Changing The Eating Habits of Kids

So a few weeks back I went on a grocery tour with a group of high school students and it was fun, because they are always fun but it was also sad. It made me think. It made me glad that I did what I did with my kids when I did it. The major objection when I told them things was 2 fold. I) they don’t care what it does and 2) their Mum’s don’t cook. They don’t care what the food does because they are at the age when they are invincible and nothing will happen to them and frankly health food tastes bad, at least that is what they have been lead to think. Unless you have been forced into an epiphany about food such as getting sick or being overweight or other issues. Where is the incentive to eat vegetables? Vegetables have been given such a bad wrap because there are so many people making them horribly.
I loved my mother but a cook she was not. She cooked the life out of vegetables and they were awful. I wish that I could cook for people vegetables my way and they could see how great they could be. My kids love them. We also need to get over the thought that you need to steam vegetables it makes them disgusting and there is nothing wrong with a little olive oil and stir frying them and adding other wonderful ways of adding flavour to them. In order to do this we need to get over our obsession with fat. Fat has been so demonized in the world and hasn’t that worked out well for us? Did you know that very often when you take the fat out of yogurt that they have more calories than full fat as they have to add more sugar and other crap to make it taste good? I buy full fat yogurt and add a little maple syrup or honey or stevia and cinnamon and often my own fruit. Tastes way better and better for you.
Remember people, eating well is a lifetime thing not a short term thing to get thinner. Dieting does not work and nor does changing the structure of how nature made food. It is called “Frankenfood” and it is never good for you. I will say it again whole foods, from scratch nothing from a package. And to get kids to eat well it has to be a lifetime thing something that is normal for them, not something to try and introduce when they are 16, you have to start as young as possible. At that time of their life they are so resistant to change and unless they have health issues or weight problems it is very hard to get them to change. It can be done but you need to make it interesting.
I never fed my kids “kid food”, KD, alphagettis, that kind of crap so they never knew the difference and they never acquired a taste for it. We have always made our own salad dressings and mayo and so when we got really die hard later in their life they were not resistant to change. Do my kids love green smoothies, probably not, but they know that there is no choice and that they feel better when they have them.
If your kids are 16 and you want to change them and you feel it is too late, it is not! I think that if you talk to them and explain why and make food interesting and appeal to them where they are at you could have success. Is it easy…no, but it is worth it.