Lion and Magic Boy

Recently Sheryl of Paper Napkin wrote about children and food, and I might as well include my rantings here:

I decided long ago not to make food an issue in my house. After indulging in eating disorders in my 20′s, and still being not so far away from all that, I decided never to pressure my younger children, now 10, 6, and 2, about eating. They are allowed to say they don’t care for something, but I do encourage them to try the whatever-it-is that they blanketly dismiss before truly dismissing it. Lately, I noticed that Serena has changed her mind from saying “I don’t like red peppers” to “Please may I have more red peppers?”, simply because Michael sold her on how luscious they are (good work, Michael; she’d never take that from me). So my children are fairly open to whatever is served, and Nathaniel frequently asks for vegetables such as broccoli when he feels he’s not getting enough. (Eric, however, could live on pancakes and applesauce, but that’s another story.)

My children are thin and tall. They don’t walk hardly, but seem to mainly run. It seems to be their genetic makeup. I’m thankful for this, because it means that they may escape body-image issues later when they’ve been bombarded with media images portraying people as impossibly thin. (I’m concerned somewhat though about Nathaniel’s recent comments about being “too fat”, while bending over and feeling his stomach, feeling how the skin ripples when he curls up. This is a boy with perhaps 6% body fat. I wonder where he is getting this from.)

Foodwise, we’ve gone somewhat in a circle, not a full circle, from where we were ten years ago. In that time, I’ve discarded most of not all prepared foods. That’s right, nothing in a box touches our lips. For a time I was even making all our own snack foods, crackers and granola bars. That was before Eric came and reality set in. I still make granola bars though — very easy and really good! I make all our bread, too, though these days I cheat, er, use a breadmaker.

In addition, I feel it is really important that most if not all foods, especially produce, dairy, and other animal products, be organic. I prefer grass-fed beef, free-range chicken. It’s important to me what the animals ate and how they were treated. All matter is energy, and I prefer that the energy we ingest in the form of animals be the best possible. Milk is unpasteurized, unhomogenized. Click here to find out why.

You can read more about my food theories here:

1. Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon
2. Foodwise, by Wendy E. Cook

They are, though, in short:

1. Fat is good! You need lots! But it has to be Good Fat (butter, olive oil, coconut oil = Good; transfats, found in processed foods = Bad).

2. Vegetables = Good!

3. Whole grains! Soak your grains before cooking to unlock the good stuff.

4. Meat = Good! (I had trouble with this at first, having been vegetarian for 15 years, but I see it now).

5. Sugar = Bad! Maple syrup is okay though, in moderation.

6. Processed foods = Bad!

7. Raw Milk! See above.

8. Snacks = Good! Yes, good! Children especially need to eat frequently throughout the day. They have a mid-morning snack at school, and another when they get home in the afternoon. It does not seem to affect their mealtime appetites.

So….nothing too strange here, really.

Here’s a sample of what we eat:

Breakfast is bagels, toast from homemade bread with almond butter and honey or butter and jam, or homemade oatmeal, or eggs in some form. My omelets are legendary. Saturday is Pancake Day (with “real” maple syrup, of course), and I make enough that Eric can have these, warmed up syrupless, throughout the week as snacks.

Lunch on school days is something warm in a thermos, leftover dinner or homemade soup, plus yogurt, cheese, crackers maybe, and fruit.

Dinner is often a one-dish affair combining rice, meat, and vegetables. Additional vegetables grace the table, plus homemade bread, and fruit. Dessert seldom makes an appearance, but we do have something once in awhile.

Bacon, while surely making the Bad List in many ways, does have a place here. There have to be at least some things to indulge in.

Sugar and candy aren’t much of an issue. There is candy once in awhile, but neither is it banned or encouraged. It just isn’t an issue. We don’t do fast food, as the children don’t like it. They’d rather have a meal at home than go out anyway. We don’t keep soda in the house, nor is there juice. They prefer water anyway, and Serena wouldn’t drink a soda if you paid her to, being unable to get past the bubble thing. I suspect all that’s an acquired taste anyway. I grew up drinking a weekly black cherry cola while watching The Brady Bunch (and later The Partridge Family, oh David Cassidy) on Friday nights.

Mainly, we strive for balance. Balance is sometimes about indulging seeming strange food whims, especially when they’re sick or they’re simply Age Two. Which is why I don’t too much sweat the pancakes-and-applesauce diet of Eric’s, knowing that some days he has broccoli or butternut squash soup or brown rice or all of those. Balance also is not worrying too deeply about any one of my Eight Tenets, above. They’re simply something to strive for.

When I was growing up, children (me) were forced to clean their plates of evils such as peas and Brussels sprouts, which somehow was related to Starving Children in China (couldn’t we just send them my Brussels sprouts?). Now that I’m in charge, children do not have to clear their plates, but instead are encouraged and taught to take what they will eat. I recognize that at times their eyes are indeed bigger than their stomachs, but I’m trying to teach them the difference between wanting something because it tastes good and truly being hungry. I see that children come equipped with this knowledge instinctively but culturally, somewhere along the way to adulthood, we tend to quash this tendency and instead use food as reward. Or even punishment. My children will not know the shame of sitting alone at the dinner table long after the meal is over, staring at a bowl of congealed and stone-cold peas while the rest of the family goes about its business. Meals in our house are happy family times, with things served that everyone likes (for the most part anyway, and yes, including peas and Brussels sprouts, now that I’ve learned to cook them properly) that are nutritious, a time when we’re together breaking bread, one of the most intimate moments between humans, one that touches us all in the deepest and most visceral level.

So, is my house too restrictive? So far it doesn’t seem so. When my children go a-visiting they don’t seem to clamor for the things they don’t get at home, coming back encrusted with Sugar Smacks and Oreos, bits of Pop Tarts and french fries clinging to their hair as they desperately attempt to cram in everything Forbidden, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that they’re happy with their diet, despite the fact that their father refers to me as the Food Nazi (his diet consists mainly of Hershey’s Almond Nuggets and Wheat Thins).

It may all go out the window one day though when/if I become once again a Working Outside the Home Mommy, but I hope not. It’s fulfilling knowing you’re giving your children the best that you can, whatever that best is.

technorati tags: nutrition, food issues, why the pyramid is wrong