Book Review: The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood

Just after Ben was born, I picked up The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood by Dr. Sears. Before I tell you the laugh-out-loud funny parts of this book (did this guy not have an editor?), I will tell you the helpful parts.

The measure of any book about nutrition is the changes the reader makes based on the book. I read the book almost two years ago, and these are the changes that have stuck with me:

1. Blueberries. Sears says blueberries are good because of the anti-oxidants, so I buy blueberries. Ben loves blueberries. It was one of his first words: “bzzbzz!” I thought it was cute he could say the word without using any vowels. He gets really purple when he eats blueberries.



2. Olive oil. Sears talks about how necessary it is to get good fats in your diet. I now use olive oil instead of regular vegetable oil whenever possible. Olive oil doesn’t handle high heats very well, so it’s mostly confined to the stovetop and salads.

3. Fish is good for you. I dug out a recipe for salmon loaf, and try to make it about once a month. Dirk was polite about it. Benji is also polite about it. He chirps a cute little “no” at me and politely asks for a cracker.

4. Flaxseed. This stuff is the best natural way to lower your cholesterol. You just sprinkle it on stuff like cereal, or put it in muffins or pancakes.

Besides the list of things to eat, Sears gives an understandable description of why transfats are bad but regular fats are good, and why high fructose corn syrup is so much worse than plain old sugar. He breaks it all the way down to the molecular level. It was a good explanation.

Now for the parts where Sears really should have listened to suggestions from an editor, or his wife.

Sears has a really good idea for helping kids classify food. He says to label food like a traffic light. Green light foods are foods you can always eat. Yellow light foods are ones you can eat sometimes. Red light foods are foods that you should avoid.

He uses this classification system because you should not label foods good and bad because kids would feel like they were bad just because they like bad food. Did you think you were bad when your mom said, “no, that’s bad for you, don’t eat it”? Yeah, me neither. But to protect the fragile psyches of children, we label food like a stoplight. (I actually think this is a good idea because it gives kids a way to categorize what mom says “no” to.)

But then, while talking about how important it is to not label a kid “bad” for liking “bad” foods, he labels the moms. Moms who feed their kids good food are “Pure Moms” and have “Pure Kids”. Moms who don’t are “Junk Food Moms” who have “Junk Food Kids.” Then he tells stories about PMs with their PKs (he seriously uses those abbreviations), as compared to the JFMs and JFKs. I think he should pass out stickers with Happy Meals that say, “my mom is giving me coronary artery disease!”

The other part that sent me into giggles was the last chapter, where he is determined to persuade all those Coronary Artery Disease Moms that they too can eat nutritiously. He describes taking his own kids grocery shopping. I’m giggling again just thinking about it. He admits that his wife does their grocery shopping, and this is the first time he’s been inside a store with a kid in his entire life.

The reader is treated to fun episodes like, “what happened when Dr. Sears lets the kids pick out their own breakfast cereal” which Dr. Sears then corrects in the teaching episode, “how to rationally tell your children that bran is healthier than chocolate-frosted sugar bombs.”

Then they go pick out meat. I’m laughing my head off again. Dr. Sears asks his kids whether they want to buy steak or wild salmon. “Kids, do you want to eat a lazy cow that ate nasty processed food made out of its own cousins? Or do you want to eat a fish that roamed the wild oceans, eating physically fit plankton, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and regularly doing fish aerobics?” Oh all right, that’s not a direct quote or anything. But the whole string of “wise parent teaching eager children in the supermarket” cracked me up.

Anyway, it’s a decent book. You just have to filter out the real information from the massive guilt trips, condescension, and other pomposity.