Naturalpath

“I’ve been a nutritionist and an exercise physiologist for years, but I’ve been a mom for 11 years now, and I’m shuddering now at some of the advice I used to give to moms, because it’s a whole different ball game when you have the kids.

“Exposure equals preference. We have a responsibility to teach our kids how to eat correctly. What I’ve taught my kids to do is eat the good stuff first.

“And kids want to do the right thing. You need to teach them. So it’s not that they can’t have things like pizza. It’s that these are seen as treats.

“They understand the difference between things they need to eat on a regular basis, always getting their vegetables, always getting some protein, and the things that are treats.

“We also don’t do breakfast cereal and milk in my house, so we’ll have different things. We could have a grass-fed hamburger for breakfast.

"We do different things, such as sweetener. We use xylitol, which comes from birch. It’s a polyol, and it actually helps prevent tooth decay, it raises glutathione, helps with bone remineralization, and it has some calories, so it doesn’t cause that calorie disregulation. And our body naturally produces some of it, so this isn’t some kind of artificial, neurotoxic sweetener.

“Those are just [a few] tricks, but I always say hide things. Hide them, involve them. If they’re involved in the process and you do, from a selling perspective, a choice close: do you want the broccoli or do you want the asparagus? And then make it fun. Do you want the bushes or the trees? So we do that, and then add some of the fun sauces – marinara sauce, a little bit of some kind of goat cheese, etc.”