Part II: Q&A on tiding over a two-year-old before dinner

Feb 24, 2010 by

This post is the second installment of my answer to the question of a reader, Jen, a few days ago:

My two-year-old eats really well most days, and we only have real food in the house. There are times though, when I’m moments away from having a meal ready, and he has the refrigerator open pointing at the yogurt or applesauce. I often tell him that after he eats the soup, spaghetti, red beans and rice, or whatever it is we’re having, then he can have the yogurt. I’ll say, “First we’re going to eat the soup, then we can have some yogurt.” Is this wrong? Is this like offering a reward? He usually complies without much of a fuss, though occasionally he throws a bit of a tantrum. I think the problem is he’s hungry, but the food isn’t on the table yet. If it’s going to be a…

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Question & Answer on how to tide over a hungry two-year-old before dinner

Feb 21, 2010 by

A question from Jen, a reader:

My two-year-old eats really well most days, and we only have real food in the house. There are times though, when I’m moments away from having a meal ready, and he has the refrigerator open pointing at the yogurt or applesauce. I often tell him that after he eats the soup, spaghetti, red beans and rice, or whatever it is we’re having, then he can have the yogurt. I’ll say, “First we’re going to eat the soup, then we can have some yogurt”. Is this wrong? Is this like offering a reward? He usually complies without much of a fuss, though occasionally he throws a bit of a tantrum. I think the problem is he’s hungry, but the food isn’t on the table yet. If it’s going to be a while before dinner is ready, I’ll let him have the yogurt or applesauce…

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Better behavior through better eating? The high price of cheap food

Feb 17, 2010 by

Sure it costs more to feed your children real food than processed junk. But what price might you be paying to feed your kids cheaply? How about lack of focus, bad behavior, poor school performance, even violence or crime?

“Can we cut crime by changing cafeteria menus?” is the question Christina Pirello answers in the Huffington Post this week.

Pirello tells about several instances that prove that feeding people better can result in dramatic improvements in their behavior. From schools to prisons, garbage in means garbage out, but healthier eating can clearly net measurably better behavior. School performance was also shown to improve with better eating.

Being treated with respect, being deemed worthy of decent food, might contribute to better behavior, I believe. But clear results tied strictly to nutrition were also found in a study with placebos.

A better diet dramatically transformed student behavior in a Wisconsin school. In over…

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Child obesity task force: stacking the deck against parents and health

Feb 11, 2010 by

As of Tuesday, a White House task force made up of cabinet secretaries and other officials has 90 days to come up with a strategy to reduce childhood obesity. It’s a worthy use of their time. One-third of American 8- to 10-year-olds are now obese.

I’m sure the first thing this bureaucratic task force will no doubt tackle is the government’s own role in causing the problem. Our food system, which includes government subsidies for growing the ingredients of processed foods, notably the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup, has conspired to make junk foods the cheapest eats option. We pay the huge food companies to grow and produce junk food, and they in turn spend millions on advertising to kids and the rest of us.

I bet the first thing the task force will do is to insist we quit subsidizing processed…

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The right strategy to get kids to eat: Put gas in that car

Jan 28, 2010 by

“Is this wrong?” my new friend Ginger asked me today.

Last night, she said, her kids had refused to eat dinner. She knew it wasn’t that they didn’t like it. Rather, they just wanted to have power over her. So, at breakfast this morning, she made them eat the food they didn’t eat last night.

Right or wrong, Ginger’s strategy is about as useful as any when parent and child are locked in a battle of wills about eating. It’s not so much a question of whether the strategy itself is sound. What’s wrong is that such strategies are used at all and that a power struggle has formed around food.

Getting in the game of making kids eat is like running out of gas and deciding you want to save money by never buying gas again. So you ask whether it’s better to push your car or pull it down the road…

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Ratatouille: Everybody can cook

Jan 11, 2010 by

Anybody can cook, right? That’s the main message of the animated kids’ movie Ratatouille, out last year, and which I finally watched. That message seemed pretty sound to me at first glance.

But what the film actually means by “anybody can cook” gave me plenty of food for thought. I wish I could rewrite the film to convey instead, “everybody can cook.”

The story tells of Remy, a rat of humble origins, who becomes more than human through a superhuman genius for cooking.

Remy gets his inspiration to rise above the garbage-eating gluttony of his rat culture through exposure to humans, in particular their cookbooks, TV cooking shows, higher quality foodstuffs and discriminating tastes.

Without condemning or rejecting his rat family and friends, Remy the rat…

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