GROWING UP HEALTHY: A Complete Guide to Childhood Nutrition and Well-Being, Birth Through Adolescence

This overreaching book assumes all "take-action," "proactive" parents will dedicate themselves to their children's nutritional needs from delivery through the teen years. In order to ensure their "cute chubby child" won't "go on to become a fat teenager and adult, at risk for obesity, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a shorter life," parents' attention to what their kids eat must be unflagging, say the authors. They prescribe researching a family medical tree, tracking children's growth and computing their body mass index. Diligent moms and dads must get young ones to love exercise, fish and vegetables and must make meals fun and snacks healthy. If Good Morning America cohost Lunden, whom pediatrician Winick calls "one of America's most famous and visible working moms," can do it, so can readers. Most of the book's real advice, however, is commonsense and can be found in any basic nutrition guide. And the authors' assertions regarding the relationship between a specific childhood nutritional regimen and adult disease have few studies to back them up. So they hedge: "We now recognize that because of the diets our children consume, some... diseases may begin in early childhood or infancy—even in the womb." But based on this uncertain hypothesis, Winick proclaims, "we now know that we can intervene on those diseases and perhaps change the course of our children's lives." Perhaps. But it's also possible that this book will merely turn mealtimes into parental guilt-trips. (May 4)