Demi
Sun, Oct-14-07, 03:06
The Sunday Times
London, UK
14 October, 2007
War of nutrition
Healthy diets for children are a new form of parental one-upmanship. But it is a dangerous game
Peta Bee
A degree of paranoia about how to feed a child is part and parcel of motherhood. From the second a baby is born, mothers are prone to feelings of inadequacy if they don’t breast-feed, or if they do, if they don’t keep it up for long enough. Then, through toddlerhood and beyond, the slightest deviation from a virtuous organic diet can trigger feelings of panic because you could be feeding your cherub inappropriately and setting him or her up for a life of ill health or obesity.
As if these worries weren’t enough, a new trend is emerging as mothers battle for one-upmanship in the feeding of their children. Competitive nutrition (CN) is evident wherever you find mothers and their offspring dining in groups – coffee shops, child-friendly restaurants, parks, parties. The mothers who practise it are the ones who look on with an air of superiority as their toddler munches on a cube of melon as your child reaches for the crisps. Not for their daughter something as sinful as a flapjack – only homemade, organic and commercially unadulterated fare passes their lips.
COMPETITIVE MOTHERS
These mothers delight in publicising the hours they spend concocting meals from competitive nutrition bibles. They have perfected the barbed comments designed to cut other mothers down to size: “I offered Helena a pizza, but she prefers my homemade vegetable risotto”; “Noah hates sweets, but I just can’t stop him munching on blueberries.” One mother I know is adamant that her child consumes more fruit than his peers and precedes each of his meals with a course of fresh fruit salad, vegetable crudités and fruit juice, then wonders why he suffers from gastrointestinal complaints. Another routinely produces a packet of crisps and a box of strawberries from her cool bag at lunchtime. As my two-and-a-half-year-old and his friends dive to grab a crisp, she looks on triumphantly as she coolly pops a piece of fruit into her own child’s mouth.
It is not just smugness that sets the CN mothers apart; they are also prone to freaky levels of dietary control. Take a toddler’s tea party I attended recently. Out came the chocolate fingers and no fewer than three mothers leapt up in horror to shield their offspring from the offending item. Chocolate, it transpired, was destined not to become a dietary experience until the children were at least five years old. Instead, they were ushered towards the carrot sticks. Other distinct nonos include nuts, anything processed, sweetened or containing anything remotely resembling a food colouring (that means no fruit squash, oven chips, fishfingers, ketchup or ice lollies), and absolutely anything with a cartoon character on the packaging.
MIXED MESSAGES MAKE US PARANOID
In some ways, society is responsible for the increase in CN. Barely a week goes by without a new study confirming that children’s diets are so replete with sugar, salt, fat or additives that they face a miserable future unless dietary imbalance is redressed. With one in four children now obese, there is a fear that overfeeding on the wrong sort of food will result in irreversible weight gain. Highly publicised fears about allergies don’t help either – government advice currently says that pregnant women “may wish” to avoid peanuts, for instance, if there is a family history of allergy, and that children should avoid the nut until they are three years old. However, last month a House of Lords committee reported that mothers who shield their babies from peanut products may be doing more harm than good.
To add to the confusion, there are the voices of doom in the form of Jamie Oliver, Gillian McKeith and others in the “eat no evil” brigade. As a result, we are now racked with guilt about what we feed our children and ourselves. Yet, what mothers with CN probably don’t realise is that the tighter they rein in their children’s diets, the more likely their kids are to grow up with warped views of what is, or isn’t, acceptable to eat. And the consequences can be disastrous. “That kind of behaviour teaches children at a very early age to think that there are good foods and bad foods,” says Dr Dee Dawson, director of the Rhodes Farm eating disorders clinic in north London. “That is simply not true, and it sets them up for all sorts of troubled relationships with food when they are older.”
BANNING FAT MAKES KIDS FAT
Dawson says that no food should be banned during childhood – even a McDonald’s meal or crisps are acceptable every so often. “We are never going to change the fact that, as human beings, we have an inherent liking for the taste of fatty foods,” she says. “Feeding a child only fruit and vegetables is not going to alter that fact.”
Rachel Cooke, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, has similar concerns: “Children need to try different tastes and textures. Fat should constitute about 30% of their food intake to support their growth and development.” As well as serving oily fish, you can offer peanut butter and full-fat dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese.
Just last month, researchers warned that the growing number of parents who inflict adult dietary messages on their children could find that their well-meaning intentions backfire. Canadian nutritionists at the University of Alberta suggested that diet and low-fat foods distort a child’s ability to recognise calories and to regulate their energy intake appropriately. The result? They are more likely to overeat and end up obese than those who are allowed to consume moderate amounts of fatty snacks. Other studies have shown how restricting certain foods in early childhood is more likely to trigger eating disorders later in life. “If a child is repeatedly told not to eat something, they will have feelings of guilt if they do so, and these feelings can lead to the emotional trauma associated with anorexia,” says Dawson.
At the very least, says Cooke, children of CN mothers are probably going to rebel by the time they get to secondary school. “It is usually the children who are not allowed to eat crisps or sweets at home who develop an obsession with them when they are exposed to them socially,” she says. Not only do they become intrigued about what they have been missing, but often they are resentful too. “What parents need to remember is that ensuring a child eats healthily is not as straightforward as simply cutting something out of their diet,” Cooke says. “The best thing is to foster a relaxed and healthy emotional relationship with food. And that means letting them try most things at least once.”
LET THEM EAT CAKE
Don’t ban any foods. It’s better to steer your children in the right direction. For instance, let them eat chocolate, but get them used to eating a small amount of high-quality 70% cocoa chocolate rather than very sweet milk or white varieties.
Aim to give your children five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but beware that considerably more than that can cause diarrhoea and stomach upsets .
Let them drink juice or smoothies, but limit it to a glass a day. Too much fruit juice (more than a glass a day) can cause dental problems and tooth decay.
Don’t obsess about additives – it is always better for children to eat freshly prepared food, but the occasional E number will not do them any harm.
Get them to enjoy food: studies have found that eating at least one meal a day as a family and encouraging children to help you cook will foster a positive relationship with food.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article2625022.ece
London, UK
14 October, 2007
War of nutrition
Healthy diets for children are a new form of parental one-upmanship. But it is a dangerous game
Peta Bee
A degree of paranoia about how to feed a child is part and parcel of motherhood. From the second a baby is born, mothers are prone to feelings of inadequacy if they don’t breast-feed, or if they do, if they don’t keep it up for long enough. Then, through toddlerhood and beyond, the slightest deviation from a virtuous organic diet can trigger feelings of panic because you could be feeding your cherub inappropriately and setting him or her up for a life of ill health or obesity.
As if these worries weren’t enough, a new trend is emerging as mothers battle for one-upmanship in the feeding of their children. Competitive nutrition (CN) is evident wherever you find mothers and their offspring dining in groups – coffee shops, child-friendly restaurants, parks, parties. The mothers who practise it are the ones who look on with an air of superiority as their toddler munches on a cube of melon as your child reaches for the crisps. Not for their daughter something as sinful as a flapjack – only homemade, organic and commercially unadulterated fare passes their lips.
COMPETITIVE MOTHERS
These mothers delight in publicising the hours they spend concocting meals from competitive nutrition bibles. They have perfected the barbed comments designed to cut other mothers down to size: “I offered Helena a pizza, but she prefers my homemade vegetable risotto”; “Noah hates sweets, but I just can’t stop him munching on blueberries.” One mother I know is adamant that her child consumes more fruit than his peers and precedes each of his meals with a course of fresh fruit salad, vegetable crudités and fruit juice, then wonders why he suffers from gastrointestinal complaints. Another routinely produces a packet of crisps and a box of strawberries from her cool bag at lunchtime. As my two-and-a-half-year-old and his friends dive to grab a crisp, she looks on triumphantly as she coolly pops a piece of fruit into her own child’s mouth.
It is not just smugness that sets the CN mothers apart; they are also prone to freaky levels of dietary control. Take a toddler’s tea party I attended recently. Out came the chocolate fingers and no fewer than three mothers leapt up in horror to shield their offspring from the offending item. Chocolate, it transpired, was destined not to become a dietary experience until the children were at least five years old. Instead, they were ushered towards the carrot sticks. Other distinct nonos include nuts, anything processed, sweetened or containing anything remotely resembling a food colouring (that means no fruit squash, oven chips, fishfingers, ketchup or ice lollies), and absolutely anything with a cartoon character on the packaging.
MIXED MESSAGES MAKE US PARANOID
In some ways, society is responsible for the increase in CN. Barely a week goes by without a new study confirming that children’s diets are so replete with sugar, salt, fat or additives that they face a miserable future unless dietary imbalance is redressed. With one in four children now obese, there is a fear that overfeeding on the wrong sort of food will result in irreversible weight gain. Highly publicised fears about allergies don’t help either – government advice currently says that pregnant women “may wish” to avoid peanuts, for instance, if there is a family history of allergy, and that children should avoid the nut until they are three years old. However, last month a House of Lords committee reported that mothers who shield their babies from peanut products may be doing more harm than good.
To add to the confusion, there are the voices of doom in the form of Jamie Oliver, Gillian McKeith and others in the “eat no evil” brigade. As a result, we are now racked with guilt about what we feed our children and ourselves. Yet, what mothers with CN probably don’t realise is that the tighter they rein in their children’s diets, the more likely their kids are to grow up with warped views of what is, or isn’t, acceptable to eat. And the consequences can be disastrous. “That kind of behaviour teaches children at a very early age to think that there are good foods and bad foods,” says Dr Dee Dawson, director of the Rhodes Farm eating disorders clinic in north London. “That is simply not true, and it sets them up for all sorts of troubled relationships with food when they are older.”
BANNING FAT MAKES KIDS FAT
Dawson says that no food should be banned during childhood – even a McDonald’s meal or crisps are acceptable every so often. “We are never going to change the fact that, as human beings, we have an inherent liking for the taste of fatty foods,” she says. “Feeding a child only fruit and vegetables is not going to alter that fact.”
Rachel Cooke, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, has similar concerns: “Children need to try different tastes and textures. Fat should constitute about 30% of their food intake to support their growth and development.” As well as serving oily fish, you can offer peanut butter and full-fat dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese.
Just last month, researchers warned that the growing number of parents who inflict adult dietary messages on their children could find that their well-meaning intentions backfire. Canadian nutritionists at the University of Alberta suggested that diet and low-fat foods distort a child’s ability to recognise calories and to regulate their energy intake appropriately. The result? They are more likely to overeat and end up obese than those who are allowed to consume moderate amounts of fatty snacks. Other studies have shown how restricting certain foods in early childhood is more likely to trigger eating disorders later in life. “If a child is repeatedly told not to eat something, they will have feelings of guilt if they do so, and these feelings can lead to the emotional trauma associated with anorexia,” says Dawson.
At the very least, says Cooke, children of CN mothers are probably going to rebel by the time they get to secondary school. “It is usually the children who are not allowed to eat crisps or sweets at home who develop an obsession with them when they are exposed to them socially,” she says. Not only do they become intrigued about what they have been missing, but often they are resentful too. “What parents need to remember is that ensuring a child eats healthily is not as straightforward as simply cutting something out of their diet,” Cooke says. “The best thing is to foster a relaxed and healthy emotional relationship with food. And that means letting them try most things at least once.”
LET THEM EAT CAKE
Don’t ban any foods. It’s better to steer your children in the right direction. For instance, let them eat chocolate, but get them used to eating a small amount of high-quality 70% cocoa chocolate rather than very sweet milk or white varieties.
Aim to give your children five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but beware that considerably more than that can cause diarrhoea and stomach upsets .
Let them drink juice or smoothies, but limit it to a glass a day. Too much fruit juice (more than a glass a day) can cause dental problems and tooth decay.
Don’t obsess about additives – it is always better for children to eat freshly prepared food, but the occasional E number will not do them any harm.
Get them to enjoy food: studies have found that eating at least one meal a day as a family and encouraging children to help you cook will foster a positive relationship with food.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article2625022.ece