by Ross Hunter on December 6, 2009
As schools start removing junk food and beverages, we’re finding that kids DON’T go home and binge on junk. Instead, they eat better at school and no worse at home.
This is according to a study just completed by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. The full story is here.
The food industry had argued that cleaning up school food (a health disaster and a national disgrace in my opinion) and substituting healthier choices would lead to counter-swings by kids deprived of their treats.
The study’s lead author explains that
financial pressure from both the food industry, looking to build brand loyalty, and the schools, which get a cut of the profits from vending machines, is the main reason there is opposition to removing soft drinks and junk foods.
We’re going to be lied to all the way along the path to healthy living.
It sounds cynical but I believe it’s simply the truth, that we can’t trust anyone with our food and drink except people we know, which means local. We also need solid science, and clear research by institutes like Rudd that build a solid reputation by proving their claims with facts.
by Ross Hunter on November 3, 2009
by Ross Hunter on October 7, 2009
How do we take back our imprinting and teach ourselves and our families to like wholesome food? What good practices do we repeat to make the change in taste?
Our friend Sara at the Down To Earth blog shares two of the key factors that help her family keep their taste for good foods. At the heart of it is the family garden where the kids play a role in bringing food to the table. And outside, good old Montessori school reinforces to Sara’s children that food is an event in life worth learning about. See what she says in her post here: Getting your children to ENJOY veggies and fruits
[And be sure and follow Sara's link through to Jenny's fantastic article at Nourished Kitchen, with more useful tips and scientific research about teaching your kids to like healthy food.]
by Ross Hunter on October 6, 2009
Dr. Alan Greene, the famous pediatrician, whose family eats nothing but natural food, has a great new blog post showing why we’re hooked on junk food. He calls for a delicious revolution back to natural food.
All living things, says Dr. Greene, get imprinted with their survival habits in their early stage of life: during gestation, at birth, and in their first set of life experiences after being born. And human babies today are getting imprinted with all the wrong messages.
In particular human babies imprint on food. This is a highly adaptive mechanism — but in the second half of the twentieth century we have unwittingly imprinted our children on the wrong tastes and textures. They will chase after junk food and kids meals, and ignore a delicious, ripe peach or tomato packed with nutrients their bodies crave.
This is only comes rather recently, from a wrong turn we’ve taken as a society, as Dr. Greene shows.
The idea of baby food (and later, of kids’ meals) is a recently created myth. It didn’t exist when my father was born. But by the time I was born, almost every baby in the U.S. ate mostly jarred baby food, and we are reaping the consequences of this today.Baby food can have a place in a healthy childhood, but not as the knee-jerk centerpiece of infant nutrition.
We can turn this around – food is an acquired taste. But it’s important to know that imprinting as a child holds deep value for us as a support factor, more so than simple habit. So go easy on your kids, and yourself, as you re-learn the traditional ways of food.
