Food provides the energy your child needs to grow, learn, jump, stretch, and play. It provides the nutrient base necessary for building a strong and healthy body. Food also provides immediate information] to the body. It can make your child feel full and re-energized, or tired, jumpy, and irritable. The breakfasts you give your child, the lunches eaten at school, the snacks you provide, the dinners you prepare all provide the building blocks for every cell in your child's body.

The Historical Use of Diet
Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine," wrote, "Let food be your medicine. Let your medicine be your food." This recommendation is as important for us today as it was in ancient Greece. Food was a primary form of medicine in ancient cultures and has continued to be used as such through the ages. Warm teas and soups for colds, prune juice for constipation, toast and crackers for diarrhea-all are well-known and time-tested "medicines."

Food is important not only for curing illness, but for preventing it Today, the importance of diet in maintaining health-and conversely, in contributing to the development of disease-is increasingly evident. A proper diet is therefore useful in treating acute and chronic childhood illness as well as in promoting and enhancing optimal health.

The American Diet Today
A hundred years ago, food was prepared in a very different way than it generally is today. Most importantly, food was prepared and served more simply. In the last several decades, thanks to food-processing technology, we have seen the development of a vast selection of "quick-fix" packaged, canned, frozen, boil-in-a-bag, and microwaveable foods that get us in and out of the kitchen fast. Few people cook in the traditional sense of the word, at least on a regular basis. It's easier and more convenient to stir water into the contents of a package, open a can, heat up a frozen dinner, or "nuke" a prepackaged serving in the microwave.

Highly processed junk food is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. The shelves of American supermarket are weighted down with candy, cookies, and all kinds of packaged baked goods; snacks loaded with sugar, fat, and salt; sodas, colas, "juices," and punches made with more chemicals and additives than fruit; and artificially flavored and colored cereals.

The typical American diet is in need of an overhaul Most of us eat too much fat, too few complex carbohydrates, and too many empty calories, and are deficient in trace minerals and vitamins. The typical American gets about 42 percent of total calories from fat, with 16 percent coming from saturated fats and 26 percent from unsaturated fats. Compare this to the recommended amounts: a maximum of 30 percent of total daily calories from fat, with 10 percent from saturated fats (such as meat and dairy products), 10 percent from monounsaturated fats (such as olive oil), and 10 percent from polyunsaturated fats (such as corn, safflower, and soybean oils).