Won't Someone Think Of...
This article from Time Magazine is about establishing eating habits and food preferences right from the get-go and contains what are, to me, some fairly shocking statistics. Baby food companies offer dessert lines. 60% of toddlers eat some kind of pastry every day. The number one vegetable for toddlers is French fries.
"'When we're really young, our taste buds are especially attuned to sweet flavors. If you're offered bananas and berries at an early age, that level of sweetness will satisfy. But if you're given concentrated sweets, a taste for those intense sweets will follow you for the rest of your life.'"
Basically, the crux of the article is that eating habits are established early. I know there are a lot of pearl-clutching articles out there but feeding toddlers French fries above and beyond all other vegetables and feeding babies dessert baby food does seem like a flat-out terrible idea. Maybe the mothers out there will have some insight into this issue that I don't.
"'When we're really young, our taste buds are especially attuned to sweet flavors. If you're offered bananas and berries at an early age, that level of sweetness will satisfy. But if you're given concentrated sweets, a taste for those intense sweets will follow you for the rest of your life.'"
Basically, the crux of the article is that eating habits are established early. I know there are a lot of pearl-clutching articles out there but feeding toddlers French fries above and beyond all other vegetables and feeding babies dessert baby food does seem like a flat-out terrible idea. Maybe the mothers out there will have some insight into this issue that I don't.
posted by mo pie at 12:04 PM
10 Comments:
My husband and I are both overweight, so we are very conscious about how we feed our one-year-old. I know all kids are different, but it's been easy to keep him on a healthy diet. I don't understand why parents give infants and small children juice, candy, cookies, etc. One book we've found very helpful is "Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming" by Ellyn Satter.
I don't understand why parents give babies and toddlers juice, candy and cookies. As overweight parents of a so-far (fingers crossed) healthy, non-overweight boy, we found the book, "Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Hurting" by Ellyn Satter, to be very helpful.
when i was three, my little sister was born and i loved to eat her babyfood. but i wasn't allowed because it was too expensive. so i plotted to get an entire jar of chocolate pudding. i scoped out the cabinet to see how far i would have to climb from the top of the washing machine. i stashed the spoon behind the couch. i waited. and the moment came. i crept up, up and up to snatch my prize. i ran behind the couch with the jar of dark delicious goodness. i grabbed the spoon and opened the little vacuum-sealed lid so i could take a big bite of...PUREED BEETS which were the same color as the chocolate pudding and little dumbass can't read yet. i ran out from behind the couch screaming, my face covered with the vilest substance i had ever tasted, which was fairly expansive for a 4 year old. my grandmother told me the chocolate turned to shit because i stole it. i think about this story now and all i can see are very early signs of a binge eater- the planning, the sneakiness, the need for forbidden chocolate. i still do the same thing as i struggle with my weight. only now i can afford to buy godiva instead of stealing babyfood chocolate pudding. sorry to ramble, i just had to tell my horrible babyfood story.
You know, I realize that mothers hardly need another source of guilt.... but honestly, French fries? Toddlers? The very occasional treat, maybe, but good lord, not in place of real vegetables. I got raised in a relatively healthy way (lots of vegetables, everything made from scratch because cheap homemade meals were my stay-at-home mother's way of keeping expenses --and her own weight-- down), and my most basic cravings really are very different from those of my friends who grew up with sugary, greasy food as staples. I envied the hell out of my friends at the time, but I'm grateful now... i've got plenty of genetic predisposition to weight gain, and i'm lucky to have at least one ingrained habit that works against that.
I hate that after every meal, I need to have some sort of dessert. If I go out and we don't get dessert, it feels wrong.
At mealtimes, instead of offering whatever the parents are eating, moms will provide "kid food"--easy-to-prepare child pleasers like pizza, mac and cheese and chicken nuggets.
Ok, so I don't have a kid... but I just gotta ask WHY??? Isn't it easier to serve what the parents are eating instead of fixing something else? How is the child ever going to learn to eat adult foods if they aren't served adult foods?
I do love these articles that give moms and dads yet another reason to feel guilty. My two kids are 6 and 3, so I guess they've crossed the magic 2 year old deadline mentioned in the article and are doomed to be picky, sugar-addicted eaters their whole life.
It is easy to control what a one year old eats. It's not so easy once they turn two and develop picky toddler syndrome. Yes you can bar junk, but you can't make them eat vegetables. I would guess that like the scorned families in the article, french fries make up the majority of 'vegetables' in my three year old's diet. But that's not because he eats that many french fries, it's just that he refuses to eat vegetables. I make home cooked meals, get a weekly organic produce delivery, and even have my own food blog for heaven's sake. I love vegetables and eat a lot of them. But he didn't get the memo. So we make sure he is eating a lot of fruit and that his peanut butter sandwiches are on whole grain bread and pray that he'll snap out of it like his older brother has.
Hmm.. this is developing into a rant so I'll finish up. There is a problem with what kids eat in this country. There is a problem with what adults eat in this country as well. But as a parent I feel enough guilt. I don't need to feel I'm being judged if occasionally I feed our kids pizza for dinner because I can't take fixing yet another delicious, kid-friendly, healthy meal and watching it be rejected with much dramatic whining. Kids are unique individuals with their own tastebuds, and just because they're picky and would eat nothing but sugar and fast food if they could doesn't mean we've failed to model good behavior as parents. Sometimes you can do everything right and kids still want junk food!
Has this book crossed the Atlantic?
Recommended.
I think sometimes it's hard to deny your kids soda if they see you drinking it -- or deny them fries if they see you eating them. We try to be good role models of nutrition for our kids, but somehow it hasn't mattered too much. Whenever we're away from home, they chow down on all the things we don't have at home!
My kids are 3 & 8 and are VERY picky eaters. We haven't watched TV since before my oldest was born, and the rule is that you can only eat in the dining room, so the snacking thing is taken care of. We eat out only about once every other week, and I serve nutritious meals that always include a fruit and a vegetable.
However, you can't MAKE a kid eat. My previously salad-loving chldren suddenly are not eating it -- I'm not going to hold their mouths open and force it down! I don't want to make dinner time a battleground, so what to do if they eat three bites at dinner and then announce they're hungry an hour later? MAKE them eat the now-cold dinner? Um, no. As a member of the "clean plate club" who now struggles with weight, bingeing, and compulsive eating, there's no way I'd do that. I don't know what the solution is though, so I will quit rambling.
I didn't go through all the comments, so sorry if I'm repeating something.
I just wanted to say that in relation to my two year old niece's eating habits -she has the same preferences as her father, and he happens to be a very picky eater. Doesn't like potatoes, etc.
I think taste buds may be involved with genetics and not just what we were given as toddlers. Still, I too think it is ridiculous giving a baby "baby dessert" food, and that as parents we should do all that we can to help our children develop healthy eating habits from an early age.
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