 Speaking of eating disorders, there's always the fear that when we start talking about making food choices or when we start talking about weight, that somehow that's automatically going to trip some switch in a 12-year-old girl that's going to turn her into an anorexic or a bulimic or both. What say you? What say I? Yes. You're going to throw me like a lamb to the slaughter. What I would say is I think there's a big misconception that as we start talking about food and bodies and body image that it automatically triggers an eating disorder. In my experience, both working with quite literally over 10,000 youth at this point, in my experience, there is a percentage and it is a very small percentage of people that I have seen come through our programs who have felt like they've struggled with an eating disorder and every single one of those kiddos came in with it and did not come in and then acquire it while they were with us. What I'm in the point I'm trying to make there is that there is a very specific etiology or origin of an eating disorder to be categorized as an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. It is a very different etiology than what I see with kids struggling with obesity and overweight. There are also some genetic and biological triggers for eating disorders. While there is some relationship and small percentage, I would say that it's the vast majority of kids that are struggling with something more like disordered eating, that they have this struggle with a body image in relation to their food decisions, that is a much higher percentage. The truth is this fear of not discussing food and not discussing healthy behaviors is not helping either. There is a way to talk about it that certainly is not going to suddenly trigger an eating disorder in a child, but not talking about it either is not that helpful I find. What sort of advice do you give to parents and kids about making choices in the kitchen, for instance? Do you spend a lot of time on that or not so much in food preparation or, okay, here's our choices, here's what might work for you? Yeah, we do. We spend a lot of time in it, as you can imagine, and as you also can imagine, it has changed through the years as the science and the research has changed and what we know now about a healthier diet, there's that word again. Really when I'm working with families, the most important thing that I stress is that health is a family affair. One of the biggest mistakes people make is, oh, I have one son who can't keep weight on him and one son who can't take weight off of him. We have special food for this kiddo and special food for this kiddo. That's not going to work for anybody. Health is a family affair. You either need to decide to be healthy as a family or you need to decide to let food be free reign. Now, I prefer everybody be healthy as a family, but it doesn't help the kiddo who's struggling with weight and body image issues to become what's called the identified patient. There's something wrong with this kid over here, so we lock this cabinet and they can't have access to that food. Never helpful. If you're asking about what we prescribe specifically nutritionally, what we have found works best for this population, and I'd be curious to know if you disagree, but this push towards nutrient-dense whole foods overall is what we adhere to and becomes really important to us. We think it's very important what the kids eat, not just how much the kids eat. In fact, more important what than how much. We explain to us what nutrient-dense whole food is, food in its purest form. It's close to mother nature, it's humanly possible, and if they're willing, stay away from it, and there's no need to touch processed foods and foods without a sugar. We talk a lot about what happens, the brain and your ability to make healthy decisions for yourself when you're consistently eating a lot of processed foods. As you can imagine with teens, this is a difficult conversation. These are the ones who are very susceptible to processed food. That's a whole other conversation. Speaking of addictive foods, you come down pretty hard on food companies in the book. Have you gotten any pushback from them? I know another woman, Food Babe, certainly relishes the pushback from these companies. What are you here? I myself have not gotten personal pushback from the food companies yet, thankfully. But I think my biggest issue is that I work with children, and children are very susceptible to things like processed foods and added sugar. They're susceptible to the marketing. They're susceptible to the addictive properties in the food. What we know is that once you go down this trajectory, it's very difficult to backtrack. These overweight and obese kids become overweight and obese adults. We're setting them up for failure. I know the food companies argue that we make our own decisions, that it's free will. If you don't like this fake food, then just don't eat it. My argument is and continues to be, if there are food scientists whose entire job is to understand the part of the brain that lights up when you crunch this chip in a certain way. How can we then not deduce that that would have a negative impact on someone's ability to make a good decision about that food? It doesn't make sense to me. I am constantly teaching these kids about what's happening there unconsciously on their part and how to fight against it. I find that once they're off the processed food, which they get when they come to us, that it's easier for them to make good decisions about that going forward. Yeah, there was an amazing study published probably now 10 years ago about the Appleton School District study. I'm not sure if you know about Appleton, Wisconsin started a program where the kids would eat their breakfast and lunches in school and they would be all organic foods and then they would they taught the parents what would be appropriate to serve at dinner, but they didn't have any control over that. And they did this actually for a year. And what happened was that behavior issues virtually disappeared from school. The testing scores went up and the trips to the principal's office dramatically went down and the truancy rate went way down. What's really sad about the whole study, which they then wanted to institutionalize it. So they brought in a major food service company to run this. And I won't mention names, but the minute the major food service company came in and started running it went right back down to normal because they were basically sneaking in the processed cheap foods again. So speaking of teens, what's what's your feeling about the impact of screen time on all of this epidemic and any thoughts on how you help parents or even the kids develop habits with screen time? I get this all the time at camp and have seen the progression over it up, it's seen the progression of it over the last 10 years and how that's actually changed our youth. One of the first things I tell parents as much as I can is you are still the parent. And so to the extent that you are having struggle or finding trouble with screen time, remember that just because everybody's friend has the phone and the iPad and the TV and computer in the room doesn't mean that you have to follow those same, quote, requirements. I often tell parents to take back the household in the sense that if your child is struggling with screen time, there should probably be some structured time around it. I always tell parents no screens in the bedroom, especially at bedtime, right, when it's so important, especially for our teenagers to be sleeping. And what I hear is, yeah, but how will they wake up in the morning, they need their alarm and what about the music to go to sleep. And I chuckle and I smile and I say, man, I had an alarm clock and it worked just fine. And we buy them for all of our campers at camp and we say, here's your alarm clock. I'll teach you how to use it. Here's the snooze button. Here's how you wake up, right? So we forget that we don't have to go with conventional wisdom. You don't have to go with the flow. I believe that screen time is just becoming another unhealthy coping mechanism for our teens. Another way to numb out, another way to find reprieve from whatever they're struggling with. And of course, when we were kids, we didn't have things like that. So we were either outside or we sort of had to learn to cope with whatever anxiety or stress was coming up for us naturally as a teenager. And our kids aren't doing that as much anymore. They're reverting to their screens in order to numb out those feelings. I don't want to be a sound the alarm or anything, but I think we have yet to see the long-term impact of how much screen time is impacting our children's brains.