How to get your kids to eat fish oil?

Well…seriously I don’t really want to subject any kid to eat/drink fish oil. The interesting aspect of fish oil is the omega 3 acids it contains. The brain is made up of 60 percent fat and the omega-3 fatty acids (also called EPA+DHA) are the kind of fat that helps the brain develop and grow.  According to several studies, omega-3 fatty acids have been linked to the following benefits:

• Helps with mood disorders, including ADD & ADHD
• Improves focus thus helping kids suffering from learning difficulties, such as dyslexia
• Protects the heart and reduce the pain of arthritis.
• Help adults with conditions as schizophrenia and depression

While these benefits are wonderful the reality is that there is a big lack of omega-3 in Western diets.  This miracle food can be found in fish, Flaxseeds, Walnuts and Soybeans. As you can imagine those are not really part of the common American lunch or dinner. Fish has been slowly been pushed out of the average American meals for decades and the trend does not seem to be slowing down. To make matters worse concerns about high doses of heavy metals found in fish make it even less likely that fish consumption is going to pick up.

So does your kid, or yourself for that matter, receive enough omega 3 – fatty acids?

A traditional approach is to take cod liver oil as a natural supplement. However, as most parents know, children don’t like it and the oil is not particularly rich in EPA and DHA. Talk about a bad deal!

Fortunately there are some good news.  Several manufacturers offer nutritional supplements, in the form of a pill or candy, that allow you to get the right amount of EPA and DHA.  Those products actually taste good…well good might be pushing it. Let’s say they taste OK which is a hundred times better than what liver oil does. They do not have any of the risks associated with the heavy metal found in some fishes either.

The only issue with the nutritional supplements is to find the ones that give you enough of what you need (EPA+DHA). Typically the daily recommended dose of both elements combined is around 500-600mg (250-300mg of each). If you have to take several supplements to get the right amount you have to be careful that you are not getting other nutriments. For example vitamins A or D can be bad for  you if you get too much of them.

As usual consult your doctor before taking any action.

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Making sure our kids are safe

Everybody who has kids knows how important it is to keep them safe. I am the mother of 3 and the youngest is 18 months old and puts everything in her mouth. So, of course, I was extremely concerned when I heard about the lead and phthalates problem in certain children toys.

All parents talked about how awful it was and that it is amazing that this could happen in today’s world. So the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) decided to do something about it and the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) was passed.

Basically, the Commission has decided to request that all manufacturer / retailers get all their products, intended primarily for children 12 years and younger, to be tested. No product is allowed to contain more than 600 ppm of lead (as of February 10, 2009), 300 ppm of lead (as of August 14, 2009); 100 ppm after three years (as of August 14, 2011), unless the Commission determines that it is not technologically feasible to have this lower limit.” All testing has to be performed by a laboratory accepted by the Commission. For more details, please click here

Of course, this is causing a big commotion, since thousands of small and medium-sized businesses may go out of business because they can’t afford (it can cost up to $ 4,000 per toy) getting all their products tested to the CPSIA standards.

However, when this act was made the CPSC included all children-product manufacturer, even businesses who offer clothing, jewelry and other gifts for children. In short, the entire children’s industry is affected.

They simply forgot to exclude the class of toys that have earned and kept the public’s trust and unless the law is not modified, handmade children’s products will no longer be legal in the US.

Thousands of citizens and business are standing together to fight the pending demise of handmade children’s products. A “Help Save Handmade Toys from the CPSIA” has already more than 15,000 members, and is gaining members every day.

Who doesn’t want their child to be safe? But is it really realistic to implement such a law on such short notice? And shouldn’t all business, small and large, be considered?

My oldest is 5 ½ years old and I remember already hearing about phthalates back then and I remember looking at all products before buying them to make sure they didn’t contain phthalates. Did I get annoyed when most products didn’t even seem to care about writing whether or not they contained phthalates? Yes, because being a first-time mom you just want the best for your baby. But I don’t believe in pushing this law through so fast that many businesses will have to close their doors, ESPECIALLY since the current economy situation is already doing hurting small companies really badly. There has to be a better way of doing this.

UPDATE: The CPSC has granted a 1 year stay of testing and certification requirements.

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