So I had to try them out again just to get a fresh opinion.

Sardines rock!  They’re so good.  All you have to do is dump them in a bowl, add a lot of mustard, mix it together, and put them on some toast and you have a beautifully tasty meal.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I think people who don’t like sardines just haven’t tried them with mustard (mustard is a good approach to hiding strange flavors, as you may have gathered from the liver mcnuggets post.)  Also, if sardines aren’t packaged or processed right their flavor will really suffer. You can get good sardines at Costco, or online at Vital Choice seafood.

Sardines are high in omega-3 fatty acids.  They are low on the food chain, and thus are very low in mercury.  Not only do they contain a lot of omega-3, sardines also contain a lot of iron, selenium, vitamin D, vitamin B12, phosphorus, potassium, protein, and coenzyme Q-10.  Sardines are good for your heart, brain, joints, and pretty much everything else.  Yes, sardines are very good for you!  You can read more about sardines at Associated Content, or better yet, at whfoods.org.

Sardines can have a lot of histamine, which isn’t a problem unless you’re sensitive or have urticaria or hives.  Check out an article about histamine avoidance if you’re curious.

If you get quality sardines and you like fish, you’ll probably love them right out of the can.  But mixing them with mustard has never failed at making them a hit for me.  I have not tried them on the kids yet because we haven’t yet incorporated them into our routine like we have with salmon.  That’s on my agenda, and I’ll let you know what they think by posting a comment.

A tin of sardines

Why Vitamin D and Omega-3?

Scientists are unraveling a link between Vitamin D levels and susceptibility to respiratory infections. Low Vitamin D levels are cited with the fact that colds, pneumonia, and especially the flu are confined to winter months, when exposure to sunlight is most limited.  It’s no mere coincidence. And Omega-3 fatty acids (like DHA and EPA) are important in preventing your immune system from causing excess damage.

Vitamin D and Omega-3 (both found in cod liver oil) greatly diminish flu problems in two ways:

1. Vitamin D is necessary for immune cell production of anti-microbial peptides. These peptides, spurred only by vitamin D, are indispensable for directly killing the influenza virus.  Without Vitamin D, the immune system is greatly crippled.
2. Vitamin D and Omega-3’s help lower respiratory inflammation. Often, what is worse than the actual infection itself is the body’s response to the infection.  This is no less true with the flu and swine flu.  Without the calming effects of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, the body often damages itself by an over-reactive immune response, making the infection worse.  Over-reactive immunity is analogous to “friendly fire” in a war zone.  Without vitamin D and omega-3, your body will end up killing itself trying to fight the enemy.

Action Steps

1. Get cod liver oil. Cod liver oil can be found at your health food store.  TwinLabs is the best “cheap” brand, while Carlson’s and Nordic Naturals are the highest quality (and highest priced).  Consider lemon-flavored.  Don’t get emulsified (comment if you’re curious why).
2. Feed it to your family by the teaspoonful every day. Cod liver oil doesn’t taste bad (if it’s fresh), although most people aren’t used to the buoyancy of pure oil on their tongue.  It “don’t seem right.”  Therefore, I give you permission to gently bribe your kids with a treat (eek!).  After swallowing the oil they can have a chewable vitamin!  (By the way, this last tactic worked for us when we started cod liver oil a few years ago with Isaac.  Now they eat it without bribery.  Anika loves it unconditionally because she’s had it from infancy.)
3. Read more about Vitamin D.

Alternatively, you can get separate Vitamin D tablets or capsules and fish oil capsules.  This is fine.  You can smash vitamin D easily and since it doesn’t have a taste, you can sprinkle it in the child’s food.  The food needs to have fat in it for proper absorption of the Vitamin D. Vitamin D capsules have the added benefit of allowing you to load up quickly by giving a more concentrated form of Vitamin D.  But you shouldn’t give anyone more than 2,000 IU for extended periods.  Post-menopausal women should not eat cod liver oil because they lack the hormones that would handle the Vitamin A correctly.

Vitamin D is not the only factor in susceptibility to bad respiratory infections.  A healthy diet full of whole foods is an important protection.  But increasing your levels of Vitamin D is so easy, and can make such a vast improvement in your health, that I recommend you purchase it as soon as you can.

Oh, and don’t forget to make sure you’re getting enough zinc in your diet!  Zinc is also essential for the immune system, but that’s for another post.

Good luck and flourish.

Nick

His wife just wrote a blog post about their children’s experiences being raised in a nutrition-conscious family. Their three-year-old’s first exposure to a chocolate chip cookie is pretty funny. They’ve come to the same belief we have: you can’t keep your kids in a bubble forever. The point is to train them to love healthy eating and then send them off to govern themselves as they grow older.

To learn more, read the blog post or go to the official site of Disease Proof Your Child.

Please comment and tell us your biggest challenge in eating healthier.  It could be anything, but here are a few guesses at what you might want to know:

• You want food knowledge. i.e. “I don’t know for sure what’s healthy.  I keep hearing all these recommendations but it’s overwhelming.”
• You want to learn to eat healthy in a hurry. i.e. “Finding time to cook healthy food is difficult.”
• You need a crash course in child psychology. i.e. “My kids are picky.  Whenever I feed them healthy food they turn up their noses.”
• Or whatever else…

So let us know.  We look forward to hearing about it!