In The Eyes Of a Child: Freedom to Eat and Drink like a Teen Does

My mom is a health nut! Yes she’s training to become a Health Coach and on top of that she’s a Chemical Engineer! She basically understands chemicals much more than a normal person around me would. Lately she’s exploring about ingredients on the food label. It’s all good because she really cares about our health, wants to teach us to make the right decisions when it comes to food and understand to "Let thy food be thy medicine". But at the same time I am a part of this group called teens! The TEENS of 2014!

In this world of experiments that she does with foods, I have ended up trying every single green smoothie she has made. Some crazy green smoothies are made with extremely healthy dark greens like kale and spinach. Other green juices involve wheat grass that need to be swished around in our mouths. I have also tried the best proteins that involve quinoa (Pronounced as kin-wa but it looks like Kee-Nova to me). There are also some super foods like goji berries, chia seeds and hemp seeds as she calls them that I had never heard of, but they are now a part of my smoothie. I cannot even start listing the rest of them, but a whole lot of ingredients in my life have changed because I know my mom cares a lot about me and my health. All I can say is that if it’s healthy and good for my body I have tried it. And no complaints because I have been amazingly healthy with side effects of tons of energy, liveliness and positive attitude!

But guess what I am a teen and I live in a world where teen consume so many things just cause it looks cool. Some of such cool things that come to my mind are-

Coke- The No. 1 drink on my list contains Aspartame. Most of the chewing gums contains this sweetener too. It is something that causes a whole lot of diseases I would not want my body to have.
Food coloring and dyes- My favorite cereals and candies have them. But mom says they are made out of petroleum products. Now why aren’t food colors made out of food? I don’t understand why we need synthetic materials in our food?
Natural Flavors that are made from Beaver Butt! Really! This one is in just about everything and its disgusting. I saw a video on Food babe. Ugh. Check it out for yourself at the link below.
Sweets that are made from HFCS. Oh No, I am turning into my mom! I know what HFCS stands for. Do you? High Fructose Corn Syrup. And this sweetener is everywhere in everything.

Life is turning into a very difficult place to live- all because I want to be a part of the community that is called teen! A normal regular teen who can just go about freely and put whatever type of food in his/her mouth when he/she wants to. I want to be like a normal regular teen who doesn't find the need to know where his/her food is coming from. A normal regular teen who doses on sugar as many times as he/she wants to.

But living with a health nut (in all good ways) has definitely made me think. Even when I try to have a guilt free drink full of chemicals it is just not possible. Over time I have realized that I do care about my health. I tend to choose water over other sugary drinks that are just a concoction of chemicals. It seems to be important to me that I grow into a healthy individual full of energy. While I don’t want to be called the son of a health nut I definitely don’t want to compromise my health. It is absolutely a struggle choosing to be a teen who is different. But this time I will say while I wish to have the freedom to eat and drink the way a teen does I also would like to demand for cleaner foods and be a part of the change that our society needs so that all teens can make the right choice. This year we have taken a step towards knowing where our food comes from by joining the Community Sustainable Agriculture program (http://www.localharvest.org/csa/) where we join hands with a farmer and get our organic vegetables from our local farmer.

If you’d like to learn more about all these wonderful things go to www.rupavadodaria.com/blog. You will find a lot of tips on taking charge of your health. Check out these two infographics first.

http://www.rupavadodaria.com/blog/2014/04/fructose-overload-infographic

http://www.rupavadodaria.com/blog/2014/04/coke-is-a-joke-alarming-aspartame-facts

See you soon. With more topics on freedom to explore!

References:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/28/soda-aspartame.aspx

http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/hidden_dangers.htm

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx

http://foodbabe.com/2013/09/09/food-babe-tv-do-you-eat-beaver-butt/

http://drhyman.com/blog/2011/05/13/5-reasons-high-fructose-corn-syrup-will-kill-you/