My Passions in a blog post.

While sitting in my hotel room in Orlando, rather than writing about my new business, I started journaling about nutrition, parenting, and "screen time." Imagine. Here's what I wrote:


Would putting these substances into your body scare you in the least?
Nutritive Dextrose
Calcium Saccharin
Cream of Tartar
Calcium Silicate
***
Corn syrup solids
Partially hydrogenated soybean oil
Sodium caseinate
Dipotassium phosphate
Mono and diglycerides
Titanium dioxide
Silicon dioxide
Artificial flavor
Artificial color


These are the ingredients in the “sugar substitute” and “creamer,” respectively, that were next to the complimentary Wolfgang Puck organic tea and gourmet coffee in my room tonight.

Would it scare you at all for your food to fall on the floor and get “dirty”? Would you pick it up and eat it anyway? Do you think twice about putting artificial (fake—not real—made in a laboratory) substances in your body but throw away anything that has dropped on the floor?

Help me understand why we so quickly consume anything labeled as “food” or “food product” without reading the label or understanding what the ingredients are, but we shun any real food that has spent a couple seconds on the floor. If you drop a strawberry on the floor, would you throw it away or rinse it off? I’ve often seen people throw away their dropped food! Are you willing to eat a strawberry that has had all sorts of pesticides and fungicides and weed killer sprayed on it, but unwilling to eat a strawberry that might have a little dirt from your own kitchen floor?

My friend Sally was joking around with me once and said, “Here, let me spray a little Raid on that squash before I give it to you. Don’t worry, though, I’ll rinse it off.” If you watched her do it, would you still eat it? Out of sight, out of mind. What we don’t know is killing us.

My neighbor shouts at her daughter to “get out of those woods!” when she comes over and wants to play with Judah in the little patch of trees next to our house. However, she exposes her 8-year-old daughter to thousands of violent and sexual images a day on television, she’s allowed to play video games for hours on end, and she now has a computer in her bedroom connected to the Internet. Somebody please, please help me understand.

Recently, I attended a Carole Joy Seid home school workshop. She read from a book called The Last Child In The Woods. There is actually a nature-deficit disorder that children are suffering from, which stems from a lack of being outdoors. Too much indoor play (fear of abduction has dramatically decreased the radius around which children are allowed to roam from their homes) combined with an exponential increase in “screen time” (time spent in front of televisions, computers, and video games) has actually damaged the brains of our children. Their developing minds need more social interaction, more real-world experiences, more nature connections, more time spent outdoors in unstructured play than we’re offering as a culture.

The American Academy of Pediatrics warned us in 2000 that children under the age of two should not be exposed to any television or videos. Having majored in communications and believing that television had no benefit for children, I tried to find evidence to support my theory. In 1994, I found none. Now, the evidence abounds.

I didn’t allow Judah to watch movies until he turned two, and even now he probably only watches one a week, on average. Miriam has seen one video twice, but we have made sure that she’s not exposed to television or videos much at all. Everyone thought I was nuts (and some still do) for not owning a television (a lady actually told my mom that my kids were “missing out on so much” and that she would “pray about it.”) Please, pray all you want. We’re not getting a TV.

Did you know that television viewing decreases as education increases? The higher educated a person is, the less television he watches. Did you also know that wealthy people tend to watch television the least? Poor people watch television much more often than wealthy people. What does that tell you?

Everywhere I turn, I’m hearing the message, “Don’t watch television.” Do you know where it’s coming from? The wealthy. The self-made. The rich. Fortunately for us, we’re a step ahead by not owning a TV, but it makes me think about how many hours and hours are wasted in front of the boob tube for so many families throughout the world, but especially in America where the viewing statistics are staggering.

Children in America spend more time, on average, in front of a screen, “plugged in” than playing outside. They spend more time in front of a screen than they do interacting with other children or adults. They spend more time in front of a screen than they do reading books. What is feeding them messages about what success looks like? what they should think about themselves? what they should think about other people? what they should believe about the world around them? what they should eat and drink? what they should wear? what they should say to their friends and family members? what kinds of attitudes are acceptable? what their role is in society? what a healthy marriage looks like? what a healthy sexual relationship looks like? what is really important? TV. Movies. Video Games. Computers. Internet.

As a culture, we have effectively handed over the educating of our children to the government. We expect the government to teach them everything they “need to know” in “school.” Have you ever thought about who decides what your children will learn in school? Has it ever occurred to you that every country has a different standard? that every culture has a different set of values?

Have you handed over your child’s education to a system that is failing miserably on a global scale?

Have you handed over the teaching of “religion” to Sunday School teachers who see your child for one hour once a week?

Have you handed over your child’s health to a doctor that your child sees once every few months?

Have you handed over your child’s emotional development to the media?

Who is more qualified to train your child in education than the one who loves and cares for them most?

Who is more qualified to train your child in the ways of God than you?

Who is more qualified to make decisions about your child’s health than you?

Who is more qualified to shape your child’s emotional development than you?

The answer is NO ONE. YOU are the most qualified person on the planet to train your child because you love your child more than anyone else could possibly love him or her. God has entrusted your child to YOU, not to the government, not to the religious establishment, not to the medical community, not to the media . . . to YOU.

It’s time we started taking back the reigns and realizing that we have a tremendous responsibility to “train up” our children in the ways they should go and not depend on other people or groups to do it for us.

Let’s think about what we’re feeding them. Are they eating healthy, nutritious fare or pigging out on junk food and sodas? And what about their minds? Are they absorbing lots of good brain food, or are they zoning out on mindless, flashing images for hours a day?

What if meats and natural fats are not the enemy of healthy living? The diet dictocrats would have you believe that it’s better to eat soy than meat, that it’s better to eat canola oil than real butter, that it’s best to avoid fat to stave off heart disease and obesity. However, the rates of heart disease and obesity continue to climb ever higher. Did you know that heart disease was virtually non-existent before 1900? Did you know that people prior to 1900 ate meat and real butter and animal fats on a regular basis? Did you know that since the inception of newfangled vegetable oils, our country’s rates of heart disease, cancer, and obesity have gone through the roof? That we’re now facing an epidemic?

What if we all went back to traditional diets (eating only what our great-grandparents might have eaten) and stayed away from packaged, processed, newfangled foods (more appropriately labeled food products)? I wonder what would happen.

Perhaps we will never know.