Health coach Jordan Rubin stresses the urgency of optimizing your children’s nutrition (even before birth) to ensure a strong, healthy, and long life.
Mike O’Hearn has spent his entire career stressing the importance of starting healthy living young. But how young should you start? The truth is there is no limit. In fact, you can even start setting up your own children for health success way before they are even born. By optimizing your nutrition as a pregnant mother and then continuing an optimized nutrition plan after birth – you can set the foundations for, in a sense, a super human. Jordan Rubin is a health coach with a long list of credentials (which we will get to below) and has worked with O’Hearn during the birth and raising of his son, Titan. In Generation Iron and Barbend’s latest episode of The Mike O’Hearn Show, Jordan Rubin goes into great detail about the little known, but very vital, nutrition tactics to build a health foundation for your children.
Health coach Jordan Rubin is known as “America’s Biblical Health Coach” and wrote the New York Times best-selling book “The Maker’s Diet” alongside 25 other titles. He holds a doctor of naturopathic medicine degree as well as credentials as a certified nutritional consultant and a PhDs from People’s University of the Americas School Of Natural Medicine and the Academy of Natural Therapies. He also provided nutritional guidance for Mike O’Hearn and his partner Mona during their first pregnancy.
That’s why Mike O’Hearn wanted to bring on Jordan Rubin to have a detailed discussion about nutrition in children. More specifically, how parents can help guide their child with optimal nutrition and build a strong foundation for a healthy life as they get older and, eventually, start making their own health choices.
O’Hearn has always stressed how important it is to start being healthy young to ensure longevity. However, for some it can be a true challenge if improper habits were formed during childhood. That’s why Jordan Rubin’s advice can be so vital. It can not only build a healthy foundation for your child – but also set up the proper habits so that healthy living in adulthood comes more naturally rather than being a chore.
In some ways, Jordan Rubin rejects common nutrition advice you find in the mainstream scientific and nutrition community. This is less to say that mainstream advice is wrong but more to show that each individual is different and how generalized advice can lead certain individuals astray because they might not fit the broad boxes these systems are designed for.
Let’s jump into a few of the topics they discuss and how it can help set your child up to not only be healthy – but be a “super specimen” of not just health but physical fitness excellence.
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Eggs and Milk – how the source of your nutrition matters
The average person may understand today more than ever that grass fed food is healthier than processed mega grocery store options. But they might not realize this applies to more than just main course options such as beef or chicken. Since this conversation is focused specifically on nutrition for children – Jordan Rubin dives into milk and how its source can be much more important to long term health than most people realize.
Jordan Rubin believes that cow milk is the wrong choice for growing children – for anyone at any stage in life in fact. This is because of a specific protein found in cow milk – often nicknamed “The Devil In The Milk.” According to Rubin, this protein has been linked by some studies to neurological issues over the long term. It’s a protein that is not found in breast milk – so it is important to consider your milk source carefully after transitioning your child off breastfeeding.
Goat milk, according to Rubin, is the best option for giving your children the best source of nutrients from milk. In addition to this, he suggests to avoid pasteurized milk as well. He understands that this might make your weekly grocery list a little more complicated. A traditional grocery store may not carry such items.
Jordan Rubin believes that putting in the extra work or time is worth it. In the same way that we value putting in extra work into school, a job, or even exercising in the gym. What we put in our body has a direct impact on our entire life. So why not treat it with the most importance instead of finding the foods that are most convenient?
Mike O’Hearn takes this opportunity to talk about his love of duck eggs, something that he has gone viral about for in the past. While Jordan Rubin doesn’t find duck eggs to be the absolute best source of egg to eat – he does believe it is much more healthy than chicken eggs. It’s also easy to obtain if you know where to look.
Rubin feeds his own children smoothies that include raw duck eggs as an ingredient. He says that this is perfectly healthy so long as you are buying eggs from a grass fed healthy animal and ensure to clean the eggs before adding into your food. He claims that there are more cases of food poisoning from salmonella in the modern age than there ever was before regulations. This is likely due to the industrial processed version of eggs most of the public consumes.
Jordan Rubin believes that plant-based diets are dangerous for growing children
With each passing year, plant-based diets including vegetarianism and veganism grow in mainstream popularity. What was once seen as a small and even outsider dietary choice has grown in popularity. It has also been pushed as an imperative moral choice to help save the environment as discussions of climate change and disaster grow in concern.
Jordan Rubin is concerned about how this growing push might impact the youth of our community. During childhood, our bodies are doing the most amount of growing, and requires the right fuel (nutrition) to aid in that growth. Rubin believes a plant-based diet or even a plant-focused diet can be passively dangerous for the long-term health of these kids as they age. He points out that beans and legumes even contain a substance that inhibits the human’s body of absorbing certain nutrients such as iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium.
Wrap Up
Jordan Rubin and Mike O’Hearn talk in great detail about these topics and more in terms of nutrition tips for raising children. They both use their own children as personal examples – and how their experiences can be used as a reference for parents who will be raising children in the coming generation.
Rubin asserts – when he’s asked when is the right time to start a healthy nutrition or diet, right now is the best time. So for those who have children not yet born, the work can actually begin right now. Rubin and O’Hearn discuss pre-natal nutrition that can start your children on the right track before “day 1” and also the ways that a child’s diet can evolve as they age. All in effort to provide not only a healthy foundation but also an optimal foundation for success throughout life.
You can watch Jordan Rubin and Mike O’Hearn’s full conversation in our latest episode of The Mike O’Hearn Show above. Make sure to check back every Friday for new episodes only on the Generation Iron Fitness Network or wherever podcasts are downloaded!
