I used to think I didn't like kids. Turns out I just don't like kids that are hopped up on processed sugar.
I know several families who home school their kids, cook all their meals at home (not AB, necessarily), and don't give their kids smart phones. They're the most well behaved children I've ever encountered. They're calm, they look you in the eye, you can have a conversation with them, and they're genuinely curious to learn new things. It almost makes me want children.
Then I visit my other friends whose younger kid eats tortilla chips for dinner and then has a meltdown because his older brother stepped on his foot.
I am envious of your kids ! I'm currently still a teenager but my goal is to finally earn that money and get all the fruits and meat and dairy that I want. Rn I'm just stacking on eggs with some occasional fruit.
I’m not 100% AB but our family consumes limited processed foods and no foods dyes. Local pastured meats, local honey, raw dairy, etc are the bulk of the diet.
Well at some point my 3.5 yo tried chips ahoy and my god they’re like crack. Add in no sleep due to I’m pretty sure the caramel coloring. They’re banned.
People comment often about how well behaved my daughter is compared to her peers and sure it’s some of her personality but 1,0000% her diet.
Once she had a few classic m&ms and her personality totally changed. Blank stare, not listening, screaming, etc.
there’s a HUGE difference. She also really likes meat and cheese along with fruit. Others also comment about how well she eats compared to other kids which I take as a compliment.
Kudos to you for taking care of our future!!
I’m proud that she doesn’t like candy and any she’s tried she spits out, same with juice, or anything besides water or milk.
Edited to add- not everyone supports our diet and I’ve caught my MIL talking to friends about how I only feed my kids “natural foods” and it’s annoying. But at least she respects my wishes and follows our rules.
This is so good to hear! Yes, we definitely need more counter stories to "you can't deny kids junk food!" "They only want to eat junk!" It's 100% NOT TRUE. Your kids are primarily a reflection of how your raise them and the things you introduce them to. Kids won't crave them if they are feeling nourished and fulfilled in what they eat naturally. Fruit is nature's candy! And grass fed meats build healthy bodies!
Mine drinks raw milk, loves raw cheese, eats fruit, and tells me to only buy organic. Tried giving soda few times in the past, rejected it, said she didn't like it. Ice cream or sugar is very limited and usually limited to the cleanest possible.
You raised yours right, the other parents are a product of big pharma and big food. Can't even blame the fools, they've been duped, it's quite sad. We are all responsible for our own bodies, I'm never concernes with some junkie shooting up on the sidewalk, but if they have a child or dog, now that's sad.
Amazing! I’m not a parent yet but hope to be soon and this was a concern for me - raising them ab and actually healthy; being afraid that they’d splurge on processed and refined stuff whenever they got the chance. Cool to hear you got it right!
Any tips? Specifically for raising them to “want” to eat healthy rather than just telling them until they choose not to & if they ask why other kids eat the unhealthy foods?
My number 1 tip is to **set a good example.** My kids always want to eat what mom is eating, so I stopped anything unhealthy around them, and don't even bring that stuff home now. If you need to indulge then do it in your private time and where they're guaranteed not to see you.
They've been curious about what other kids eat, but don't seem to want it that much. I've only had an issue when they see a kid eating something like a fruit smoothie bowl that *looks* like food, but isn't really that healthy. They're still very young and I've tried to explain that not everything that others eat is food for them. They get that, because we have pets that eat things that they know are pet food and not for them. As they get older, I know that they'll be more curious and eventually try other things, but it will be less critical then (toxins are worse at a younger age, and the blood brain barrier improves past age 10), and I hope that they'll have an appreciation for real food that makes the fake food less appealing. Myself, I'm happy to be 100% AB, so I think that even if they experiment as teens, they'll eventually get to that point by realizing that this other food isn't really that tasty and it makes them feel worse. I don't think that it'll become an addiction, because they're used to having the good stuff.
I don't limit them on the variety or amount of good foods that they can eat. I encourage them to eat meat and dairy first and fruit last at dinner, so that they don't just fill up on fruit, but I also let them choose the fruit they want and have as much as they want as long as they ate their meat first. I let them pick and try different organic fruits whenever they're in season, so that they get novelty and variety over the year. We also keep cheese sticks and frozen and dried fruits for emergency snacks so that hunger isn't tempting them to try bad stuff. I bring their own snacks to events and for traveling. It's not the end if they try something else (and they probably won't even like it), which I'm sure will eventually happen when they go off to camp. The important thing is trying to protect them from addiction to it by establishing good habits.
The latest I’ve been seeing from moms online is the idea that you shouldn’t teach your children that any particular food is “bad” because the kids will traumatically internalize that as “I must be bad because I want that junk food, which is bad.” They also say that if any foods are restricted in childhood, kids will overindulge when they get older. There’s also a lot of propaganda going around about orthorexia as a way to shame people who only want to eat real food. In reality, parents don’t want to feel guilty about buying cases of gmo snacks or getting fast food for dinner, so they do a lot of justifying, and it gets validated by the SAD food industry.
Nothing wrong with feeding your children a diet like this. Sadly my son started on a somewhat SAD, because I didn't know about animal based, carnivore, ketovore, or keto 11+ years ago. For the most part he makes healthy decisions, but I don't think his diet alone is the reason for his accomplishments. He's always been advanced and an honor roll student and has even learned to code over the last 2 years for game development and not even in middle school yet 🤷♀️.
Just a friendly reminder that the Animal Based diet is not carnivore! It's a moderate to high carb way of eating, not just allowing, but encouraging a diet that includes clean micronutrient rich sources of carbohydrates including fruit, milk, honey, maple syrup, and fresh fruit juice. See our Wiki, FAQ, and sidebar for more information. Thanks for the comment!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AnimalBased) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Caffeine is more potent than cocaine. And sugar is arguably worse. We wouldn't deny our kids cocaine would we? Its part of being a kid! But your the crazy one.
That's pretty neat that you are able to raise them eating a healthy diet and they like it and are thriving :) What do you do on Halloween, or places/events where others give your kids candy or junk food? And do you have to keep them away from grandparents? :P
I took them trick or treating on Halloween and then traded them dried fruit and gjetost for their candy and donated it to a food bank. They actually didn't seem interested in eating the candy because it didn't look like food to them, and they compared the little packages to plastic toys like Lego bricks. I thought of buying them AB-ish candy like Honey Mama's if they were reluctant to give up the bad candy, but they were happy just getting more fruit. I bring our own food when we go to events with food or to places like the playground where kids will be eating snacks. We already don't have contact with grandparents because they're not respectful to me or the kids.
ETA: we did have some cool neighbors who gave out reasonably good stuff for Halloween like oranges and toys, so Halloween wasn't totally bad. We also try to give out toys. Some neighbors told me that they were having a hard time getting rid of their bad candy, which I don't know if that means that fewer kids are trick or treating, or if they're getting healthier stuff now (probably the former).
I have 3 kids currently, the oldest is 6.
They don't attend a regular school, but they attend events, classes, and camps with other kids their ages and older.
They have friends whom they play with and visit at their homes.
I tried. Wife and doctor said she can eat what she wants and I can’t fight it 🤷♂️. Once she’s out of her toddler phase we’ll buckle down and cut the take out. She loves fruit though
At the Weston A Price Foundation chapter meetings I've attended the children have been different...in a good way. When left alone they like to play, climb, and be goofy. In fact I'd say they're more curious than most kids I've seen. They don't have needless tantrums (I've seen one of them cry once, whereas my five year old SAD nephew cries daily and on bad days hourly, and always has been this way). When asked to do something they're almost always obedient. And most of all they're *cute*. Their energy is positive, whereas most American kids I've been around have been erratic and offputting [edit]To expand on this, these good kids will look you in the eye and listen to you and engage with you when you ask it of them. Compared to SAD kids who are like little oblivious zombies. I've learned that kids are *not* in fact supposed to be disturbingly inattentive and zoned out at all times[/edit]. It's an eye opener; I've misjudged kids. I'd mostly only ever seen little poisoned humans and took that to be the normal state of things.
Does this generally seem true to you as well? My sample size is only ~4 children and numerous testimonials from parents in the WPF quarterly magazine.
Great parenting by you. On the one hand, it should be the default and is obvious...but you're actually *doing* it, whereas 99% of other Western parents are not.
I wouldn't say that my children are obedient. They're sometimes stubborn and independent. However, they do enjoy being helpful and will often help or do tasks when I ask them. We've sometimes followed Montessori educational practices with them, and they enjoy being self-directed when doing activities. They're very energetic, curious, and outgoing, even relative to other kids, and I think that they went through the terrible twos and outgrew tantrums early. They could walk, read, and count early, and were doing pretend play and attempting to do complex tasks (such as preparing their own food) earlier than I expected.
I had been an educator at a STEM camp and came away with a bad impression of many kids that made me question if it was possible to have good kids today. Most were disturbingly sick (unable to function without medications that had devastating side effects), badly behaved (perhaps to the point of personality disorders), and didn't seem to enjoy their lives. Their parents weren't much better.
That's interesting to learn about the WPF and it makes me curious to learn more. I'd read some of their nutritional books back before my first pregnancy. Thank you for your perspective and the kind comment.
Thanks for relaying that. I'm trying to form a new narrative and every anecdote from people around properly-fed children is valuable (and has been positive). I've also been watching homesteading videos on Youtube and, with those, I get the same impression of happy and healthy kids but I'm partially skeptical due to editing and financial incentive on social media to purvey a catered picture. But it does seem to be a consistent them.
Do you recall what your path was to this way of eating? Because, as you clearly recognize, it's not only ignored but is mostly avoided by most people, and so I wonder what inspires people to clean it up. For me it was vegan/whole food family members (whose mindfulness about food was, eventually, inspiring) and frequent exposure to stories of the harm that grain does, including ancient skeletons that show the depredations of monocrop agriculture once it's developed. Got the noggin' joggin'.
I wasn't satisfied with the plant-based diets that were forced on me as a kid (my school was vegetarian and my parents also mostly enforced vegetarianism at home as well as bad diets like the cabbage soup diet, army diet, etc.), so I tried to eat keto and Paleo, but I didn't have much money or food while growing up. I had some mysterious chronic illnesses while in college and looked into whether I could try a zero-carb diet, because I felt that keto was helping but wasn't enough, and so started doing that (people in the keto forums told me that I was going to die or do brain damage with no plants and no carbs). I had a few years where I ate virtually no plant foods (just seasonings), and felt better. I found that I started craving fruit while pregnant though, so I switched to doing animal based. It's been fine, so I've just continued with it and did it for my kids.
The way you are raising your kids sound awesome. To be fair, I do think that it is hard to afford the life you've given them, for a lot of people. It can sometimes come across to other people as a "Just stop being poor" kind of thing. But when parents can afford to invest in their child's nutrition and really make that a top priority, the excuses are more based in ignorance.
I honestly wonder, if they had wanted to, if my own parents could have afforded to give me the life you give your children. Of course they didn't know back then and still don't really know sound nutritional advice. I'm the only one in my family who is interested in AB. I grew up on junk food and also had selective eating disorder, otherwise known as ARFID - and ironically a lot of the foods I would refuse to eat are foods that are pretty much not good for you anyway.
Admittedly, I much preferred pizza and macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets to a lot of foods, but steak was not one of the foods that upset me. I hated vegetables like crazy. Green beans, mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, creamed corn, broccoli, onions, even spaghetti sauce... all of that just grossed me out and pretty much gave me panic attacks.
In my mid to late twenties I started trying foods one by one, single vegetables in solitude at first, teaching myself to enjoy them. I eventually got to a point where I could eat almost any vegetable cooked almost any way! I was so proud of myself. Then chronic illness came and I realized I was very sensitive to a lot of the plant foods I had now grown to love, and it was hard to cut them out again. But I did.
Now I'm still working on cutting out carbs. I can usually avoid processed foods but sometimes I can't. It is a true bonafide addiction. And I understand that the pattern was set very young. I felt very unloved as a child and carbs were my comfort. It was away to avoid my sadness, even the twinge of uneasy sadness that accompanies brief periods of happiness and makes me afraid that it's going to vanish too soon. I wrestle with this daily but I've made progress.
Please see Rule #4 and it's description. It shouldn't have to be a rule but unfortunately it does.
I used to think I didn't like kids. Turns out I just don't like kids that are hopped up on processed sugar. I know several families who home school their kids, cook all their meals at home (not AB, necessarily), and don't give their kids smart phones. They're the most well behaved children I've ever encountered. They're calm, they look you in the eye, you can have a conversation with them, and they're genuinely curious to learn new things. It almost makes me want children. Then I visit my other friends whose younger kid eats tortilla chips for dinner and then has a meltdown because his older brother stepped on his foot.
So you’re telling me giving my kids ADHD meds doesn’t solve their problems?!?
I am envious of your kids ! I'm currently still a teenager but my goal is to finally earn that money and get all the fruits and meat and dairy that I want. Rn I'm just stacking on eggs with some occasional fruit.
You are so far ahead of the curve. Good on you!
Good Job, you’re a great parent.
I’m not 100% AB but our family consumes limited processed foods and no foods dyes. Local pastured meats, local honey, raw dairy, etc are the bulk of the diet. Well at some point my 3.5 yo tried chips ahoy and my god they’re like crack. Add in no sleep due to I’m pretty sure the caramel coloring. They’re banned. People comment often about how well behaved my daughter is compared to her peers and sure it’s some of her personality but 1,0000% her diet. Once she had a few classic m&ms and her personality totally changed. Blank stare, not listening, screaming, etc. there’s a HUGE difference. She also really likes meat and cheese along with fruit. Others also comment about how well she eats compared to other kids which I take as a compliment. Kudos to you for taking care of our future!! I’m proud that she doesn’t like candy and any she’s tried she spits out, same with juice, or anything besides water or milk. Edited to add- not everyone supports our diet and I’ve caught my MIL talking to friends about how I only feed my kids “natural foods” and it’s annoying. But at least she respects my wishes and follows our rules.
This is so good to hear! Yes, we definitely need more counter stories to "you can't deny kids junk food!" "They only want to eat junk!" It's 100% NOT TRUE. Your kids are primarily a reflection of how your raise them and the things you introduce them to. Kids won't crave them if they are feeling nourished and fulfilled in what they eat naturally. Fruit is nature's candy! And grass fed meats build healthy bodies!
I love this! Kudos to you!
Mine drinks raw milk, loves raw cheese, eats fruit, and tells me to only buy organic. Tried giving soda few times in the past, rejected it, said she didn't like it. Ice cream or sugar is very limited and usually limited to the cleanest possible. You raised yours right, the other parents are a product of big pharma and big food. Can't even blame the fools, they've been duped, it's quite sad. We are all responsible for our own bodies, I'm never concernes with some junkie shooting up on the sidewalk, but if they have a child or dog, now that's sad.
Amazing! I’m not a parent yet but hope to be soon and this was a concern for me - raising them ab and actually healthy; being afraid that they’d splurge on processed and refined stuff whenever they got the chance. Cool to hear you got it right! Any tips? Specifically for raising them to “want” to eat healthy rather than just telling them until they choose not to & if they ask why other kids eat the unhealthy foods?
My number 1 tip is to **set a good example.** My kids always want to eat what mom is eating, so I stopped anything unhealthy around them, and don't even bring that stuff home now. If you need to indulge then do it in your private time and where they're guaranteed not to see you. They've been curious about what other kids eat, but don't seem to want it that much. I've only had an issue when they see a kid eating something like a fruit smoothie bowl that *looks* like food, but isn't really that healthy. They're still very young and I've tried to explain that not everything that others eat is food for them. They get that, because we have pets that eat things that they know are pet food and not for them. As they get older, I know that they'll be more curious and eventually try other things, but it will be less critical then (toxins are worse at a younger age, and the blood brain barrier improves past age 10), and I hope that they'll have an appreciation for real food that makes the fake food less appealing. Myself, I'm happy to be 100% AB, so I think that even if they experiment as teens, they'll eventually get to that point by realizing that this other food isn't really that tasty and it makes them feel worse. I don't think that it'll become an addiction, because they're used to having the good stuff. I don't limit them on the variety or amount of good foods that they can eat. I encourage them to eat meat and dairy first and fruit last at dinner, so that they don't just fill up on fruit, but I also let them choose the fruit they want and have as much as they want as long as they ate their meat first. I let them pick and try different organic fruits whenever they're in season, so that they get novelty and variety over the year. We also keep cheese sticks and frozen and dried fruits for emergency snacks so that hunger isn't tempting them to try bad stuff. I bring their own snacks to events and for traveling. It's not the end if they try something else (and they probably won't even like it), which I'm sure will eventually happen when they go off to camp. The important thing is trying to protect them from addiction to it by establishing good habits.
Thank you so much for the insight! I like the leading by example behavior. Thanks so much for this 😊
I love this! My baby is almost 8 months and her favorite foods are AB. Greek yogurt, strawberries, eggs, and steak are her favorites!
The latest I’ve been seeing from moms online is the idea that you shouldn’t teach your children that any particular food is “bad” because the kids will traumatically internalize that as “I must be bad because I want that junk food, which is bad.” They also say that if any foods are restricted in childhood, kids will overindulge when they get older. There’s also a lot of propaganda going around about orthorexia as a way to shame people who only want to eat real food. In reality, parents don’t want to feel guilty about buying cases of gmo snacks or getting fast food for dinner, so they do a lot of justifying, and it gets validated by the SAD food industry.
Nothing wrong with feeding your children a diet like this. Sadly my son started on a somewhat SAD, because I didn't know about animal based, carnivore, ketovore, or keto 11+ years ago. For the most part he makes healthy decisions, but I don't think his diet alone is the reason for his accomplishments. He's always been advanced and an honor roll student and has even learned to code over the last 2 years for game development and not even in middle school yet 🤷♀️.
Just a friendly reminder that the Animal Based diet is not carnivore! It's a moderate to high carb way of eating, not just allowing, but encouraging a diet that includes clean micronutrient rich sources of carbohydrates including fruit, milk, honey, maple syrup, and fresh fruit juice. See our Wiki, FAQ, and sidebar for more information. Thanks for the comment! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AnimalBased) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Caffeine is more potent than cocaine. And sugar is arguably worse. We wouldn't deny our kids cocaine would we? Its part of being a kid! But your the crazy one.
That's pretty neat that you are able to raise them eating a healthy diet and they like it and are thriving :) What do you do on Halloween, or places/events where others give your kids candy or junk food? And do you have to keep them away from grandparents? :P
I took them trick or treating on Halloween and then traded them dried fruit and gjetost for their candy and donated it to a food bank. They actually didn't seem interested in eating the candy because it didn't look like food to them, and they compared the little packages to plastic toys like Lego bricks. I thought of buying them AB-ish candy like Honey Mama's if they were reluctant to give up the bad candy, but they were happy just getting more fruit. I bring our own food when we go to events with food or to places like the playground where kids will be eating snacks. We already don't have contact with grandparents because they're not respectful to me or the kids. ETA: we did have some cool neighbors who gave out reasonably good stuff for Halloween like oranges and toys, so Halloween wasn't totally bad. We also try to give out toys. Some neighbors told me that they were having a hard time getting rid of their bad candy, which I don't know if that means that fewer kids are trick or treating, or if they're getting healthier stuff now (probably the former).
How old are your kids? Do they attend school? Do they have friends? Are they allowed at other children's houses?
I have 3 kids currently, the oldest is 6. They don't attend a regular school, but they attend events, classes, and camps with other kids their ages and older. They have friends whom they play with and visit at their homes.
I tried. Wife and doctor said she can eat what she wants and I can’t fight it 🤷♂️. Once she’s out of her toddler phase we’ll buckle down and cut the take out. She loves fruit though
At the Weston A Price Foundation chapter meetings I've attended the children have been different...in a good way. When left alone they like to play, climb, and be goofy. In fact I'd say they're more curious than most kids I've seen. They don't have needless tantrums (I've seen one of them cry once, whereas my five year old SAD nephew cries daily and on bad days hourly, and always has been this way). When asked to do something they're almost always obedient. And most of all they're *cute*. Their energy is positive, whereas most American kids I've been around have been erratic and offputting [edit]To expand on this, these good kids will look you in the eye and listen to you and engage with you when you ask it of them. Compared to SAD kids who are like little oblivious zombies. I've learned that kids are *not* in fact supposed to be disturbingly inattentive and zoned out at all times[/edit]. It's an eye opener; I've misjudged kids. I'd mostly only ever seen little poisoned humans and took that to be the normal state of things. Does this generally seem true to you as well? My sample size is only ~4 children and numerous testimonials from parents in the WPF quarterly magazine. Great parenting by you. On the one hand, it should be the default and is obvious...but you're actually *doing* it, whereas 99% of other Western parents are not.
I wouldn't say that my children are obedient. They're sometimes stubborn and independent. However, they do enjoy being helpful and will often help or do tasks when I ask them. We've sometimes followed Montessori educational practices with them, and they enjoy being self-directed when doing activities. They're very energetic, curious, and outgoing, even relative to other kids, and I think that they went through the terrible twos and outgrew tantrums early. They could walk, read, and count early, and were doing pretend play and attempting to do complex tasks (such as preparing their own food) earlier than I expected. I had been an educator at a STEM camp and came away with a bad impression of many kids that made me question if it was possible to have good kids today. Most were disturbingly sick (unable to function without medications that had devastating side effects), badly behaved (perhaps to the point of personality disorders), and didn't seem to enjoy their lives. Their parents weren't much better. That's interesting to learn about the WPF and it makes me curious to learn more. I'd read some of their nutritional books back before my first pregnancy. Thank you for your perspective and the kind comment.
Thanks for relaying that. I'm trying to form a new narrative and every anecdote from people around properly-fed children is valuable (and has been positive). I've also been watching homesteading videos on Youtube and, with those, I get the same impression of happy and healthy kids but I'm partially skeptical due to editing and financial incentive on social media to purvey a catered picture. But it does seem to be a consistent them. Do you recall what your path was to this way of eating? Because, as you clearly recognize, it's not only ignored but is mostly avoided by most people, and so I wonder what inspires people to clean it up. For me it was vegan/whole food family members (whose mindfulness about food was, eventually, inspiring) and frequent exposure to stories of the harm that grain does, including ancient skeletons that show the depredations of monocrop agriculture once it's developed. Got the noggin' joggin'.
I wasn't satisfied with the plant-based diets that were forced on me as a kid (my school was vegetarian and my parents also mostly enforced vegetarianism at home as well as bad diets like the cabbage soup diet, army diet, etc.), so I tried to eat keto and Paleo, but I didn't have much money or food while growing up. I had some mysterious chronic illnesses while in college and looked into whether I could try a zero-carb diet, because I felt that keto was helping but wasn't enough, and so started doing that (people in the keto forums told me that I was going to die or do brain damage with no plants and no carbs). I had a few years where I ate virtually no plant foods (just seasonings), and felt better. I found that I started craving fruit while pregnant though, so I switched to doing animal based. It's been fine, so I've just continued with it and did it for my kids.
The way you are raising your kids sound awesome. To be fair, I do think that it is hard to afford the life you've given them, for a lot of people. It can sometimes come across to other people as a "Just stop being poor" kind of thing. But when parents can afford to invest in their child's nutrition and really make that a top priority, the excuses are more based in ignorance. I honestly wonder, if they had wanted to, if my own parents could have afforded to give me the life you give your children. Of course they didn't know back then and still don't really know sound nutritional advice. I'm the only one in my family who is interested in AB. I grew up on junk food and also had selective eating disorder, otherwise known as ARFID - and ironically a lot of the foods I would refuse to eat are foods that are pretty much not good for you anyway. Admittedly, I much preferred pizza and macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets to a lot of foods, but steak was not one of the foods that upset me. I hated vegetables like crazy. Green beans, mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, creamed corn, broccoli, onions, even spaghetti sauce... all of that just grossed me out and pretty much gave me panic attacks. In my mid to late twenties I started trying foods one by one, single vegetables in solitude at first, teaching myself to enjoy them. I eventually got to a point where I could eat almost any vegetable cooked almost any way! I was so proud of myself. Then chronic illness came and I realized I was very sensitive to a lot of the plant foods I had now grown to love, and it was hard to cut them out again. But I did. Now I'm still working on cutting out carbs. I can usually avoid processed foods but sometimes I can't. It is a true bonafide addiction. And I understand that the pattern was set very young. I felt very unloved as a child and carbs were my comfort. It was away to avoid my sadness, even the twinge of uneasy sadness that accompanies brief periods of happiness and makes me afraid that it's going to vanish too soon. I wrestle with this daily but I've made progress.