I talk about epigenetics all the time. Childhood Obesity is a very serious epidemic in North America. Disease that has never been seen in children before. And overweight child will become an overweight adult. It's so sad, because I know that it used to be so unusual. Now nearly a third of our children are overweight or obese. That number is growing every year.

Children with Type-2 Diabetes, Hypertension, and elevated Cholesterol. Can you imagine? What if it's an inability to absorb our nutrients and we just crave it? What if it's genetics and we've passed on an inability to methylate properly? What if our kids without proper supplementation cannot change this path to obesity that they are on?There is an emerging body of work indicating that genes, epigenetics, and the in utero environment can impact whether or not a child is obese.

We're at risk of raising supersized kids who may live sicker and die younger than the generation before them and there are a lot of unanswered questions. If you look at the data, there is this notion that some of the changes that are contributing to this rise in obesity have to do with the exposure to toxicity in our environment. Yet there is no testing to find out if the exposure has a bigger impact on a specific genotype. However we see that 35% of Latino, and 40% of African American children compared to 29% of Caucasian kids are overweight. How does your biological genetics vs. your ancestral genetics impact obesity? Great place to check out some of the stats http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/obesity-in-the-us/

In Germany they have shown through research that puberty has dropped by four years since 1920, and six years in that last century. Some kids in some areas are showing physical signs of puberty as early as age four. So we know that toxicity is having an impact on hormones, and we know that hormones can impact weight.

The best we can do is to change the chemical and toxic environment in our homes. That means non-gmo foods, non-gmo supplementation, non-toxic cleaners and personal care products. Influence your children's dietary choices because they will develop food preferences that will follow them into adulthood. We can change. Although you cannot change your genes, you can change your epigenome!! So the answer is just how to do it.

For my house, green smoothies have been a big support tool for getting more variety and nutrition into my daughter. I always make a smoothie in the morning. I like my daughter to not just have health, I want to model it for her. I know that in this life, I can't get the same nutrition from fresh greens as I could fifty years ago. Our soils are depleted. And so supporting my health with supplementation, that makes a difference. But it has to be non-gmo and organic, it has to be nutrient dense, and it has to taste good. Yucky tasting health will not win over a kid. So we do a lot of cooking together, and I even offer cooking classes to our community. The more we cook, the more power you have over your future.

GMO has been the biggest a-ha for my family, and what it was doing to myself, my family, and now to my child. The implications of what they are doing to us, is essential for us to understand.

So win over your family with some easy options, clean up your home with non-gmo vinegar (almost all vinegar is gmo), water, clean and tested essential oils, and start thinking about the impact on your kids, and their kids. It's important.