My husband and I are on Atkins (still doing induction because we have a lot to lose) and we have a one year old son.

Question one: Because we're not eating any grain, we don't have any bread, pasta, cookies etc. in the house. Our son only eats those things when we go out or visit friends and family, or when someone shares them in play group. If he eats a lot of fruits and veggies, which he does, is there any reason he needs grains? Is a nearly grain-free diet nutritionally appropriate for a toddler? He's not eating low-carb by any means; he loads up on fruit and starchy veggies.

Question two: I'm still breastfeeding. Since I am eating <20 net carbs a day, I was debating with my husband if my breastmilk could possibly have as much sugar as normal. We disagreed, so in the name of science, I tasted it. It was VERY sweet - I'm sure over the course of a day I make waaay more than 20 carbs of breastmilk. Where is my body coming up with all the sugar? Can it make sugar out of other nutrients?

I ate LC while nursing my daughter and 80% of the foods in my house are LC. I talked to my kids' doctor about it and he saw no reason to push grains at home. Especially since, like you said, they're available everywhere else.

Your body will compensate and I'm sure your breastmilk is fine .

I've been reading about Paleo eating lately, and there are tons of families that feed their families this way, full time.

Don't children need WHOLE grains (not cake and bread, WHOLE grains like oatmeal) for brain development? I feel pretty weird about not giving a kid at least some oatmeal and real whole grain bread.

Your child will be fine. "Paleo" style eating is simply the way food was prior to agriculture. I use a lot of whole grain products in my son's weaning diet but it isn't necessary. Same with your milk supply - your breasts were not designed to manufacture milk on grains, so they'll be ok.

If you are nursing and depending on age of baby -- try www.kellymom.com

Esp the solids area.

Grains aren't totally needed -- think about the first grains for baby cereals. It's rice -- the plainest, easiest to digest on an developing system! As foods get introduced, there's running down the allergy list a bit at at time and with wheat, cow milk, egg, peanut, shellfish being among the top allergen foods... I found it easier just to take it one thing at a time.

So holding off isn't going to hurt any. Baby gets all they need from the breastmilk.

A.

There are so many different ways people feed their kids, usually as long as they are growing appropriately on the growth scale and there's no issues with failure to thrive I'd say its ok. Personally I wouldn't have my children on a LC diet, but personally I wouldn't have my kids eat others diets that are totally normal for other families, like vegetarian or vegan (I was one but not my kids) Paleo, or diets consisting mainly of McDonalds!

But their are people that won't feed their kids any refined sugar, we do. But we don't give them juice. Just seems like empty calories and we feel getting them used to water was a good choice. We also don't do the soda at all. But we do feed them ice cream for treats...and my kids eat gluten, but their sre some families that are against gluten (even with out gluten allergies) Because my son is has autism, I meet other parents that don't feed their ASD kids casein either, but we do. I don't feed my kids any soy products as there has been enough evidence for me that soy is no good, but some otehr parents may have no problem using soy as a meet subtitute, and think that is the better choice over real meat...I don't feed my kids and nitrates either, because there's been enough evidence for me to avoid nitrates for my kids, but someone else might not be convinced.
My point is as long as you toddler is growing and do not seem tired, sluggish ect. he's probably fine, since there are so many things people do and do not feed their kids and people always think that thier choices are the best, and everyone else is wrong! lol Even people that feed their kids Mcd's like 5x a week might not see the harm. I'm not being funny, I am friends with a women, she's very nice, funny friend, but we have 2 very differnet ways of feeding our kids, and she feeds her kids MCd's several times a week and lots of junk, but says since they aren't fat its ok...to each his own!

Nope. They need FAT for brain development which is why babies and toddlers should get whole milk rather than reduced fat (unless they're getting a lot of fat from other sources).

Grains actually contain "anti-nutrients" (substances that deplete certain nutrients - this is one of the reasons breads and flours have often been "enriched" with additional vitamins and minerals, primarily the ones that the grains tend to deplete from the body).

The most likely nutrient children are likely to miss from a modern attempt at paleo eating are the nutrients (mostly minerals) found in paleo foods that modern people tend to avoid (skin, blood and other connective tissue, bones, organ meats, worms, insects, and dirt/clay from foods not meticulously washed or found in natural sources of water).

So, unless you happen to be feeding your kids a significant amount of insects and bonemeal, you probably want to continue letting them eat dairy after they've been weaned from formula or breastmilk.

Standing ovation, on this post!!! People look at me like I have two heads because my kids don't eat grain but they mow through a chicken, skin, bone marrow and all. They're fit, healthy, brilliant kids. Fat does not = body fat for kids especially, it = brain development!

Good point kaplods, "Paleo" moms should strongly consider sticking to their paleo roots in terms of marrow, organ meats, etc.

Really? Because I just googled and found a ton of sources that say children need whole grains for brain development. And fat, I agree.

I know low carb is your thing and I've ready many of your posts on the topic, but you have to be super careful when you're talking about developing CHILDREN. They're not small adults and their nutritional needs are different.

Agreed- but humans went for centuries without eating grain. Human ability to eat grain is a pretty recent development.

My kids eat tons of fruit and get their carbs that way. I have a son on the spectrum and he does a BILLION times better off grain. My neurotypical child does as well. To each their own.

Summer, what nutrient are you reading that children need from grain? All I can find is fiber, and grains are actually a pretty poor source of fiber when compared with fruits and veggies. All the articles that I'm finding say whole grains are important because they are much better than refined grains, assuming that you're going to feed your kid one or the other, not that whole grains are better than no grains. Can you link me to the article you found?

I am super careful when talking about developing children, and I think that was reflected in my post (if not, I'll clarify even more in this one). I am not a pediatric dietitian, although I have a strong background in developmental nutrition. My master's degree is in developmental psychology. Prenatal nutrition and developmental nutrition, especially for brain growth and development was a large part of the coursework.

I was taught and taught others (when I taught human development and psychology classes at a community college) that fat was the primary nutrient for brain development. I used to teach that whole grains were important for other nutrients, but (as I have since learned) it turns out that none of the nutrients in grains are exclusive to grains - adults and children can get them from other foods (without the pesky anti-nutrients), if they're eating a varied enough diet (which is not the standard American diet).
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This was long before I had an interest or belief in paleo or low-carb. In fact, this was when I was violently opposed to low-carb diets and had barely heard of paleo diets (I had read Neanderthin, but didn't yet believe most of what I read).

There are no nutrients in grains that cannot be found elsewhere. However, fruit and vegetables are largely absent from the standard American diet (and sadly many parents do not seem at all concerned that their children refuse to eat non-grain, non-starchy plant foods, including most fruits and vegetables). The FDA recommends 5 or more servings of veggies and fruits (and doesn't distinguish much between the types of produce, which I think is in error. From all I've read (except perhaps for people living in the arctic) I believe that most people would do best on at least twice that number of low-sugar vegetables and fruits than is recommended (and the SAD isn't even providing that much). Supposedly (and this may be a myth, as I haven't verified it) the FDA researchers originally wanted to recommend 10 servings, but since people weren't even eating 5 servings (and many people were eating 1 or fewer) they decided to reduce the recommendation to 5 or more, because they didn't believe anyone would go from essentially zero to 10).

This may be urban legend, but what is true is that the SAD on average is not providing even the 5 servings recommended (and the serving sizes aren't huge - one small apple or half a medium apple/pear/banana is one serving. 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw veggies).

If children are eating a large variety of fruits and vegetables, they do not need grains. Many cultures eat few or no grains and their children are not developmentally delayed. However, those cultures do incorporate a much wider variety of foods (and their children eat them).

The traditional diet of the Inuit contains virtually no plant foods at all, except a few in the summer (but the ones they do eat are powerhouses like seaweed and berries - and they eat virtually every part of the critters they eat, eat fermented foods, and get their vitamin C primarily from sea-mammal blubber which contains more vitamin C per gram than oranges).

The Inuit did not experience "modern diseases" or malnutrition until they started adding European foods such as grains in their diets.

The human diet has been grain-free (or virtually grain free) for 95% of our history on this earth - and grains in the diet seem to be very highly correlated with modern diseases and there's a great deal of research to suggest that grain-free childhoods do not result in malnutrition, so long as the diet is varied - this is the catch. Modern diets tend to contain far fewer food choices than our pre-agrarian ancestors. However, they are not (at lest in the USA) short in calories.

In the past, even as late as the 1940's "calorie shortage" was the most common source of malnutrition (this is why foods such as nutella were actually developed as "health foods" because they contained protein, fat, and large amounts of calories).

Our nutrition-education is still largely based on a theory that no longer applies. Grains provide "cheap calories" (they always have - its why our ancestors traded hunting for farming - more reliable calories. It introduced many lifestyle diseases - as diabetes, heart-disease, arthritis, and tooth decay, but people lived longer on average - but the age range was reduced - because the food supply was more stable. So they lived longer (on average), but less healthy lives, they were sicker, had more tooth decay, and fewer people lived to extreme old age. Average life expectancy continued to increase, because of fewer hunting accidents (obviously) and "advances" in treating infectious illness (calorie restriction is known to impair immune function - even mild immune function, therefore an unreliable food source could make famine more likely - and with famine comes increased susceptibility to infectious disease). Agriculture, "won out" because more people could be fed on less individual effort, so fewer died of hunger and illness during the sparcer years or times of the year (because more food calories could be harvested than hunted).

Unfortunately, our planet cannot support "optimal nutrition" for everyone. We don't have the financial or environmental resources (at least not currently) for everyone to be on a low-carb, paleo, grain-free diet, even if such a diet is optimal (and there's a surprising amount of research to suggest that it is).

Because the situation is more complicated than "no grains" I hesitated to weigh in at all, because even among paleo dieters, there are many people who dismiss the necessity for "whole animal" eating and/or plant foods - and this can be dangerous.

If you are not eating a very wide variety of plant foods (as in hundreds), and a wide variety of meat foods (including the less desireable bits - or as they used to say on the farm "everything but the oink" for pork and "everything but the moo" for beef), there are a lot of opportunities for malnutrition.

But while everyone seems to be concerned about leaving out the "grain food group," virtually no one is concerned about neglecting the "insect food group" despite the fact that the human diet has included insects as a significant part of the diet for nine times as long as we've been eating grains."

Many paleo groups forbid dairy - but I think dairy is a better choice than skipping dairy and the insect group. As much as I'm committed to paleo, I do not eat insects (though I consider it a personal weakness on my part - I almost ate cricket when my brother "dared" me to buy the sour-cream-and-onion "crickets" in the zoo giftshop when I visited my family a few weeks ago, but I couldn't do it (though I wish I could have - I just couldn't get past not knowing whether the cricket had been exposed to modern pesticides).

So I eat dairy (usually fermented), because I don't eat bugs or much other animal bone (I should but I don't. I eat a little bone from sardines and what gets accidentally "gnawed off" poultry and red meat on-the-bone, but not enough).



As I tried to make clear, I don't make any statements about children's nutrition lightly - and I personally believe that all families should have a family dietitian (ideally a pediatric dietitian), not just a family doctor/pediatritian. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of dietitian's familiar with paleo nutrition (but they're out there, and more and more are coming).

No single food is "necessary" for brain development, only individual nutrients - and you can get all the nutrients in grains from other foods (without the antinutrients). The problem is in getting those nutrients. You can't do it carelessly and without an extremely varied diet. You can't be healthy on a vegetable-free, fruit-free, grain-free, dairy-free, insect-free diet (unless you're eating a whole-critter diet including sea mammals, and being breast-fed at least until late toddlerhood).

Unfortunately our modern diets are so low in vegetables (and not all that much higher in fruit), that many children don't eat anything that really counts as a whole-low-starch-vegetable (maybe eating only corn, potatoes, peas - which are better classified as grain/starch foods than true vegetables), and many unfortunately only consume fruit in the form of fruit juices (or fruits so low in fiber and so high in sugar that they're not the best choices out there).

We accept this as "normal" despite the fact that it's only been true for less than the last 1% or less of human history.

Even when children were raised on farms (corn, wheat, and rice) they didn't eat as many carbs (especially refined carbs) as children in the modern USA. Even "whole grain bread" is genetically modified, highly hybridized, and very different than the same grains of only 100 years ago.

This isn't a simple problem, with a simple solution, but there's a surprising amount of research out there that suggests that much of what we know about nutrition is wrong. And some of what we DO know is based on the assumption that the diet WILL include lots of grains (for example, before I was a low-carb, paleo convert, I learned and taught about the antinutrients in grains - and that the vital nutrients in grains could be found in other foods - especially traditional foods that a large percentage of people in the USA no longer eat, because they're foods associated with poverty, such as like insects, low-calorie vegetables and less desireable cuts of meat).

As it turns out, what we ate as "filler" (before we had grains to fill that space and largely until the last 50 years contined to eat as filler in addition to grains) turns out to have been the most nutritious part of the diet.

I don't expect anyone to believe me (in fact, I really hope no one takes my word for anything I've said. Nutrition is too important to base-on a few posts made in a weight loss forum, written by a stranger, especially one who isn't a credentialed and published expert in the field).

But do your own research. And pay attention to the research and reading materials that include both sides of the debate. Surprisingly when you do, you'll find that most of the anti-paleo experts do not refute the fact that paleo diet can be just as healthy or even healtier than grain-based diets. I was shocked at how many of the anti-paleo "experts" agree that paleo is healthier, but argue against it because of "practical considerations," such as limited resources and cultural preferences (they're not arguing that we have to eat grains, they're arguing that we have to eat grains if we're not willing to eat the plant and animal foods that contain those absent nutrients - or if we want to feed everyone on the planet or the worst reason of all - if we want to eat the foods we've come to prefer).

EEEK, I just love what you've written here!!

It's funny that you keep bringing up insects... because my daughter LOVES them. Like seriously LOVES. My husband hit port in Singapore last year and sent her a bag of crickets and mealworms and now she asks him for more every time he's away. It's hilarious.

But, spot on! I hate that grain has been dubbed a food group. It's cheap. End of story. It's not needed for development. My kids eat WAYYY more fruits and veggies than the average kid, and still people think I'm depriving them because I don't feed them grain? It's funny. At least my little one eats bugs .

Awesome! When I grow up, I want to be like your daughter.

I also want to add that I am only a moderate when it comes to low-carb and paleo theory.

I do include some non-paleo and higher-carb foods including grains in my own diet, and I think that some grains, in moderate amounts are safe (not necessary, not great, not optimal, just reasonably safe) for many people, including some (but not all) children.

I just think we rely on them far too heavily, and that most people (even children) are getting far too many of them at the expense of more nutritious foods (especially non-starchy, low-sugar plant foods). The veggies and fruit we do eat, are often too high in easily digested sugars and/or starches (both of which break down into sugar very quickly) and too low in water and fiber. Sadly the most popular fruits and veggies are often the least nutritious. To get a good balance of nutrients, you have to eat "all the colors of the rainbow" (well maybe not blue - allegedly there are no truly blue foods - all blue foods are technically purple, supposedly).

I think high-grain diets can even be healthy (but not for all of us, perhaps not even for many of us), but I think that higher-carb diets are healthy only when they're also high in other plant foods - and when those calories are being burned off with strenuous activity, and that's not common any more.

Unfortunately whole-grain in the USA, means primarily means wheat and corn, which I think are some of the least nutritious of the whole grains.

Sorghum and buckwheat are considered "animal feed" and most other grains are unheard of.

I eat a few servings of grain per week, but usually choose quinoa, millet, amaranth, wild rice, brown rice ... and other grains that are either very high in protein, or seem to agree with me the best. I do eat sweetcorn in the summer (because I love the damned stuff).

I have been eating fewer and fewer servings of grain, because I just don't feel good or lose weight on more than a couple servings per week, so I suspect that I "need" the grains I do eat about as much as I "need" the cheetohs that I don't eat.

I don't think everyone (or perhaps even anyone) "needs" to be on a strict paleo, grain-free or low-carb diet. I think small amounts of modern foods are ok - ok, not necessary, just ok. And how much IS ok, is going to largely depend on your genetic makeup, your activity level, your weight, your age, perhaps your stress level and perhaps dozens of other factors we don't know about yet.