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What kind of eating habits are you passing on to your kids?
Filed under: Nutrition: Health, Development/Milestones: Babies
The topic of dessert--as a regular feature, or a once-a-week treat--has come up in conversation lately at our house. My husband and I are starting to talk about the kinds of eating habits we want to pass on to Bean, and in the process, we've got not choice but to examine our own.
I come from the 'everything in moderation' camp. My parents ate smallish, very reasonable portions. My mom always used fresh, local, organic food (even before it was popular) and baked her own bread. I grew up with flavors: cinnamon, turmeric, buckwheat, amaranth, jicama, boc choi, garlic, coriander, you name it. Sweets weren't prevalent in our house, and we almost never had candy, but low sugar desserts were a regular feature after dinner. My mom's apple crisp with whipped cream will always have a soft spot in my heart. As will the peaches she always canned herself each summer. But I grew up hating to cook, mostly because in my family that was what girls/women were expected to do (my father never prepared a meal for our family in my entire childhood.) And only recently have come around to the idea that cooking can be fun.
My husband on the other hand, came from a family of vivacious Italians who love to cook and love to eat. Overrating is an art form at their house. You get your money's worth at buffets. Snacking is a regular night time activity. Food is rich and decadent: fresh sausages with basil; fresh mozzarella; canolis; ricotta; Panchito. My husband is a dream in the kitchen. Give him any five ingredients and he can make a five-star meal.
We want to come to some sort of balance between us: sharing with Bean a vivacious enjoyment of food and food culture; while also modeling the healthful moderate eating habits that lead to lifelong health. And somewhere in the mix of all that is dessert. Our question is this: do you serve small portions of relatively healthy desserts daily (and by relatively healthy I mean ice cream as opposed to Twinkies) or do you ration out sweets more stringently? Does deprivation of sugary treats cause binging on them later on, when the child is old enough to make choices about his food? Or does providing regular sweets create a habit that later causes cravings for more?
What kind of eating habits do you want your children to have? How are you helping to shape these? And lastly what do you think about dessert?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
10-06-2007 @ 10:27PM
michelle said...I think that loving cooking and good food leads to healthier choices. It is not homemade bread and fresh pasta sauces that are making America fat, it is McDonalds and soda. For me, dessert is not worth eating unless it is homemade and delicious. Since you don't find that often, it is easy for me to resist when I am out.
I love cooking, we have a good homemade meal on the table every night (except once a week when we go out - but not to fast food!) We don't eat dessert every night nor do we completely ration it. I would say a couple nights a week, often just strawberries and whipped cream which is a summer regular. Ice cream might be a few bites, not a whole bowl, and often homemade. We eat real dessert only when I'm inspired to make something. I don't keep store-bought cookies or anything like that in the house, they are not good enough to waste the calories on. And my daughter is turning out like me - she regularly turns down bakery birthday cake (yuck!) at parties, but asks me every year to make Flourless Chocolate Cake for her! (She is 6 1/2) Just yesterday, she said to me "some kids just like anything that is sweet, but I only like certain things." I'm creating a foodie with gourmet tastes, but I do think she eats healthier than her peers.
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10-06-2007 @ 1:09PM
CLM said...My father always had a garden and very few things in our house came from a box. While I did the fast food thing in my teens, by my early 20s I rarely ever went to a drive-thru and was hitting the grocery stores for fresh produce and meats. I simply preferred eating the way I had been brought up to eat - it tasted better and I felt better.
My husband learned how to cook because both of his parents worked and one of his "chores" as he got older was to prepare dinner one night a week. Happily for me, he really enjoyed learning how to cook and we pretty much split cooking duty 50-50.
Our goal is to teach our boys to enjoy food because it is an amazing part of life, but we definitely fall into the moderation camp. I don't think any particular foods should be off limits, but we will be teaching them to eat reasonable portions at a reasonable pace (no wolfing things down!).
Regarding dessert, we had dessert almost every night. Now that I look back, I am amused because dessert was usually something like baked pears with a little cinnamon and butter, strawberries with fresh cream, and so on... little did I realize that my big treat at the end of a meal was just as healthy as the meal itself!
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10-06-2007 @ 2:11PM
Dina said...I have to say, I grew up in a family where we ate healthily all the time-- no pre-packaged foods bearing bright cartoon characters, nothing artificial, everything organic from the co-op and freshly made-- and when I got older and had money to spend on things like food, I went crazy with the junk. It was my "forbidden fruit" since I never, ever got it growing up except at other peoples' houses.
Now as an adult, I eat mostly healthily again. I think growing up eating more diversely than many made me less picky-- I will try anything once-- and more inclined towards the healthy stuff (it tastes better). But I allow myself very occasional "splurges" of non-healthy foods, and if I had a kid I would do the same. Stands to reason if you're forbidden any one thing, that's the thing you're going to want.
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10-06-2007 @ 10:30PM
Christina Sbarro said...Michelle--your comment made me so happy. That's just what I'm trying to do with my kiddo: make him into a foodie gormet! You're daughter sounds like she has fantastic taste, just like her mommy!
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10-08-2007 @ 8:58AM
Mama C-ta said...All I have to say is I grew up on junk food as long as I can remember. My mom's theory was if she restricted it, I would go crazy for it later. Well her plan backfired b/c I have a killer sweet tooth, I wake up wanting chocolate cake (like my childhood) and go to bed with a pint of ice cream nightly. Having a kid has forced me to unlearn all of these habits and I really restrict his sugar intake and snacks in general. I still sneak my junk when he's sleeping but that won't last long. I may be strict with his diet but if he does binge on junk when he's older, at least he had a good start.
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