December 15, 2009 10 Habits MORE Important than Vegetable Eating
It’s sacrilegious to say this in the current era when we’re constantly being told how vital vegetables are, but there are more important things to teach your kids than vegetable eating.
In fact, the techniques we use to get some vegetables into our kids — such as bribing them with cookies so they’ll consume some carrots — often backfire (in this case by making kids like carrots even less than they already do).
So stop worrying about how many bites of broccoli your tyke takes in and foster ANY (hopefully ALL) of the following habits instead:
1) Save room for dessert instead of eating ‘til you're stuffed.
2) Eat a variety of foods every day and from day-to-day (even if that variety doesn’t include veggies.)
3) Select foods in proportion to their healthful benefits, by keeping moderate and junky fare in check.
4) Avoid emotional eating.
5) Practice proper table manners.
6) Develop a strategy to survive parties, buffets and even Main Street without overeating.
7) Practice proper snacking.
8) Avoid drinking empty or unnecessary calories.
9) Eat without guilt.
10) Plan for parties and holiday eating by "priming the pump" with healthy foods first.
The added bonus of reinforcing these habits? Your kids will eat more veggies. (It’s one of the great ironies of parenting that you can’t always attack a problem head on.)
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
Reader Comments (2)
Hi Dina, I have just stumbled upon your work and your thoughts, and am glad I have. I appreciate this post that you reference in your insightful article on food/eating modeling. I believe the focus on and panic about fruits and vegetables, is a simplistic approach that ignores many of the deeper issues of why food and mis-feeding, or why food and guilt-eating are so predominant in our culture. That we have to intellectualize and stress over a basic survival mechanism like eating speaks to a schizophrenic rift in our natural relationship to eating and hunger spurred by marketing, stressful living, and food addiction. As you mention, emotional eating begins to occur even in very young children. Thank you for bringing attention to these very important aspects related to the how and why rather than just the what of our intake. Elyn Zimmerman "The Nutritionist's Dilemma"
Elyn,
I agree with everything you say about the focus on fruits and vegetables being simplistic, that our society has created a rift in our natural relationship to food and that emotional eating begins very young. Maybe we can start a movement!!!
Dina