Reply to How do you raise a healthy eater?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "How do you raise a healthy eater?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You have to say no. We live in a toxic food environment. Be proud you aren't poisoning your kid. Raise him to be proud he doesn't eat junk himself. [/quote]

This.  But the junk food will find him, and it comes down to how his brain is wired, whether he takes it or passes.  Regardless of how you raise him.  There is TONS of junk food given out at school, starting in elementary and escalating.  The class parties, class birthday treats, candy and chips as rewards, then there’s weekend birthday parties, grandma’s house (and neighbors’ and friends’) who may have tons of junk offered, and the sports games/practices/tournaments all revolve around “snack” (junk) sign up, and even more junk on big game days. Then they become teens and go out with friends and eat whatever they want.

I guess what I’m saying is, the best you can do is raise your child to like heathy foods, but you have very little control over how much they will like junk food and how good they are at self moderation. [/quote]

I have so many anecdotes about kids from school who had the unfortunate circumstance of being wired to love sugar and junk food while being severely restricted at home. These kids ate pints of ice cream and squeezed chocolate sauce directly into their mouths at birthday parties, left a sleeping bags full of candy wrappers and melted chocolate after a Halloween sleepover, ate entire bowls of grape jelly from the sandwich bar at school, consumed a Costco sized jug of maple syrup from the pantry over the course of a week, the list goes on. Most kids are not like this, but when the stars align, wow, it’s crazy.

Like everything else, you have to give kids an opportunity to make the right choices about food. Giving carte blanche to all junk foods is bad. Severely restricting foods to the point that they gorge on them when given any opportunity is also bad. For most parents, finding the happy medium works best. [/quote]

Well, and there’s plenty of kids that eat a lot of junk food at home, outside the home, and everywhere else too.  As evidenced by the growing number of obese children. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics