Lazy bloody town and damned sports candy

[ailbhe]

Linnea is really confused by what constitutes "healthy" food and since I explained that fruit contains sugar (we were talking about dental health) she's not sure whether she's ALLOWED to eat fruit any more. I can't see why any child likes bloody Lazytown because it is incredibly irritating and all the people are wholly unattractive and the puppets are horrible, but they do - and it's a bit crazy about the whole food thing.

Sports candy. Fruit is FRUIT, it's not a substitute for sweets and cake. It's worth eating in its own right. And conflating sugar and refined sugar is really annoying.

Comments

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Me too. :-( Hugh now drinks 'sports water' not normal water.

And I'm very annoyed about another comment that came from somewhere on BBC2 kids programmes, yesterday morning, that you shouldn't eat too much good even if it's good nutrition, as it will make you sick and unhealthy.

AAARRRGGHH!!!!!!!!

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as 'too much' for a child that has been allowed to wean properly, with no pushing of food.

"Too much" only takes place once the natural biology of the child has been disrupted. The body produces strong and powerful signals to stop when full, and children who are raised to respond to food naturally, recognise those signals.

And then telling them if they eat too much, will make them ill, makes then second guess and make suspect their own perfectly balanced reactions to food.

It is not too easy to overeat at all, actually. One the signal is in place, you have to do a lot of work to overcome it. Those who've had the signal blown, can often wonder what the hell people are talking about - but talk to people with the signal intact, and it's a very strong chemical reaction from stomach to brain, and they will tell you it's a switch 'on' and 'off'.

Normal healthy appetites do not need controlled in the slightest: the biology is in place. It's only once you've wrecked the biology, done to most of us by force feeding either from a baby bottle, or at early weaning, that any support is needed at all for making conscious adjustments to eating.

And a child raised in such a normative feeding way, with a good range of normal foods, would find it very hard to over eat on sweets. (Although how we got to over eating on sweets, from a point about being told to not eat 'too much' good nutrition, is beyond me.) Children who can listen to their own bodies around food, do not over eat sweets. They feel the 'feeling sick' signal from the sugar rush, and stop. It's been observed and written about, and something I've watched my own child do.

The point is that pitching all the kid's food messages, to the level of trying to get the message through to those with bad habits already, is often counter productive to those children with very normal and body timed eating habits.

One size does not fit all.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

This. I'm a firm believer in intuitive eating, and our only rule around food is "If you're hungry, you can eat it" (with due regard for allergies, necessary safety precautions, asking the owner if it wasn't bought out of general household money, etc). My daughter was raised on intuitive eating principles, and at nine years old, she was amazed - amazed - to discover that there are people who eat when they are not hungry. She reported it to me in the tone I might use if I suddenly discovered ET living at the bottom of my garden.

(The other kids were older when I started doing this, so can remember it being different and aren't surprised by people with broken satiety mechanisms - but both of them have now internalised intuitive eating pretty well. Meanwhile, I think some of their friends suspect I myself am some sort of alien in disguise because I don't make them finish their plates when they aren't hungry or don't like my cooking.)

[ailbhe]

I sometimes have to stop my children eating things while they're recovering from minor illnesses - seven satsumas in a sitting feel lovely and cleansing as they go in, but bode ill for later on.

I don't eat when I'm not hungry. But sometimes I don't remember to eat when I *am* hungry, which makes me cross and unreasonable.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, we do encourage them to be sensible when ill and to follow medical advice, but I've had success with phrasing that as advice rather than a rule, or encouraging them to make their own rule rather than having me impose one - it even worked when C was unable to eat chocolate for a while due to IBS-like symptoms.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I fascinated to watch the odd arguments between my sister raising her son (4) and my mother and my mother having to unpick in her mind the stuff she thought was 'good': 'one more mouthful, don't spit it out - here comes the train woo woo'. No you can't have desert until you've cleared you plate, you can't leave the table until you've eaten all of xyz'. All of these things override the body's signals.

I'm having to struggle so hard now as an overweight adult who has internalised all these 'rules' and try and 'hear' the signals my body gives me.

So proud of my sister who seems to be raising a child who loves his grub, tries anything and everything and stops when he's full.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

A story about the signals. I too am an overweight adult, who firmly had the signals blown in very early childhood. In fact, it was so alien to me, I couldn't comprehend what everyone was talking about. It was an alien language.

And then, I went on prozac. The signal hit in loud and clear, and was so strong, it was like a blow to the head. I simply could _not_ eat one mouthfull more, when the signal hit. And the portion size was so small!!!

I've been on prozac three times now,a nd each time, BANG, for two weeks, I get a full signal. It's just wonderful. I always lose about two stone in weight. But it wears off, and my need for food, and the pleasure signals that it fills my brain with, takes over, and my portion size creeps back up again.

But having experienced that signal, I'm very determined my child will be allowed to keep his! :-)

It also allowed me to re-evaluate smug relatives who'd always said "Just stop whilst you are full, I do. You have no self control."
Actually, dear relatives who HAVE NO CLUE, it's you who don't understand self-control. You don't' consciously stop eating to stay slim, you have a working signal, and so you NEVER HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.

It was a very healing experience, all round, being able to look at 'the signal' from both sides. :-)

[gloriap.livejournal.com]

Too much of anything will tend to make you fat, not necessarily sick.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

See above replies. Natural appetites don't do 'too much'.

[ailbhe]

But fat is not equal to sick. Many fat people are very healthy!

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

What I particularly hate is that kids aren't supposed to have juice now, they're supposed to drink no-added-sugar squash instead. The fuck? Dumping artificial sweetners into kids cannot be the way forward. It might even do real harm, if you subscribe to the theory that you're setting someone's palate up to always want ultra-ridiculously-sweet everything for life.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

This is another of my bug bears.

Now't wrong with perfectly normal and natural sugar. Now aspartame... don't get me started!

Just another way to send the wrong signals, including brain ones!

[gloriap.livejournal.com]

Use your own common sense and judgement. My kids were brought up drinking real fruit juices, sometimes watered down, and in their 30s they rarely drink sodas.

If teeth are a concern, brushing or even rinsing well with clear water after drinking is an option.

I would never give a child soda, with either real or artificial sweetener. IMO, It sets up bad eating habits.

There are currently studies being done that point to artificial sweeteners creating more thirst and a craving for sugar and additional sweets.

[ailbhe]

We had fizzy drinks as children and I don't think an of the five of us drink them as adults. They were a treat. My children have been offered them but since they don't like fizz on principle I'm not sure they've tasted any.

The sugar in juice isn't any better than the sugar in Coke, but I believe aspartame is worse... And most of the others are laxatives.

[jentifred.livejournal.com]

Here in the US, the sugar in sodas is generally high fructose corn syrup. So I'd MUCH rather give my kids juice than soda.

I used to have a Pepsi-a-day habit, until I got a hold of some Pepsi Throwback, which was made with cane syrup instead of HFCS. But it was a limited-time run, and I found that just a couple of weeks of sugared-soda was enough to turn my palate off to HFCS soda. I am not complaining.

[jentifred.livejournal.com]

I've been drinking Izze drinks lately. 70% juice, 30% sparkling water. I have yet to find a cola drink I like that's not Pepsi (or, well, now Pepsi Throwback).

They are bringing Throwback back for the holidays I hear, but I think by then I will have thoroughly lost any taste for colas and it would probably be better if I kept it that way. ;-)

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

I've made my own soda in the past. It's not hard once you find a source for food-grade essential oils, everything else is available off-the-shelf and recipes can be adapted easily from http://www.colawp.com/colas/400/cola467_recipe.html

[ailbhe]

I'm not at all sure I've ever encountered HFCS in the wild. I don't usually drink fizzy drinks so even when I *was* in the US I probably didn't meet it. Much, anyway. I did find the hotel had no unsweetened breakfast foods except melon and eggs.

[ailbhe]

"supposed to" according to whom? follow the money...

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

It's on juice cartons from the supermarket, is all I know

[ailbhe]

Ew. That's a leetle crazy. "Don't buy this, buy something more expensive for these health reasons"? Or what?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I am particularly annoyed about this as it makes it harder for me to buy normal-sugar squash!

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Rocks

http://www.rocksorganic.com/

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don't want recommendations - I just want to be able to get ordinary Robinson's lemon barley water when I'm down the Co-op, but they only have sugar-free versions!

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

And even some of the ones that don't claim to be sugar-free still have artificial sweetners in them.

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

Yes, I hate this as well :(

[ailbhe]

What, really?! Gawd. What about other supermarkets? We pretty much never drink squash unless we're having a birthday party so it's not something I've checked.

It has just occurred to me that they may no longer do a real sugar version; do you suppose that's true?!

(Er, yrs etc, Shocked of Reading, apparently - sorry about that).

[ailbhe]

I checked Tesco - no real-sugar Robinsons. At all.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Tsk! Yeah, that's what our Co-op is like.

It's not that I can't get it at all, but I can't get it reliably just going to the Co-op and the Tesco Metro and things that are in the city centre, which is where we do most of our non-fresh-fruit-and-veg shopping (things like pasta, breakfast cereal, milk, butter, biscuits and so on.) If I were going to the really big supermarkets I'm sure I'd find it, but it's ridiculously frustrating when there are actually half a dozen different types of squash in the shop and every single one of them is aspartame horridness!

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

I started buying my pickled cucumbers from the Polish shop because the Tesco ones have artificial sweetener in. Anyone know of a source for rollops without sweetener?

[trizia.livejournal.com]

Really, that's ridiculous! Aaaargh!!!!

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

my kids drink water or milk. There's no need to ffer any kind of fruit/sugar/sweetener based drinks to kids, but once you've started there's no going back.

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

We'll have to agree to disagree here - while the sugar and calorie content of milk and juice are similar, milk also contains fat, protein, vitamin D and calcium which aren't generally present in most fruit juices in any appreciable quantity. I offer my children (ages 1 and 3) milk to drink because it has dietary benefits beyond just the calories it provides, which juice doesn't (in my opinion).

And as for the "milk is bad" argument - I would love to see one peer-reviewed study, published in the medical literature, that has categorically shown that milk is detrimental to the health of the general population, as opposed to random so-called experts' opinion published in popular newspapers and magazines. Humans have been drinking and cooking with the milk of other species (cows, sheep, goats in particular) for many hundreds of years, and we're still here. I'm not saying it's the best thing for us (but then most of the modern western diet isn't), but (in my opinion) it certainly isn't teh evil that some people seem to have decided it is.

[ailbhe]

We found it very easy to eliminate fruit juice from Emer's diet when she was on a healthy-teeth diet. Much easier than eliminating fresh fruit, which is, of course, much worse for the teeth because you can't bypass them with a straw.

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

yeah - mine pretty much live on fresh fruit. We'd struggle to get rid of that too.

[ailbhe]

I hate that they've called "cake and junk food" unhealthy, as though it's an all-or-nothing deal. When I have PMS, a ton and a half of exceedingly finely refined sugar is way healthier than ripping the cat's throat out with my teeth, for example.

We do distinguish between growing foods and dessert foods, but about two years ago, maybe more, I had to explain that children need fat - because Linnea was refusing to eat anything with fat in it unless we pretended it wasn't there.

Of course, what *I* mainly look for in food is calories, because calories are the point of food. If I don't get enough calories I get really hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. (Flapjacks are great for this; fast-and-slow release carbs, and some fat).