Sandwiches as school lunch. Yay or Nay?

Today marks the kick-off of a new school year in Romania and other countries in Europe. School lunches are as much of a challenge as other school-related things.

“Hi, I’ve been following you for years and I was curious how could I eliminate bread and starches from my kid’s school lunch”.

✅ I KEEP WRITING

I keep writing about bread and starches. They represent mostly empty calories and they should disappear from the table of the modern sedentary human because they make us fat.

Most adults are overweight and a good part of them are prediabetic, although their blood sugar levels are “perfect”.

What that means is that they have severe insulin resistance.

Most grandparents are diabetic or prediabetic. Stats show that 1 in 3 children (or maybe more) are overweight or obese.

I believe that in the framework of what I just presented, it makes no sense to keep bread around the house, right?

✅ WHAT FOOD MEANS

Have you ever wondered what food means for the homo sapiens?

Besides comfort for boredom, stress, everyday problems, our food is composed, in essence, of 2 distinct elements:

1. energy;

2. spare parts.

✅ ENERGY

Solar energy is captured by plants via photosynthesis and it’s transformed into chemical energy (carbohydrates and oil).

• Vegetables contain glucose;

• Root vegetables and legumes contain starches (glucose);

• Fruits contain sugar (glucose + fruits);

• Peanuts, nuts and seeds contain glucose (starch) and oil.

👉 Herbivore animals eat plants and transfer the energy produced by the plants (glucose and oil) into their bodies.  

A part of this energy is deposited as fat by these animals. It’s an energy reserve for the winter.

👉 Carnivore animals eat herbivore animals and transfer the energy (fat) in their body.  

👉 Homo sapiens eat both animals and plants. Well, lately some of them only eat animals, some only plants. You get the idea.

In fact, carbohydrates, vegetable oils and animal fats are solar energy.

✅ CARBOHYDRATES ARE NOT FATTENING

Contrary to what you’ve heard before, carbohydrates BY THEMSELVES don’t make you fat.

“Carbohydrates make us fat” is just a myth.

✅ CARDBOARD

Everything that comes extra on top of our daily calorie intake is deposited under our skin as “cardboard” – the subcutaneous fat tissue.

The fat under our skin, the “cardboard”, is like an energy reserve. This energy reserve is accessed only if we eat less energy than our daily necessary intake.

Skipping meals, intermittent fasting are both useful levers that help us eat less energy if we want to lose weight.

However, One Meal a Day or prolonged fasting will cause more harm than good.

✅ SPARE PARTS

The second component of our nutrition, besides energy, is represented by spare parts.

I am talking about protein, Omega-3, minerals and vitamins.

Spare parts for adults represent construction bricks for organs, muscles and bones for children.

For adults, if they stay malnourished, they just remain incompletely fixed. Their bodies slowly degrade and premature aging comes along (simply look around…).

✅ MALNUTRITION

I believe it’s very important to know WHAT to feed your child (either at home or for school lunch). A child is like a machine undergoing rapid construction.

Malnutrition is child abuse.

See below the part about physical development as read from article 90, Law 272 / 2004:

(1) Child abuse is constituted to mean any voluntary action by a person who is in a relationship of responsibility, trust or authority towards him, by which life, physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development are endangered, bodily integrity, physical or mental health of the child, and is classified as physical, emotional, psychological, sexual and economic abuse.

You can of course say that it’s not your fault that you don’t know what to feed your child.

✍️ I wrote about how to lose weight without constantly being malnourished. Read here: CLICK.

✅ THE LITTLE CUPBOARD

I’ll tell you something: the little cupboard filled with snacks is an abuse. Feeding your child something sweet EVERY DAY constituted an abuse.

You know very well that sweets are addictive. Don’t you think I’m right?

YOU try not eating sugar for a week. See how that feels.

Sugar will destroy the child’s teeth. Don’t you think that’s abuse?

I believe that your dentist did tell you not to feed the child so much sugar, juices and sodas. But it’s OK if you have the money to treat cavities.

Just out of curiosity: do cheese puffs (corn, oil, salt) seem like proper food for a child?

✅ FOR ADULTS

For adults, food has two components: energy + spare parts. Adults are no longer in the process of growing, they just get “repaired”.

The necessary energy and spare parts intake is relatively small.

The exception: people who lift weights. After their workout they have a minimum of 36 hours of “teenage rocket metabolic rate”.

A part of the food (energy and spare parts) is partitioned for muscle growth.

For this reason, I believe this saying is true:

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Strength training is the fountain of youth.

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✅ FOR CHILDREN

For children, food has 2 components: energy + building bricks.

Children and teenagers are in a fast growth process and their necessary energy (carbs / fats) and spare parts intake is HIGH.

The reason why a lot of children eat a lot of sweets and don’t get fat is…

Their organism takes over that energy and directs it towards growth processes, which are very demanding from an energy consumption standpoint.

✅ CAN’T YOU SEE HOW THIN HE IS?

Many parents will even brag about this:

“Can’t you see how thin he is? He’s eating so many sweets yet you can see his ribcage. You’re wrong when you say sugar and bread make children fat”.

They won’t get fat NOW. Not now, when they’re out running all day long and their growth processes require a lot of calories.

But what do you think will happen in a few years when their growth processes will slow down and they will start spending more time sitting at their desk at school or in their chairs at home doing homework?

I’ll tell you what will happen: they will eat in the same manner they are used to.

And all those “harmless” calories from sugar, bread, cereal, cocoa drinks, juices, oreos, cheese puffs will end up on the child’s belly.

🏆 PRO Tip: cereal, bread, potatoes, rice, sugar, sweets, sodas all contain at least 90% energy.

I NEVER kicked off my children’s day by feeding them extra energy (cereal, bread). I start by feeding them building bricks (eggs, ham, cheese, yoghurt).

Am I talking sense so far?

✅ HABITS

Inadequate habits from childhood will create a fat teenager and a future obese adult.

If you don’t understand how all this works, you’ll most likely blame the tablet and you’ll seek help over at the nutrition clinic because “the child is fat”.

Childhood habits are absolutely crucial for how the kid will look like in high school, then university and so on.

I think you must understand what I’ve explained over here and act accordingly.

The person explaining this (me) is a former child / teenager / adult who has constantly been either overweight or downright obese until the age of 28. Decades of the yoyo effect.

I’m not just quoting books here.

✅ PROBABILITIES

Studies show that…

A child with two adult obese parents has a 75% probability to become an obese adult as well.

Getting fat has nothing to do with “inherited genetics” but with the inherited habits.

If you have an obese child, you must change yourself, your partner. Then talk to the grandparents, to friends, change the mentality of your social group. Or change your social group.

Clean up your house and throw away everything that’s junk. Just keep ther real food.

Clean up the ENVIRONMENT around your children and they will adapt (they’ll lose weight, they will have more energy, they will be healthier).

Go to park together. Exercise with them. It won’t make any difference if you take them to soccer practice or to the gym if you don’t exercise yourself.

They’ll say they don’t like it because they can’t see you do it as well.

If they’re overweight, taking them to soccer practice will be for nothing if they’re still going to be eating sweets, starches and drink sodas.  

The parents are the first HEROES for their children. Children love copying their parents. Think about what behaviors your children will copy from you.

Think about WHAT you want your children to copy from you and DO exactly those things.

✅ SO SANDWICHES: YAY OR NAY?