Food and Parenting

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  • phinners
    phinners Posts: 524 Member
    I have two sons 16 and 4. We all eat the same: i cook slimming world food in our house, so we all eat from fresh ingredients, plenty of veg, protein, fruits etc. except for my youngest who is fructose intolerant, he cant have any fruit or fructose stuff at all (no im not google-guessing, yes it was diagnosed by the hospital paediatric gastrointestinal consultant) . The occasional piece of strawberry or mango, but no more.

    Whatever my 16 yr old eats that he's bought to and from school I cannot control (yes it is mostly crap) but indoors he's got a good diet.

    We all eat well in our house. And i have a full time job, and a physical disability. But we still cook from scratch, which is the very ethos of slimming world.
  • nicsflyingcircus
    nicsflyingcircus Posts: 2,860 Member
    dawne000 wrote: »
    I love that you posted on this topic!

    I agree! I keep a "food box" for my son in our fridge. On Sundays, I take him shopping and let him pick out healthy snacks like fruits, cheese and veggies, then I cut them up and put them in baggies. This way if he wants a snack, he could just go in and grab a bag of strawberries or carrots. His picks for this week were: strawberries, orange slices, grapefruit 1/2's, carrots w little containers of yogurt dip, cucumbers, cheese and turkey and cheese roll-ups. It works out for both of us...it sounds horrible...but If I'm in the middle of something, I don't have stop to clean and cut up fresh fruit...he could just go in and grab a pre-portioned bag, and I know whatever he chooses, is a good choice as long it's from his food box!

    I also keep baggies of crackers w/ PB & homemade trail mix ready for him too in the cabinet.

    Don't get me wrong, he's an 8 year boy... he does love junk food - he loves chips but now he actually ASKS for baked chips instead of the regular ones.

    We have one of those french door refrigerators with the bottom drawer freezer and I specifically picked one that had the extra "snack" drawer, which can be accessed without opening the main part of the fridge. That is my kids' drawer. Fruit, veg, cups of yogurt, string cheese or other pre-portioned cheese snacks, basically anything they are allowed to snack on freely that needs to be refrigerated.

    They also know that when they get pretzels or other types of cracker/dry snack, that they are to get a small plastic bowl-full (amounts to about double the "recommended serving size" if they fill it to the brim) and not just eat directly from the bag. I don't feel the need to restrict them from this sort of "convenience" snacky food, but do feel it is important they learn to moderate portions and etc.

    We also keep both wheat and whole-grain white bread in the house. My husband and two of the kids like wheat, the other two kids prefer the white.

    I think it is important to teach the kids a number of things food-wise: no foods are "bad" but some should be eaten only in moderation, how to make good choices, both in what to eat and how much, how to cook, both things that come in boxes/bags and from scratch.

    I like to think we're doing alright with it. The kids are all active and fit and don't go to town on "treats". They don't feel the need to clear their plates if they're full and they tend to make decent, balanced choices in general.

  • SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage
    SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage Posts: 2,668 Member
    edited January 2015
    deleted - quote fail
  • EtheFinn
    EtheFinn Posts: 4 Member
    OP, Why would you post this?
  • ViolaLeeBlueberry
    ViolaLeeBlueberry Posts: 182 Member
    OK, great topic. (And I'm late to the party. So, bump.)

    Uh, I'm raising a kid in the Himalayas. (And we've even homeschooled. Yeah, should be "free of cultural brainwashing," right? :smile: Hahaha cough cough ...) Guess what's around here to eat for snacks? Oreos and Pringles. (Global brands have their tentacles everywhere.) OK, Oreos and Pringles AND oil-laden dalmat and mega-sugar bombs like jalebi and so on. But kids don't run around snacking on oranges. Sure, they eat oranges too, and steal guavas from neighbors' trees and all that good traditional fun ... but it's not too often that you see a school that doesn't have a bunch of little stores nearby selling sugar bombs to kids. And even in remote villages nowadays, kids run after school to little shops selling knockoffs of unhealthy global brands.

    It's actually HARDER to find healthy snacks here than it was in the US. I probably bought Oreos once or twice and Pringles never in the US. Here, my son gets them because of the lack of other options or local equivalents to, say, Trader Joe's. But of course, even Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are full of "healthy" unhealthy choices. You don't have to go the Little Debbies or McD's route to find sugar-and-carb bombs! (Not that there's anything wrong with a few sugar-and-carb bombs. Some of my best food friends are sugar-and-carb bombs. They're just a little hard to handle LOL!)

    I suspect the best "cure" for crappy eating habits is to (a) become a teenager, (b) break out in zits, (c) have to get snacks with your own allowance, and then (d) suddenly realize "oh geez, now that I'm paying for it, and now that I actually want to look good, maybe I'd better look for better stuff cuz maybe mom was right after all!"

    That's what the dynamic is in our house right now. No matter what you teach, kids will be drawn to unhealthy stuff, because humans are drawn to fat and sugar and the sellers of food know how to exploit that. But eventually, if you've shared better information with your kids, hopefully it will sink in. That's the best I figure we can hope for as parents :smile:
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