| Happy Sunday, everyone. Someone recently asked me for tips on gaining weight for a kid who isn't hitting growth goals. He followed up with a quick summary of what his kid has been eating so far, and it looked solid. His focus was on "nutrient-dense" foods, things like liver meatballs, egg yolks in everything, grass-fed meat, extra yolks and butter in omelets, that sort of thing. In other words, these are the things that almost no other kid is eating. These are foods that are dense with nutrients a child needs to build a healthy, strong, resilient brain and body. Loads of B vitamins, choline, healthy fat, protein, vitamin A. And yet the kid isn't growing like he should be. So why isn't the kid hitting growth goals? One thing people miss is that children aren't just tiny adults. Whereas your average adult has no business eating hundreds of grams of carbohydrates, I'd argue that your average growing child can really benefit from some "safe starches." The big issue with eating too many carbohydrates as an adult is when you don't use them. Your average desk jockey isn't creating enough glycogen debt through physical activity to warrant carbing up at every meal. The carbs become "extra," and that's extra energy your body has to deal with. Energy overload—the presence of too much energy without an outlet for it—is one of the main causes of degenerative diseases like diabetes and obesity. Growing children have other outlets for that energy. For one, they run around all the time. They climb, they play, they sprint to go anywhere. They don't stop moving. Mentally they're active as well. They're constantly learning new things, exploring the world, engaging with the world. Tinkering. All that utilizes energy. Another outlet is in physical stature. They are laying down new tissue, new bones, new brain wiring. They're growing in all directions. That requires a lot of energy, raw physical building blocks. Glucose is one such building block. Everything else he's doing is great. The nutrient-dense liver meatballs, the extra yolks, the omelets. These are fantastic places to start and provide necessary (and increasingly rare) nutrients. But he also needs the pure energy of starches and fruits. Some might differ. Some will say "kids don't need carbs," and perhaps some don't. But if a given child is not growing the way the parents and pediatrician thinks is optimal, adding in some potatoes, rice, winter squash, bananas, dairy, and fruit of all kinds is a harmless thing to try and might actually increase growth. That way at least you know you're covering your bases. What would you say to the person who asked me? What foods would you give to a kid struggling to grow? Let me know in the comment section of New and Noteworthy. | 