Teaching Kids About Nutrition? Add Patience to the Food Pyramid

With the onset of a new school year, it was time to start thinking about establishing healthy school-time routines especially in the area of nutrition. After dining on cold cereal and pop corn all summer, it was time to reacquaint my kids with foods that don't come with toys or have cartoon characters on the back of the box-or for that matter, foods that don't even come in a box.

Upon preparing to enter the seventh grade, my daughter announced that she wanted to pack a lunch to school. After toting a lunchbox all through grade school, I thought she would be ready for school lunch. Then she told me what she wanted to have in her lunch. Together, the items she requested for her lunchtime menu had all the nutritional value of a screwdriver.

Encouraging my kids to consume a healthy diet has been particularly challenging to me because I can't exactly lead by example. The "do as I say not as I do" command lost its effectiveness long before I had the opportunity to use it. I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle. My kids are aware that I regularly go running or cycling because they insist that I hose myself down and pass through a decontamination chamber before entering the house after a workout. While my diet is pretty nutritious, my mouth doesn't exactly water at the prospect of a veggie burger with a side of tofu. And I do my best not to get within 10 miles of steamed broccoli.

Over the course of six years, I've gone the rounds with my oldest daughter about eating at least some of the lunch I packed. I tried threats, bribes, and episodes of getting on my knees and begging. Each day her lunch was either completely untouched or looked like she used her lunch box as a footstool with its initial contents mangled beyond recognition. Nothing worked. She either starved herself during lunch or graciously accepted handouts from her classmates. I was ready to give up. However, in order to prevent myself from being added to the guest list of child protective services for starving my children, I still made sure my daughter had a nutritious sack lunch in her backpack each morning. I even ended all discussion about whether she ate her lunch or not.

Eventually she started to soften. I started seeing partially eaten sandwiches and fewer carrots in her lunch box after school. I wouldn't say that I'm the suspicious type, but my daughter's dentist would because I showed up at his office with a half-eaten sandwich to have him confirm that the bite marks were actually my daughter's. He also thinks I'm a little strange.

Through all the arguing, tantrums, and threatening to hold my breath until I turned blue, it turned out that patience and letting my daughter make her own decisions worked the best. This doesn't mean that following a nutritious diet is no longer an issue, but we have made great progress. I think as long as I silently maintain a healthy lifestyle (and don't get caught snitching the multi-colored cereals), the kids might just catch on and make a healthy choice.

David Jensen is a freelance writer with expertise in article marketing, copy writing, journalism, press releases, and employment. To see more of his credentials and services, visit [http://www.ascensionwriting.com]

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Teaching Your Kids What It Really Means To Eat Healthy Food

Healthy food might mean differently from one person to another. There are those who would say, burger, fries and soda are healthy. Others would say that steak, potato and a little mount of veggies is healthy for them. Another would say more veggies less meat. Then, there are those who might say that no meat is the best route.

Ever since we were in elementary our teachers had presented to us the food pyramid. With that knowledge, some parents followed it and some inverted the pyramid and that might the reason why at present some kids are being treated for obesity. Whose fault will that be? I do not think that it is the fault of the kid because they are the ones who are targeted by advertisements and manufacturers of not healthy food in the market. What about the parents? I would say, partly they are to blamed specially if the child become obese and they do not even try to do something about it. The worse thing that they could do is when they simply refuse to observe that their child is gaining weight which is not appropriate to his her height. Also, when parents become a bad role model to the child when they, themselves keep on eating junk food or fatty food and trying to let the child avoid those things. Now that is what I would call inconsistency. The saying monkey see monkey do applies in this situation.

So, let us go back to the food pyramid. It is supposed to be followed immaculately by mothers so they could raise a healthy as well as happy child or children. I would say that it will not be a struggle between a mother and a child when it comes to eating veggies if only that was introduced early on. Being a good role model is the secret to this. I have seen vegetarian parents bringing their kids to vegetarian restaurants and the kids were not difficult to deal with when it comes to having their veggies. The parents have been vegetarians ever since they were kids and now that they have their own child it is no longer a struggle letting a child eat veggies, because he sees that his parents enjoy and really love eating veggies and not just for show.

So, what I am saying here is, as parents and adults we should be careful with what we show children. Remember, what they see is what they will do, sooner or later.

Herb likes to write about health. Please check out his website that contains countertop water cooler information as well as water cooler filters information.

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