Cultivating healthy eating habits can be a challenge. As parents we want what is best for our children. We want them to grow to be happy, healthy humans. When struggles arise, we want to do whatever we can to support them and give them the tools they need to overcome the obstacles they face.
Concerns About Nutrition Begin Early In Life
One major area of concern for parents and caregivers is promoting healthy eating habits. For many parents, this starts prior to a child even being born. While in utero, the pregnant parent might find themselves steering clear of foods that are considered unsafe to ensure that they are consuming healthy meals and snacks to provide their unborn child with nourishment. Once a baby is born, we often hear of parents concerning themselves with how many ounces of formula the baby consumes, or the duration of time the baby spends at the breast. These are two very early examples of choices parents make with regards to nutrition.
The choices can grow exponentially as a child gets older. Parents might have to contend with food allergies, food aversions, or digestive struggles. Parents might simply be trying to find the latest and greatest tips and tricks for sneaking veggies in a child’s favorite meal, or be desperately trying to get their children to branch out and try new things. These are all normal development stages for kids but what happens though when healthy eating becomes an obsession?
Sneaky Messaging
Experts say that the messages received from social media and society in general about food, health and wellness, and body image can have a substantial negative impact on people from a very young age. When it comes to instilling healthy eating habits in children, experts like Hannah Topper, an Integrative Nutritionist say that social media and its exponential growth have exacerbated the negative messages that youth receive about their body and their worth. Even more than that, Topper says that youth (and adults too) are being exposed to negative messaging that is cleverly designed to appear healthy. “Many adults were raised in the boom of diet culture,” she says.
Diet, exercise, and health and wellness programs are often designed to appeal to those who are already health conscious and care about their overall well-being. The messaging is rarely outright negative but instead creates a false narrative that there is a right way and a wrong way of approaching health, wellness, and nutrition. What this messaging tends to do is warp our thinking about what it means to intuitively understand the needs of our bodies. This messaging also tends to categorize things as either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, rather than creating a culture of acceptance, pleasure, and natural moderation. While not everyone exposed to this covert messaging will develop an eating disorder or engage in patterns of disordered eating, this type of messaging can cause youth to become hyper-focused on food, food choices, and body image.
Topper talks about the flawed messaging that many parents were raised with when it comes to food, and how we might be inadvertently passing this messaging on to our children. “The first thing we need to do as parents when it comes to the messages kids are getting about food, comes down to modeling the desired behavior and mindset in the home. The earlier we build the foundation the better, but it is never too late. Trust and mindfulness are the most important aspects of food when it comes to raising nutritionally conscious eaters.” She says.
Jacquelyn Stern, a registered dietician nutritionist at Annapolis Nutrition echoes the effects of messaging saying “One of the challenges is that we live in a society that is filled with messaging about what is and is not healthy.” She says this puts a lot of pressure on parents.
There Is No Good And Bad
Categorizing foods into hierarchical arrangements from least healthy to most healthy, or defining some foods as “good” and others as “bad” is a seemingly harmless way of trying to help youth make good nutritional choices. What this actually does, according to nutritionists like Topper and Stern, is override a child’s natural ability to use intuition when it comes to choosing what foods they put into their bodies, how much they consume, and how they feel about it. “Language is a huge part of it.” Says Topper. “Foods should not be used as punishments or rewards.” She says that even small changes such as using selective eater rather than picky eater can help remove the shame or guilt associated with eating habits.
Stern points out that it shouldn’t be taboo to eat processed foods, snacks, or fast food on occasion. She says “These foods should not be off limits, they should instead come with appropriate boundaries and guidelines that each family can feel good about.”
A simple example of flawed messaging can be things like you have to eat vegetables before you have dessert, you have to try everything at least once, and you have to finish your plate. Topper suggests alternative approaches such as putting the dessert, or what could be considered the “treat” item on the same plate as a child’s meal. By serving everything together, it removes the hierarchy of something being better or worse. It removes the barrier of having to finish one thing before the child can have the thing they really want. And perhaps most importantly, it puts the child back in charge of what they put in their bodies.
This sounds scary, ineffective, and counterintuitive to many parents, and experts say that there may be an adjustment period. But kids naturally and intuitively will eat what their bodies need, and will control the quality, frequency, and variety of what they consume based on their own comfort, knowledge of their body, and how things make them feel.
“The actual message we should be sending is that kids need to learn to trust themselves to regulate their food intake and their choices according to what their body is telling them. Telling a child that food is bad makes them internalize it to think I am bad because I want that food. That then creates this internalized sense of shame.”
Modeling Healthy Choices
Many parents are struggling with disordered eating or skewed relationships with foods themselves which can be tricky when trying to prevent their children from developing these same struggles. Topper encourages parents to model eating a variety of foods, including the foods that may not be considered nutritious but are still foods that you genuinely enjoy, and to do so with positivity. She also suggests modeling acceptance of our emotions surrounding food. “Our emotions surrounding food and our desires surrounding food are never going to be exactly the same every day. It’s all about establishing and maintaining the relationship we have with ourselves, our family, our foods, and our culture.”
Modeling healthy choices looks like a lot of different things. Going to the gym or engaging in exercise is a healthy habit. But the healthy messaging is lost if you are going to the gym because I am fat, I need to lose weight, or I ate pizza last night. Eating salads or vegetable-heavy dishes is a healthy choice. But the healthy messaging is lost if you are eating these things because I ate bad for lunch, or I don’t fit in my clothes.
The Importance Of Eating Together
Meals have historically been a time for families to come together and connect over shared food and conversation.
While the dinner table might be the picture that first comes to mind when we think of families sharing meals together, Topper says it goes beyond setting and time of day. Stern reinforced the concept saying that “dinner doesn’t have to be a three course meal, it can be as simple as a bowl of cereal.”
A mom sitting on the couch with her kids eating a bowl of cereal and catching up at the end of the day after she gets off work, or a family sharing a plate of cheese and crackers at the kitchen counter together before rushing off to team sports can be just as beneficial as a full meal around the table. The benefit of eating together is taking time to connect and be present. That can happen in a variety of places with a variety of foods.
When To Seek Help
Both Stern and Topper say that if parents notice any major change in their children’s eating habits such as overeating, restricting foods, hiding foods, not wanting to eat things they usually love, or having a sudden urge to eat “healthy” or make drastic changes to their diet, it is worth having a deeper conversation. Concerns about diet and nutrition can also be discussed with your child’s pediatrician or a nutritionist. If parents think their child might be developing an eating disorder, consulting a therapist skilled in this area can be an important factor in seeking help.
Nutrition is highly personal and nuanced and the approaches described in this article do not necessarily account for all specific needs including dietary restrictions or health complications. The main takeaway is that nutrition is less about the specific foods we eat, and more about the relationships we have with food as individuals and as a family unit.
Jillian Amodio is a mother of two, mental health advocate and creator of Moms For Mental Health. She is passionate about family, health and wellness, and spreading joy like glitter! She lives in Cape Saint Claire with her husband, children, and crazy dog.