Wheat-free diets are a frequently sought-after item in the field of diet and exercise. Whether your children are allergic or you would rather eliminate wheat from their diet for other reasons, children can easily and effectively function without. In fact, removing wheat from a child's diet early can help to ingrain healthy eating habits from a young age, setting him up for a lifetime of dietary excellence.
Caveman Diet
The best wheat-free diet for children is the Caveman, or Paleo, Diet designed by Dr. Ben Balzer, a family physician who understands well the dietary needs of both children and adults. Despite its primitive-sounding name, the Caveman Diet is a perfectly healthy way to function year-round and incorporates many advanced nutritional principles in an attempt to return the dieter to pure, functional simplicity when it comes to meal selection.
The main rule of the Caveman Diet is to limit one's food consumption to only those items to which our ancestors would have had access. Dr. Balzer opines that the human diet began to degenerate when grains were first introduced, as grains contain a number of toxins that were never intended for consumption by humans. Eliminating grains from the diet entirely will release built-up toxins in the body and the dieter will return to a more natural state of health. Although this diet takes the "wheat-free" approach one step further, individuals who are already considering wheat-free diets for their children would greatly benefit from the further restrictions recommended by Dr. Balzer in the Caveman Diet. In fact, this diet presents principles that are best if adhered to by all members of the household. After all, children look for good examples in their parents, so who better to instruct them in proper dietary compliance?
Rules of the Diet
The rules of the Caveman Diet are simple. The child (and hopefully the rest of the family as well) abstains from grains, beans, potatoes, dairy, sugar and salt. Instead, she limits her consumption to meat, fish, eggs, poultry, fruit, vegetables, nuts and berries. With regard to nuts, keep in mind that peanuts and cashews are excluded, as peanuts are beans and cashews are in a category of their own.
If your child balks at undergoing such a radical dietary change, consider weaning her into the diet by slowly removing undesirable food choices and replacing them with Caveman-compliant choices. As her entire range of food choices is under your direct control, removing problem items from the household entirely will work best for keeping her healthy and eating the correct foods. Keeping a "secret stash" of select forbidden items in the house is also ill-advised. No matter how secret you believe it to be, children can be quite cunning and will usually ferret it out in due time.
Additionally, while the Caveman Diet is designed to be a total package solution to health and weight control, one need not follow the diet in its entirety to reap the benefits. Although 100 percent compliance will result in 100 percent of the benefits, sticking to a rule of 80-20 or some other reasonable split can also provide a solid median approach to Caveman dieting. For example, you could hold your child to the diet fairly strictly during the week, but permit one or two off-diet items on the weekend to ease the psychological trauma of dietary reprogramming.
Although the Caveman Diet is a stark departure from our ordinary , remember that it was our ordinary eating habits that caused these problems in the first place. Break the cycle and achieve real health for yourself and the next generation.
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