The news from the front lines of childhood nutrition isn't good these days. Junk food prevails, and fat, sugar, and salt are the mainstay ingredients in the meals kids prefer. What's coming out of the nation's pantry isn't a happy meal at all but an unprecedented pediatric obesity epidemic rivaled only by skyrocketing rates of childhood diabetes.

At the same time, we're learning more than ever about the profound lifelong impact poor eating habits have on our wellbeing. We're also discovering some extremely interesting things about the way these habits develop; namely that we learn to prefer certain flavors and foods, and are permanently programmed to favor those we experience while in the womb and during the first few years of life.

That's good to know, but how do we best put this knowledge to work raising healthier kids who make smarter eating decisions? The answer waits in Feeding Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Program for Healthy, Safe Nutrition During Pregnancy, Childhood, and Beyond, by Dr. Alan Greene, a new book that offers a recipe for lifelong positive eating habits that every parent should keep in their kitchen.

A Stanford University professor and practicing pediatrician, Greene has spent years teaching parents and others how to raise healthier children. (Full disclosure: Seventh Generation has worked with Dr. Greene many times on issues of mutual concern.) Feeding Baby Green follows his extremely successful Raising Baby Green.

Feeding Baby Green begins with a section on fostering something Dr. Green calls "nutritional intelligence," an instinctual desire to choose healthier and tastier unprocessed foods made from whole, natural ingredients. As he traces his own interest in the subject, Greene explains how this imprinting works and why it's so important to get right. Eight steps for teaching nutritional intelligence follow, and then the book dives into its primary mission: providing a 34-month how-to guide to giving our kids the most nutritious start in life possible and establishing a lifetime of better eating behaviors.

Traveling from pregnancy to the toddler years, Greene leaves no dietary stone unturned. General rules and concepts are coupled with discussions of specific nutrients, herbs, spices, and foods. Recipes combine with sidebars on ingredients like sweeteners and dairy, issues like teething, and subjects like vitamin supplements to provide a complete picture of wholesome balanced childhood nutrition.

In between, parents will find plenty to cheer about. Greene's approach, for example, has the happy side effect of dramatically reducing if not eliminating future food battles because it trains our kids to naturally head for the foods we want them to eat. And because imprinting goes on for the first two and half years or so of life, late comers still have time to correct for less-than-healthy pregnancy diets and first-year mistakes.

At each life stage, the eight steps for teaching nutritional intelligence re-emerge to show us how to apply their broader concepts to age-specific dietary requirements and behavioral development. It's an approach that reinforces the book's fundamental ideas while maintaining the flexibility needed to actually succeed with the range of mutating personalities our children assume as they grow from fussy infants to picky babies to fearsomely independent toddlers.

What emerges in the end is a manual for teaching our kids not just to make healthy dietary choices but to prefer these choices over others. It's about feeding them well today but also preparing them to embark on a deliciously nutritious lifetime of instinctively craving natural unprocessed foods and enjoying all that this better brand of cuisine has to offer both body and soul. As Greene says, such an epicurean upbringing is a "a powerful gift" we can easily give our children. We agree and recommend Feeding Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Program for Healthy, Safe Nutrition During Pregnancy, Childhood, and Beyond as a must-read for parents who want to serve up the healthiest and most satisfying future possible for their kids.

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