Let them Eat Cake? - CareforKids.com.au®

Let them Eat Cake?
The importance of finding the balance between healthy eating and food paranoia

The media reported recently that child care centres are being warned against feeding children too many sweets and desserts, with doctors saying that regular dessert is creating poor habits for life.

Doctors and nutritionists want "nutritionally void" desserts such as jelly and ice cream banned from menus and Sydney Children's Hospital consultant paediatrician Patricia McVeagh said children don't need dessert.

"It programs or reinforces that preference for sweet and fatty foods and they will be more likely to carry that preference into adulthood, potentially leading to problems with obesity and cardiovascular disease.

"There are also concerns about their brain development in the longer term", she said.

A one-off dessert for a child's birthday was acceptable but should be removed from the daily menu, Dr McVeagh said.

The CareforKids.com.au team all agreed if we took dessert off the menu in our houses we think our kids would pack their bags and leave! Perhaps daily dessert is not necessary, but should they really be limited to just birthdays and special occasions? Are we placing too much emphasis on eating habits and restrictions at too young an age and just going to the opposite extreme?

While childhood obesity figures are officially on the downward trend, University of Sydney associate professor of nutrition Dr Timothy Gill said that toddlers are overloading on unhealthy snacks, which means they're not getting the essential nutrients they need.

However the largest eating disorders clinic in NSW, based at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, reported a 270 per cent increase in the number of children being admitted to hospital over the past decade. And this doesn't even include children being treated as outpatients at the hospital – the figure for which has increased more than 10-fold, - up from 298 in 2003 to 3157 in 2009.

Clinic co-director Dr Michael Kohn said patients are getting younger due to the increasing stress put on young people, so that those people vulnerable to develop eating disorders are doing so at a younger age.

Last Thursday alone, Dr Kohn saw 12 new patients including a five-year-old.

Other factors include the media portrayal of thin women and cute men as attractive ideals, the amount of food advertising targeting children, and that the children of obese parents don't want to end up like them.

Evolution is also playing a part with the average age of girls reaching puberty also decreasing, resulting in the sexualisation of girls at a younger age and making them more vulnerable to body image issues.

Christine Morgan, chief executive of eating disorder charity The Butterfly Foundation, said girls were suffering from negative body image issues from an earlier and earlier age, with dieting becoming the norm.

And it's not only obese parents that are a bad influence on their children: The increasing number of mothers who skip means and crash diet or overload on gym visits are just as bad role models.

Just another area where we parents must find the difficult balance between educating kids on life's dangers and scaring our children to the point of being paranoid.

Tips for Parents to Find The Healthy Eating Balance

As with many areas of kids' education, the balance often comes with avoiding over emphasis on the negative and putting most emphasis on the positive.

Rather than constantly telling your children eating sweets, sugar and fat is bad, encourage them (passively or actively) to eat more of the good stuff. Don't make sweets and lolly bags at parties an issue. Kids who are constantly drilled about not eating sweets and bad stuff often become paranoid and sometimes even socially excluded at parties. After all the food table is where it all happens at kids' parties. A child who is nervous around "naughty food" and doesn't participate in the dash for crisps and treats will find himself out on a limb. And going nuts on the fairy bread and cake every now and then at a birthday party is not really going to harm your child.

Avoid talking negatively about weight and dieting in front of your kids. Focus instead on the positives of eating healthily and the nutrition side of good food rather than the weight side – i.e. good foods keep you healthy, make you smart, give you strong hair, teeth and nails, stop you from getting sick etc. It's not all about avoiding getting fat.

Load up their meals with veggies (hidden or visible depending on your child's tastes). It's a good way of getting in the nutrient and bulking up the food a bit. Blended veggies can be quite easily disguised in a pasta dish or pie.

Limit snacking between meals to avoid ruining their appetite for dinner. A full child will be less likely to want dessert. My mother's voice still rings in my ears "Have an apple"!

Simply don't buy the bad stuff… Of course kids will want chips, bikkies and ice cream if it's staring at them from the kitchen fridge or cupboards. if it's not there, they can't eat it! When you say to your kids – "You mustn't eat so many biscuits". They will quite rightly answer: "So why do you buy them then?"

Make healthy food fun and interesting, like making fruit shapes, smoothies, natural yogurt flavoured with real fruit puree and honey (this can also be frozen).

Try to avoid unplanned, quick fix meals. If you're a busy mum, working or stay at home, or if you have busy kids, one of the pitfalls is finding a quick meal to give your kids. Often we revert to a make-do quick fix meal or quick buy fast food option, which is often not healthy.

Pre-prepare some meals when you have more time (like spaghetti Bolognese or chilli and rice or chicken stir fries) and pop them in the freezer for a quick microwavable meal option. If you're out with kids go for fast food options like mini sushi rolls, which most children love, rather than a burger and fries.

Work up a list of quick and easy healthy meals. Kids love picking at stuff too so often the simplest and easiest meals can be the best… raw carrots, pre-cooked chicken pieces, ham or salami slices or smoked salmon, new potatoes (easy to microwave), wholegrain tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches, baked beans, lean lamb chops (quick to grill), boiled eggs and wholegrain toast/vegemite and some veggies or beans…

When you think about it there are actually quite a few things you can rustle up pretty quickly, you just have to write them down and remember to add them to your repertoire and make sure you remember to buy the basics on your weekly shop.

And let them eat cake. Preferably home-made. At least you know what's in it and home-made cake is always much better than the over preserved, packed full of unnecessary sugar and other additives version you buy in the shops.

For advice and help with healthy eating or food issues with your kids, talk to your GP.