Health Nuts
My husband and I try to keep our house as healthy as possible. This is true in terms of my stellar housecleaning (not!) as well as the food that is allowed in the house. Â We don’t buy chips or cookies for the kids. We reserve dessert for Shabbat and simchas. No sugar cereals. This includes “healthy” cereals, like Life, that actually have a lot of grams of sugar. Absolutely no candy, and no juice.
Many people address these choices with a great deal of scorn. We are “mean parents”, we are creating hoarders with food issues, Â and of course our children will take twice as much junk as other kids whenever we aren’t around, didn’t you know?
First of all, let me just say that my kids do have juice and dessert when they are in other places, and yes, they sometimes sneak stuff (and think that we actually don’t know), and that a few times every summer we simply have to go get ice cream because it is just too hot and Ima feels like it. So there are exceptions. Â They also still come out waaaaaaay ahead in terms of junk consumption, despite the sneaking. And not only do they not have food issues, they are learning the AMAZING skill of taking “just one”, and they recently declared that when allowed a “normal” sized piece of birthday cake that it was just too much icing and they couldn’t eat it.
I find it terribly amusing just how opinionated other people are about this particular issue. Most of the time when parents really feel the need to probe this issue with me, they eventually tell me it is because they are not really happy with the amount of sugar and junk their own kids eat, but they just don’t feel there is any way they could buck the system. Â They want to believe no one can do it, therefore our existence is problematic. I get that.
Bucking “the system” isn’t always a lot of fun. I don’t know that I would stand up to the irrational and ridiculous social pressure to load my kids’ bodies with sugar if my husband and I were not such a united front on the matter. He couldn’t care less what anyone thinks, pretty much all of the time, so this doesn’t seem to be an issue for him at all. He is even happy to be the bad cop, saying no more consistently and without any defensiveness than I could ever manage.
The “why” we do this is on the one hand simple and obvious – it’s healthy – and on the other hand a lengthy explanation.
I tell my children that our body is like the front lawn of our neshama, our soul. Â Now why would anyone want to fill their front lawn with garbage and junk? I also explain that we have a mitzvah to guide all of our actions by serving Hashem, and that sugar slows us down, makes us more prone to illness, and makes less room in our bodies for the food and drink that do help us serve Hashem. Which, by the way is true.
I don’t tell them that without developing a taste for all things oily, salty and sweet early on, that they are learning how to actually taste food, try a wider range of things, not become “picky eaters” and to have a ground work of healthy habits that I hope will prevent the weight struggles and food issues from which I suffer.
I do tell them that the restrictions are out of our love for them, their bodies, and our love for Hashem. We want to show we appreciate the wonderful, nourishing foods that He created, and that we don’t take our miraculous bodies for granted.
One of the hardest parts of this decision? Trying to explain to my children why other G-d fearing, well-meaning, caring good parents are happy to “litter all over the front lawn” and give their kids a green light to eat whatever they choose! Â I of course explain that their are different approaches, etc., but in the mind of a four year if we restrict their junk consumption because we love them, then what does that say about those other parents? What does it say about the teachers in school who tell them to go ahead and eat the candy – Ima and Abba aren’t looking.
Confronting this battle within my kids’ school is another article in and of itself.  I am proud to say that on a local level, progress has been made….. very small amounts of progress over a very long amount of time. We aren’t the only ones:  Soveya is an organization trying to change the thinking about food in yeshivas and the frum world in general, “one pound at a time”.
So. how did I get started on this topic today? Homeshuling’s  Amy Meltzer posted an article about juice for kids.
I never really thought cutting out juice was necessary. I only gave pure juice (as opposed to cocktail or sugar drinks) to the kids, and I diluted it, but juice is healthy, right? And then five years ago, just when I thought the pediatrician would tell me that our food policies were too strict even for him, he said “don’t ever kids your kids juice.”
What?
He explained that kids crave fruit sugar, and that fruit is GREAT for kids. They will get the sweetness they crave, but that the fruit itself has important fiber and vitamins that they won’t get if they have the juice. He also explained that kids who drink juice drink a LOT less water than kids who don’t. This is true from my experience. So, armed with the powerful phrase “The Dr. said”, I stopped giving the kids juice, cold -turkey, years ago.
Now I buy a LOT of fruit. People gawk in the store and give me looks that clearly show they are sure I work at the zoo. One day I am going to print up a shirt for myself that says:
[ I hope you like my first drawing. You can see why I don’t make them. I am no Allie Brosh, nor do I aspire to be. But I really do want a T-shirt that says that, if anyone is thinking ahead to my birthday. ]
…Getting back to my point, I do buy a lot of fruit, but I am spared the endless dilution of juice and the lugging of large jugs. (I lug large bags of fruit instead.)
The juice article that was posted: Â http://www.inhabitots.com/2010/06/11/85-of-kids-drinks-snacks-could-contain-high-levels-of-lead/ explains that many, many brands of juice for kids may actually be toxic. Â Kudos to Dr. Shah for sparing us. Do you think maybe this will hold back the ridicule from the scornful throngs?
On a last note, food policies are like religious observance; anyone to the right of one is “extreme” and anyone to the left is “too liberal”. So we are by no means considered hard-core in healthy eating circles. After all, we still have white flour, white sugar and even – gasp! – hydrogenated oils – in our home. Everyone has to find the balance that works for them. What we do works for us. I never try to suggest it would work for everyone. I am amazed when the same people who campaign on my children’s behalf for lollipops and other forms of food dye ask me with astonishment how I get my kids to eat nicely, or how I get them to sit still. Â Â If you tell me I am doing great with the cutting down sugar but am far from feeding them healthily, you may be right.
…. But at least it turns out I am sparing them lots of lead in juice. Who knew?
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I wish I lived in a juice-less home – can you convince my husband that juice is no good? He drinks it, too.
We say NO NO NO to hydrogenated fats. We had too much of it in my home as a child, because my mother, z”l, was told it was healthier than butter. And she is no longer alive.
What really gets me is people with sick kids who won’t listen about nutrition. It makes me SO sad. So sad.
I don’t think I can convince your hubby, but maybe you should show him the article about lead in juice. Pretty scary stuff…
I think we should be better than we are about the hyd. fats, but we have a very, very low fat menu in this house, and I try to keep it as low as I can. Natural PB, olive oil, and very few processed foods. Ironically, my new vegetarian is the biggest challenge for healthy eating. At 9, he is too young to prepare much for himself, and the premade veggie food which is far more processed than anything else in my house is my easiest solution for one child that has to eat differently than the rest.
Do people still fry food? I have heard that they do…..
I have a similar approach. A ton of fruit, must have at least one (hopefully at least 2) veg over the course of the day, water to drink, and actual dessert (as opposed to fruit) max 2 days out of 7. When we are at someone’s house for a shabbat meal we will agree to a little bit of juice, diluted in water, but they both know they have to eat their meal first. Never at home though–we rarely have it.
The healthy eating is being undermined by the gan experience, unfortunately–my daughter gets a ton of junk for no reason at all. Oh well.
Gan is just the beginning, and while I believe the culture around it is changing in Israel, I have heard that junk and sugar in general are worse in Israel than the US. Your guidelines sounds like good ones. I have found that as the kids get older the guidelines have to change a bit, but I see that the education behind them is getting through.
I have to say that I wish I had thought of onetiredema as my domain name. It’s awesome.
I wanted to add that my intelligent and very articulate friend wrote to me off-line about this post, but wouldn’t post her thoughts here. I am doing it for her, because I think she makes a good point. A lot of people start out with ideas of how they want the kids to eat, and it becomes just one more of the battles they don’t choose to fight. “They give up,” as she put it. While that may be true, wouldn’t it be nice if it weren’t such a battle? It would be nice if we didn’t have to give up because choices and differences in how our kids can/should eat are respected and honored. I totally and thoroughly respect your right to give your kids juice all day. Even juice proven to have lead in it. Just please don’t give me a hard time because I choose not to.
She made another point. “Who cares what people think or say?”. Of course she is right. Yet I wish this type of “white noise” was much easier for me to tune out.
as someone who from the age of 4-7 was banned chocolate, cheese, milk and eggs for dietary reasons but didnt eat a vegetable until aged 18 and spent her teen years (plus plus who am i kidding) gorging on the above (often in secret) i just cant do the food bans. TG till now my two year old loves fruit and veg – even eats the carrots in favor of the lockshen in his chicken soup. this is probably thanks to a gannenet who gives out fruit and veg up the wazoo (together with some of the not so good stuff). the other day we had frum family visiting from england. i got out the watermelon, they got out the sour sticks. my son *HAD* to have the sticks but then proclaimed them icky after one bite and went on to make his way through the fruit, offering his older cousins it too.
i know its early but that really is my dream. he gets the palatte early for good stuff and the lifestyle (ie he gets to run around alot so often cucumber is more refreshing than biscuits) and there’s no big attraction about the “forbidden.” he can take it or leave it. I am 38 and still a slave to the forbidden. i dont want that to happen to my kids.
ok now back to the work i’m procrastinating from and the article that i saw this link from.
love L xxx
I am really so curious how it is that you, my friend, got to this article from somewhere else?!? A story for another time, I suppose. Thank you for alerting me; I had no idea this had been linked to elsewhere until you replied.
I am 100% right there with you, because I am also a slave to the forbidden. My approach with my kids is a reaction to being given whatever we wanted as children. I too became a “slave to the forbidden” not because of a prohibition as a child. Rather because I wanted to choose for myself (junk) instead of being told what to eat (healthy food.) Funnily, my latest post about sleepaway camp addresses my daughter’s relationship to being told what to do… so I know where she gets it from.
Thanks for procrastinating and joining the conversation.