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Food for Thought

By Okima Hitt, Family Programming Assistant, Chicago Children's Museum

I was raised in a family of traditional southern soul-food cooks. My happiest childhood memories involve being in the kitchen with my mother, aunts and cousins and watching them turn out feasts without a cookbook or measuring cup in sight. It was just a pinch of this or that. "How does this taste?" "Needs salt," was about as technical as it got.

The prevailing thought in those days was that you could discern properly nourished children simply by looking at them. A fat baby was a healthy baby and a skinny baby needed to be fattened up. I fell into the latter category. My pediatrician put me on a diet that included vanilla ice-cream malts containing two raw eggs, all of the pasta and peanut butter I wanted, and double desserts. Salmonella, carb-counting, and juvenile diabetes were not considerations. Nutrition labels were still years away.

It's not that we weren't concerned about healthy eating, just that the standard of what constituted healthy was different. I ate my veggies. They were swimming in salt-pork and butter, but that was beside the point. For the southern cook, fattening food is not a sin; tasteless food is. When I had my own children, I realized the need to expand my knowledge of healthy eating beyond whether something was tasty. The first thing I needed to know was . . .

What is healthy eating? Healthy foods maintain an individual's overall well being, promote proper growth and function of bones and organs, and aid in the healing process. The specific foods that constitute healthy differ among individuals, cultures and environments.

Healthy eating also means eating with awareness. Are we eating because we're hungry or because we're bored? We should know where food comes from and how it has been processed before it reaches our childrenís plates. Here are ten tips for introducing healthy eating to your family:

• Introduce healthy eating as simply one area of overall healthy living that includes daily exercise and regular physical exams. Making healthy eating a part of your daily routine establishes lifelong patterns.

• Kids learn by example. When adults model healthy eating behavior, children are less apprehensive about it. Also, families that eat together tend to eat in more healthful ways.

• Don't fight about food. Kids go through phases. One day they love bananas, the next day they find bananas inedible. A child's sense of taste is different from that of an adult. What might be a mild taste to an adult might be too intense for a young palate. Introduce new foods gradually by allowing children to become accustomed to the new tastes and textures. Try preparing food in various ways. My own daughter disdains cooked spinach but loves spinach salad.

• Donít force children to eat beyond their limit. A body knows when it's full. Eating past that point creates overeating habits that can cause future weight problems. No child will deliberately starve!

• Lay off the guilt trips. Yes, there are hungry children in the world, but eating or not eating the broccoli growing cold on the dinner plate wonít change that. And, despite protests to the contrary, Aunty won't crumble if your child doesn't have just one more teensy bite, just for her.

• Eating healthy doesn't mean giving up family favorites. Try making Grandma's macaroni and cheese with low fat or soy cheese, or chili with your favorite beans, instead of meat. Homemade frozen juice pops and hot-air popcorn are a great treats, too.

• Let your child help buy and prepare the food. Being involved in the process gives children a connection to their foodósomething they helped create rather than something forced on them.

• Eating healthy can be less expensive. Shop the perimeter of the store. That's where most of the fresh foods can be found. Eating fruits and vegetables in their most un-processed states maximizes their nutritional value.

• Start a garden. It's great exercise and really connects kids with the earth and production of food. I have herbs growing in pots on my city apartment's kitchen windowsill.

• Lighten-up. Sometimes, despite your best effort, your kids will turn their noses up at your glorious fruit salad and dive for the chips. A little junk food now and then doesn't hurt. For more information on healthy eating, visit www.mypyramid.gov.

© 2007 Chicago Children's Museum

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