You know that your kids imitate you (at least until they’re old enough to believe everything you do is uncool). They can, after all, home in on that one cuss word you let slip and repeat it for days. Well, guess what other bad habits they pick up from you? Food choices.
It turns out that kids as young as toddlers are watching what you put in the grocery cart. And if you’re reaching for the doughnuts instead of the veggies, they’ll do the same if given the chance.
In a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, children ages 2–6 were allowed to choose from 55 different food and beverages in a play store stocked with toy food items. In the end, only 11% of the kids had shopping baskets filled with healthy choices and 70% piled their cart with the unhealthiest food choices. You might think, Big deal, what kid wouldn’t snatch up candy and cake? But here’s the catch: The kids who gravitated to the unhealthy picks were those whose parents (mostly the moms, in this case) also tended to load up on treats.
In our household, my husband does most of the shopping (my least-loved domestic chore). But it’s a trade-off: I have to balance overwhelming feelings of gratitude with occasional irritation at what ends up in the pantry.
My hubby is sweetly free of the burdens of food guilt. While he generally picks healthy stuff, he’s not above chucking in the occasional box of brightly colored, overprocessed food products with the word fruit in the name. (Sorry, it doesn’t qualify as fruit if the main ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup.)
I could take the glass half-empty approach and let this study spur on my paroxysms of parental guilt over these junk food failures (or use it as more ammunition to try to control spousal behavior from afar, an approach we all know is doomed to failure.)
This time, though, I’m going to assume the glass is half-full (with milk!). This study suggests that good parental food choices can trickle down to the next generation, that you can make a difference in your children’s food preferences simply by choosing wisely.
I have one child who scarfs down fish, fruits, and vegetables and generally spurns the sweet, high-fat stuff. And another who subsists entirely on buttered noodles and often balks at healthy food, even fruit. It’s maddening at times. (What kid doesn’t like—won’t even try—watermelon?)
But we try to choose healthy food most of the time, and this study gives me hope that when my kids are old enough to choose for themselves, they’ll have the same batting average.
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Comments (2)
Absolutely – “monkey see, monkey do” is a well-documented and perfectly rational reality that parents really need to understand. You can preach until you’re blue in the face, but children are going to do what they see YOU do. What could be a more natural, basic extension of this idea than eating?
“I have one child who scarfs down fish, fruits, and vegetables and generally spurns the sweet, high-fat stuff. And another who subsists entirely on buttered noodles and often balks at healthy food, even fruit. It’s maddening at times.”
Oh my this sounds like my house. My youngest won’t touch chocolate milk, and loves peas more than any other veggie. My 4 year old, well lets just say she ends up in bed early because she refuses to eat dinner. *sigh*