December 29, 2009 2 New Year’s Resolutions to Create Kids Who Eat Right.
There are many columns out there suggesting how to improve your life in the New Year. In keeping with that tradition, here are 2 changes that will definitely make your life better. They’ll also make your kids' lives better too.
1) First you: Give up your fixation with nutrition.
Trust me on this one, giving up nutrition is like spending a month at a spa: it shuts out the noise so you can relax and focus on what really counts. It also just feels good.
Instead of being your salvation, nutrition is really a shackle.
- Nutrition is too complicated, it’s impossible to know which elements are most important and the information is always changing. Frankly, keeping up with nutrition is exhausting.
- Nutrition makes it challenging to know which foods to buy. Food manufacturers make health claims that obscure the truth. Renowned nutritionist Marion Nestle frequently says: health claims are about marketing, not about health. Believe her.
- Nutrition keeps your attention focused on the qualities in the food instead of on what really counts: the habits your kids are developing about eating food.
2) Next, your kids: Focus on teaching them three principles of healthy eating.
These principles teach your kids how to eat. The end result will be the nutritious eating patterns you’re going for -- without the struggle.
- Proportion: Eat foods in relation to their healthy benefits. Don’t worry about reading labels and don’t try to trade up to slightly healthier versions of the foods your kids like to eat (these products are still only marginally better for you and this approach doesn’t help your kids like different foods - like veggies). Instead...
- Serve fresh, natural foods that look like what they once were the most. (You know, chicken, broccoli, milk...)
- Serve processed foods less frequently. (These products not only contain too much sugar, fat and sodium, but they alter the taste, texture, appearance, and aroma of foods so you kids don’t know what real foods are really like.)
- Serve junky treats the least frequently.
- Variety: Eat different foods during the day and over the course of a few days. Culinary monotony is a curse. It may seem like a good (i.e. easy) idea to serve your kids foods you know they’ll eat, but it undermines your efforts in the long run. Constant variety early in life is the only technique consistently associated with healthy eating in kids. You’ll have to broaden your focus from the immediate meal to consider your children’s eating patterns.
- Moderation: Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. This is the trickiest principle for parents to put into practice because it means not feeding kids to reduce conflict, keep them occupied when you’re busy, to alleviate boredom, to soothe hurt feelings or even to get them to eat more veggies.
These resolutions will change how you think about feeding your kids, how you interact with your kids around food and eating, and ultimately your kids eating habits.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
Reader Comments (2)
I really like most of what you say. I was surprised, though, that when you said to eat food that looks like what it was the most, that you suggested chicken along with milk and broccoli. How do you prepare and serve chicken that looks like a chicken? You serve chicken that has no feathers, no head or beak or feet, right? So what about the chicken you serve looks like a chicken?
You have a point. My issue, though, is to help people start thinking about how processed different foods are. Sure, chicken is processed and a piece of chicken doesn't really resemble the animal it cam from but a chicken breast sure looks more like a chicken than a chicken nugget does.
Dina