 Welcome to a special episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. If there's one thing I hear from a lot of my patients, it's this. How can I get my family to follow your diet? Believe me, I've struggled with this myself. A few years ago, my daughter Elizabeth and her husband were both struggling with extra weight. But Elizabeth sees me as dad, and not Dr. Gundry. About a year and a half ago, though, something changed. Elizabeth and her hubby both adopted my plant paradox protocol, and today I'm proud to say they both lost 60 pounds each in great shape. Transformations like Elizabeth are why I wrote my new book, The Plant Paradox Family Cookbook. Because I've seen firsthand what a difference this program can make for your entire family. The Plant Paradox Family Cookbook will equip you with the tools you need to get your whole family eating healthy together. Which is why in today's episode of the show, I'm going to give you a sneak peek and share three easy steps for getting your whole family to start eating healthier today. Plus, I'm going to debunk five of the biggest myths about childhood diets. Tune in. You won't want to miss this one. A lot of people ask me, Dr. Gundry, how do I get my whole family to follow your diet? I get it. Changing your diet is never easy. That's why I want to share three quick tips for getting your whole family on board with the Plant Paradox Diet Plan. Number one, choose one food or one meal at a time. Throwing everything out, particularly with a family who's used to eating things, is not going to work. So choose your areas where you think it's best. How about this? We're going to get bread out of the house or we're going to make our own bread and I'll discuss that in a minute. Or we're no longer going to have peas for dinner anymore. Or we're going to stop eating corn on the cob and you're going to hear, but that's all we're going to change, guys. We're not going to throw out the fried chicken. We're not going to throw out the pizza until next week. This is a great way to get people to realize that their lives aren't going to be miserable. Now option number two, offer choices. When I was growing up, quite frankly, peas were the health food that my parents wanted us to eat and they were canned and they were horrible. And my sister and I developed great strategies for hiding the peas under anything that we can find. Now looking back, I'm sure my parents knew that this was going on, but it was their way of letting us not eat the things we didn't want to eat. So let your kids say, give them choices of what we're going to give up this week. Make it even a fun game of what we're going to give up. Get them involved. Now that brings me to number three, get your kids in the kitchen. I was lucky to have grown up with a mother who loved to cook and loved to teach me how to cook. And luckily, my daughter Elizabeth and her husband have taken my two grandchildren who are now three and five and brought them into the kitchen and there's nothing better than having your kids prepare, for instance, waffles or pancakes or cookies or cakes that they can make and they can get excited about. In fact, my three-year-old grandchild just thinks making chocolate chip cookies is one of the best activities that he can do. And they get to make a mess and have fun at it and then they get to eat what they made. And really there's no better way to start out your kids than welcoming them into the kitchen. Now there are a lot of myths out there about healthy diets, especially for kids. I want to address five of the biggest myths out there. Let's start with this one. Believe me, I hear this all the time. Kids can eat whatever they want without suffering the consequences. Let me tell you why this isn't true. First of all, look around. Most of our kids are now overweight or obese. And that's because we've gotten the idea that kids can eat anything that they want. So our kids, for instance, weren't designed to drink another animal's milk like a cow. Cow's milk is designed to make baby cows grow rapidly. And your kid is not a baby cow. Your kid is supposed to grow slowly. There's more and more evidence, published evidence, that children who grow rapidly have much higher incidences of cancers as a child or in their teenage years than children who grow slowly. And one of the causes for this is cow's milk. So no, milk does not do a body good. The other thing that we've been led to believe is that children should be drinking fruit juices because fruit juice is healthy. Fruit juice is pure fructose. It's main lining sugar. And be careful of looking at a label and it says no sugar added fruit juice. What that means to you as a parent is there's so much sugar in here already we didn't have to put anymore in. That's a trick to make you give your kids juice. There's a recent study in the British Medical Journal showing that juice consumption increases your risk of cancer as much as other really bad foods do. Juice is not a health food. Now fruit in general, we're giving our kids far too much fruit early in life. Fruit is a leading cause of obesity in this country. It's a leading cause of fatty liver disease. And by the way, fructose is a toxin that we carry to our liver to produce triglycerides which increase your children's cholesterol level and uric acid which can actually lead to kidney stones and kidney damage and gout by the way. The other important thing to realize is we're seeing an epidemic of autoimmune disease, asthma, eczema in our children. This never used to occur. And this is because so many of the foods that our kids have been given are number one loaded with whole grains. Whole grains are a recent addition to our kids diet. Quite frankly, when I was growing up in the 50s we had no whole grains. We had wonder bread. And nobody actually had autoimmune diseases in those days. We also didn't have broad spectrum antibiotics that are given to kids and adults like candy. We also didn't have non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like a leave or Advil. I mean, there's a leave or Advil for kids for goodness sakes and this actually causes leaky gut. The other thing we didn't have was animal products that are fed antibiotics to make them grow. And unfortunately, every time we eat factory raised chicken, factory raised beef, factory raised pork, we're consuming the antibiotics that are in those meats. Why are these animals fed antibiotics? For one reason. That is to make them grow faster and fatter. And antibiotics that we give our kids and that we eat in those animals, guess what? They make our kids grow faster and fatter. So that's the last thing you want to feed your kids for a healthy kid. Now all of these things actually make for a leaky gut. And in my practice I see large numbers of children with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and all these things can be stopped by getting lectins out of their diet. And as hard as that sounds like, the Plant Paradox Family Cookbook was designed with you and your kids in mind to give your kids the foods they need without breaking your budget and getting it on the table quickly. Most of the recipes used an instant pot or other rapid pressure cooker or a sheet pan. And it's no longer necessary for you to stop on the way home for fast food. You can get a food that feeds you and your family the foods they need in record time and it's all in the Plant Paradox Family Cookbook. Okay, let's move on to our next myth. Kids need to eat lots of protein. So protein is essential for growing bodies. Protein is one of the three food groups that we need and that includes fat and carbohydrates. There's no reason to doubt that protein is essential for muscle growth. But unfortunately, advertising has tried to convince us that we need huge amounts of protein in order to grow healthy. In fact, we really don't need much protein. And one of the mistakes that Dr. Adkins of Adkins Diet Fame years ago made was that he felt protein was safe and that too much protein would just be burned off. In fact, we don't waste protein. So if we eat more protein than we need for building muscle and for repairing cells, we actually convert that protein into sugar. Now it's got a fancy name called gluconeogenesis. But I see time and time again in my practice that most of us, kids and adults are eating too much protein. You absolutely don't need protein at every meal. And the other thing we have to realize is that there are plenty of protein in plant sources, including nuts, including leaves. And that we don't have to have an animal protein at every meal. So how much protein is right for your child or your grandchild? So an easy rule of thumb is an adult only needs about 20 grams of protein every day. How do you figure out what 20 grams of protein is? Well, most protein bars have about 20 grams of protein. So that's a good rule of thumb. Two and a half eggs has about 20 grams of protein. A small can of tuna has about 20 grams of protein. About three ounces of fish or chicken or meat, that's about a deck of cards, maybe a little less, has about 20 grams of protein. So that's a good baseline. Now, I know that most of you are actually going to eat a lot more than that, but you always want to remind yourself that that sort of baseline is going to get most of us, including your kids, adequate nutrition and enough protein to grow and do well. Now, if your kids are active and into sports, they can stand into weightlifting and weight training, say your kids in high school, soccer or football. You can certainly add to that amount of protein, but again, try to get the protein from sources other than a giant juicy steak from a factory farm every day. You can get plenty of protein from nuts. You can get plenty of protein from hemp seeds, hemp powder. There's all sorts of alternatives to get the protein into your kids. Okay, myth number five. Here's a myth I know many of you've heard before. You can't get kids to stop eating junk food. Now, don't get me wrong. This one is hard, but it can be done. And it can be done because I've seen it happen in a lot of my patients who are children who have these autoimmune diseases like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis. How do they do it? Quite frankly, it requires parents talking to teachers at school and talking to the child's lunchroom people that your child is going to need to bring in food from home. And one of the keys is to make that food look fantastic and taste fantastic. And that's some of the tools you're going to learn in the Plant Paradox Family Cookbook. The other thing that's important is to talk with the parents of your kid's friends and make them know that your kid, being nice to their child by giving them a slice of pizza or a cookie is not being nice to your child. It's actually killing your child. Now, some moms have told me that they really come off as the warrior mom, but when they see their child succeed, it's so worth it. One of the children that I talk about in the book is a young man from Texas, a young kid who had such disabling psoriasis on the soles of his feet and on his hands that as a seven-year-old, his mother had to carry him because it hurt too much to walk. And he couldn't even feed himself because it hurt to hold a fork. Well, over the course of nine months, this was all done long distance. I've met him twice. His sores have completely healed. He now walks. He goes to school. He hadn't been able to attend classes. And it's all because she gave him the foods he needed to heal himself. And quite frankly, the school and his friends are so excited that this is no longer a kid who literally was being carried by his mother everywhere who can now run and play and actually be a normal little eight-year-old that why would they give him this stuff? In fact, we do some specialized tests to see how much junk is getting into his diet. And recently we tested him. His gut looked great, but there was a little bit of gluten in his blood. And I said, uh-oh, you know, somebody's cheating. She said, I know exactly what happened. It was a special day at school and some child brought in cupcakes and he had one bite before he realized this was really stupid. And she said, you saw it in your blood tests. And he said, he caught himself, but so it can be done. And it really takes the mother and the child knowing, you know, the consequences. So, and that's just one example. And there's so many more. So how do you do this? Again, one of the easiest ways is children are gonna want cookies and cakes and all the things and macaroni and cheese and all the things that everybody else has. But you can make alternatives to those that taste like the real thing out of alternative flours, like coconut flour, like cassava flour, like tapioca flour, like almond flour. And my grandchildren, children love to make these for themselves. You can make a cake that tastes exactly like a cake. You can make a pizza that tastes exactly like a pizza. And so you can have junk food that your kids love, but that loves them back. And that's really what this is all about. Having the food you love that loves you back. Our fourth myth is one I used to hear all the time. Oatmeal is the perfect breakfast food. Let me tell you, oatmeal is really good for fattening horses for winter. My daughter, Elizabeth, is a horsewoman. And she can tell you that the only way to fatten a horse for winter is to give it oatmeal. And quite frankly, if you wanna get fat, oatmeal is one of the best ways to do it. And it'll fatten you and your kids. There's nothing good in oatmeal. It's loaded with lectins. Most oatmeal, even the ones that say gluten free, cross react with gluten. Of all the oat products recently tested, all of them had glyphosate, whether it was breakfast cereals, whether it was breakfast granola, whether it was breakfast bars, and glyphosate is the last thing you want in your kids. There's much better breakfast options and alternative. I've got a great millet porridge recipe from the book. Millet has no lectins. And if you want something that tastes like oatmeal, try the millet recipe. Now, if you gotta buy oatmeal, cook it in a pressure cooker and make sure you buy organic. Most oats in this country are now sprayed with Roundup. And that's the last thing you want in your kids diet, glyphosate. Because it's a cancer-causing agent. Just look at the news. And it also disrupts the gut microbiome. It kills good bacteria. And it also by itself causes leaky gut. So please ditch the oatmeal. I say my most controversial myth for last. Fruit is great for kids. Oh, come on. What's wrong with fruit? Fruit used to be available only during the summer and early fall because for most of us in the world, fruit does not exist year round. But thanks to 747s from Chile and Argentina and Mexico, you can now have fruit delivered every day that looks fresh. But in fact, fruit is actually candy. We don't call it nature's candy for nothing. It's been bred for sugar content. And it's been bred for size. We now have apples that are the size of grapefruit. And then we have apples with names like honey crisp. What does that tell you? It's pure sugar. So fruit should be viewed as a treat and you should only have it in season and please, please, please spend the money to get it from your local farmer's market or get it organic. Most fruit is covered with toxic pesticides and herbicides that have no business going into your child or grandchild. Fruit should be limited to a special occasion. Like for instance, let's have it on the weekends during season, but you don't need fruit every day. Which fruits are the best? Well, the berries are the best and believe it or not, raspberries and blackberries are actually better than blueberries, primarily because blueberries particularly have been bred for sugar content. When I was growing up, blueberries were little bitter things that you had to put a half cup of sugar on to make them edible. Now, organic blueberries are the size of grapes and we can just munch them like candy because that's what they are. They are nature's candy and we need to treat them that way. And like I've said over and over again, fruit juice has no business in your child's diet. Fruit is main lining sugar and the last thing you wanna do is get sugar into your children. So please avoid fruit juice at all costs. Okay, so changing what you and your family eat is a real challenge and it can be tough to do it on your own, which is why I wrote my new book, The Plant Paradox Family Cookbook. I wanted to help people all around the globe improve their health and the health of their families. So that was just a preview and here's a few more things you're gonna get in the book that I didn't talk about today. If you're thinking about getting pregnant, if you're pregnant already, I'm gonna give you step-by-step things to do right now to ensure the health of your baby while the baby is still in you. And I'm gonna give you 80 recipes that you can actually feed your family well on a budget. We break down exactly how to do this. Many people think that this is too expensive. In fact, families on budgets I take care of all the time and you can take care of your health on a budget. I show you how to do that. This and many more things are all in this book. So it's available for pre-order now. It'll be out November 19th. Get it online wherever you pre-order books. And I really look forward to hearing what you think when you start reading the Plant Paradox Family Cookbook. And I can't wait to read your posts on social media as you try these new recipes. And good luck on improving your health and the health of your entire family.