You Can't Make Me Eat It!

Your kids don’t understand why they should ever eat something other than what they want to eat.

That is the source of your control struggle. And parents don't generally do a good job convincing kids otherwise.

Your kids also don't understand why: 

• They got to eat pasta yesterday, but they have to eat chicken today.
• You always let them decide what they want for breakfast but you never let them decide what they want for dinner.
• Sometimes they can have a snack and sometimes they can't.

To your kids, food decisions seem arbitrary. 

• If food choices are arbitrary, they can be changed.
• If decisions are made because of what you want, why can’t they be made because of what I want? 

Your children don’t think these thoughts literally, of course, but these are their sentiments. They are also the source of your control struggle.

In an arbitrary environment, every decision is up for grabs.

How many bites of broccoli do I have to eat before I can have a brownie? Let the bidding begin. Read Raising Lawyers.

Give your children a clear decision-making principle and the food fight diminishes.

Why?

• Kids learn how decisions are made and start making the right choices themselves.
• Parents implement clear decision-making principles more consistently. Kids love consistency.

I’m not saying that parents don’t try to explain their thinking to their children; most parents do. But there’s no one underlying theory or principle that parents can give their children for serving pasta one night and chicken the next, or for why their kids can sometimes have a snack but other times they can’t.

Unless, of course, you teach your kids these three principles: 

• Variety: We eat different things from day-to-day.
• Proportion: We eat healthier foods more frequently than treat foods.
• Moderation: We only eat when we are hungry, and we stop when we're full.

Teach these principles with The Big Fix.

 It will change how you and your kids interact around food, and that will change how your kids eat.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Mark Bittman's Dream Food Label (or how Bittman stole my ideas)

Mark Bittman's dream food label is a lot like what I've been advocating for years.

I'm not saying he copied from me (Oh, how I wish!), or that I was his inspiration (A dream come true!).  I'm just saying...

Bittman and I agree: It doesn't matter what your kids eat. What matters is how often they eat it. (Does it really matter who said it first?)

The essence of Bittman's new food label is a color code. 

• Green: Eat freely.
• Yellow: Eat with restraint or consideration.
• Red: Eat food rarely or never. 

In other words, Bittman's label is translating nutrition information into behavior. 

• Nutrition Information=Knowledge. 
• Behavior=Habits. 

Hmmm. ~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~ (Where have I heard that before? 

The online photo of the label is only a partial image.

I don't know if it's The New York Times' problem or my technological incompetence, but here is the label.

The New York Times

There is a 5-bar scale for each of three components: nutrition, foodness and welfare. (Finally, Bittman gets original: I've never written about welfare.) 

• Nutrition=A summary of the "Nutrition Facts" box.
• Foodness=A meausre of how close a product is to being real.
• Welfare: A measure of the impact of the food's production on the welfare of everything involved, including laborers, animals, land, etc.

Every food is scored 1 out of 5 for each dimension, leading to an overall number grade, out of 15 possible points.

The numeric score is then translated into a color code.

Brilliant!

Bittman's label puts proportion into action.  

Proportion is one of the three principles of healthy eating.  Eat healthy foods more frequently than less healthy foods.

The other two principles are variety and moderation.

You don't need to know anything but these three principles to have healthy eating habits because these principles translate nutrition into action.  And even young kids can understand them.

• "We eat these foods more often than those foods" (proportion).
• "We eat different foods from day-to-day" (variety).
• "We eat when we're hungry and stop when we're full, and we don't eat because we're bored, sad, or lonely" (moderation).

The current nutrition label, Bittman argues, is information overload.

That's why I've always said, nobody don't need nutrition labels.  Nutrition labels:

• Complicate your shopping experience. Who knows which parts to pay attention to?
• Are only useful for processed foods. We don't put them on bananas because...nobody needs them there.

For more on how to live your life without nutrition labels...

Read Slackers Rule. Or, you could read The New York Times article.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

The Argument for Packing an Unhealthy School Lunch

There's a lot of pressure at this time of year to write a back-to-school healthy lunch post.

But I want to make an argument for packing an unhealthy lunch.  Not one filled with Coke, Fritos and Ring Dings, but not the vegetable-kabob, salad lunch of nutritionists' (and bloggers') dreams.

I'm talking about a lunch that might not have fruits or vegetables in it (yet). 

Packing an unhealthy lunch can be better than packing a healthy lunch if...

 1) Your children routinely throw out/ignore the carrot sticks or apple slices you pack.

I know a lot of parents who insist on packing fruits and vegetables (or yogurt, cheese...) knowing full well that their children will never, in a million years, eat these items. I get the rationale (you want to send the message that fruits and veggies are important, and you hope that today will be THE day) but it teaches the unintended lesson I call "Seek and Destroy." For more on "Seek and Destroy" read The Bad News About Healthy Lunches.

2) You routinely send "healthy" versions of "unhealthy" foods. Think of this is as The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake argument on steroids. Eating pizza produces a pizza eating habit, even if the pizza is healthy. "Healthifying" food also distorts what kids think of as healthy, and this affects their habits too. Read Cookies and The Cycle of Guilty Eating to see how healthy cookies make it harder to teach your kids to eat vegetables.

3) You send the same healthy lunch everyday because you know your kids will eat it. This strategy limits your children's palates, reinforces their ideas about what they should eat and teaches your children to expect the same food every day. Try introducing new foods after that.

You can use unhealthy lunches to teach your children healthy eating habits.

These lessons may not seem like much but these three principles translate everything your kids need to know about nutrition into behavior and, in doing so, they lay the foundation for better eating down the road.

• Proportion: Eat foods in different amounts and frequencies according to how healthy they are. 

I know this sounds like an impossible lesson to teach using unhealthy foods but it's not. Help your children learn this concept with whatever group of foods they eat. Even if what you're distinguishing between are not-so-healthy and really-unhealthy foods, you can still teach the lesson that "we eat this more frequently than that because it has better things for your body." 

• Variety: Eat different foods from day to day. 

Most parents think variety means new.  It doesn't. Variety means different. Send a different, less-than-healthy lunch from day-to-day and explicitly telli your children why you're doing this.  (Be upfront: this is the foundation for new foods.)  I call this The Rotation Rule and it changes minds and taste buds. 

If you think your children will only eat PB&J for lunch, think big. There are breakfast and dinner foods, and plenty of snack combinations that could fill a lunch box (raisins, crackers, yogurt and a granola bar for instance). 

If your child must eat the same sandwich every day, at least put it on different bread or cut the sandwich into different shapes.  Do anything you can to make the sandwich different from day to day. 

• Moderation: Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. 

Don't ask your children to finish their food. Rather, teach them to eat a little of everything in their lunchbox before they finish any one item.  The rationale? Kids don't know when they're going to be full and so they devour the foods they favor and leave the rest as leftovers.  (This doesn't seem like an important rule now, but it will stand your kids in good stead when they start eating better.) Read My Child Asks for Seconds of Pasta Before She's Even Touched Her Peas.

It's tempting to throw in the towel when your kids don't eat well. 

Focus on teaching your kids how to eat, however, and you will still set your kids up for a lifetime of healthy eating.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~