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Improve Your Family Food Attitude and End The Food Fight

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By Erika Speirs, certified Cooking Instructor and board certified in Holistic Nutrition December 1, 2016
The media bombards us with food messages daily, “Eat whole grains”, “Five servings of fruits and veggies a day”, “Avoid refined sugar”. We hear these messages everywhere, as do our children, but the follow-through is where most of us struggle. If your family, like many, is in this sinking, processed-food-filled boat then let’s bail out the junk food together and change our attitudes.

When it comes to what we eat, our job as parents, grandparents, teachers, and childcare providers is to make sure we are sending positive food messages. We hold the key to helping our children establish lifelong healthful eating habits. Our children, or the children we care for, look to us for guidance in all things. So our unintentionally negative messages about food begin to shape our children’s food attitudes in a detrimental way. Here are some common negative messages to avoid:

“You’re a picky eater. You don’t like broccoli and never eat it, so I’m not going to make it anymore. It just goes to waste”
Once you apply a label, it tends to stick. When children hear this statement there is zero motivation to ever try broccoli again. They don’t know that they’re hardwired at this age to be instinctually cautious about trying new foods—especially bitter vegetables. A great retort to “I don’t like this” is, “You may not like it YET, but you might like it the next time you try it. I didn’t like broccoli either at first, but now I do!” Then discuss ways they might find it more palatable. 

“Ugh, I’m so tired, the last thing I want to do is make dinner tonight”
We are all exhausted at the end of the day and making dinner can seem like an arduous task. Children who grow up hearing this come to believe that preparing food takes a lot of effort and that ready-to-go processed meals or eating out is quicker and less stressful. To avoid this pattern, keep an array of healthful foods in the house to create a quick nutritious meal and enlist the help of your children. You’ve turned the task of making dinner into a fun family event that empowers your kids and gets dinner on the table.

“No dessert until you clean your plate”
There are multiple issues with this statement. When your meal turns into an argument, your child begins to associate dinnertime with anxiety and stress, instead of a relaxed and pleasant experience. When you force your children to clean their plates, you’re teaching them to not check in with their bodies and potentially leading them down the path to overeating—this is true especially if you have served them instead of letting them serve themselves. Lastly, when dessert becomes a reward for finishing a meal, then eating nutritious foods becomes a punishment, while eating sweets equals pleasure. 

Hiding Veggies in Baked Goods
 is another unintentional message we send comes in the form of cramming veggies into baked goods and smoothies without your children knowing. When they finally discover your secret, you’re essentially telling them, “This food is so gross that people need to be tricked into eating it!” I love the idea of using fruit and veggies in our baked goods and smoothies, but we need to talk to our kids about why this item is an important addition to the recipe.

The bottom line is that we need to make certain our children don’t view food as something that just comes out of a manufactured box, is a hassle to prepare, is a punishment, and just makes the hunger disappear. These key points below will help you break through the barriers of change.
  • Be Positive & Model Healthy Behaviors. Your children will be more enthusiastic about healthful foods if you are. They will feed off of your excitement and energy about what you eat and how good it makes your body feel when you eat properly.
  • Set Goals. Start making a plan with your family about what your food goals are and how to address them. Begin small by adding one more serving of vegetables each day. Try tracking your family’s progress on a chart. If you take it seriously, they will too.
  • Provide Only Healthful Foods. If only nutritious foods are bought/made and offered, then only nutritious foods will be eaten-no matter what your child chooses to eat or not eat. This doesn’t mean that sweet treats can’t be purchased, but it’s important for your children to know that nutritious foods give their bodies the things they need to grow and function, and that factory made sweets are void of nutrition and can impair their health.
  • Let Them Choose & Serve Themselves. You’ve done your job by ridding your fridge and pantry of empty calories, now your child’s job is to decide which of the foods you’re serving to eat and how much to eat. Allowing children to serve themselves helps them learn how much food they need to feel satisfied and prevents overeating in the future.
  • Let Them Cook. Children who cook are more likely to try new foods and take pride in the dishes they’ve prepared.
  • Shop Together. Involve your children in meal planning. At the store, focus on shopping the perimeter aisles where the most nutritious foods are found. Let them choose a new fruit or vegetable each week and find a recipe to use it in.
  • Grow Food/Visit a Farm. The more connected your children are with their food, the more they will enjoy eating it. Food is one of the things that connect us all; it should be enjoyed and appreciated from garden to plate.
  • Learn About Healthy Food Together. Read books, watch documentaries, take a cooking class, or tour a farm.
  • Don’t Give Up. Change won’t happen overnight. You may have to offer the same food 10-20 times before a child will accept it. If a new food is rejected, talk about other ways it might be prepared and have your child help you prepare it.
  • Enlist Support. This one is really important! Make certain that the adults who are with your children at mealtime are also trying their best to send positive food messages. If you have a nanny, or your child has preschool teachers who eat lunch with them, speak with them about their food attitudes and approaches to mealtime. Eating habits are established during the preschool years. When children begin to eat with other children without adult supervision, food stigmas can form. If one child brings a food to school that another child considers distasteful, the teacher should be there to help direct the conversation in a positive way, thus preventing food stigmas. There are many great programs and resources out there to help teachers. The Early Sprouts Institute is an incredible resource for educators (and parents), offering online training programs that are approved for use in Washington State. FMI: http://www.earlysprouts.org
The more our children feel connected to their food the more they will value its place in their lives. It’s crucial that they learn where their food comes from, how to prepare it, and how it affects their bodies so they can develop healthful lifelong food attitudes.
Erika Speirs, owner of nourishME!, teaches children’s nutrition and cooking classes in the Seattle, Bellevue, and Issaquah communities. She is a certified Healthy Hands Cooking Instructor and board certified in Holistic Nutrition. Her goal in life is to empower your children by engaging and inspiring them to make nutritious food choices while learning basic cooking skills.
Visit her website for a list of upcoming classes:
http://www.healthyhandscooking.com/instructor/erika-speirs