What I Teach my Kids about Food
My kids and I regularly bake cookies, banana bread and muffins and freeze them, so we always have lunchbox snacks on hand.
My eight year old daughter recently asked if the blueberry muffins we were baking were healthy. I thought about my response. Our muffins were made with butter, wholemeal flour, eggs, milk and sugar, so as far as them being “real” food items, on one hand I thought they were not too bad.
Then, in the climate of no sugar/low carb/anti grain etc etc, many people and families would consider these foods “bad” or even banish from their diets altogether.
What I consider healthy is probably different to what others consider healthy, with one end of the spectrum eliminating these foods altogether and the other end buying the processed version from the supermarket as a lunchbox staple. With so many popularised diets, food options, fads and extreme opinions out there, healthy eating really is a very subjective term.
In our house we eat everything. Vegetables, fruit, meat, grains, dairy, healthy fats, chocolate – that’s a food group, right?!? And of course there is the occasional take away, ice cream or hot chips.
We eat a mixture of organic, non-organic, local, imported, fresh, packaged, GMO, non GMO but at the end of the day I still consider us a “healthy” family.
I believe my children having a healthy relationship with food is more important than eating a “perfectly healthy” food. I spent years classifying foods as “good” or “bad” and then feeling guilty whenever I indulged, even on something harmless like a blueberry muffin. What is life without enjoying the simple pleasure of a freshly-baked, warm blueberry muffin? This is not what I want to pass on to my children.
So my response to my daughter was “These muffins are going to give us lots of energy, so this afternoon you can run, jump and play! The blueberries are really good for us, they give us vitamins and minerals and help you to you grow, learn, play and help stop your body getting sick. The muffins are a treat, so we wouldn’t have them for dinner, but they still have things in there that are good for us, so it’s OK to have them as a snack or for dessert.”