Food Freedom, Kids' Edition

The other day, Google photos showed me this li'l gem from 14 years ago.

This is D with their friend Morgan (in the background) at the Dallas Zoo. I noticed that D was holding a long twisted marshmallow (a much better choice than when we bought a popsicle in June at the San Antonio Zoo, and its rainbow immediately melted all over D and me, and then it just fell off the stick entirely), but what really struck me was the fact that Morgan also had one. 

Morgan's mom Susan and I were different in a lot of ways, but we got along well and I always thought she was one of the most genuinely kind and encouraging people I've ever met. This picture made me appreciate the ease of parenting in Susan's vicinity. One or both of these kids saw the marshmallow and wanted it, and we both got them. Simple.

Mal has so many good friends whose parents very heavily influence what they eat. If we're somewhere and Mal gets a bag of cookies, those kids also want cookies... and it turns into a whole "thing." They ask their parent, the request is declined, they beg, the parent gets frustrated.

I'm sure the other parent really wishes that I wouldn't let Mal get whatever he wants. But letting my kid eat intuitively is a parenting philosophy I decided on when D was very, very young. I didn't want my kids to have weird food stuff to unravel when they became adults (or if they did, anyway, I didn't want to be the cause of it).

The more I thought about the ease of feeding D and their friends when they were small, though, I realized that relaxed eating was the norm pretty much everywhere we went. When we had lunch at enrichment classes, people had all sorts of stuff, and no one really commented on what anyone else was eating unless it looked good and someone wanted the recipe.

In fact, I remember vividly the exception to that rule when I was watching D's friend's sister once, and she was hungry. I asked if she wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, and she said, "I don't think my mom would want me to eat that much sugar." I was flummoxed. What did she think was in a grilled cheese?

I've heard this from one of Mal's friends many, MANY times. The thing is, I'm very good friends with her mom, too. We just have different food philosophies. But it makes her and Mal's together times around snacks and meals more stressful.

Whereas another friend of Mal's would come over here and eat whatever regardless of what her mom might think, this friend will often reject certain offers by saying her mom wouldn't like it. The other day, after she said no to a banana, an apple, and string cheese, I offered her a Lunchable. She said, "Oh, no, my mom wouldn't want me to eat that. She said they're so bad that even the creator wouldn't let his kids eat them!"

Mal asked me if it was true that they're "bad" and I just indicated that we weren't going to talk about it. But I had to know if that was the truth, so I looked it up. First, I did find a couple of websites that indicated that Bob Drane, who was one of the Oscar Mayer employees who developed Lunchables to help them sell more bologna, didn't let his kids eat the kits (which are not enough food to be a full lunch, in my opinion, but they're adequate in a snack situation) but they were all URLs like "healthvalues" or "eatingcleanforlife," etc. Not what I consider reliable sites, with zero citations. 

I finally tracked down an article from Popular Science entitled "Industry insiders don't use their products like we do. That should worry us," It's a bunch of elitist crap, like the fact that Steve Jobs's kids didn't use iPads. Listen, if I could outsource my kids' every moment, what they do in a day might be vastly different. But this isn't an instructional article for me. It's just saying, "Wealthy people don't have to live the same way that most of us plebes do."

Furthermore, it doesn't say that Drane didn't let his kids eat Lunchables. It says that one of his two adult children doesn't let her kids eat Lunchables because they're "junky" and "awful," and "we eat very healthfully." Barf. Or high five. Whatever.

Here's why I don't really pay much attention to "nutrition" guidelines or diet fads: I've seen them change too much over my lifetime. Eggs are terrible. Steaks are death. Butter will murder you. No, wait! Those fats are good, and protein is great, and margarine is fake and IT is the real danger! Don't eat fat and you won't be fat. Nevermind. Fat is good and satiating, but added sugar is something to avoid. Processed foods and things that are ultra-palatable is what's causing the downfall of our food society! Heck, even salt, which has been vilified for years, has recently made a comeback when studies have shown that the recommended intake of sodium that the American Heart Association publishes is actually associated with WORSE health outcomes than consuming moderately more sodium. 

When D was a baby and couldn't breastfeed, I fed them a bottle of formula. We'd only been home from the hospital for a couple of weeks, but initially, D was losing weight and becoming jaundiced. They were also very frustrated because they were literally starving. I made a bottle, which they slurped right up and were so content. I had been contacted by lactation consultants who offered to come help me figure out the breastfeeding thing, but I was just exhausted and ready not to have to worry about my newborn's health. The threat of being re-hospitalized was too much. I just wanted to know that D was getting enough to eat.

We visited the pediatrician a couple of days into formula-feeding, and I sheepishly admitted that I didn't have the will to try too hard to go back to breast-feeding, and did he think that D would suffer? As he continued D's exam, he asked me, "Is your baby gaining weight? Does your baby seem content? Is your baby thriving? Then I don't care what you do. Keep that up."

I guess that's been my feeding philosophy since. 

Fundamentally, there is a difference between "nutrition" and "health." Nutrition is literally a measure of the nutrients in any given food item. You might say that spinach is more nutritious than a slice of cake, and that's probably true (if it's a real cake and not a fake "hide 'healthy' ingredients" recipe). However, calories are important to consume! And joy from having a treat is a mental health boost that goes a long way toward a total "health" picture. Health isn't just about maximizing every calorie for its narrowly-defined benefit to the mechanical function of your biological components.

Food is about joy and family and socialization and meeting your needs in a specific moment in time. I love a good salad! And I also appreciate a Cinnabon. There is literally no time when I could switch one out for the other. Nor would I want to seek out a "more nutritious" version of a cinnamon roll in order to biohack my body's performance. And I'm certainly not putting that weight on my kids' shoulders. When they're hungry, I want them to listen to their bodies, not to have my voice in their brains knocking around, nor to see my side-eye even if they can still that voice. 

So... here's to those two kids in the picture with uncomplicated relationships with the stick of spun sugar and corn starch that they're carrying around during a fun day at the zoo. They and their moms are my heroes.