Despite all our advances in so many areas in this first decade of the 21st century in one of the luckiest countries in the world, the health and wellbeing of our children is a startling contrast. Obesity, diabetes, depression, conditions of the "autism spectrum", asthma and allergies in epidemic proportions - parents, grandparents, teachers, doctors and other health professionals, and social workers, know this litany only too well.

It's time to ask what, as a society, are we doing wrong? And, even more importantly, what can we do to get it right for them now so they can live a full life of optimum health, vitality and happiness?

This month we begin an important new column that focuses attention on our kids' needs because we believe nothing is more important. Our inaugural columnist is nutritionist Cyndi O'Meara, author of Changing Habits, Changing Lives.

Starting Right

I went to school in the '60s and '70s, an all girls' school with 600 students. For tuck shop we had meat pies, vanilla slices and chocolate eclairs, and on the way home from school we'd stop at the local fish and chip shop to order 20 cents worth of chips and smother them in salt and vinegar. There was one fat girl in the whole school. I remember her name and her face because she was an oddity. I don't remember anyone with diabetes, one girl in the school got a brain tumour and there was no one who had a peanut or nut allergy. Not one of my friends had a sibling or cousin, for that matter, with Autism, Aspergers or ADD. Everyone drank 250ml of milk every day at morning tea and there wasn't a wheat or dairy allergy to hear about. My mum was the best cook in town - I had three good meals a day with snacks and always dessert. My lunch, when I didn't have tuck shop, was a sandwich, homemade cake or biscuit and piece of fruit. I got through my childhood and teenage years without an antibiotic, painkiller or Bonjello, despite getting all my teeth and breaking four bones.

Wow! Did that really happen? Just 30 years ago life seemed very different to what it is now. What happened?

In the last 20 years, diabetes has increased 300 per cent,and Type 1 diabetes is on the increase amongst children and teenagers. Brain tumours are the leading form of cancer among children in Australia. Heart disease not only affects the elderly, but also the young. Autism, Aspergers, ADD and ADHD are destroying the basic family unit. Asthma and allergies restrict young lives.

Science has looked down the barrel of a microscope and looked at the human body and how it works in a very mechanistic, compartmentalised way. Scientific experts have proclaimed over the years that salt causes hypertension, sugar causes diabetes, butter causes heart disease, eggs cause high cholesterol, raw milk is dangerous and should be banned, infant formulas are better then breast milk, fruit and vegetables don't help prevent cancer, and the list goes on. Anything that was natural they saw as a danger to human health. In their naivety - or was it their arrogance - science and technology believed they could make things better, so they made margarine, egg substitute, artificial sweeteners, modified milks and many more "plastic fantastic" foods. For 25 to 30 years, people have been bombarded with propaganda, persuasive advertising and untruths, and have taken these foods into their homes and mouths without question. As Mark Twain said: "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." Evidence is now mounting about the dangers of these "technology foods" and parents need to take heed.

At present many people are starved for knowledge amid a glut of information. Who do you believe? I believe many people who do things without too much thought sometimes feel uncomfortable and unsure of what they are doing, but science, government and technology says that this is best for the children, and everyone else is doing it, so it must be right! So despite it not feeling right, we continue to feed technology foods, vaccinate heavily, medicate without evidence and compromise because it's easier to go with the flow than to buck the system.

Our children in this decade are compromised from the day they are conceived. They're never fully able to reach their true potential for bountiful health as they are bombarded with more chemicals then ever before. But this doesn't need to be the case. Education about the food we eat, the vaccinations we give our children, the medications we dish out to them and the products we put on their skin, as well as the cleaning products we use in the home, can change the status of their health, for the rest of their lives.

Knowledge and then action are the vital keys. Starting right is paramount. If a newborn is given the right start in life, then the rest of their life can be without complication, without sickness, mental illness and obesity. The key is to start right and continue to do the right thing.

A blinding fact is that despite all the science and technology, our children are not healthy. Disease is rampant amongst our babies, toddlers, children and adolescents. What seems so obvious to me is that if you don't want your children to be like the rest of society's children and you'd rather they be like the children of the '60s and '70s, then don't do what the general population is doing today. Do something different!

I believe more and more people are realising that breast feeding is best, but what about what you feed your baby once they want to eat? The process can be different depending on whom you are listening to or what you are reading. In my opinion, the most important thing is to feed your baby, child or teenager foods that nature provides. Back in the '60s and '70s, the food I ate including what I bought at the tuck shop was made with real food. My vanilla slice had real milk, sugar, eggs, butter and flour. These days a vanilla slice could be made with hydrogenated vegetable oil, egg substitute, milk solids, mineral salts, colours, bakers flour, high fructose syrup and preservative, to name but a few ingredients. The food still looks the same - a vanilla slice still looks like a vanilla slice - but the fundamental ingredients are nothing alike.

There has been scare mongering in the scientific and food industries about food. Butter, sugar, salt, raw milk, breast milk, eggs and red meat were looked at mechanistically by focusing only on the components. For instance, eggs had cholesterol, so the conclusion was that they caused high cholesterol. Never has there been such an untruth about a food. All foods that were deemed bad were looked at mechanistically through their component parts, so if there was saturated fat present in a food then it was deemed bad for the arteries and heart. The food was not looked at holistically which simply means as a whole. The many components that make up the food work synchronistically in the body to create energy and health, but this was overlooked.

Health is a step-by-step process, beginning with education and an intuition about what is the truth about the foods and health directives we should provide for our children. Be aware of everything you put into your babies' and children's bodies - food, vaccinations, medications - and also what you put onto your babies' and children's bodies.