Winning the Food Fight: Every Parent's Guide to Raising a Healthy, Happy Child

Arlene Gryfe is a Toronto-based professional nutritionist and home
economist.

Dr. Joey Shulman is a chiropractor and registered holistic nutritionist
who believes that nutrition is the key to children’s health. She
wishes to help parents learn to keenly observe their children’s
nutritional state and to select appropriate foods for optimum health
benefits.

Shulman believes that it is harder than ever to access healthy foods
due to depletion of minerals in the soil, heavy use of herbicides and
pesticides, and refinement and excessive processing of grains. Moreover,
an increase in serving sizes and decrease of daily activity is
contributing to an ever-increasing obesity problem. The author’s goal
“is to provide … easy-to-understand information … to maintain
optimum health.” The emphasis throughout the book is on natural food
sources that provide nutritional health benefits without creating
negative side effects.

Many of Shulman’s cited effects of “dangerous” foods are alarmist
and not documented by scientific studies. To identify foods that do not
promote health, she urges reading of labels and states that “in
general, if the words are difficult to pronounce or are more that eight
letters long,” they should be avoided. Not a very rational approach.

Shulman provides many reasonable suggestions for monitoring
children’s food intakes. She also makes the valid point that we should
not passively accept chronic diseases such as arthritis, heart disease,
diabetes, and stroke. Instead of exposure to detection techniques such
as X-rays, scans, and blood analyses, the focus should shift to
education and preventative nutrition. However, as the book progresses,
her theories increasingly depart from accepted medical practice. There
is the danger that a parent who follows her recommendations may try to
treat an ear infection with dietary changes, thereby prolonging the
child’s suffering. Indeed, Shulman concedes that many symptoms may
worsen before improving.

Should a parent wish to use this book as a reference, there is an
extensive table of contents, a detailed index, and four appendixes of
organic food alternatives—“healthy” bulk food bargains, menus, and
Shulman’s choice of supplements. Overall, the theories are vague and
mostly unsubstantiated. In fact, the publisher cautions that the
author’s recommendations are not guaranteed to produce any specified
results.