Hi, I’m Lisa. I’m a registered dietitian nutritionist at Tahoe Forest Hospital, and I’m talking to you parents today.
Do you want to raise competent, healthy eaters and avoid power struggles or food battles? I want to bring up this concept called food neutrality. Basically, what that means is that food’s not good or bad. It doesn’t have a moral value. It’s just food.
So, for example, when I hold this up, what words come to mind? And then when I hold this food up, what words come to mind?
Foods have been associated with labels for decades. The problem with doing this with kids, saying foods are healthy or they’re bad for you or to limit them, is that kids are really concrete thinkers. When we say a cupcake is high in sugar and they shouldn’t eat very much or it’s a bad food, now when a kid is around cupcakes, they’re going to think, “Wow, that tastes really good, and I love cupcakes. Does that make me bad?”
I know as adults that sounds a little bit silly, but then we get this ingrained in our heads over years and decades, and now we have a moral value based on the foods that we prefer. So we really want to stay neutral with foods.
The research shows that the more we put labels on food, the more we increase the likelihood of kids becoming picky eaters, hiding or sneaking food, developing disordered eating, or even eating disorders. It’s not what we want for our kids.
