Is feeding the kids really your job?

Guess what? It's not really your job to feed your kids.  OK. Well, you do have to keep them nourished.  But thinking that's the full extent of their job holds most parents back.  

People who are successful getting their kids to eat right think about the job differently than people who struggle.  The successful mentality begins with the recognition that eating right isn’t about food, it’s about behavior — what, when, why and how much someone chooses to eat.  Since nutrition only partially shapes those choices, especially for children, the key to success can never be found by focusing only on food.  Rather, you must shape how your children behave in relation to food.

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Why feeding kids is not about nutrition - Part 2

At first, the focus on nutrition seems to make sense.  Nutrition, after all, is the science of nourishing our bodies. Surely, the more we know about which foods are most beneficial for promoting growth and sustaining healthy lives the more likely we are to eat them.  Right? And the more we know about the artery-clogging effect of steak, the sodium-spiking result of chips and the girth-expanding consequences of sweets, the more we'll avoid them? Sure!  

That's like saying you can get people to quit smoking simply by educating them about the health effects of cigarettes (like they don't know that already) or by telling them how healthy they would be if only they would quit. OK.  Maybe those strategies work for some people, but the most effective way to get people to stop smoking is to get them to change their habits.  You don't have to know the details about the health damages of smoking to decide to quit, but you do need to know a lot about how to change your behavior before you can become successful.

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How Habits Solve Your Problems

Habits.  If you want your kids to learn to eat right you have to forget about nutrition -- at least for a little while -- and think about habits.  When most people think about eating habits they either have some vague idea that about how well someone eats, or they think about etiquette (is your napkin on your lap, do you chew with your mouth closed, do you know which fork to use) or other manners such as whether you eat at the table, standing in the kitchen or in front of the television.

But that's an incomplete way of thinking about eating habits.  Eating habits reflect how we behave with regard to food on a regular and repeated basis.  In other words, what does your child eat regularly, when does she eat most of the time, why does she usually eat and how much is she accustomed to consuming?

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