3 ways to foster your child’s relationship with food

With all the diet culture around us it is important to check in with our own and our kids relationship with food. But what does a healthy relationship with food actually mean?

There are so many different definitions of a healthy relationship with food but this is one of my favourites:

“To have a healthy relationship with food means that one is able to eat for the reasons of physiological rather than emotional hunger and to stop eating at a point when the body and mind are truly satisfied.”

While I dream that one day diet culture won’t be all around us, it is important to instead learn how to navigate it and form that healthy relationship with food regardless of what is going on around us.

Here are three ways you can start fostering your child’s relationship with food today!

Promote Body Relationship – shape, weight, activity level

Eating habits are where this all starts, but it is important to go beyond the food relationships and also work on promoting a positive body relationship. Instead of focusing on the way a body looks focus on what it can do – how strong they feel, how it feels to move their body and be active. Health and activity, it ALWAYS more important that weight – but that is not always the message that we receive, so it is important to constantly reinforce this from a young age. Find an active family activity that you can do together – riding your bikes, walking the dogs etc. Movement should be fun not forced.

Remove the rewards and celebration –

If you find yourself begging your kids to eat their vegetables, saying, “If you eat your green beans you can have some ice cream” or taking away dessert because of bad behaviour, stop. Food given as a reward (or withheld as punishment) leads kids to connect certain food to emotions, seeing them as good or bad. It also lets them know that some foods are more desirable than others, and that they should expect certain foods when they do something well. This undermines the healthy relationship with food you’re trying to build. Try rewarding kids with stickers or small toys, play dates with friends, quality time with you, or a fun outing they enjoy.

Remove the food Labels – good or bad.

I know that preach that all foods can fit within a healthy diet. That doesn’t mean I want your to feed your kids m&ms for breakfast every day, but there is a time and place for all foods, and kids (well everyone really?!) shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for enjoying a less nutrient-dense food like a donut or a cupcake, just like they aren’t virtuous for eating their vegetables (although we certainly want them to!).

Food has no moral value, and we want kids to know that every food can be allowed in moderation. Labelling certain foods as ‘bad’ or ‘off limits’ creates that ‘forbidden fruit’ complex and can lead to serious food issues like hiding food and eating in secret when taken to an extreme, or even just overeating when we do allow that food ‘just this once’ as many of us know all too well. Instead of saying things like “we can’t eat cookies, they have too much sugar,” or “you have to eat your broccoli because it’s good for you,” try focusing on what foods can do for our kids, for example, “eating fish makes our brains smart,” and “baking cookies together is such a fun treat, isn’t it?”

Just as your kids’ relationship with food is incredibly important to work on from a young age, it is also important to check in with your own relationship.