Is dinnertime a battleground for your family?  Is it commonplace for you to come home after a long day at work or running around with the children, make supper, only to have the meal either spit out or complained about?  Dinnertime if often a stressful time for parents of young children who are adverse to eating anything resembling a vegetable.  I am a mother of a two year old who only seems to gravitate towards the standard fare of chicken nuggets, cheese curls, and sweets. Dinnertime is the most stressful part of my day.  As a parent, I feel that it is my obligation to feed my child what he or she needs but end up falling short.  Parents across the United States find it easier to give in to their childrens’ whims and just allow them to eat whatever.  There is an old wive’s tale that says, “they will eventually get what they need”, but that isn’t true nowadays.  Nowadays there are less opportunities for children to get exercise, more junk food available, and less time for family meals. 

We are doing our children a disservice by allowing them to eat the “convienant foods”, sugary foods, and allowing them to say “No” to their vegetables.  The importance of healthy eating isn’t just for vanity reasons.  As adults we are slowly killing our children when we fail to put our childrens’ health on the back burner.  We do the same with our bodies.  Parenting is about protecting our offspring, setting them up for success, primping them to become productive adults; how can we do this when we can’t even teach them the fundementals of taking care of their bodies? 

Making sure your child is eating well and living well is a very hard job.  It can be overwhelming, frustrating, and at times seem impossible.  That is why as parents, we need to use every tool, every tactic to combat this “Food dilemma” for our children.  Sit-down family meals, books, planned exercise time, and even clever deception.  Yes deception.  I use deception at dinnertime to convince my toddler (and my picky husband) to eat healthy.  I swap out fattening ingredients with healthy substitutes, sneak veggies into meals, and disguise foods.  I am not a Oprah-maniac, but was watching Oprah yesterday and she had Jessica Seinfeld and Dr. Oz on talking about kids and their relationship to food, particularly vegetables.  Jessica Seinfeld has a great cookbook that uses vegetable purees in “comfort foods” that children like.  The vegetable is disguised and often unnoticed by the children who are eating it.  I find this a great idea!!  It eliminates the guilty feeling of the parent, makes dinnertime less of a battlezone, and insures that your children are getting their veggies that they need.  If you are interested in learning more, Seinfeld’s book is titled, “Deceptively Delicious” and is available this month.  I know I will be getting my copy.

Five steps to get your family healthy

1-Keep nothing off limits-best thing to do is to make the big decisions about food at the Supermarket, not the home. Don’t bring it into the house.
2- Don’t eat in front of the TV-you can consume more calories (avg 250 extra)
3-Have Fiber for breakfast-7 to 10 grams a day
4-Try healthy foods 10 times-expose yourself 10 times to these foods
5- Get moving

Great topic Zookie, I love it.  My mom called me last night and asked me to Tivo the Oprah show.  I haven’t watched it yet, but my mom said it was really good.  Go to Oprah.com for a overview on what was discussed.  Good stuff. 

One more thing parents need to be a model for their kids.  Don’t just talk about eating fresh fruit and veggies, you need to do it.  I have at leat 5 or more servings a day and I make sure that my daughter sees me doing it.  Modeling does work very well.  My child is eating lots of fresh fruit and is just starting to get back into eating veggies.  Do not give in to fast foods and comfort foods, it can be done folks.  It just takes work and time, but hang in there it will work. 

Also talk about exercise with your kids, they do understand.  My daughter knows that both mommy and daddy spend time working out.  In fact I have started teaching her some of Scott’s sayings too.  She sees the added benefit of it.  Last weekend my daughter and I both played together on the playground.  I didn’t stand on the sidelines watching like other parents do, nope I was running and climbing too.  Parents need to join in head first and really play with their kids, they will really enjoy the time together.  Plus it is a good time to see what your child is learning about the world around them. 

Well that is my 2 cents worth on this topic.  Parents need to model for their kids good eating and exercise!! 

Scooby

Nicely done, Julie!

It’s funny that you bring that up because lately I’ve been thinking about something. I was housesitting and helping take care of my mom’s friend’s two children, and not one thing in their house is healthy. It’s all pre-packaged, processed, chemicals, refined sugar, whatever is the worst, they have it. And I’ve seen a lot of this with my family, and it makes you think about why children today have this aversion to vegetables. It always seems like as soon as they get anything toxic, really sugary and full of chemicals, and it starts to occur on a fairly regular basis(and escalates out of convenience), they suddenly don’t want to eat vegetables. And somehow it is learned into them that it’s yucky food. Where do they learn that? If my nieces and nephews hear the word “healthy” attached to any food(my nephew won’t eat grandma’s organic ketchup because he was told it’s healthier than Heinz), it means it doesn’t taste good. And they only want to eat things that are unhealthy. And this is obviously a fairly common pattern. But what if a person didn’t introduce those types of junk foods into their child’s diet? What if virtually all they knew was fruit and vegetables and whole grains and healthy fats? Is it TV? I mean all of those kids shows seem to reference to vegetables being “gross.” I remember as a kid, being impressionable and if my favorite character didn’t like a certain food, I often concluded that it must not taste good.

I think it’s the addictive nature of many of the junk foods, I think it’s insidious(sell more product, more product, more product). I’ve seen children become so addicted that they lose control, they become miserable without it. And that makes me mad at these “food” companies, but they know most people have no idea what the label means, and all they look at is the fancy advertisements on the front. But is the fact that corporations take advantage of people like that. There are things that we have here that aren’t even allowed to touch ground in Europe.

So I guess I just think that if some stricter laws came into place, we would have a fighting chance as a society to raise healthier kids that don’t create a war at the dinner table every night. Because there seems to be an neverending battle with society’s food associations. Good is bad and bad is good. People used to de-worm their children in spring and fall, I don’t even think that’s a custom anymore.

Great points Brandon and Scooby!!!  As parents we worry so much (or should) about our own health and bodies, that it seems like kids get the back burner sometimes in regards to their nutrition.  Fast paced society is also a culrpit I think.  More Mothers working so less time for sit-down-family dinners, easier to grab something and go (Like fast food).  My wish is that the schools can incorporate good food into their menus (and the government gives these schools adequte funds to do so!) and have a Fitness and Nutrition curriculum added to health and gym classes.

Excellent points, Julie.

And we’re hearing more and more it seems about schools making huge improvements as to what they provide for kids. Instead of pop machines, some schools have switched to juice for example.

Brandon,

The problem is those fruit juices have as much or more sugar than the pop.

http://www.hookedonjuice.com/

Julie,
Lovely message- THANK YOU!  I love sneaking veggies into the food- broccoli, celery, squash, you name it, I’ve likely thrown it into a food.  It’s a great way for everyone to get their veggies in.

However, I also agree with Brandon’s point that the junk is addictive- a common conversation at our house lately has been,
“I want Spaghettio’s for supper,” says Morgan.
“But we don’t have Spaghettios in our house and never have,” says Mommy.
[Crying begins, or whining] “But I want Spaghettios!”

The key here: Morgan did not know what Spagettios was until a couple months ago when she started at a new daycare that serves junk and processed food on a very regular basis.  Sigh.