Janice Newell Bissex, MS, RD and Liz Weiss, MS, RD, Co-authors, The Moms' Guide to Meal Makeovers
The Meal Makeover Moms have created a series of online videos featuring cooking demonstrations and mealtime/pantry tips. Discover easy ways to improve your family's diet by watching more of their how-to videos.
Imagine what life would be like without rules. As much as your child may gripe when you tell her to “clean your room,” “look both ways before you cross the street,” “do your homework,” and “brush your teeth,” children need structure. They need to know what’s expected of them in order to develop both emotionally and socially. When it comes to food rules, however, many parents feel guilty when they have to impose limits and restrictions. One reason may be that children often whine when they're told they can't have candy before dinner or soft drinks with meals. Sometimes it's just easier to cave in. However, in order to provide nutritious meals for your family, you’ll need to lay down the law. Luckily, you don’t have to be a dictator to do so.
To establish realistic rules, child development experts recommend making them specific, reasonable, and enforceable. For example, if you tell your children that soft drinks and candy are forbidden, chances are you won't be able to enforce it since kids spend a lot of time outside of the home where you have no control over what they eat or drink. A more reasonable approach might be a rule stating that soft drinks are off limits at meal and snack times but allowed on special occasions such as birthday parties. While the food rules you institute may be different from ours, the following rules can easily be adapted to every family, no matter how old the children may be.
Rule 1: Mom is the Executive Chef, Not the Short-Order Cook: The title of Executive Chef implies that you are “the boss” and that’s exactly what we mean by this first rule. As Executive Chef, you get to set the menu and decide what’s for dinner. Sometimes, busy moms run out of dinner ideas or get burned out from all the complaints. When that happens, they toss in the dish towel and, out of shear desperation, morph back into a short-order cook. Hey, we’ve all been there.
To attain and maintain your status as Executive Chef, plan only one meal but make sure it's delicious and nutritious with some familiar components so the kids are more likely to eat it. It’s also a good idea to serve one or two dishes on the side (such as sliced fresh fruit, baby carrots, or whole wheat bread) just in case your main dish isn’t well accepted. That way there’s something for everyone.
Another reason moms end up cooking on demand is that their children often refuse to take even one bite. That’s a real dilemma because no one likes to force a child to eat something he clearly doesn’t want to eat or to send him to bed hungry. To encourage your children to try new things, we suggest you serve “No Thank You Bites” of everything. Here’s how it works: say you’ve prepared our No-Nonsense Chicken Nuggets for dinner along with Simply Delicious Broccoli (they’re in our book!) and a side of grapes. Everyone – including mom, dad, and the kids – is required to place at least one bite of each item on his or her plate. If one of the children, for example, doesn’t want the nuggets, you still serve him a “No Thank You Bite.” At that point, you suggest he take a bite and say either, “no thank you” or “thank you, I’d like more please.” “No Thank You Bites” provide a low-key and often amusing way to introduce new foods and flavors to your family. Even if your child says, “no thank you” a hundred times, one day he just may change his mind.
Rule 2: Drop Out of the Clean Plate Club: Young children have an innate ability to regulate their own food intake. In other words, they eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full. On some days, they might just pick at their meal while on others, they may devour everything and ask for seconds. If you’re concerned that a scant forkful here or a spoonful there will result in starvation or malnutrition, you can breathe easy because over the course of a few days or a few weeks, your child will undoubtedly compensate by eating more. Some parents worry when their children pick at their food and some get frustrated by the waste. As a result, they establish “the clean plate club” to make sure no one leaves the table hungry and that nothing gets tossed in the trash. The problem with forcing a child to eat every last bite, however, is that it interferes with his or her own internal hunger cues. Telling a child he has to clean his plate before leaving the table or insisting he finish dinner in order to get dessert can result in overeating and may lead to obesity later in life. It can also make dinnertime a nightmare for everyone.
It’s your job to present a variety of great tasting, nutritious foods but your child’s job to decide how much to consume at any given meal or snack. In the end, your children will learn to eat the calories they need. It’s important to offer small child-sized portions rather than the supersized portions we as adults have become accustomed to eating. A recent study found that when three year olds were served either a small, medium, or large portion of macaroni & cheese over the course of three days, they ate the same amount at each meal despite the increasing serving size. But when a group of five year olds was given those same three portions, they ate incrementally more food as the portion sizes got bigger… and apparently more tempting. The researchers concluded that somewhere between the ages of three and five, children actually learn to ignore their internal hunger signals and eat more when presented with larger portions.
As a rule of thumb, we suggest you serve your children small portions at the start of the meal. If they’re really hungry, they’ll clean their plates all on their own and then ask for seconds.
Rule 3: Let Them Eat Cake… Sometimes: What kind of status does dessert hold in your house? Is it a reward for eating vegetables, strictly forbidden, or just one of the many delicious foods you offer your family? We believe the latter standing is the healthiest one for everyone.
When parents promise dessert in exchange for eating spinach, dessert becomes revered while the vegetable loses respect. In the end, children may perceive dessert as superior to the rest of the meal. On the other hand, banning dessert altogether may cause kids to want it even more. Cookies and cake taste great so why forbid them? Our rule to Let Them Eat Cake… Sometimes offers a happy medium but it comes with a few caveats. While we believe that children should be exposed to a wide variety of great-tasting foods throughout the day, including sweet goodies, we’re not talking carte blanche here. Our kids would eat sweet desserts all day long if given the chance so instituting limits helps to ensure that children don’t make saturated fat and sugar the mainstay of their diets. Given the fact that today’s youth consume 50% of their total daily calories from fat and sugar, the sometimes part of this rule is especially important to enforce.
Many of the moms we’ve talked to over the years find it hard to believe that offering dessert can be one component of a healthy meal makeover. What we have found, however, is that by making dessert (i.e., one small cookie, a bowl of berries, grapes, one piece of chocolate candy) a part of the meal and not the grand finale it becomes less of a big deal. But what if, for instance, on a particular night, one of your children only eats a few bites of dinner but demands dessert anyway? Our advice is to tell her to wait quietly at the table while everyone finishes their meal and that when dessert is eventually served, she’s welcome to join in. In the end, while she’s sitting there twiddling her thumbs, she’ll probably realize she’s still pretty hungry and may, in fact, eat more of her main meal.
Rule 4: Practice Good Manners at the Dinner Table: While at first glance this rule may seem unrelated to good nutrition, without good table manners, mealtime can become chaotic and distracting. For example, if the kids are getting up and down from the table, burping on purpose just to get a laugh from a sibling, or sitting slumped in their chair, you may have little success introducing a new food or just getting the kids to eat their meal in general. When this happens, your children may still be hungry when they leave the dinner table, which can lead to hassles at bedtime when they want to raid the refrigerator for a big snack. When the kids forget their manners, parents lose control and the meal loses its appeal.
Consider some of our manner makeovers:
• Stay in Your Seat: Remind your children that once they leave the table, unless it's for a good reason such as getting seconds, dinner is officially over. Exceptions may need to be made for very young children.
• Chew With Your Mouth Closed and No Talking with Food in Your Mouth: No explanation needed here.
• Use Inside Voices at the Table: Screaming is not only annoying and disrespectful, it’s also distracting … and distracted children don’t eat well.
• Say Please and Thank You: Children who whine, "Yuck, that meatloaf looks gross," can influence other siblings to also refuse the meal. A quiet "no thank you" or "yes please" is a nicer way to communicate.
Everyone has different rules and philosophies about appropriate behavior at the table. Just remember, in order to enforce them, they’ll need to be realistic.
