Healthy Eating for Kids & Teens

Teaching children healthy food habits can be inordinately frustrating and confusing for parents. Different children have different food preferences. Switching from breast milk or formula to grown-up food can be a smooth transition or fraught with conflict and shouts of "No!" on a daily basis. Healthy food habits for teenagers starts with training them as young children.

Significance

• Children develop preferences and learn how to assert them at roughly the same time as they learn how to speak their first words. The single best thing that a parent can do in terms of teaching good nutrition is to demonstrate healthy eating behavior. That doesn't mean never eating candy, desserts, chips or drinking soda--but it does mean acknowledging the fact that children will not comply with instructions that their parents themselves do not conform to.

Function

• Children, teenagers and even many adults communicate symbolically through their consumption of food. The formative experience of infants with food is that it is an essential component to relationships--without milk from the parent, there is no relationship and no life. Because very young children have only limited capability, they instead communicate through one of the chief means at their disposal to get the attention of their parents--through their interaction with food.

Features

• Some children pass through their early childhood phase of rejecting all foods but a few familiar items relatively quickly, but there is, in many cases, a good chance that such food issues will never be resolved, and persist throughout their teen years and adulthood. Ask your child questions about why they might be rejecting healthy food. Try many alternatives for food--if they truly despise broccoli, for example, try peas or green beans instead. Get them accustomed to a constant cycle of new food introduction when they are making the transition away from milk or formula, and future introductions will become easier.

Effects

• Habits do not simply form instantly, and with teenagers, any healthy or unhealthy habits will have developed in childhood. It may be tempting to try to impose a new program of healthy nutrition from the top-down for the entire family--dumping out soda into the sink, contracting nutritionists for everyone and forbidding fast food--but such attempts at control are exhausting and frequently trigger rebellious impulses. Instead, reflect on the past relationship of your teenager to food. Think about what you might have done better. Sit down with your children and talk openly and honestly about the family's relationship to food and its health consequences.

Benefits

• Recognizing the emotional context of food behavior will go a long way towards resolving problems in the nutrition of children and teenagers. Few people in modern culture are undereducated about the importance of eating healthy food--there's a wealth of knowledge available about it, and it's constantly and aggressively promoted. Be honest, admit mistakes and be open to what your children might have to say. They will be grateful for your courage.