Customer Reviews

Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right: The Food Solution That Lets Kids Be Kids

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I think we all need a bit of a kick-start in the new year by eating right, especially with our kids! Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right is fabulous, not just for the parent of a child who is overweight, but for all parents. I can already tell you from experience this book is changing how I help my child who is struggling with weight. We were getting portion control right, but now I see our calories and fat amount was way way off.. so wonder we've hit a wall with his weight loss. I love that a Pediatrician created this program and that Dr. Dolgoff is so responsive. She is both on twitter and facebook!

No Calorie Counting, No Dieting, No Off-Limit Foods!
This is the promise of Dr. Dolgoff's food solution nutrition book. The book contains 11 chapters, with titles like:
* Coming to terms: Is your child really overweight?
* High Performance Breakfasts
* Dinner Destinations
and
* Restaurants: Be Prepared
See? Even restaurant dining is not off limits. That was one of the first things I noticed in Dr. Dolgoff's philosphy back last summer: Make healthy choices and still enjoy the foods and places you love.

Dr. Dolgoff's fabulous explanation and categorizing while 'Teaching the Rules of the Road' and how to use her system of Green Light foods (Go!) , Yellow Light foods (Slow down!) and Red Light foods (Uh Oh!) is easy to read easy to use! A simple game plan for understanding and itemizing the foods you already eat (while encouraging new healthy high fiber foods) into Green, Yellow and Red signals.

Dr. Dolgoff claims a 96 percent success rate! That's reason enough for me to get on board. Start driving the Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right express.

I am very educated on nutrition for myself and my family. This book gives fantastic recommendations for healthy kids meals. The best part is that the meals are very simple and quick to make. The book offers suggestions for meals on the go and for those times when you need dinner in a hurry. Most of all these are meals my boys will actually like to eat. My boys are in Kindergarten and have enjoyed the items we've made so far. This is a quick read and a wonderful reference tool for busy moms. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

This not just great for overweight children, adults can learn how to change the way they eat also. I have tried Weight Watchers and the Flat Belly Diet. I ended up only gaining more weight. After reading the book, I founs this is not a diet its a way of life. I have now lost 12 pounds and only have 5 more to reach the weight I was in college. I feel great about my self and don't feel like I have deprived myself of living.

The concept is great (red, yellow, and green-light foods), but many of the foods this author recommends are terrible. If you don't mind feeding your kids plenty of toxic artificial "food-stuffs," I guess this program will work for weight loss. I do not want my child drowning in "sugar-free breakfast syrup" (a green-light food... yes, you can have as much as you want), so I can't use this book. I don't want to teach her to rely on unhealthy fake foods for weight loss and maintenance.

Some of the recipes included in the book are good. But it would be hard to do the program without the saccharine and fat-free hot dogs because it is pretty calorie-restricted. 100 calories for breakfast is recommended for the weight loss phase for 10yo girls. That's not many!

Maybe someday this author will learn more about nutrition and rewrite the book to reflect better food choices. It would be great if it wasn't so focused on fat-free, sugar-free processed foods.

First of all I want to say, I did not read this book to help my daughter lose weight but to maintain and healthy weight and learn good nutrition. So my judgment may be different then others.

First the good. The concept is good and very appealing to kids. It is a great way to teach kids portion control. You get so many green foods a day and you can trade green foods to get yellow. You also get two red foods a week. Non sweetened fruit and veggies are unlimited. There are also some good diagrams such as hunger and fulness scale, and how to measure portion sizes.

The bad. There are a lot of green foods that are not nutritious. Example: Lucky Charms, white bread and white pasta, totino pizza rolls, candy corn, jelly beans, peeps, 100 cal packs and so on. And while I believe everything in moderation, I don't feel this is good way to teach nutrition. Also she uses a lot of Splenda. So if you have reservations about this you will want to use something else.

So over all I think there are parts of this book that I found helpful, but I wouldn't follow it to the T. I do recommend any of Tosca Reno's books. She does have a book geared towards children, The Eat-Clean Diet for Family and Kids: Simple Strategies for Lasting Health and Fitness.

My daughter has been heavy since the day she was born @ 10LB 12OZ, 8 years ago. She LOVES to eat but is starting to hate the effects of being heavy (like feeling different from other kids and not being as good at sports and such). This book not only gives me a foundation for talking with her about making changes (as opposed to me vapidly nagging and talking abstractly about making good choices), but also a simple, straightforward guide upon which she can base her good food related decisions. I think reading this book together takes a lot of the "sting" out of talking about her excess weight (and mine) and gives her tools she can use to change her eating habits for life.

She likes the book, she gets the concepts, she is making progress.

Food is a battle in our house. For all of us. The hubs and I both have baby weight to take off and the 3 year old is pickier than anyone I've ever seen. We have his foods separated into three categories: 1. He loves it 2. Hide it in something else and 3. WDCAM (our household lingo for "Whatever Doesn't Cause A Meltdown"). He also tends to like food from the "C" category: cookies, chicken, carrots, crackers, cheese, Cheez-Its, cake.

I saw a request on the Product Review Place from Joanna Dolgoff, MD for people to review her book Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right and I jumped at the opportunity.

The book is written to help overweight kids and teens learn to eat healthier foods. While my son is in no way overweight, he is extremely picky and I welcome anything that will help me feed him better. For months, we were giving him a bottle of Pediasure (or an equivalent brand) every morning to make sure he got his vitamins, but that was giving him way too much sugar first thing in the morning, and it really showed. Plus, it got really expensive!

I turned to this book as a way to help me expand my thinking about how he eats and what he needs to eat. Plus, I wanted ideas of other foods to try! I've gotten into quite the rut with him, mainly due to the WDCAM category.

What I like about the book is that it makes eating fun. Foods are separated into "lights" (red, yellow or green) and are looked at like a traffic signal. Green - go ahead, Yellow - slow down, Red - stop! I like that she also labels fresh fruit and vegetables as "Free Fuel" and they don't count against the number of foods for the day (for weight loss).

There are also really great recipes! I really want to try the Turkey Pepperoni Quiche, Green Light Chocolate Chip Brownies (!), Baked Fish Sticks (Sounds much better than the frozen junk!) and Garlic Roasted Potatoes.

As I was reading it, Ry was looking over my shoulder a lot and he started to get into the color system for his foods. We have a long way to go toward getting him to eat better, but I think this book is going to help make a difference. I have hope that we will all be eating better as a result of this book.

A promotional copy of Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right was provided to me by Dr. Dolgoff and Rodale Publishers. The opinions and experiences are my own and were in no way influenced by the gift of the book.

Finally a book that lets families have fun eating healthy together! I am getting RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT, EAT RIGHT for every parent I know!!

My slightly overweight five year old daughter lost weight and normalized her BMI in three months using this book. I emailed the author to thank her and she responded the same day. While some of the food choices aren't the healthiest, it's good to know that treats are included in the diet and I think that is why my daughter did so well with it. Eventually, my daughter ate less and less of the snacky foods(red light).I keep a picture of my daughter before and after the diet on my refrigerator. I have recommended the book to relatives and to some of my patients - I am a family doctor. This is a great book to use as a transition diet to get kids from a snack and fast food diet to a healthy diet. Thank you Dr. Dolgoff.

I found this book to be great and a must read for any parent who worries if they are giving their kids the proper foods. Dr. Dolgoff's plan is easy to follow and and more importantly, easy to practice in REAL life.