One guesses that they’re potatoes.
The chef then asks who knows what ketchup is, and nearly every hand shoots up. “That’s what it’s made out of,” he explains to the bewildered room.
“That is horrifying,” Marjanovic says of the clip. “I blame the parents first. Parents, do not fail your children by buying junk food for groceries.”
Marjanovic understands better than most what an ultra-processed diet can do to the body. His clinic specializes in hormone replacement and other regenerative therapies. In some cases, however, a client just needs to change their everyday habits.
“We have people coming in for gut health testing, for genetic testing, for general wellness guidance,” he says. “We have people come in thinking they need to be on hormones, and we tell them the issue is diet- and exercise-based, here's a plan. We don't even make money off that.”
Letting one’s own health suffer because of a poor diet is one thing, but Marjanovic believes that parents have an obligation to feed their children a balanced diet low in processed foods and to model a healthy lifestyle through their everyday choices and actions.
“Pay attention to what you’re putting in front of your kids. Pay attention to what you’re putting in your mouth yourself,” he says. “You are the only line of defense against the rest of the world corrupting what your kids know, learn, and look at.”
Children in the U.S. rarely learn about nutrition in school. And while school lunches should theoretically be nutritionally balanced, they aren’t always. The issue isn’t new — just ask anyone who remembers the USDA’s pizza-as-a-vegetable rule that caused an uproar in 2011.
The processed food problem isn’t unique to America, either. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that in 1990, just 8% of people aged five to 19 worldwide were overweight or obese. By 2022, that number had risen to 20%.
While processed foods aren’t solely responsible for the epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity, a growing body of research suggests that they’re a major contributor. And, sadly, Marjanovic is correct that parents are often the only line of defense between their kids and a dangerously bad diet.
The cultural normalization of ultra-processed diets is disconcerting, but the good news is that parents aren’t powerless against it. Just choosing more whole foods at the grocery store is a good place to start. Parents can help their kids get on a path to long-term wellness, and it all starts with what’s on their dinner plates.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario