Posted on 01/07/2018 3:12:19 PM PST by nickcarraway
As a new year begins, I hear many of the typical restrictive resolutions: I will give up gluten, cut sugar, never drink again. Many parents announce they are going to do a better job restricting their kids’ intake of sugar, because this past year they were too permissive. No more soda, sugary cereal or ice cream in the house. Instead it will be all vegetables all the time.
Does restriction actually work? The answer is no. Restricting food does not create healthy eating habits: In fact it usually backfires, steering children to sneak food and overeat.
The many faces of restriction Food restriction has many faces. Parents restrict when they control portion size or limit seconds. Parents restrict when they ban certain foods from the house. I am guilty of this; my boys beg me to buy Pop-Tarts, but I haven’t because they scream processed food unhealthiness. What has happened as a result of my refusal? My boys want Pop-Tarts more than any other food. Big backfire. Parents also restrict when they buy only “healthy” versions of foods, such as only fat-free cheese or brown rice. Sometimes kids just want that real cheese or white rice.
[ Want your kids to have healthy bones? It will take more than a milk mustache. ]
My restriction stems from fear. I know the science behind how powerful healthy food can be and how damaging too much unhealthy food can be, and so I clamp down on things like Pop-Tarts. Other parents restrict because they are afraid their child will be, or already is, overweight. Perhaps diabetes is a worry, or the parents have their own painful memories of being overweight as a child.
No matter which expression of restriction inhabits your house, the outcome is usually the same damaged relationship to food.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I know I swore off the big hunks of sour dough bread that I love because I can no longer handle the sodium.
Sounds like the author has an unhealthy relationship to food.
Pop tarts! Who would serve their kids that crap? Make healthy waffles, pan cakes or muffins on weekends, freeze them and stick them in the toaster or oven on Monday morning.
I heard a mother telling a kid that he wouldn’t be able to get out of the car and go to school till he finished his donut.
I know the science behind how powerful healthy food can be and how damaging too much unhealthy food can be, and so I clamp down on things like Pop-Tarts.
Some vegetables are good to have, but activity and exercise are probably more important than having a salad instead of an ice cream cone.
Diet is much over-emphasized in our modern society. It has become the “magic pill”, to insure health.
Our major dietary problem is that we have an abundance of cheap, healthy, food. People love sugar and fat, so they eat more of it. They did not eat so much previously because sugar and fat were expensive.
Our societies problems with food are First world problems of cheap, abundant food, and a lack of exercise as an imperative to survive.
Not to mention the lefty’s eternal inability to mind his own business.
My kids liked milk and they drank it with everything. I got asked more than one time at the grocery store check out line if I was running a day care center because I would buy at least 8 gallons per week.
I had to buy an extra refrigerator just for drinks.
I have discovered why diabetics lose weight.
YOU CAN’T EAT ANYTHING.
I think this may be a clue to the current "obesity epidemic."
When I was a kid, my mother discovered "healthy eating" and started subscribing to Prevention magazine, reading a lot of (dubious) books about "healthy eating," buying "organic," etc. We went from a typical American diet (for the time) to eating a "healthy" diet, never allowed to have anything with processed sugar in it. As a result, whenever I had the chance, I wanted sweets. My weight has been an issue my entire life. I can't help but think that the factors that made weight such an issue for me are an issue for a lot of people. The strict "healthy eating" forced on kids may be a reason for such high rates of obesity.
Having identified too much restrictive "healthy eating" as a factor in my own weight struggles, I decided that I would not put any restrictions on my son. Basically, I tried to teach him what is healthy and not, and that a balanced diet is the goal. I did not tell him he could not eat particular foods. I only required that he taste something before rejecting it. The result is that as an adult, he really does only eat when he is hungry, and stops when he is full. He weighs 120 pounds at 5'9.
I love pop tarts. I especially love the brown-sugar cinnamon ones WITHOUT the frosting.
What?
How dare you inject Common Sense & Wisdom into a “MAJOR AMERICAN EMOTIONAL ARGUMENT!!!”
(PS - Thank you!)
Another case for parents ensuring their children eat sweets in moderation.
Great post as always.
The problem with ice cream is the body rejects exercise afterwards. Contrary, fruit & water, the body does want exercise.
Post exercise, after some time, some junk food is more agreeable. There is a certain order
“I know I swore off the big hunks of sour dough bread that I love because I can no longer handle the sodium.”
Good sourdough is just too good to give up. They can bury me with a hunk (with butter) in my hand.
It is not hard. Or you can buy the fancy ones that are all natural (although everything is natural. Otherwise it would not exist).
People are starting to regard diet as "God" and themselves as "good" or "bad" depending on what they eat or don't eat.
You want something unhealthy? THAT attitude is unhealthy.
My mother would put fruit on the table.
Us kids would ask: What is for dessert? She would say, the fruit is the dessert.
Now, I love fruit and seldom eat ice cream. As a growing child, I craved sweets and fat. I dreamed of gorging on pastries. A few years later, when I had the resources to engage in that excess, I had other priorities.
I like pastries now, but mostly avoid them, and don’t consider gorging on them.
The reason is I know if I eat without control, I would balloon up.
Problem is diabetics don’t lose weight. Well noticed.
Diabetes is a chronic condition associated with abnormally high levels of sugar (glucose) in the blood. Insulin produced by the pancreas lowers blood glucose by making the food enter the cells properly. Absence or insufficient production of insulin, or an inability of the body to properly use insulin causes diabetes. So it has nothing to do with the food intake, but the body’s inability to produce the insullin that the body can handle to use up the intake of food or allow it to leave through urination or defecation. And in some cases, people are rejecting their own insulin which adds to the misuse of the food even worse.
So cutting the amount of food you intake may also mean you’ll add on weight slower. But you still won’t be able to use it so you can function whether it’s there or not. And it is still in the blood stream and the body can’t dispel it or use it so it turns it into fat.
rwood
stupid author, just sub out unhealthy stuff for healthier options. So easy to make healthy ice cream substitutes and they have that fizzy water machine to sub out soda if some one really feels the need for carbonated.
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