Is it mere coincidence that more kids today suffer from more chronic, hard-to-diagnose and hard-to-treat health problems compared with kids growing up in the decades before genetically engineered food ingredients became prevalent?

No, say Michelle Perro, MD, and Vincanne Adams, PhD, authors of “What’s Making Our Children Sick?” Perro and Adams say GMO and processed foods aren’t doing our kids any good. But even worse are the contaminants use to produce those foods.

From the book:

Eating processed foods that are high in carbohydrates, sugar, and hollow calories is the first problem . . . but it is not the main problem. The more insidious danger is foods that are full of pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics.

Doctors are witnessing a near-epidemic of chronic diseases in children including food allergies and food sensitivities, asthma, eczema, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), obesity, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other debilitating mental disorders.

The solution? Most doctors try to minimize the symptoms, often with drugs that come with their own health consequences. Perro and Adams believe a better approach is to look at kids’ diets as a means of addressing both cause and symptoms.

Food as medicine isn’t a new idea—after all, it was the Greek physician Hippocrates who said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” But the concept is attracting renewed attention—even in Congress, where members of the House Hunger Caucus have created a Food Is Medicine Working Group.

Perro and Adams paint a detailed picture of the connection between industrial food and sick kids, and what parents can do.

Read ‘Can Food-Focused Medicine Cure Food-Related Disease?’

Buy “What’s Making Our Kids Sick?”