Photo credit: Josephers
Enforcing good eating habits, buying mostly organic food, avoiding high fructose corn syrup and trans fats and limiting sugar intake are all great choices. It’s also a good idea to involve our children in our decision making process when it comes to grocery shopping and reading labels.
But according to experts, parents need to be careful not to go too far and “create an unhealthy aura around food.”
The last thing you want it to raise a child that’s so scared of “bad foods” that she refuses to eat birthday cakes and, when she’s a little older, restricts her food intake so much that she doesn’t consume enough calories and develops an eating disorder.
While eating healthy is good for us and for our kids, being obsessed about it is not. A health-food addiction is entirely possible, just as it is possible to be addicted to exercise or to anything else. As Dr. J recently said, humans are always at risk of becoming addicted to something.
While it’s important to convey the message that kids need to fuel their bodies with healthy food and limit candy and soda, the message needs to stay very simple. Kids need not worry about preservatives, additives or calories. All they need to know is that they should try to eat a variety of fresh foods in different colors, drink mostly water, and stop eating when they’re not hungry.
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7 Responses
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Hi Vered - That is good advice. Encouraging your kids to be fanatical about health could be damaging later on. Anything that reinforces the idea that looking like a stick insect is healthy. is dangerous.
I used to be addicted to exercise and it can be just as damaging as any other addiction.
@ Cath: A health addiction, including exercise addiction and health food addiction, isn’t “better” than other addiction. It disrupts people’s lives and endangers their health.
Vered - I like this because it echoes the advice that moderation is key. It is important to be healthy and fit, yes, but it is also important to enjoy foods - treats included - in moderation.
I liked it a lot. it resonated with me very much. I try to eat healthy food but i am not crazy about organic and other “healthy” stuff. Same w/my kids - i try to teach them good enough eating habits. They know that extreme badness is McDonald’s but sometimes I take them there just to show them there is no absolute perfectness and it is fine to make an exceptions and break some rules
RC Rambling: Exactly. I’m trying to live by “everything in moderation.” It’s not always easy, because we live in a world that’s about extremes, but I’m trying to.
@ Alik Levin: Just like you, I tell my kids eating well isn’t about perfection. It’s OK to eat not-so-healthy stuff occasionally.
I think if we are talking about children, it is good to train them what is healthy from not and yes, we shouldn’t take the privilege from them to taste snacks for their age, like candies, chocolates. I am not saying we tolerate them, but we are training them to choose food wisely. We don’t want to strip away good childhood memories. Just remember the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” where Willy Wonka as a child, didn’t allowed him by his father (who is a dentist) to taste a single candy; but he did secretly.
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