BUILDING HEALTHY KIDS & A SUPERLIFE
I just finished the book SUPERLIFE The 5 Forces That Will Make You Healthy, Fit, & Eternally Awesome, written by Darin Olien, and it inspired some great ideas.
Reading this book made me think about how we segregate children’s meals from ours. When we take our children to adult restaurants, for example, think of how we use children’s menus to define what is children’s food: chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, burgers, pizza and butter pasta. Those choices are typical of restaurant kid menus. And we use food to bribe them to behave. “Sit up straight, be quiet, and you can have a yummy mac and cheese tonight” (not a bowl of broccoli?). Now, once a week would not be a cause for alarm but how many of us create this same segregation at home, school, church events, and so on? We buy the best car seats, find the best schools, research for months to find the best schools but are we investing as much effort in their food health, the number one asset? By segregating food menus, we are telling our kids that the food they eat is for fun and really not important.
In SUPERLIFE, author Olien, points out that ignoring these bad food habits for kids “is like me quitting smoking but letting my kids continue to smoke”. So true. Think of trying to get them to quit smoking when they grow up. Bad habits take years to un-do, and sometimes change is not even possible. The food choices our kids make tomorrow come directly from what we teach them today. Protecting our kids’ food health and giving them the best nutrients we can is just like giving them the best car seat on the market to protect their lives.
Many years ago, it may have made sense to give kids a cookie or bowl of ice cream with dinner because we were not as dependent on treats and fast foods for behavior bribery. Now, by bed time, our kids may have had syrup on their pancakes, fruit snacks with lunch, a juice box at school (average 22 grams of sugar), chocolate milk after school and a pizza for dinner. If we total just the amount of sugar intake in just a day, we find they have consumed 2-3 days worth of the recommended amount of sugar (not to mention the salt).
Some think we are crazy but our kids order off the adult menus when we go out. Why wouldn’t we give our kids foods that we know are better for them? Makes no sense to continue segregating adult food from kid food. Why not help our kids learn how to eat healthfully from the start instead of waiting until they grow up to change food habits?
If you are interested in learning more and getting ideas for ways to teach our children to chose healthful options, JOIN ME FOR A FREE GROUP called SUGAR FREE KID ZONE!! Who is with me? If you are interested, click the photo below for more information about my SUGAR FREE KID ZONE event!
