How do you raise a healthy eater?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are grown, but I read “Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense” when they were little and it was very enlightening. The highlights were to offer a variety of foods and not give up offering them if your kid doesnʻt like it. They might hate cauliflower today but love it next week so donʻt deprive them of the opportunity to rediscover it. Donʻt cater to your kids by making them separate meals with different foods. Never force kids to eat something or reward them with something they like (e.g. dessert) if they eat something they dislike (e.g. broccoli). As a previous poster mentioned, donʻt make a big deal about food and eating in general.

The best way to raise healthy eaters is to be a healthy eater.

I agree with most of this but slightly disagree on the dessert. It wasn’t a bribe but a natural consequence. No dessert unless you had at least a protein and a vegetable with dinner. Because dessert is for after dinner and if you didn’t eat a protein and a vegetable, it wasn’t dinner. That just made sense. It didn’t make sense to me to totally divorce the two. (And I never worried about carbs because I felt like the kids ate carbs all day so if dinner was a piece of chicken and broccoli , I wasn’t going to insist on a carb to round it out.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids are grown, but I read “Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense” when they were little and it was very enlightening. The highlights were to offer a variety of foods and not give up offering them if your kid doesnʻt like it. They might hate cauliflower today but love it next week so donʻt deprive them of the opportunity to rediscover it. Donʻt cater to your kids by making them separate meals with different foods. Never force kids to eat something or reward them with something they like (e.g. dessert) if they eat something they dislike (e.g. broccoli). As a previous poster mentioned, donʻt make a big deal about food and eating in general.

The best way to raise healthy eaters is to be a healthy eater.

I agree with most of this but slightly disagree on the dessert. It wasn’t a bribe but a natural consequence. No dessert unless you had at least a protein and a vegetable with dinner. Because dessert is for after dinner and if you didn’t eat a protein and a vegetable, it wasn’t dinner. That just made sense. It didn’t make sense to me to totally divorce the two. (And I never worried about carbs because I felt like the kids ate carbs all day so if dinner was a piece of chicken and broccoli , I wasn’t going to insist on a carb to round it out.)

You don’t know what a natural consequence is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh and be very careful what you say - please don’t use some of the language others have - that’s toxic, or that food is bad for you. Your kids may repeat that to other kids. What you say to your kids remember can be used to judge others and their families who may not have access to as much healthy food as you do. I like to say to my kids that our goal is to have a mix of foods - does this meal have a good mix? Having a lot of any one food isn’t great for us - if I just lived on broccoli it isn’t great either. Meals with a mix, snacks with a mix, that’s our ideal and we don’t always get there but it’s a way to say it without making it about good bad toxic all this language that demonizes things

Is going to be honest, I don’t give two s’s how my teaching my kid on food affects you. Some food is bad, sorry the truth hurts.

You’ve never been poor and it shows. I was poor as a child and my mom did the best to put healthy foods on the table. But sometimes my “lunch” was literally whatever we had at home and it wasn’t always a well balanced meal. Your child’s snide comment could truly hurt a kid who has NO CONTROL over their food intake when they’re young.

I am fortunate to be able to afford healthy food for my kids and they pack fruits and vegetables and home cooked foods for their lunches AND I also teach them to not judge others lunches. Sometimes one meal is just a snapshot of someone’s whole world, so keep your judgement to yourself. That’s all you have to do. Teach your kids to eat healthy and also to be kind.

Actually I have. But I didn’t eat crap. I’m not going to tell my kid little Debbie is a healthy thing to eat because it might hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t buy into this whole “there are no bad foods” nonsense. Research has objectively shown that certain foods ARE actually bad. We can mealy mouth around it with “sometimes foods” and “foods that make you emotionally happy” or whatever is acceptable these days but it doesn’t change facts.

You’re missing the point. You don’t have to tell your kids that little Debbie is healthy to eat. But you should teach them to not shame other people’s food. Do you really not understand?

The original post I was responded to said basically be careful what you say to your own kids because they might repeat it. And I won’t. I will teach my kid proper nutrition. Sorry not sorry.

[Anonymous]

I haven't read all of the replies but I grew up eating VERY healthy. My mom made almost all of our food from scratch and we rarely had desserts. I'm a younger sister and my mom had loosened up a little when I was born so I had sweets more than my sister. My sister didn't have added sugar until she was three, whereas I had sweets earlier. I'm 40 and am not a picky eater at all, and neither is my sister, but we both went through periods in early adulthood where we went crazy for junk food and both of us gained a lot of weight and were overweight in our 20s and 30s as a result. We've both figured out eating now but with my own children I'm letting them eat whatever, even sweets and occasionally fast food. Nothing is "off limits" or "bad." They still eat tons of homemade food as I cook almost every night. I've decided not to worry about it after all I've gone through with food, they'll figure it out. I still sometimes ask my husband if I'm "allowed" to eat things, which he is creeped out by because I'm an adult. I don't want to do the same thing to my kids.

[Anonymous]

I had some struggles with eating in my teens and college and in hindsight some of the stuff my mom said indicated she went through the same at her age, and my grandmother was underweight her whole life. I was never really severely bad, but I did drop into the underweight category. I want to teach healthy eating but I also want my kid to avoid the struggles I had.

I put a lot of emphasis on food as fuel and needing a balance of foods (vitamins, protein, carbs, etc.)