Every health conscious mother should have the same challenge.
If I put Oreo cookies and homemade energy-packed less-sugar cookies with oat meal, seeds, nuts and dates on a plate, Oreo disappears no time while the other is left forever. Even my treaty custard pudding, which my kids absolutely go crazy for, doesn’t excite many of their friends as much as Jell-O.
Kids love junk food, especially from a grocery store and restaurant.
There are two main things that influence kids’ appetite. One is the sensual stimulation – color, smell, taste and texture. The other is the familiarity, the psychological factor.
Junk food tastes good. The combination of salt, sugar and fat creates the base of ‘good food’ in general. To eat healthy, likely you limit those things. No wonder why kids hate healthy food.
Junk food is following this golden rule of ‘good food’. On the top, manufactures are making every effort to create ‘perfectly addictive’ products. They add taste enhancers and flavors in the calculated balance and invent the technique to realize the particular texture (google for ‘junk food, why so good’ – you get the more detailed explanation).
When it comes to the taste, health conscious mothers, we have to admit our defeat. Are you willing to use plenty of those golden ingredients for good taste? Do you happily add MSG? Do you measure every single ingredient accurately? Does your batter or dough always have exactly the same moisture content? Do you control the cooking temperature and time perfectly to result the best texture?
Simply put, we are not making the same amount of effort to realize the ‘good taste’ like the professionals. How can we expect to beat them so easily?
So, the only hope is the other point, the psychological effect.
The more often you see something, the more familiar it becomes to you. Let’s see Sushi. It was not so popular when I came to Canada almost 20 years ago. I still remember the face some people made with Nori, the seaweed sheet, when I made Sushi at some home party. Now many Canadians, including children, say they love it. Today’s children see Sushi at any grocery store. Sushi restaurants are all over. Something exotic to many people before is not exotic anymore.
The familiarity affects a lot to children’s want. The store bought food is well accepted because not only it tastes good but also it is socially well exposed. Children see the advertisement and their friend bring it for snack or lunch. Many people show happy face with it, it is fun and taste good. The repetition of such a positive experience about a commercial product trains their brain to automatically judge the food from a grocery store (or McDonald, a pizza restaurant, etc) is good.
Be aware of this consequence.
Children see what and how you eat. Eating is everyday thing. They are educated by your eating habit. If you drink coffee every morning, coffee becomes normal to your child. If you drink beer every morning, it becomes normal to him.
If children are offered some homemade snack at a friend’s place more often, they will consider it is normal. It will make them much more open to try and, by chance, they discover some liking of it.
Healthy eating is not just the matter of nutritious matter and physical growth. It creates your habit, the religious belief over your life, as you repeat it again and again.
No matter how well balanced, if you feed the child a premade frozen dinner and supplement regularly, the idea that the ‘good food’ comes from a box and bottle will be input in his head.
It doesn’t have to be all the time, but make some time with your child to talk about the food. If possible, make the opportunity to show from where the food comes from. Visit a local farm. Have a small vegetable patch in your back yard. Teach them how the food is produced originally before it is processed and placed on the shelf of a grocery store.