Tools for teaching nutrition
My son is adopted. For the first 10 years of his life he lived in various homes and developed his nutrition habits there. His foster mother told me that he liked to eat just about anything, but when he moved to my home he'd grimace and scowl and fake gag at everything I cooked. I may not be a world-class chef, but I don't think my food is gag worthy. For a long while, I thought his food issues were just control-based and part of his adjustment to a new environment. But in time, I realized that the bigger issue was he was more used to frozen, canned, and delivered-to-your-door foods than he was used to home-cooked meals. Little by little, he's getting used to the way dinners work in our home. He's becoming slightly more adventurous and is more apt to take a bite of something "just for tries" than to immediately say "Yuck!" I've also found that giving him the nutrition facts is one of the best ways to break some of his not-so-good eating habits. He frequently checks labels for sugar content now and he knows how to tell if something is really whole grain. One of the best learning tools, believe it or not, is a TV commercial that shows high fructose corn syrup for the sticky gross mess that it is. Ever since then, he gets grossed out if he sees that a product has HFCS in it.
Teaching kids about nutrition at a young age is the best way, but even stubborn pre-teens like my kiddo will slowly come around to healthy eating. Don't make nutrition a chore or a boring lesson to be learned, just incorporate nutrition tips into your every day life. Model good eating habits for your kids and keep plenty of healthy foods on hand. You can also buy books and other tools that will help your kids learn the nutritional ropes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-13-2008 @ 3:10PM
Judy said...
I realized how little real nutrition education I had as a child. I've started trying to teach my boys from early on, and my 4 yo just yesterday told our UPS man about his birthday cake, and said, "But it wasn't very healthy." The UPS man knows I'm a bit of a food freak, and just laughed.
I grew up eating LOTS of frozen, canned, packaged foods, but in the last few years we've gone to making most of our food at home. My husband got sick, so I got him some soup, and thought it looked good, so I got some for myself. Once I got home and started eating it, all I could taste was salt and fat. ICK! But the transition away from that can be really hard when it's all you're used to.
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3-13-2008 @ 8:54PM
Maggie Vink said...
Ha! Kaitlin, I don't make my son read nutrition labels. Trying to make him do so would be the best way to get him NOT to do it. I read the labels. And, as he's seen me do so, he's developed his own interest. I'm a firm believer that the best way to teach kids about nutrition is to keep it fun, light, and to model good nutritional habits. Which, while it shouldn't be obsessive, includes label reading.
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3-13-2008 @ 9:57PM
kaitlin Hess said...
I say let kids be kids and have the parents worry about getting the right nutrition to their child. Being so militant about nutrition labels isn't as healthy as society would like us to believe. Teach your child about different types of foods , but my god, having your child reading labels and sugar milligrams is just totally messing up your child's relationship with food. Just my opinion.
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3-13-2008 @ 11:14PM
marcie0305 said...
Hm, I don't want my son reading labels either...it's a lot easier to eat foods that came from Mother Nature, the way we were intended to eat them. That said, I think human brains tend to crave foods we eat. So, if you're going to McDonald's every morning, your brain will think "pork fat! for protein! need more! with some of those empty carbs and sugar on the side!" As opposed to say, "soy milk and some organic eggs with egg-cellent Omega-3s in them" made at home. It's complicated, but you *can* evolve your family into better, disease-preventative eating habits, over time. Go back to natural...
~Marcie
http://feedingblackmail.blogspot.com/
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