Believe Big Podcast

58-Natalie Pelto - Proactive Nutrition Tips for Kids' Health

• Ivelisse Page & Natalie Pelto • Season 1 • Episode 58

Share episode

Parents, this episode is especially for you!  

  • Do you have a picky eater in the family?  
  • Does the thought of mealtime with your picky eater cause a wave of anxiety for you?  
  • Do you want to know how to better approach mealtime in a fun way to help your picky eater expand his/her palette and improve their nutrition levels?

Well today, you are in the right place.  This week's podcast episode features Natalie Pelto, a mom and former healthcare worker with over 20 years of experience.   Natalie shares the incredible story of her son, his autism diagnosis at the age of 2 and how she helped him overcome that diagnosis by the age of 8 with proper nutrition.

Natalie will touch on the relationship between childhood toxicity, the gut-brain connection for kids, and nutrition for autism and cancer patients.  There's something here for ANYONE who is or has a picky eater in the house.

Connect with Natalie on her website:
https://nataliepeltoheal.weebly.com/

Suggested Resource Links:



Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟

Ivelisse Page:

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big Podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page, and it's an honor to spend this time with you. The best way to not get cancer or any disease is prevention. We hear it all the time. Food is medicine. In today's episode, we will be discussing food strategies and tips to help our kids make wiser choices with food and create healthier eating habits. My guest today is Natalie Pelto. Natalie was a frontline healthcare worker for 21 years. Her son went through a severe nonverbal diagnosis from the age of two till he was eight. After years of nutrition certifications and applying that knowledge within her family unit, her son was deemed to no longer need his autism diagnosis and is currently thriving. That's just incredible. Natalie left healthcare in 2021 to pursue helping other families with the use of lifestyle medicine practices. Welcome Natalie to the show.

Natalie Pelto:

Thank you. That's so exciting. It always sounds so funny when you hear your own introduction, right?

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. I know you probably have many, but can you share your favorite health tip with us?

Natalie Pelto:

Yeah, my favorite health tip has actually evolved and I'm actually going to share two, because we're talking both about cancer prevention and we're talking about kids. For kids, I wanted to give a specific health tip because it is a little bit different. Kids these days are exposed to a lot more processed foods. And so for kids, my favorite health tip is actually just to overcome picky eating. And to focus on diversity. Now, my favorite health tip for adults and for everyone on the planet though, is always the same, and this is the one that has evolved is to focus on making sure that your diet is so diverse that you are feeding your microbiome at least 35 to 50 different plants in a week period.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow, that's great. That's a great tip. So you talk about picky eaters, how do you practically do that?

Natalie Pelto:

So I have a three step process, it depends on the severity of picky eaters. And within every framework, there are frameworks. And so I actually have a course called the Bring the Fun Back to Mealtime program. And it's all about first meeting your kids where they're at and creating safety around new foods. I think that picky eating often can be linked to also nutritional deficiencies. So it's not even that your child is always necessarily just picky. Sometimes the food is tasting not the same to them as it does to us. And I usually like to use the favorite foods. And then match them with the healthiest version and transition them at 10% at a time. This is for like extreme picky eaters. I'm talking the ones who, as soon as you put a new food on their plate, they would throw it and give it to the dog. They won't even give it a shot. And so we have to find ways to making, those healthier foods feel as safe. So I'll give you an example. If they love chicken nuggets from McDonald's, which is usually the case is like everybody loves chicken nuggets from McDonald's. You would start to create chicken nuggets that are healthier in your own home, transitioning them from McDonald's, store bought chicken breast, but always shaped and cut the same way and always only introduced in a 10% increment and then increasing 10% increments. So that's like the most severe. I love the 10% mark. I always share it with everybody. If you can do 10%, which is sometimes looks like one grain of rice on a fork, it's still 10%. A lot of it is like the stress of parents being in the kitchen and feeling like they've created this whole new meal for a child and they just don't want it. And that is really frustrating. I used to do this and my son only ate three foods and they were chicken nuggets, french fries, and grilled cheese. I did not have a lot to work with. So now my son does definitely eat 35 to 50 plants in a week period, so then it's bringing the fun back. How do we make this fun? How do we celebrate each little win? How do we create celebration dances or reward systems that are safe? And then that is the last portion is how do we now, as our children start to really engage and like this, how do we create a negotiating system that everyone can be happy with. For an example, I have a client who loves books. And so for her, if she can introduce two to three new foods in a two week period consistently, she'll get a book on a subject that she likes. And for her that is her negotiation and it works for her And so really at the end of the day when it comes to kids You have to meet them where they're at and you have to make the safe environment safe or like the environment as safe as possible.

Ivelisse Page:

That's great advice. And practical too, something that everyone can do. So I love that. So can you briefly share about your son's autism diagnosis and the steps that you decided to take to help change that course for him?

Natalie Pelto:

It's interesting because going into my diagnosis, which by the way, I was very blindsided about when it happened, I thought I was going in for a speech referral, and I ended up with this, I'm sorry, I think your son has non verbal and possibly severe autism, and I choked on my own spit there, and felt like my heart had been cracked open. And so I knew though, because of where I worked, I was privileged in that way that I didn't waste any time thinking that establishment could actually support my son because there just was no programs in that establishment for him. And for some people, they wait through this process. They actually go through all of these assessment processes that can take anywhere from now 12 months to 24 months in some of the cases of my clients and so by then they've wasted so much time waiting for a diagnosis even. To me, I was just very proactive and that's what I teach people. I tell people you don't have to wait for a diagnosis to take lifestyle changes. And, I ended up in the lifestyle world. I walked a beaten path all by myself. People did not talk about lifestyle and autism. It was just genetic. And now we know through microbiome and lots of studies and genetic expression practices that we can have totally different outcomes with autism. And so my path was very unique. And finally, one day I was doing all these nutrition certifications because I could see that it was benefiting and I wanted to share and talk about it and one of them was cancer prevention, which I'm sure we'll dive into at some point very quickly. But for him, the one that really clicked for me was when I did my lifestyle medicine certification from Weill Cornell with my business partner, who's a physician and, just so everyone knows this is really exciting because physicians can now be board certified in lifestyle medicine. Which is a firsthand approach at using lifestyle as treatment prevention and in often cases, putting chronic illnesses into remission. So that is the journey I brought my son through, I didn't have a word or a course or a way to describe it back then, but it was all about focusing on creating environments, internally focus. And if you don't know the lifestyle medicine pillars I will share them. So the first one is nutrition. Most people can like tangibly think, okay nutrition is medicine. Food is medicine. I get that but then we miss a lot of these other very important pillars that actually impact the way that we even absorb nutrients things like sleep and toxicity exposures, that's a big one. So risky substances and toxicity exposures, sleep, resilience building, right? We know that stress creates so much inflammation in the body. So stress is a huge one. And yet in any diagnosis, it becomes so elevated. It almost becomes its own kind of returning wheel, right? And we end up with this recurrent, okay, I think I'm doing better, but I'm so stressed. It's negating a lot of these things that I'm now implementing. And then of course there's movement. Exercise is so important. Our kids today should be getting 60 minutes every single day of movement. That's not what a lot of schools are promoting. I love our school. They're always outside. My son complains about being outside 90% of the time and I'm like, don't worry, it's good for you. You're fine. And then of course, the last one is relationships and social interactions in a way that is connecting. The opposite of basically being stuck to social media.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. I think those are excellent. And for those who are listening in the cancer world, and I'm going to have you share how you treat patients who have autism and those who have cancer and cancer prevention, how they're so similar. But for those who are listening, we've shared about this on our podcast before, but this lifestyle medicine is metabolic therapy. So we hear about lifestyle, and people don't realize that those same buckets are the areas that we need to address within the cancer world as well. And that's considered metabolic therapies. And so I would love for you to share with us, what did you learn about childhood toxicity as it relates to the gut brain connection for kids and its connection with autism and cancer.

Natalie Pelto:

Yeah, because it's really all interconnected that way. What's really interesting, specifically in toxicity, right? Nutrition and toxicity are really my go tos to teach about because it's this area that people are starting to understand, but we used to think that toxic exposure meant we're having a Fukushima like experience. All of a sudden this Chernobyl or Hiroshima or this big thing happened in our environment and this is like why we're toxic. But the truth is we're getting micro toxins all day, every day. And I took a toxicology and detox program and I remember the first module, I read it and I was like, I'm never going outside again. There's so much pollution outside. It's not happening. And then I got to the second portion of this program, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go live outside. I don't want to be inside anymore, because there's way more toxicity inside than outside. And at first, it created this really big fear in me. So that's one thing that when I teach, I always tell people, don't get so caught up on the fear that you're being exposed to a million toxins, because the truth is that is going to happen to an extent. What we can do is rather than live in fear and take no action, it's to take action on the things that we can do. And that looks like changing our cleaning products. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Think Dirty app, but I always give this resource out every single podcast because I think it's so valuable. It's like a scanning system. It's an app and you just go around your house and like my favorite ones that I tell people are check your mascaras, check the things you put on your face, check the creams you put on your kids butts, check the diapers that you actually are using because you know that gel, silicone gel that they use to absorb that pee and that poop, it actually is super toxic. So it's not that we're getting this one exposure, it's we're getting these multiple micro exposures that seem okay. And yes, the FDA says, that's okay because it's just like this one little thing, but if you have one little thing a thousand times a day, it's not a little thing, it becomes a big thing. And in relation for it to go from autism to cancer and to talk about those two and the gut microbiome axis is toxicity impacts the microbiome by depleting it. So all of these little, wonderful bacterium that are good for us, it kills them off. And so then we have this imbalance of bad bacteria. I call them the white and the dark knights. And the dark knights actually have a time and a place in our body. So you'll never get rid of them fully. They have some sort of role, even though sometimes we really wish they could just go away. But the problem is that as soon as we have dysbiosis or we have just even a little bit imbalance in the gut, we actually end up having more ability to have chronic illnesses like cancers and autism happen. Now with kids, it's very unique because before they're five years old, they tend to have a very open connection between the gut and the brain. And that's just because our developing body is not complete until usually around five years old when it comes to the microbiome and it comes to the gut brain access. And so anything that happens in the gut is really showing in the brain. If there's inflammation in the gut, you can almost guarantee that you're going to see some sort of brain things happen. And I usually tell people who are trying all of these different interesting therapies, like neuroscience therapies, I tell them, if you have not laid the foundations of gut microbiome practices, you are putting a lot of money into something that will just become re inflammed. And just so we have a clear perspective, and you may have had this on a different podcast, but in order to have cancer, you actually have to have a minimum of four mutations per cell. So that cell that becomes a cancerous cell has to be number one, a mitosis cell, and then number two, it has to have four mutations. It has to have been a free radical in your body for a lengthy period of time. And yet the WHO has stated every other person is going to acquire cancer at some point in their life, whether they get remission or not. We don't know.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, and I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize and because I've had parents that I've spoken to who have pediatric cancers and they're like, we live a healthy lifestyle. Even myself, lived a healthy lifestyle. My husband was in health and wellness for over 20 years I knew the signs to look out for and I didn't experience any of those typical signs when I was diagnosed with cancer. But what I do know now is what you're talking about, which is the importance of those lifestyle factors that all play a role. Our body was meant to detox, but our world today has so much that we need to find ways to help our bodies detox now so that it's not carrying those loads and doing what you were just sharing about. And share with us a couple things you said about Think Dirty even the diapers that are in there. I've heard that the typical umbilical cord has over 200 toxic chemicals in the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. And so what are the top, let's say three things that a mom can do now to drastically reduce the toxic load in the home or dads, both.

Natalie Pelto:

I hope that this reaches like young women who are also not yet pregnant or have not had kids yet, because they could start this process and have a totally different outcome. But the truth is, and to put this into perspective, our world today compare it to like a week or two weeks today is equivalent to one or two years of toxicity load from our grandparents. It's absolutely so astronomical. And our bodies just not used to catching up. We have created like over something like 80, 000 chemicals between, I think, 1970 and now. 80, 000 chemicals, 5, 000 of them, the last time I checked, had been tested for human safety, which is why BPAs and those things get removed. Unfortunately, you will continue to see a lot of these products get removed from the environment. To put it into perspective, it's huge. We are being just bombarded. For a mom who is like thinking, Oh my gosh, now where do I start? And really the best way to understand, to me, I'm very knowledge based. I love people to know why they want to start. And once they know where and why it's going in, or how it's getting in, they can choose which way is easiest for them to remove something. There are three pathways for toxicity to enter your body. It is through your airways, you can smell it. Cleaners are a big one for this, right? They now compare certain cleaners to literally smoking packs and packs of cigarettes And then the second one is through the skin. What are you placing on your skin, on your face, on your kids? And I hate to say this because I know that you may get some flack for this but like sunscreen. This huge thing prevents cancer, but actually does it? What if five of the products that you're putting on your skin from sunscreen actually cause cancer? We have to really be particular about those things. And then looking at the average woman is putting something like 500 chemicals on her face before she leaves the house, or on her body before she leaves the house. That's mind blowing. And then the last way is ingesting, right? So that, what are we eating that is toxic? Now I'll share very honestly, the best way to do it. And then you get to pick if that's the way you want to start, because the truth is tackling any of those is going to be beneficial. It doesn't really matter where you start. It's like lifestyle medicine. You look at the pillars and maybe nutrition is not the one you want to start with. Maybe you want to start with stress. Maybe you want to start with sleep. They all pour in and raise the other pillars and your ability to believe that you can do a new one. So the best way to start is obviously what you're ingesting. It's hitting your microbiome right away. So what foods are processed? How are they packaged? Whole foods is always going to be the best food. That is how I like to share it. Whole foods is best food. And aiming for, of course, 35 to 50 plants per week. And this is like a variety of plants. Like this could be like herbs, it could be seeds, it's like not just vegetables or fruits. It could be a variety of plants. And these are the things that are feeding the microbiome. These are the things that are going to allow the body to go into liver phase one of detoxifying and liver phase two, just by diversifying your diet. So that's usually the best way to start. I love to tell people to start in that space, but some people it's really hard. Habits are built in. We are emotional eaters. So maybe if that's you, then you look at your products. I find the easiest place for people to start is actually to start looking in the world that you live in, where you spend most of your time and seeing what products am I using in the day to day that are going on my skin that I need to remove. Now we live in a world of fragrance, and if you didn't know, fragrance is like a codename for over like 4, 000 different chemicals. You don't know which one you're gonna get. We know that they're considered the new toxin. So be very wary too when you purchase things, certain essential oils. Be sure that the company that you're purchasing from is willing to give you education, or at the very least, the testing and promise that in writing and on a label that the things that you're using are not going to increase liver toxicity. Because that's the thing, a lot of people use essential oils or other products that say fragrance in it, thinking that they say all natural, you can you only technically by the FDA standards need one to 2% of a natural product within that product. So that means if the product has one to two percent of a natural substance, it could still have the natural mark on it. We need to really learn to be informed, which is why the Think Dirty app is so amazing.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, I love that. I also use the EWG and to just go back quickly you said airways, skin and ingesting. And for skin, yes, with sunscreen, that's a huge one. And I actually have two types of sunscreen. One is the cooler that we use, but when we're at the beach and one thing that I've also realized is that by not eating and using seed oils, our skin is not burning like it used to in the past. So again, what you're eating and feeding your body impacts how the sun is gonna reflect on you. So yes, long term beach or beach day or a long hike out in the sun, especially here in Colorado, I may put some on, but mostly I don't have to because I'm eating the right things that's protecting my skin.

Natalie Pelto:

A lot of people don't realize that our skin is just an organ. And like a good thing to think through about toxicity, because I think that's one of the things that a lot of people miss, is that they feel like they're eating all the right things and maybe they are and they feel like they're dealing with stress, but the toxicity load that is often coming into our world, we do need to intentionally be making sure at least quarterly that we know that our toxic organs are working properly and that looks like making sure that we're having at least two to three bowel movements every day, making sure that if we're exercising or we're in the sun that we're actually sweating. That's a huge one. I used to not sweat and I just thought that was just normal.

Ivelisse Page:

It's a sign that your body is not detoxing properly And so there are things that you can do. And we've done some episodes on reducing your toxic load, but I really wanted to dive into a little bit more now on food and how we can help our kids to have healthier habits, and how we can create those. I know for our family, for those who are saying, Oh my goodness, my kids, I can't even get them to have a salad. And one of the things that we did back then was we had Juice Plus and it was interesting that when they took their Juice Plus, they ate more vegetables. I mean it was incredible. My husband takes AG1 or Athletic Greens every morning because he's like I can't possibly have the amount of greens that I need every day. I believe I need to get my kids on that they're in their 20s but but what are some other resources for parents to be able to get more of those good things in the bodies and create healthier habits?

Natalie Pelto:

Definitely my jam. So number one, when we're talking about kids, like there's a couple of extra things that come into play. Like we want to make sure that they're having proper brain development. So that's actually built out when they're younger, too. They have this huge surge of neurons they're creating. And so when we're thinking about brain, we want to maximize brain development, but we also want to maximize detoxification, microbiome production, and we want them to be not nutritionally deficient. And then we're like, OK. Is this going to be hard? Of course it sounds hard, but actually it's not. It's, that's like my goal is for every parent to know that getting your kids to eat things can actually be super easy. I have never met a picky eater I could not support. And ideally what my favorite thing to do is looking at, what are the most nutrient dense things that you can bring in? Now, I only work with nutrition. I could work with supplementation, but I've chosen not to because I feel like it's actually more work, which is interesting right? For some people they're like, oh and it's like you said because their nutrients are being recalibrated in some way, they tend to want to eat more fruits and vegetables. And that is true in a lot of ways. But the thing with nutrition and food itself is that it's having a multi dimensional effect right away. One food can both feed the microbiome, detox the liver, support proper brain development. That's the magic of food. So my favorite things to use for parents. is, I love smoothies. Some kids don't like textures. Juicing, some kids will usually take at least one or the other. And again, my child only likes the fruit punch juice from whatever, not great company. That's great. So if you own a juicer, my suggestion is you can consistently using that 10% rule. What if all of a sudden they could have that juice in a different cup and that cup now has 10% apple juice and they don't even know it and then you slowly incrementally shift from one to the other. So juicing is great, smoothies are great, smoothie pops are generally a great resource bringing in. A smoothie pop is like a smoothie that you have made that you'll freeze into a popsicle. And so what's nice about those is that you can be putting in there like specific seeds, like chia seeds that are ground in your like Vitamix or whatever blender you have. Now I get a lot of questions, like I hear that smoothie-ing is better than juicing, juicing is better than smoothies. Really at the end of the day, whichever one your child will take is where you start and you grow from there. And yes, to me, each of those have their own very important ways of helping with nutrient capacity, and one helps with microbiome proliferation, one is better at detoxing and bioavailable. There's not one necessarily that's better than the other, it's just, where will your kids start? And it's the same thing, like, when I say that we can make smoothie pops, you can do the same thing with juicing. You can literally just take the juices and start with apple juice and make it into a popsicle. I'm talking about fresh pressed juices. Now the goal, just so everybody knows, because like before people think, Oh, I'm promoting a lot of sugar. No, the goal is actually to transition them into having juices that are 80% vegetables and very minimal percentage of fruits. And so that's what I teach. But we have to meet our kids where they're at. And it's about them, they're going to lead you. And that's the thing, the frustration that we get is by trying to mold them into what we want and they're gonna happily change if we meet them where they're at.

Ivelisse Page:

I love that. And what are ways that we can feed our kids healthy meals and foods on a budget? And we hear that a lot, I can't afford organic. And so I'll say, eat the clean 15 and avoid the dirty dozen. But, it's amazing how much eating out actually costs. So what do you share with patients that say, it's hard for me to prepare healthy meals on a budget?

Natalie Pelto:

So it's not. I tell them, number one, it's not. You absolutely can eat all day on a budget. So we are mostly plant based and we were not before and I'm not here to promote plant based. I'm here to meet you guys where you're at. That's what I tell every parent that comes into my world. But the truth is your children will eat pancakes. Your children will likely eat waffles. Those things are very not expensive to make and beans and lentils are the cheapest foods out there and they are the thing that feeds the microbiome one of the most. And when I see gut GI maps that I get from clients and I'm matching up the foods that are going to feed that microbiota, guess what? Most of them are beans and lentils and our kids are not exposed to those things these days. At least not in our Western culture. And focusing on diversifying in a lot of the areas, and yes, of course, the clean 15 and the dirty dozen, but also eating in season allows you to actually reduce your grocery bill because you're focusing more on the things that are available and close. The 100km diet is a great one because it really promotes, first of all, less travel time, they don't have to pay as much for the gas and everything else. And each place and you may not know this because I had to research this each place in the world, you could Google what is in season and it will tell you. So that's my one tip is definitely to really focus on plants because those are going to be the most bang for your buck. Eating out is super expensive. And if you're eating packaged this is the thing people think that going gluten free and going into all of these different versions of like dairy free is going to be supportive and it is but they're replacing it with foods that are packaged, and packaging food is expensive.If you are just shopping in basically, the perimeter of the grocery store, your grocery bill will change. A bag of chips in the health food aisle, which, chips should never be in the health food aisle. Not that I don't love them, don't get me wrong, but they are like 5 dollars now, Canadian. I'm Canadian, so they're like 5 Canadian, that's like ridiculous. And so thinking that through is okay, is it really worth to have that? And if you're like, my child only eats those things, then how do we transition them to something easier? You could buy a potato, you can slice it up. I do love Plantiful Kiki because she does have great ways of making things quickly. But you can actually have the same quality of potato chip with no oil in the microwave for not even a quarter of the price. So, there's so many different ways, and I don't want price of food to feel like it's so expensive because truthfully, since we have gone and focused heavily on the 35 to 50 plants in a week period, our grocery bill has actually gone down. Because your intake of meat and your intake of packaged foods will just naturally reduce.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. And, we work with a lot of pediatric cancer patients as well. How is that different than what you do with parents that call you to help them with having healthier meals at home?

Natalie Pelto:

Yeah, so the thing with pediatric, especially with cancer patients, is really because there's a lot of nausea, you're dealing with a lot of different chemotherapies, and again, meeting kids where they're at. We used to with my son, who... was not dealing with cancer, we used to actually, to make food fun, because their appetite is just very different and not there sometimes. To make food fun, we actually would use like the syringe trick. Like you could buy they're called Toomey syringes that are for, what do you call them, like bladder bags. Sorry, I'm in healthcare, so you'll get a lot of TMI information. But what's really great is we would make it really fun with the kids in the bathtub, and so they would be allowed to like squirt the ceiling with water. And so we would create this kind of environment with this tool. They would play with that. So then we would bring it into our world of nutrition in the sense that we would use that with water. So we would allow them to squirt water. That's, alkaline water or whatever in their mouth. And then we would move on to juices and smoothies. At least if it can be fun, it can be supportive, and if you're dealing in cancer, a lot of the things that you want to support is proper nutrition capacity, and the truth is that, having dealt with cancer patients, when you address the nutrient capacity you actually have less nausea when you're going through treatment in my experience.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, and I know that a lot of parents, especially those who have a G tube. They're able to put organic nutrients, dense meals, using that as well to help them to be able to eat the things that are going to be most helpful for them throughout their treatment processes. What are some myths about healthy eating, for kids and how can we separate that fact from fiction?

Natalie Pelto:

So I feel that the myths are that nutrition has no impact in child brain development. I think one of the myths that I hear is food has nothing to do. Because I was from health care like I had physicians tell me to my face, Oh food's not gonna change your outcome. They just can't grasp it. And it's interesting because I have like my business partner is a physician. She's amazing. And she's also lifestyle board certified. But when we talk about this conversation, cause we've had these deep conversations about understanding nutrition for physicians and debunking what's out there. A lot of it comes up often with just lack of knowledge and understanding how food actually is what we build ourselves on. And the misconceptions, okay, here's a good one, actually, now that it came to my mind. I hear grandparents say it all the time is, we ate all this stuff when you were younger and we're fine. But are they? They're all having cancer now. And then chronic illnesses have even are matching our cancer diagnosis. Are we really doing better? That's my question. So that's one of the myths I hear all the time is, we ate this way. And I say, you just have to look at the grocery store. I hate to call it the number one enemy, because it's not, but the truth is about 1970, the grocery store changed, and parents were not given the memo. And so we walk into the grocery store, and everything before was geared towards proper brain development, proper body development, and cancer fighting properties. And now our grocery store is 90% things that will promote cancer growth, things that will promote autism, things that will promote chronic illnesses. And so you just have to look at the grocery store to see where this happened.

Ivelisse Page:

And what is your tip for parents when they go into the grocery store?

Natalie Pelto:

My tip for parents is at first to go without your child. I actually take people sometimes, especially when I worked one on one with clients, we would do grocery store tours and we would do package label tours. The thing is that when your child is there, and you've worked all day, and you're exhausted, and you're at the cash, and at the cash, there are gums, chocolates, and chips. Your ability to say no regardless of how much healthy food you have put in your cart when your child is actually grabbing everything is actually diminished so much that you will probably not succeed in that. And so at the beginning until you can set boundaries even with yourself and with your children, I suggest not bringing your child and getting really comfortable with going to the grocery store, and understanding that the first few times, it's going to be hard because we have habits of going down the chip aisle. They gear every grocery store to look a certain way to build habits. I don't know if anybody has read The Power of Habits, but that was a mind blowing book for me in really understanding how much our culture has been guided to behavior in this way. And so at first, until you can lead from the front yourself, don't bring your kids into that because it's really hard. And then as you grow and you get really good at purchasing healthier foods and coming home with unpackaged foods that they just don't have that option in the house, you can start bringing them into the process.

Ivelisse Page:

Natalie, yeah, these are amazing tips that you have shared with us today, and we are going to put links to your website and resources in the show notes for people who want to investigate further for their kids. And thank you for what you do to really teach parents on how we can be more proactive about our kids health and preventing things like cancer and reversing things like autism. That's just incredible. So thank you so much for joining us today. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Natalie Pelto:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having a podcast that can inspire people to take this kind of massive action into their health. That's huge.

Ivelisse Page:

If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support our podcast, please subscribe and share it with others. Be sure to visit believebig.org to access the show notes and discover our bonus content. Thanks again and keep Believing Big!