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Raven-Symoné has revealed that she underwent several cosmetic surgeries as a teenager, after her father encouraged her to do so while she was receiving criticism about her weight. The That’s So Raven star said she had two breast reductions and liposuction done before she turned 18 in 2004. Speaking on the latest episode of her and her wife Miranda Pearman-Maday’s podcast, Symoné recalled: “There was paperwork involved. My dad suggested strongly that I should get my breasts reduced. “He was like, ‘So you don’t feel bad, is there anything that you want?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, if I get lipo, will people stop calling me fat?’” She continued on The Best Podcast Ever with Raven and Miranda: “So I got a twofer. It was just a mess, just being that young and the pain of it all.” Symoné also disclosed that, after her first breast reduction surgery, she suffered a seizure. “I remember waking up and seeing everything… and then I just started to have this dry mouth and couldn’t breathe and went back under,” she said of the experience. The Cheetah Girls star said she does not remember much else because she was “disassociating” from reality, but admitted that not knowing what caused the seizure “freaks her out a bit”. She still went ahead with the second breast reduction. While she advised others who may be considering similar procedures to wait until they are fully developed before going under the knife, Symoné added that her decision to get breast reductions prevented her “t**ties reaching her ankles”. “I don’t know if I regret it because they grew back not to that big of a size,” she said. Last year, Symoné credited her wife with helping her “kick sugar”, which led to her losing 40 pounds (approximately 18kg). She told The View: “With [Pearman-Maday’s] help and guidance and love and fantastic cooking skills… she helped me kick sugar. “I say ‘kick sugar’ because it is an addictive drug and I was addicted to it in wheat form, in regular form. And it’s out of my system.” Receiving bad news about her health from her doctor also spurred Symoné to take her weight more seriously, so that she could be around longer to spend her life with her wife. “I want to be here for her as long as I can,” she said. “I found out some numbers at the doctor that were not pleasant for someone in my age bracket – or any age bracket, to be honest with you… She doesn’t want to take me to an early grave, and I want to make sure I am there for her in the best health possible.” In July, Symoné called on people not to use diabetes medication Ozempic purely for weight loss, as it is “made for certain people”. She opened up about her family’s history of pre-diabetes and diabetes, and said she is “more susceptible” to the disease if she is not careful about what she eats. “So, I think it’s very important we understand certain medications are made for certain people – and to not take that away just for glamazon purposes,” she told E! News. Read More ‘Oblivious’ woman defended after walking through beach wedding: ‘They don’t own the beach’ Men sometimes need help – and I’m determined to start asking for it King’s Guard shares sweet exchange with young boy wearing royal uniform

MCLEAN, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2023--

I’m standing outside my local cafe in west London, looking bedraggled as I’ve been up since 6.45am making the dreaded school packed lunch. It’s nothing exotic – margherita pizza for Lola, who is a fussy eater, and plain pasta with cheddar cheese and corn on the cob for Liberty. There were all the snacks to pack, too – sadly, no chunks of carrot, just Pom-Bears and breadsticks. I am buying a croissant to add to one of the lunch boxes when I bump into the mum of one of my daughter’s friends. “Oh darling,” she tells me, “it’s all ‘white food’. Not good.” I shrug my shoulders knowingly, then stupidly ask her what’s in her kids’ packed lunches. “Sushi bento box,” comes her instant reply. “Crudites and organic hummus. Japanese panda crackers. Seaweed crackers. Dim sum. Oh, and sandwiches cut into little shapes – I do hearts and stars.” Right. That’s a good start to my morning; I now feel totally inadequate. When it comes to my children, I am a slave to the packed lunch. But gone are the days of stuffing a hard-boiled egg, a jam sandwich or processed cheese triangles into a box – as was the case when I was a child. Even apples have been voted a prehistoric lunchbox item by 17 per cent of parents. Instead, packed lunches are now a status symbol. The actor Hilary Duff, for instance, gives her son caviar for a snack – and it’s not that unusual. One in 10 parents (9 per cent) choose sushi and, according to a recent survey by Amazon Fresh, 26 per cent of parents take a photo of their children’s packed lunch for Instagram. A third (33 per cent) have also admitted they’ve taken a sneak peek inside another child’s lunchbox – and believe me, it’s often to silently snack-shame another parent. I can’t help but wonder if food and snacks are a kind of modern litmus test of parenting. But does it really make you a better parent if you give your child home-cooked wild keta salmon and wholemeal rice in a thermal container for lunch? The playground politics of packed lunches are complex. Parents are constantly criticised for sending inappropriate lunches to school. The TV chef Jamie Oliver once said unhealthy packed lunches are tantamount to child abuse. At the other extreme, parents are finding the time to stamp cucumbers with flowers and dice dried herbs into them for their kid’s bento boxes – then post them online. There seems to be no middle ground. Christina (not her real name) is a 40-year-old PA and tablescaping specialist whose child attends a prep school in west London’s Notting Hill. She makes all of her daughter’s packed lunches from scratch, and it’s always organic produce. “I always wanted to go that extra mile,” she tells me. “My motivation to do this was never to be ‘Queen Bee mum’ – it was to make my daughter happy and proud of me.” The “presentation” and “the taste” of the packed lunches, she says, is “super important” – to such an extent that it needs to be “Instagram-worthy” and “fun” in order to encourage her daughter to eat healthily. One of her lunch box specialities, she adds, is mini American hot dogs “decorated with a little flag and a drizzle of ketchup”. “I know it is always going to be flagged by other mothers because the school is very competitive,” she continues. “This dish goes around the mums like wildfire because mums always want to outdo other mums.” If I put out a post saying how much fibre children should be having, I get people replying saying that ‘it’s unrealistic’ and ‘we can’t do that as well as everything else’ when it comes to kids’ foods. It ends up with parents pitting themselves off against one another with food Charlotte Stirling-Reed, child and baby nutrionist While school playground rivalry among parents used to be about pigtails and bows in your children’s hair, Christina says, now it’s about lunch and snacks. “Kids have a much more sophisticated palate,” she explains. “They’re exposed to a lot more than a ham and cheese sandwich. The playing field has widened, and the bar has been set higher due to social media, and Deliveroo and Uber Eats – everything has become more instantaneous.” For other parents, it’s about making a packed lunch as wholesome as possible – something my children would scoff at. Ella Mills, the founder of the plant-based food brand Deliciously Ella, tells me she has found “batch cooking” easiest for her daughter’s packed lunches at nursery. “It’s a real rush getting everyone dressed, ready and out of the door each morning,” she says. “Plus, thinking of something to cook at 7am that’s got no nuts, no sesame in it [due to possible nut allergies], that I’ll know they’ll eat, and that doesn’t take a little while to make. So I make huge batches of veggie bolognese, bean chilli or sweet potato and chickpea stews plus big batches of grains, then simply heat a portion up and pop it in a thermos. Something that’s pre-made makes a world of difference.” Other parents call in the professionals. Chef Meryem Korkut Avci of Mary’s Mobile Chef Services does “meal preps” for elite customers in west and north London. She sends over an ingredients list and will then come to your home once a week and cook for the whole family – a two-hour session is £120 for six dishes (on the seventh day, her clients usually get a takeaway). For packed lunches, she says gluten-free muffins are popular. “Also egg or chicken fried rice, chilli con carne with tortilla, little mini puff pastry rolls with cheese – or sausage rolls.” She’ll even wash up – and says clients use her because “they don’t have time” or are “bored of their own food”. Dr Megan Rossi, a gut health scientist, bestselling author and founder of the website The Gut Health Doctor and The Gut Health Clinic in London, says an ideal packed lunch would contain something from each of the super-six plant groups: “Legumes (such as chickpeas), vegetables, whole grains (such as oats and barley), fruit, nuts and seeds and herbs and spices. Hitting all these is a tricky one but for optimal health, the goal is for them to have at least one from each of these most days. It’s a great target to have in mind!” She advises “hiding legumes and whole grains in sweet treats like black bean brownies with porridge oats,” and says that “while not a long-term strategy to keep plants a secret, it can help build some confidence and comfort with those plants (as well as training childrens’ taste buds) for you to reveal when the time is right.” For chocolate lovers – like my daughter, Lola – Dr Rossi also suggests “making your own chocolate bars with dried fruits, popcorn, seeds and nuts included for extra dietary fibres and a more satiating treat”. I personally can’t see how I would fit that into my schedule. But for many parents healthy eating is a full-time job. Children may need to be offered a specific food “around 10 times” before they accept it, according to research, while Dr Rossi adds that it means nothing to a child if you merely tell them food is healthy or unhealthy. “Try explaining to them from a young age about the importance of their gut microbes,” she says. “Tell them they need to feed the little pet bugs in their tummy with broccoli, for instance, to help keep them strong.” I often feel ashamed that Lola is a fussy eater – though I find solace in the fact that her younger sister isn’t. Dr Rossi claims that what mums-to-be eat during pregnancy may also affect the kind of food your child will have a taste for. “That could play a part with fussing eating,” she says, but adds that she’s not keen on “mum guilt”: “Pregnancy is hard enough without the added pressure of nutrition.” Charlotte Sterling-Reed, “The Baby and Child Nutritionist”, runs a fussy eater course, and assures me that “parents are not bad parents if they are struggling with a fussy eater at home”. She says she is currently witnessing a backlash from “defensive parents” who are fed up with being told to live up to the “ideal” of being a perfect parent. “If I put out a post saying how much fibre children should be having, I get people replying saying that ‘it’s unrealistic’ and ‘we can’t do that as well as everything else’ when it comes to kids’ foods,” she says. “It ends up with parents pitting themselves off against one another with food.” An extravagant lunchbox is also not realistic for the majority of parents, she adds, “whether working or not, and nor should it be – there is a way to find a balance”. She says that a middle ground is possible. “As parents, [we can] pick something that is balanced but that also works for the family situation. This constant comparison between two extremes on social media makes us feel like we are failing in multiple aspects of parenting.” I don’t think I’m ever going to be posting my kids packed lunches on Instagram. I also know that sliced pepper fingers won’t get eaten even if I arrange them in the shape of a smiley face. More than anything though, I won’t feel guilty about my kids’ food habits any more, or the lengths I sometimes go to to get them to eat healthy – I once told my daughters that if they didn’t drink their freshly squeezed orange juice, their legs would fall off. And, you know what, it worked! Read More Keir Starmer is keeping his children out of the public eye – but that won’t stop them being privileged I’m a jellyfish parent – my run-in with a tiger mum was terrifying Kate Moss credits her stress-free life to ‘moonbathing’ – can eccentric wellness regimes help me too? Vasectomy and British men in their twenties: ‘Young, none and done’ Why taking a mental health day could be bad… for your mental health What the world’s happiest children tell us about where Britain is going wrong

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