Does your relationship with food directly affect your children?

Building Relationships with Food

Uriia Underhill, B.Sc.

Does your relationship with food directly affect your children? 

The article “A Review of Family Meal Influence” mentioned that eating dinner as family with at least one adult present may have a good impact on a child’s eating perspective.

While I think this concept holds true to a certain degree the fact that the family may eat only package “helper” type meals will not give the child a proper understanding of fueling the body with necessary macronutrients and micronutrients.

Somewhere the prescription of non processed foods in the form of vegetables, fruits, lean meats, fish and healthy fats has gotten turned into processed starches and food that only seems fit in a science experiment.

Also lies a problem with the child seeing the parent’s relationship with food. If the parents believe that after every meal they should be “rewarded” with a sugary calorie dense dessert or drinking a empty calorie beverage with every meal certainly the child is programmed to deem this an acceptable even “the way” to eat.

The problem I believe lies in not only the food products offered in today’s society but also the education given in the proper way to fuel a body. Even if the subject is touchy to parents now, if we have better education in the schools maybe the current trend will stop.

Reference:

Woodruff, S., Hanning, R., (2008) A Review of Family Mel Influence On Adolescents Dietary Intake, Retrieved October 23, 2012

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