New York Times Gets It Partly Right, Partly Wrong

People should read Eat Your Peas. Or Don’t. Whatever. by Frank Bruni (New York Times 8/30/09). It deals with a crucial topic in an interesting way. But the question he asks, “How much should or can parents control what their children eat?” is the wrong one.

1) It’s immaterial whether parents should control what their children eat because they can’t do it. What little control parents have is simply an illusion. Just ask anyone who has had a baby steadfastly refuse a bottle, or repeatedly reject nursing and it’s clear that kids, even the youngest ones, decide what they will and will not eat.

2) Asking whether parents can or should control their children’s eating frames the debate incorrectly. It’s not about controlling what kids eat, it’s about teaching them how to eat. And I’m not talking about nutrition. Parents need to actively and explicitly teach their children how to make decisions about what to eat, when to eat, why to eat and how much to eat.

Would you ever ask whether parents can and/or should influence how well their children brush their teeth? Absolutely not. We assume that parents will teach their children both the skills and the responsibility needed to accomplish this task. We also assume that parents will start doing this from the get-go, not wait until their kids are teens.

Of course, teaching kids to eat right is a lot more complicated than teaching them how to brush their teeth because the world of food and eating is incredibly complex: there are taste preferences and appetites to consider, grandparents to contend with and food manufacturers to counter. Not to mention we all have our own issues with food and eating to manage.

But still, the mentality of teaching kids to eat right is one that parents need to acquire. It shifts the dynamic from an “us vs. them” struggle with a win-or-lose outcome into an interactive process that begins in infancy and continues throughout our parenting tenure.

Starting early is crucial. By waiting until kids are teens we end up burdening them with the task of unlearning a host of bad habits. Habits that we parents have inadvertently taught them. How else can we explain the fact that bad eating habits start so early in life?

• Research shows that 1/3 of all 19-month-old toddlers eat no fruit on any given day but 90% of them consume some type of dessert, candy or sugary drink. And even though 80% of these youngsters eat vegetables, French fries are the ones they’re most likely to have.

Look at how parents typically approach feeding their toddlers and you see all sorts of bad habits in the making.

• We actively create sugar junkies. (See Yogurt vs. Coke.)
• Load our kids with nutritional fillers like Goldfish crackers.
• We teach kids to overeat. (What else can they learn when they’re told to finish their meals, take two more bites and eat their veggies in order to get dessert?) 
• Most importantly we teach kids to eat at all the wrong times and for all the wrong reasons. Who hasn’t bought some quiet time with a cookie or handed out candy when our kids are bored, sad or lonely?

So what can parents do to guide their children through today’s food maze without turning food and weight into a hot-button issue that backfires? Start teaching them when they’re young how to make food-related decisions. As Cynthia M. Bulik, the director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program points out in Bruni's article, eating right isn’t about dieting, it’s about a lifestyle.

So, Mr. Bruni, in answer to your question, should your parents have forbidden your early weight-loss schemes? No. They should have prevented them. How? By teaching you when you were small how manage your outsize appetite. The techniques you use today could have been taught to you years ago. Why wait? 

Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.

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Source: Bruni, Frank. 2009. Eat Your Peas. Or Don't. Whatever. New York Times August 30th.; Fox, Mary Kay, Susan Pac, Barbara Devaney, Linda Jankowski. 2004. "Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study: What foods are infants and toddlers eating?" Journal of the American Dietetic Association 104:S22-S30.