This will be a series that I will be doing. I have friends who are raising children on a vegetarian and vegan diets and looking from the outside I see health issues in these children. The parents however do not see these issues.

Myself when I was vegan and raising my first baby I was very upset and offended when a holistic herbalist told me that my daughter would have health issues. She told me to just feed a little bit of meat to my daughter. I was in total denial when she said that. But she mentioned teeth problems and low and behold six months later my daughter was having teeth problems. I remembered this holistic herbalist when the health problems started occurring and wished that I had headed her advice.

Vegetarian Health Problem #1

The vegetarian diet is very high in carbohydrates. Whether you are lacto-ovo vegetarian or raw vegan you are consuming a lot of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are metabolised as blood glucose and contribute greatly to insulin resistance, diabetes and BODY FAT.

What types of carbohydrates do this?

• Grains, Beans, Fruits, Sugars

Through a Vegetarian diet I have become Insulin Resistant. I was continuously hungry for food and never satisfied until I was stuffed. I was feeding myself with bananas, raisins, pastas, breads, cereals, rice, and lots of soy.

Even when I wanted to transition to a more Raw Food diet and eating more raw fruits and veggies I could not understand why I was hungrier! But with eating more fruit I was causing my insulin to spike and then drop and therefore increasing hunger.

There are lots of Vegetarians and Vegans that are not skinny. Many struggle with weight issues exactly like regular folks with insulin resistance.

Vegetarian Health Problem #2

Carbohydrates also feed Candida Yeast.

There are a lot of people who suffer from Candida Yeast and they don’t know it. With the prevalence of antibiotic use in medicine AND in animal products, chlorination of tap water and high carb and sugar intake that there is a definite unbalance of gut bacteria. Yes, we are seeing more products on the market promoting live cultures, but watch those sugars in these products as they most likely have them!

Lacto-fermented foods (ie. Naturally fermented pickles, sauerkraut, kefir and natural yogurts) are not as popular as they once were. These foods used to be eaten at every meal to aide in digestion. Now pickles and sauerkraut are being mass produced and they do not contain any of these beneficial bacteria (due to high temperature canning methods).

What foods feed Candida Yeast?

• Grains, Beans, Fruits and Sugars (honey, molasses, cane sugar, maple syrup)

As a Vegetarian, these were the foods that I was eating every day.

Insulin Resistance and Candida Yeast are very serious health issues.

Insulin Resistance leads to diabetes and Candida Yeast attacks your body from the digestive tract and burrows in and makes holes in your G.I. tract called rhizoids. Candida Yeast has many side effects like bloating, allergies, skin issues and neurological problems.

It took over 12 years for me to actually identify what my health problems were. I would still probably be vegetarian if I had not had children and seen the problems that I had passed on to them. Sometimes it takes being removed from the situation to get the full picture. I have read many similar testimonials to mine.

Being Vegetarian and raising Vegetarian families is not as healthy as it is portrayed to be.

A question for you -

What are your thoughts on this?

Disclaimer: as a former long term vegetarian and vegan I have had some health issues. This is article is coming from my health research and experience and is not meant as medical advice.

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Watching kids eat these days is horrifying and it makes me cringe. Carbs and Sugar are everywhere – from pizza’s, candy, french fries, chips, muffins, sodas, juices, cereals. Kids these days have their insulin raised from the moment they eat their breakfast to the moment that they fall asleep. Their poor cells are being assaulted with insulin to get rid of sugars in the blood. But the cells can only take so much before they start to get resistant to the insulin and not working properly. This is how we become insulin sensitive and insulin resistant.  The pancreas has to produce more insulin to get rid of blood sugar. The thing about high insulin is that it STORES FAT! That is why insulin is called the fat storing hormone.

With this kind of high sugar and carb diet we are ensuring that our kids will battle weight gain in adolescence or adulthood. This is what happened to me. I was a skinny kid that ate sweets and carbs and as I reached adulthood the fat piled on. As an adult I was eating natural whole foods but still I gained weight.

Why do kids need special menus at restaurants made up of processed carbs? Why are crackers a staple in kids diets? Kids should not need to have juice boxes for lunch.  Limiting these foods would do your kids a great favour!

A lifetime struggle with chronic disease and overweight is hard! By limiting sugars and carbs you would be doing your kids a huge favour.  ADHD, allergies, behavioural problems, cavities, diabetes, obestity, cancers are just a few of the diseases that can be attributed to the above aforementioned foods.

We should be teaching our kids about living a healthy lifestyle and not how to treat disease.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences!

To your health and wellness,

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