STEP 2: WHAT TO EAT?
Ask your child what she wants to eat. At first she will probably request foods that she thinks you will not approve of.
This is an understatement.
I am a whole foodie, to be sure. I eat mostly plant-based, occasional fish, and very little gluten. (And yes, I have come to this by eating exactly what I want, when I want it. I like the way that I feel when I eat this way. More on this later.) My cohort and I are well-versed in the evils of factory meat farming, the benefits of nutrient-dense superfoods and organic produce, and the psychotropic effects of sugar on the body. I can totally see how there are many, many foods that my kids believe that I do not approve of.
It is critical to this process that all foods be legalized and equalized. Forbidden foods – those that we do not allow into the home or that we label as bad – are precisely the ones that both parent and child want in excess. It is their forbidden quality that makes them so attractive.
Attractive? More like magnetic.
When I asked the girls for a shopping list, this is what I got:
Strawberry Pop Tarts
Italian cheese
tortillas
Bounty candy bars
Fruit Loops with Marshmallows (they have marshmallows now??)
Lucky Charms cereal
7up
Pepsi
Hot Fudge
Whipped Cream
Tomato soup
cheese squares
Pizza
Blueberries
CranGrape juice
Mentos Coca Cola flavor
Mentos fruit flavor
Tic Tac orange flavor
TicTac Simpsons flavor (Bart is a flavor? Well, ok…)
Cookies and Cream Hershey’s Bar
M&Ms
Cookie Crisp cereal
Fruit Roll Ups
Chocolate Hershey’s Bar
Starburst
Ouch. I was not surprised. I was scared. It brought me right back to 19, when I ordered chocolate chip cookies for lunch every day. I rode a seesaw between some kind of innate belief that this was the right thing for me, and the various voices, both in my head and around me, that said I was totally nuts. I felt exactly the same way now. How could I trust that this would work? How could I trust that they would be able to reach the same point that I had?
Having already started down the road (click here for the start of the story), I wasn’t ready to turn back, yet anyway. Here is what the cupboard looked like after shopping:
It is not that I believe that the foods that my kids want are now good for them. As I explained to them, they are not now magically healthy. Rather, my priorities have shifted. What is most important to me is that they are in touch with their bodies from the inside out. I am way more interested in them being able to recognize their hunger and how to satisfy it, then in them knowing the nutritional value of spirulina. In order for them to see their hunger clearly, they need to believe that it more complex than wanting what their mother will not let them have. This is the storming period. I just hope I can weather the storm.