What Happened When I Tried To Talk To My Kids About Nutrition
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Today is day three of my seven day blogging challenge. Read about day 2 here.
While clutching at straws over ways to get my picky eater kids to improve their eating habits (see my earlier post here), I decided it could be helpful to have a little talk with them about nutrition. I was totally wrong. Turns out they pretty much understand the theory behind eating a balanced diet, they just really, really don’t want to do it.
It began earnestly enough. I made some cards for each food group (fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains and dairy), explained
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roughly what each group was, and we took turns shouting out and writing down all the foods we could think of for each category. The boys were pretty good at this, although I had to explain that chocolate and Yorkshire puddings did not fit into one of these groups neatly, and were instead comprised of several different ingredients. I told them that a lot of people like to try and include something from each group in every meal, but we could just aim to cover all the groups over the course of a whole day instead. This went down pretty well considering the
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only thing either of them currently eat from the vegetables group is corn on the cob. I think they presumed (correctly) that I was bluffing.
At their request, I had set up a list of ’fun’ food-related questions to ask them. I was hoping for a result similar to my earlier post featuring questions to ask your kids. Disappointingly, the answers all involved either pizza, toad in the hole or sweets. I got annoyed and gave up.
Next, we made a list of all the foods they actually eat, one column per child because the little bastards can’t agree on
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anything. We labelled these ’E’ for foods you can eat everyday, and ’S’ for foods you should only eat sometimes. At this point I got a little confused about certain foods. Are sausages, pizza and chicken nuggets ’S’ foods or ’E’ foods? My gut reaction is telling my ’S’, but if I take them out of the everyday equation, what does that bloody well leave us with??? So, reluctantly, they went down as an ’E’, leaving me to wonder who I am to be teaching my children about nutrition anyway, and that perhaps I have just done more harm than
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good.
Lastly, I asked them to design a meal containing something from each of the food groups. They had to pick things from the list we made of foods they like to eat. Here are their delicious choices:
Jackson: ”Glass of milk, apple, bread and butter, corn on the cob and two chicken legs.”
Dylan: ”Margherita pizza, toad in the hole, toast and peanut butter, apple and grapes”. When I reminded him that he hadn’t chosen a vegetable he added ”sausages”.
Clearly, my work is done.
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Penny Bull - 30 Jun 18
Today is day three of my seven day blogging challenge. Read about day 2 here.
While clutching at straws over ways to get my picky eater kids to improve their eating habits (see my earlier post here), I decided it could be helpful to have a little talk with them about nutrition. I was totally wrong. Turns out they pretty much understand the theory behind eating a balanced diet, they just really, really don’t want to do it.
It began earnestly enough. I made some cards for each food group (fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains and dairy), explained roughly what each group was, and we took turns shouting out and writing down all the foods we could think of for each category. The boys were pretty good at this, although I had to explain that chocolate and Yorkshire puddings did not fit into one of these groups neatly, and were instead comprised of several different ingredients. I told them that a lot of people like to try and include something from each group in every meal, but we could just aim to cover all the groups over the course of a whole day instead. This went down pretty well considering the only thing either of them currently eat from the vegetables group is corn on the cob. I think they presumed (correctly) that I was bluffing.
At their request, I had set up a list of ‘fun’ food-related questions to ask them. I was hoping for a result similar to my earlier post featuring questions to ask your kids. Disappointingly, the answers all involved either pizza, toad in the hole or sweets. I got annoyed and gave up.
Next, we made a list of all the foods they actually eat, one column per child because the little bastards can’t agree on anything. We labelled these ‘E’ for foods you can eat everyday, and ‘S’ for foods you should only eat sometimes. At this point I got a little confused about certain foods. Are sausages, pizza and chicken nuggets ‘S’ foods or ‘E’ foods? My gut reaction is telling my ‘S’, but if I take them out of the everyday equation, what does that bloody well leave us with??? So, reluctantly, they went down as an ‘E’, leaving me to wonder who I am to be teaching my children about nutrition anyway, and that perhaps I have just done more harm than good.
Lastly, I asked them to design a meal containing something from each of the food groups. They had to pick things from the list we made of foods they like to eat. Here are their delicious choices:
Jackson: “Glass of milk, apple, bread and butter, corn on the cob and two chicken legs.”
Dylan: “Margherita pizza, toad in the hole, toast and peanut butter, apple and grapes”. When I reminded him that he hadn’t chosen a vegetable he added “sausages”.
Clearly, my work is done.
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Mum to 2 boys and a husky. Spends days writing and worrying about health, the world in general and skills as a parent. Started blogging to regain sanity(hasn't happened yet).
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