Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
food for thought
Why Food Fights?
If you have ever asked yourself just how you are supposed to apply all of the latest dietary directives to your family's everyday life when your child recoils at the slightest hint of something green on her plate or had a hard time even figuring out how to get dinner on the table in the first place, then this is definitely the book for you. If not, we can all but guarantee that you are still going to find plenty of tidbits of helpful advice that will serve your family well. We are convinced that by giving you a bird's-eye view of what you're up against and arming you with some basic insights and some palatable peacekeeping strategies, each and every one of you can win the nutritional challenges of parenthood and play a defining role in shaping your child's lifelong eating habits.
We called this book Food Fights for several reasons. First it was because we really wanted people to pay attention to the hugely important topics we're about to discuss, and we figured we'd need a catchy title to get your attention. It's also called Food Fights because we hoped that the thought of a good old-fashioned food fight à la the movie Animal House would be enough to make you smile, the promise of a discussion of ketchup might be enough to make you chuckle knowingly and, most of all, you'd be more likely to breathe a sigh of relief that you've finally found a book that relates to the real nutritional challenges of parenthood. But more fundamentally, it's because it is impossible to ignore the fact that now more than ever, food-related battles rank right at the top of the daily list of parental challenges. They are being waged in virtually every household in America, and our children's nutritional fortitude clearly depends on their outcome. As both pediatricians and parents, we decided it was high time to march straight to the front lines and mediate — whether that's in your homes, in child care centers across America, on the road, or anywhere else today's children are learning lifelong eating habits.
Under Siege
As parents today we are faced with raising our children in a veritable minefield of dietary trappings and hazardous temptations. Finding them is not a matter of searching, but simply of opening our eyes to their presence in our children's everyday diets, not to mention our own. Over the past several decades, fast-food meals increased from less than 10% to nearly a quarter of all meals consumed. Over this same time span, the percentage of total energy intake from either soda or juice increased nearly 100%, and salty snack intake doubled. Even bagels have been super-sized such that they contain at least 200 calories more than they did 25 years ago. Not surprisingly, the proportion of obese Americans has continued to increase as well.
The Battle of the Bulge
Regardless of how you weigh the facts, it is impossible to look past the estimated one-third of adults (that's more than 70 million people) who are now considered to be obese. At the same time, we know that children with obese parents are as much as 80% more likely to become obese themselves. These numbers confirm what we should have seen coming: An estimated 1 in 5 of our country's children have already followed in their parents' footsteps. Also hard to ignore are the clear health implications of poor nutrition, overweight, and obesity — including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, eating disorders, and stroke, to name but a few.
So why tackle the huge problem of adult obesity in a book about teaching kids healthy eating habits? We hope the answer to this question is as obvious to you as it is to us: Because it's impossible to separate the two. While we had every intention of focusing our attention on the questions parents typically ask that are specific to their kids, we constantly found ourselves discussing eating habits in general. After all, if we as parents can't get our own eating habits and waistlines under control, how is it that we think we will be able to teach our children to do so? Bottom line: Our children stand to take after us in more ways than one, and when it comes to being overweight, they are already lumbering their way up the growth curves (at least for weight) in record numbers.
So there you have it — a big-picture view of the battlefield. If that's all there was, it would be a very sobering sight indeed. Yet we are optimistic. If we weren't convinced there are things that each of us can do in our day-to-day approach to feeding our children that will help them steer clear of trouble and come out ahead, we wouldn't have bothered to write this book. Instead of throwing up our hands in surrender, we decided to take a closer look at what each and every one of you can do to prevent your children — and hopefully yourselves — from becoming statistics in this battle of increasing proportions.
Looking Beyond the Substances at Hand
As much as this now seems like it's going to be yet another book on the subject of childhood nutrition, it's not. Well, not exactly anyway. While we fully intend to provide you with a reality-based approach to your children's nutritional needs and offer plenty of practical information for you to use as you dish up everything from your baby's first foods to your family's meals, this book is first and foremost about teaching, learning, behavior, and development. Because it really doesn't matter if you have a medical degree, a PhD in nutrition, or the best parental intentions in the world if you can't get your child to agree to the rules of engagement — get him to consider giving up his bedtime bottle, give peas a chance, sit for a meal, or open his mouth and try new foods. Unlike so many of the nutrition books out there, this book is as much about applying tried-and-true parenting skills as it is about the actual food. And while it may seem that in the end Food Fights is all about winning and losing, it's actually not. Our real goal is to minimize food-related conflicts and take the fight out of food.
Staying Away From Slippery Slopes
One of the problems with parenthood is that nobody ever tells you just exactly when a nutritional necessity, such as a newborn's middle-of-the-night feedings or bedtime bottle, suddenly becomes a bad habit in the making. That's because as with most routines, using food for comfort has a way of easing itself into existence while we're too busy going about our parenting business to notice. While we don't presume to be able to give you an exact timetable of exactly when to stop certain routines before they become ingrained, we do intend to wave some red warning flags at the crest of each of the most predictable slippery slopes of sustenance-turned-habit.
Whetting Your Child's Appetite
We once heard a comment that stuck with us like gum on a shoe: "It's one thing to place good food in front of your child, but it's altogether another to place the appetite for good food in your child's mind." We couldn't agree more. In fact, this astute observation serves as the underpinning for a good portion of what we aim to accomplish with Food Fights. While plenty of books simply promise recipes for success and put lists of recommended vitamins and minerals at your fingertips, we hope also to whet your appetite and empower you to establish a more holistic approach to teaching your children lifelong healthy eating habits.
We strongly recommend you think of your role this way: You're planting the seeds of your child's future success. As you may have already discovered, teaching children healthy habits doesn't happen overnight, and it's certainly not a one-shot deal. As with just about all tasks that involve nurturing children, you don't just go and plant seeds, take the time to water them, and then get frustrated the next day because there are no plants to show for your efforts. When it comes to modifying your child's behavior, be aware that it takes time and requires cultivation. Although we intend to help guide you down a path of nutritional (and behavioral) enlightenment, we guarantee that it will be a path with its requisite share of cookie crumbs and spilt milk.
Setting the Table = Setting the Stage
It's next to impossible to discuss children's eating habits and nutritional status without taking into account several other factors. Not only do behavior and development play a key role in determining what your child is willing and/or able to accomplish at any given time, but your family's lifestyle stands to be a major influence. As we put together the advice we wanted to offer you in Food Fights, we kept wandering away from the table and confronting the entire "stage" of everyday life — everything from fast food and television to work/life issues and hectic lifestyles.
Let's face it, being a parent today can be a bit tricky, and our goal is to point out how some of today's lifestyle challenges stand to impact your family's eating habits. We'll leave it to you to decide what, if anything, you want to change. And lest you start feeling pangs of guilt before you have even passed the introduction portion of the book, please realize that we do not mean to sit in judgment. Let us be the first to admit that our own schedules don't always allow for family-style meals, that keeping pace with the many demands of parenthood often means that our refrigerators sit empty, our kitchens go underused, and the waitstaff at some of the more family-friendly local restaurants know us by name.
A Call to Action
Despite the fact that we have high hopes for putting an end to many of the unnecessary food fights of everyday parenthood, let it be known that we do not believe in force-feeding you a rigid set of rules any more than we believe in force-feeding children. Instead, our call to action is to arm you with the information and inspiration you need to get started. By giving you realistic ways of putting nutritional guidelines into practice, our Food Fights plan of attack is designed specifically to help keep your high chairs, family gatherings, and kitchen tables from turning into nutritional battlefields. We have yet to find a parent who wasn't grateful for a battle plan for winning the nutritional challenges of parenthood, and so we're ready to forge ahead and offer you your own plan for success.
CHAPTER 2
war and peace
It's one thing to acknowledge that the childhood obesity epidemic is looming ever nearer and commit to protecting your child in this battle of epic proportions. It's altogether another to find the wherewithal at the end of a long day to appreciate your toddler's unsuccessful but dedicated attempts to feed herself, set aside the bottle or the sippy cup, or stroll calmly down the aisles of the grocery store picking out produce you have the sinking feeling your child will never eat. Knowing what it is you're supposed to be doing, buying, and serving is definitely a big step in the right direction. Knowing how to put your plan into action can be a completely different story.
When we first sat down to address the most common dietary dilemmas that parents face and then write about how to successfully anticipate and approach them, we found ourselves faced with an unanticipated struggle. We thought it would be easy to separate out and address each individual challenge. Yet each time we tried to direct our attention to a particular food fight — whether it was bedtime bottles, soda pop, green vegetables, or ketchup — we found that the approaches required to address today's wide-ranging battles aren't as unique as you might think. In essence, we found ourselves recommending many of the same strategies over and over again. Instead of risking redundancy, we therefore decided to distill for you the 10 overarching peacekeeping strategies you will need to be a role model for your child in all matters of lifelong healthy eating.
Palatable Peacekeeping Strategies
Strategy #1: Vow Not to Fight Over Food
Half the parental "battle" — and we use the word intentionally because all too often the nutritional responsibilities of everyday parenting life deteriorate quickly into predictable battles — is figuring out how to teach your child healthy eating habits without ending up on opposing sides of the table. Right from the start, vow to yourself that you're not going to wage war over food — at least not so much that you find yourself worn out, frustrated, and/or feeling like a failure on a regular basis.
Despite the commonplace occurrence of food fights, the fact of the matter is that life's too short to pick many of these fights. Besides, if you get in the habit of truly fighting with your child over food, studies show that you're not likely to win in the long run. More often than not, you're not likely to win in the short run, either. After all, there are few things harder than getting children to open wide when they don't want to, yet we've seen parents continue to try. One of the best things you can do is to commit to some basic ground rules on how you're going to approach matters of food, and then apply them as calmly and consistently as possible. It's your job to always make a variety of nutritious foods available to your child, not decide if, when, and how much your child must eat.
Strategy #2: Remind Yourself That It's Not (Just) About the Bite
The other half of the battle is realizing that eating is not just about eating. It's about your parental expectations, the stages of your child's development, and more than a few habits — both good and bad — tossed in along the way. Just because we're talking about food doesn't mean that there aren't a whole host of other factors involved. Feeding children is, in fact, a learning experience for everyone involved. Parents and children alike are bound to bring far more to the table than just food or drink. Sure, understanding the substance at hand is fundamentally important, but it is also vital to grasp the opportunity we have to teach our children healthy attitudes toward food and eating.
When it comes to children's unaccepting attitudes toward food, it's critical to recognize that eating is an activity that is particularly susceptible to a child's natural tendency to rebel. Sure, your child's declarations of feeding independence may stand to throw a wrench in your dietary plans, but an occasional rebellion (or even an outright mealtime mutiny) is only to be expected given that it's a young child's job to test limits. As challenging as it may be, remind yourself that it is entirely normal for children to assert themselves in the form of food refusals, tantrums, and food-related rituals at just about the same time you nobly set out to introduce them to a wider range of foods and teach the social graces of eating.
And finally, consider that you have a lifetime's accumulation of your own individual, inherited, and even cultural beliefs regarding food. We highly recommend separating out those factors that make each bite or sip a far more weighty issue in your own mind than it otherwise needs to be.
Strategy #3: Never Let Them See You Sweat
We could just say, "Don't sweat it," but our years of experience tell us that unless you're far more calm, cool, and collected than we are as parents, you're going to sweat it out anyway. When it comes to feeding children, everyone inevitably feels some degree of pressure to perform. So in the spirit of reality, instead of telling you not to sweat it, we suggest perfecting your ability to hide it when you do. This is a practical strategy for parenting in general, but it will most definitely serve you well as you dish out what you know is best for your baby or child. This applies most often to those foods that children really want that they shouldn't have, or for things you really want them to eat but they want nothing to do with.
When it comes to babies, they may seem as if they aren't aware of how much of an emotional investment you may have riding on getting them to eat their rice cereal or drink out of a cup, but they really do sense stress and it can definitely wear off on them. The same holds true for toddlers and older children to an even greater degree. If they find out just how much their consumption of a single brussels sprout means to you, or how much of an impact a tantrum can have on pushing back their bedtime in favor of a late-night snack, they're sure to try it. When they repeatedly test your limits, your job is to stick to your guns and reinforce the ground rules while maintaining your composure.
Strategy #4: Keep Food for Food's Sake
Keeping food for food's sake is an important peacekeeping strategy that, on its surface, seems relatively straightforward: Just teach children to eat when they're hungry, drink when they're thirsty, and refrain from doing so when they're not and you've got it made. Sound simple? You'd think it would be since we are all born with a natural drive to eat and drink only as much as our bodies need. Yet the fact of the matter is that by the time we reach adulthood, and often far sooner than that, these internal cues are overshadowed by external ones. Too many of us eat and drink for reasons that have very little to do with hunger or thirst, and unknowingly start teaching our children — even as early as in infancy — to do the same. It's pretty safe to say that the classic "freshman 15" pounds rumored to be gained by those entering college isn't just the result of increasing hunger and the availability of better food, that enjoying a movie really shouldn't require a bucket of popcorn, and that a lot of football fans would be a fair bit slimmer if they didn't associate Monday Night Football with burgers, beer, and a bag of chips. What we hope you'll also consider is that there's not much, if any, difference between these more obvious examples later in life and the tendency to routinely nurse babies to sleep, allow children to become reliant on bedtime bottles, or tempt toddlers with food as a reward for good behavior.
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Excerpted from "Food Fights"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Laura A. Jana, MD, FAAP, and Jennifer Shu, MD, FAAP.
Excerpted by permission of American Academy of Pediatrics.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
