Should we teach kids about calories?

It's probably not good to let companies get a head start "teaching" kids.

Yes. We should ALSO teach them about manners, respect for themselves, one another, and all living things, actual real math (not common core), handwriting, proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Yes.

One thing I keep saying to people as I learn more and more about food and weight loss on this journey is that I really really wish I'd been raised to understand serving sizes and portion control.

Obviously we shouldn't teach calories as a way to frighten or shame kids, or give the idea that there are good vs bad foods, but instead to explain how a body needs to be fuelled properly. Not too much and not too little.

My daugher is obese... so do i teach her about calories...sure i do... because with this type of knowledge she can make better choices... with knowledge comes power...

Now... this doesn't mean i would expect her to start counting them..... like i do.. but she should understand that with good choices comes rewards...

So... I use the Red, Yellow, Green system of what she should not eat (very high calories little or no nutritional value), should eat a little (high calories but healthy) or eat as much as you like... (low calories good or high nutritional value)

and yes i know you can become over weight eating healthy food if you eat too much... but I don't have to worry too much about my daughter eating too many carrots or lettuce... :laugh:

I was always taught to eat to be "healthy." We always had fresh fruit and veggies cut up in the fridge for snacks and not a lot of junk food. So I was always able to eat whatever I wanted at home, but it was rarely any type of processed food. I enjoyed going out to eat with friends and such, but because of how we ate at home it was always a treat. I've continued to eat that way into adulthood and it has worked out really well for me.

That´s cool....a loooot more parents should do it this way!

Of course, in due time!

I will teach my daughter what a kilowatt hour is, and won't be afraid she will become obsessed with electricity.
I will teach my son economics, rates of interest, etc. without becoming afraid he'll become Ebenezeer Scrooge.
I will teach them that the sun is a star, that it won't last forever, and that everyone they love will eventually die.

Knowledge is good. Like I said, in time.

When my kids eat ice cream, will I call them "hopelessly bound to be unloved fatsos"?
If they fail to score a goal in soccer, will I yell "get out of the pitch, you loser"?

Of course not. Those are the type of things that actually can damage someone's psyche. Calories are merely teaching the right terminology, I will certainly follow up with basic nutrition and some age-appropriate cooking.

Yes and no. As long as you show them the basics of healthy eating and show by example (not having chips and chocolate in the house for example), I'm pretty sure they will turn out ok. Sometimes showing them the battlegrounds of calorie counting can lead to a frustrating life down the road. Like obsessively counting and not living...on the extreme end.

Calorie counting: No
Healthy eating: Yes

Like others have said, there's a chance of eating disorders developing with calorie counting being introduced at a young age. I would have loved some advice on finding a middle ground between enjoying food and being gluttonous.

It's probably not good to let companies get a head start "teaching" kids.

Oh man, so THIS.

From the moment they are BORN (And in the case of shaping public opinion in the Third World concerning Breast milk not being as good as Formula) companies are throwing billions of dollars at some of our species' brightest people to manipulate humanity's basic evolutionary weaknesses into eating a certain way.

If you don't teach your kids how to eat right now, there are tons of people happy to do it for you and they're being paid a lot of money for knowing how to do it.

Girls stop growing around 18, men around 21... they may stop growing in height before this, but there will still be some growing going on, e.g. young men's' shoulders getting wider, young women's pelvis getting wider, etc.

For this reason (and some others, but this is the main reason), I would not advise calorie counting for teenagers, unless it's under the advice of a paediatric dietitian or paediatrician, i.e. someone who's qualifed to know exactly how many extra calories to add on for growing. Growing takes calories, and the calorie calculators on this site and others like it are for adults and do not give extra calories for growth.

I think it is good to teach kids about calories, i.e. what a calorie is and give them a rough guide to how many they need and basic facts like that exercise burns additional calories so people who do a lot of exercise/physical need to eat more to fuel their exercise/activity, and all of that kind of thing, (but not actual calorie counting). There's no reason why teaching kids to be conscious of their food choices would inevitably lead to an eating disorder... what would concern me though is when a parent has a bad relationship with food, the child can then end up picking up that bad relationship, and that's where the problems are likely to arise. So in that case more care needs to be taken, and the parent needs to be aware of what's bad about their relationship with food so they don't end up projecting it all on the kid.

I think it's important not to classify food into two separate groups "healthy" and "unhealthy" and instead teach the child that you need to look at the whole diet to determine if the diet is healthy. Kids need to know they can enjoy what foods they want in moderation. I teach my kids that they can have restaurant food, sweets etc, sometimes but that it's not healthy to eat it to eat that kind of food all the time... I focus more on teaching them what protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and fibre are, which foods contain them, and the importance of getting enough protein, or matching their fat and carbohydrate intake to their activity levels, and why their bodies need plenty of vitamins, minerals and fibre. I focus on this rather than on calories. They're too young to really get calories anyway, but when they're older I will teach it to them from a science point of view, i.e. calorie is a unit of energy and the calorie count on the food tells you how much energy there is in the food.

I think it's very important with kids to encourage physical activity. Food and calories is really only half of the equation, and kids in the past did not get fat, and none of them were counting calories, or even knew or cared what a calorie was. Until recently, kids stayed at a health weight through physical activity. It's only a problem nowadays because kids spend too long staring at screens, are driven everywhere, don't get enough time or opportunities to play outdoors, do sports, etc. I spend entire days outside as a child, only coming in for meals and even having to be dragged in at bedtime or if the weather got so severe that my mum would not let us stay outside (light rain etc we carried on playing outdoors and just got muddy.)

Calorie counting really should only be done by people who already have a weight problem (this goes for children and adults), because a lot of people can stay at a healthy weight just by being physically active and paying attention to eating a balanced diet. In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. For someone who's successfully maintiaining a healthy diet without calorie counting, it's not only pointless to count calories, it may cause problems (e.g. obsession, eating the wrong amount of calories because their body doesn't match the calorie calulator) where there wasn't any problems before......... The vast majority of kids don't need to count calories, and will stay thin (or get thin) with an active lifestyle and being careful to get a balanced diet..... for kids that are already obese and are not losing fat doing this, then yes do take them to a paediatrician and it may well be the case that a calorie controlled diet is what the child needs - under the supervision of the paediatrician/paediatric dietitian who will ensure that they're getting enough calories to keep growing normally, while losing the fat slowly. And of course teach kids about good nutrition and the importance of exercise.... just that IMO there's no point to having kids count calories or have a "calorie budget" unless they already have a weight problem and the paediatrician recommends calorie counting as a way to fix it.