Impressionable minds, Captive Audiences?

After the initial burst of inspiration that resulted in the creation of this blog came the intense pressure of writing a substantial and worthwhile second post.  I had a nice lofty topic figured out sure to be informative and intellectually satisfying.  That was till I took a trip to Lucky, the local grocery store, along with two somewhat hungry 7 year old boys (my son and my nephew) and saw the experience from the perspective of a 7 year old.  We were in the deli meats and cheese aisle looking for Ricotta cheese and sure enough the boys started wondering why they could not have this thing called  ‘Lunchables’.  I dismissed them saying that it was not healthy and they could not figure out why that was the case considering that it was food that they sometimes get as part of their ‘healthy snacks’ - turkey, cheese and crackers.  I mean it was not cake, brownies or cookies so why was this not healthy especially when it said so on the box?  Crazy lady that I am, I got down on my knees, turned over the package and tried to teach them how to read a food label.  Here is how the conversation went:

Not just one kind or one brand!

Me: OK, so let me teach you guys why it is not healthy.  See this list over here which says ‘Ingredients’?
Boys: Yes?
Me: Lets try to read it.  (I start rattling off the initial seemingly harmless ingredients such as Enriched flour, etc. and then we get to the interesting stuff)
Me: Can you guys read this? Do you know what it means? (Pointing to the larger words like the Sodium Diacetate, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed oils, Sodium Nitrite, etc.)
Boys: No we don’t, but this is just turkey and cheese.  Look at the picture.

Defeated, I invoked the privilege of the all-knowing adult and insisted that they trust me.  I reminded them of an earlier conversation when my son had innocently asked me why McDonalds sold junk food if it was not healthy.  After a couple of facts had been shared with him, he had concluded that they must be ‘bad’ people if they were only interested in money and not making kids healthy.  I told them that these are the same kind of people who made the ‘lunchables’ look so nice and healthy.   

Strawberry, Chocolate, Vanilla.....c'mon how can this be bad?

We moved on to the dairy section looking for plain old milk and they got excited because how can one go wrong with milk.  “Can we have this chocolate milk?  Milk is good for our bones right?”  Using their new found label reading skills, they informed me “This has 28g of sugar.”  I nearly burst out laughing since this means that in 1 cup of milk, they had to have added 16g of sugar which works out to be roughly 4 tsps of sugar!  Dismissed again.  I tried telling them about the evils of sugar, ie. it makes you sick, does not help your body grow strong and turns your brain into mush (OK so I don’t have a scientific backup for the last claim but it is the most powerful one that works in my family).  My nephew who is more believing and accepting of his crazy aunt’s idiosyncrasies had now caught on and claimed that he was not interested in getting any unhealthy food.  My son on the other hand has had more experience trying to wear his mother down.  He started to get combative picking up items left and right asking why they were unacceptable.  Extremely frustrated at not having been allowed to get
1) Turkey & Cheese Lunchables
2) Chocolate milk
3) Fruit rollups
4) Cheetos
5) Vanilla flavored yogurt

6) Oreo cookies
7) Some transparent pink colored juice that looked plain bad without even glancing at labels,
he exclaimed, “there is nothing here in this store that is good for us.  You are not letting us buy anything!”

Overwhelming choices

This is only one small section of the flavored yogurt shelves

And indeed that was the crux of the matter.  The choices of foods in that store which were categorically nutritious were very limited.  We had to mosey along to the Produce section before I could set them free and ultimately they were allowed to pick up a bottle of Odwalla fruit juice which seemed like the least I could do given the torture I had just put them through.  

Long story short, it got me thinking about the irony of the state of our food choices in the United States.  This is after all the land of the plenty but isn’t it also supposed to be the land of the free?  Free to make choices?  However even an adult can get frustrated by the overabundance of unacceptable foods that either have added sugars, chemicals and/or preservatives to the point of overshadowing the nutritious foods that we actually need and want.   So what hope is there for a 7 year old to find an acceptable choice?  And how many times am I just going to have to say NO to almost anything and everything that catches his fancy?


Captive to the dictates of the big bad wolf?


There are several books, discussions and agitations about the evil genius of the food industry - marketing to kids, monopoly, processing, politics, blah, blah, blah.  But the more pertinent question for me turned out to be "How in the world am I going to teach/encourage my children to recognize, choose and enjoy nutritious foods?  How will they learn to make the same choices that I make when they are no longer subject to my seemingly arbitrary decrees?”  Don’t get me wrong - it is not as if my family does not enjoy our share of the so-called junk food and my kids get their share of dubious snacks and treats (moreso than not).  My sweet tooth that has me stocking up chocolate periodically and there are enough birthday celebrations around to keep us eating cake with amazing regularity.  However the treats and food choices are regulated by this sane obsessive parent for the most part.  I wonder what will happen when my son finally flees the coop in 10 odd years.  Will he just binge and make up for all the lost time or will I have done my job and scared him off all processed foods for life?  (Sheesh I can just visualize it - he will be the only freshman in college who will turn up his nose at pizza!).  But seriously there has to be a middle ground.  I wonder if along with geography, science and math, my son should be learning how to decipher food and nutrition labels?

In the interest of unscrambling and defying the marketing genius, I am going to try to figure out some basic rules to teach my kids understand the difference between healthy and not.  I mean it is not exactly rocket science.  In my simplistic world, the rules might go something like,

1. If it grows on a tree or is a plant then it is good for you.  If it looks like something that comes from a factory then it can’t be good.
2. If it is something that has a long list of ingredients with things that you cannot pronounce then chances are it is not really good for you.
3. Just because it says ‘Its healthy’ on the package, it does not mean it is true.  Remember that there are people in the world who care about money more than they care about your health.  (talk about stealing away their trust and innocence)
4. If something is very sweet and and it is not a fruit, then it means it has too much sugar which is not good for you.  
5. You should not have too many treats.  In fact you should definitely not have more than one treat in a day.  A treat is one cookie or a piece of any other sweet.
6. Ultimately I suppose one has to keep reminding them that healthy eating is the only way they are going to grow to be strong and smart.  I have found that my kids respond very well to the idea of being strong and smart enough to pursue their sports and other activities.  I might have well use that to my advantage.  

This seems like commonsense but it is amazing how we don't normally talk about this with our kids. I wonder if these kinds of rules and conversations will make my children into precocious little brats and anxious eaters or simply more informed kids who can freely make sensible food choices?  Luckily for me my kids already like fruits and vegetables and other nutritious choices so the imposition of these rules should not completely traumatize them (or so I hope). Time will tell all.