Getting Kids to Eat a Balanced Meal

I read this essay on the weekend and had to laugh. It's by a man who remembers being obsessed during his childhood by junk foods since he was forced by his healthy parents to eat a strictly nutritious diet. I wonder if my kids will be so desperate for these types of foods that they'll become junk food junkies. I tend to be strict about desserts for the children and we don't bring junk foods into the house. I don't feel like a Green Food Ogre, and I hope they won't look back as adults and see me that way.

However, it must be said that when the author of Forbidden Nonfruit grew up in the 1970s, schools and daycares did not drown kids in empty processed foods as much as they have recently. I feel like I must serve very healthy meals at home to balance out my first grader's "white foods" diet on weekdays.

But I digress. Many parents dread dinner time because it involves a lot of fighting to get kids to eat healthier choices like green vegetables. Many wonder "how can I be sure my children are eating the healthy choices I offer them at home?"

The first answer to this question is to make it a routine to serve a nutritious meal for the whole family: not just for kids, not just for parents, and not all of a sudden because "we're on a diet". Then you need to make sure that you're pressuring kids to eat any particular foods on offer. This prevailing wisdom, attributed to Dietitian Ellyn Satter 30 years back, means that parents get to control what food is offered to kids, and kids get to control which foods they eat and how much. No pressure means no power struggle. This presumes, of course that you're offering your kids a range of healthy options at mealtimes. After that, you need to sit back and allow your children to manage what goes into their mouths.

I'd say that we mostly follow this in our family. The Bug is easy because she loudly begs for anything and everything that's within sight and not nailed down. Her older sister, however, is a pickier child and so I try to stay within her comfort zone.

While I often ask her to try a new food (and she can spit it out if she hates it, but rarely does), I don't often serve her food I know she will dislike. Why do something that we know will set up a conflict? Thankfully she gives me a pretty wide range of approved vegetables. And she's come up with this amazing habit of eating her veggies first, all by herself! But when she say she's full, we usually don't push her to eat more; even if we think she's not really full but just not wanting to eat a particular food. As long as she has eaten some vegetables I'm pretty happy and that's it for her for the evening.

So if you haven't done so already, consider the possibility of letting go a bit at dinnertime. If you are offering healthy choices and a variety of colourful foods throughout the week, your kids should be getting the right amount of vitamins and nutrition, unless they are on a hunger strike.