July 27, 2009 It Doesn't Matter WHAT Your Kids Eat!
It doesn’t really matter what your children eat. What matters is how often they eat it. Whatever it is.
Stop worrying about broccoli or candy. It does not even matter if your kids consume Goldfish crackers, sweetened yogurt or juice.
What matters is whether your kids eat foods in proportion to their healthful benefits. What kinds of foods do your kids eat most often?
Teaching your kids to eat right is kind of like baking cookies -- it’s not enough to know the ingredients, or even to get them all into the bowl. You need the correct amounts of flour, sugar, butter and eggs in relation to each other to produce the ideal outcome.
Proportion matters. Here's an easy way to get it right:
1) Don’t think of foods as individual delicacies. Instead think of food in groups. But...
2) Don’t use traditional groupings like dairy, fruit, meat, or protein, carbohydrates and fat. Instead, group foods by how frequently they should be eaten.
Category 1 - Growing Foods
- Fresh, natural foods that look basically like they did when they came off the tree, out of the ground, or from the animal.
Category 2 - Fun Foods
- Growing Foods that have modified to make them moderates: French fries, creamed spinach, chocolate milk, sweetened yogurt.
- High fat foods: cheese.
- Foods that aren't found in natures: hot dogs.
- Snack Foods: rice cakes, crackers, pretzels.
Category 3 - Treat & Junk Foods
- Ice cream, chips, candy, soda, sports drinks.
How does your child’s diet stack up? Most kids eat most frequently out of category 2, the Fun Foods.
The Nutrition Perspective. Feeding your children primarily from Category 2 – Fun Foods - is like trying to fill a bathtub without a drain stopper: you never quite fill your kids with the healthy stuff because the overall nutritional values of items they are eating is constantly being drained away.
The Habits Perspective. Regularly feeding your children Fun Foods can undermine your ability to get them to eat Growing Foods.
- Test this by asking your child whether an oatmeal breakfast bar is more like a bowl or oatmeal or more like an oatmeal cookie. Better yet, do a blind taste test.
It's important to manage Fun Foods. Read More.
You probably never thought about your kids like cookies before, but look at all the similarities: both come in all shapes and sizes. All varieties are sweet and delicious. One satisfied some people whereas others can’t get enough. They both go great with milk! And for both, proportion matters.
Remember, every chocolate milk makes regular milk a harder sell. It's not so much what you feed, but what you teach, that matters.
Reader Comments (8)
I love your blogs but I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to take away from this one. I understand that non-processed foods are better for all of us, but how can I get my child to eat more of them? Any advice would be appreciated.
If your child is already "addicted" to processed foods - and I use the term very lightly -- then you need to wean him off them. I'll write more about how to do that tomorrow.
Thanks for your comment.
Dina
agree that proportions are really important--glad to see a mom writing to give us a little guidance. Saw your post on Twitter mom and thought I'd take a look. I'm at www.answersformoms.org and www.brickhousemama2.blogspot.com will look for a way to follow you on this site--please comment on mine and follow or link away. thank you
Kaydee,
I love www.answersformoms.org. Way to go.
Dina
You describe category one foods as "Fresh, natural foods that look basically like they did when they came off the tree, out of the ground, or from the animal." Most foods that come from animals do not look at all like they did when they first came from the animal. Eggs and milk do, but do you feed your child chicken that actually looks like a chicken? Hamburgers that actually look like a cow? I have to question the inclusion of animal products in the first category anyway. Kids really like some of them but they are not real healthy. I would think they should go in category two.
Kids eat what they want that's why there are parents to monitor their children.
Giving them balance diet would be a good start.
Dina, I am very pleased to stumble upon your site from a link passed on by Tribeca Pediatrics. I have a question. I'm curious about cheese in the fun foods. I try as much as possible to balance my children's carbs with protein, even at snack time. Their diets include almost no processed foods except I suppose for yogurt and cheese. My children are still quite young (3.5 & 2 yo) so I am focus much less on fat content and more on getting the right organic nutrients in. Is this wrong? Is cheese with fruit not then a healthy snack? Should I be cutting their fat intake when everything they eat is largely a "whole food" prepared by me?
Many thanks for any insights you can provide.
Best,
Amy
Amy,
The question is, what eating habits do you want to teach your kids? You're off to a good start because you're teaching them to eat home cooked, whole foods. I wouldn't recommend serving cheese everyday because the research shows that people shouldn't eat cheese everyday. Beyond that, I wouldn't serve cheese everyday because I would want to teach my children two important ideas: we eat different foods from day to day, and we eat foods in proportion to their healthful benefits.If you teach the right habits, you'll get the right nutrients. If you focus on the nutrients, it's easy to get the habits wrong.
Thanks for your kind words about the blog. Let me know what you decide to do.
Dina