Author Virginia Sole-Smith learned that demonizing foods like ice cream and candy can backfire when it comes to bringing up kids with healthy attitudes toward food and their bodies.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband has a very limited number of dishes he is willing to eat. It’s pretty much: burgers, mac and cheese, pizza, and chicken fingers. Basically the children’s menu of any chain family restaurant. He’s not a super taster (he eats olives on his pizza and drinks coffee), and he doesn’t have texture issues (he dips his fries in mayo and his pizza crusts in ranch like it’s going out of style). He’s just very limited in what he eats. These self-imposed limitations on his diet have caused so many problems for him. He doesn’t want to attend work events, weddings, or extended family celebrations because he doesn’t think there will be anything that he’ll want to eat. He doesn’t want to try any new restaurants and sticks to chains where he knows his “food groups” will be represented. I know it’s bad, and he knows it’s bad, but there’s no changing him so we just live with it.
Eating Disorder Symptoms Have Spiked During Covid nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Should You Worry About Your Kidâs Pandemic Weight Gain?
Think of body changes as something to be curious about, not a problem to be solved.
Credit.Janice Chang
Published Jan. 15, 2021Updated Jan. 23, 2021
Last spring, scientists predicted that the Covid-19 pandemic might contribute to a rise in childrenâs body weight, because of school closures and families hunkering down with comfort foods, lacking access to healthful meal options and exercising less. Yet while we know that childhood hunger has risen precipitously during the pandemic, we donât have much data on whether childrenâs body sizes have changed in the past year.