12 Steps to Whole Foods

Introduction
Nutrition is no different than any other topic. Would you allow your 9-year-old to opt out of her least favorite
subjects in school—say, math and science? Just quit, not participate at all from kindergarten through high
school graduation? Why would we knowingly allow our children to opt out of the most important food groups
they need for growth, development, energy, and disease prevention? Yet this is what modern parents do: they
leave all food choices to the child and throw up their hands, saying, “She just won’t eat any vegetables!”
As parents who embrace being in charge, you can certainly be your child’s friend, just as long as you know that
you’re a parent-leader first—and sometimes your child will resist the structure you provide and even not “like”
you for short periods of time. I avoid fighting with my children about food, and I use firm but positive phrases,
with a smile, such as, “This is what we’re having tonight.” Or “I’m sorry this isn’t your favorite—sometimes
we have to try something a few times before it appeals to us.” Or “I think you’ll like this better mixed into your
salad—you’re welcome to have a small helping.”
Sometimes I point out that I don’t always get to eat my favorite foods every night, but if I did, they probably
wouldn’t be my favorite foods any more. To drive these points home and teach about nutrition on a level even
a young child will understand, I read two of my favorite books to my children about food choices: Bread and
Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban and The Children’s Health Food Book by Ron Seaborn.Bread and Jam
doesn’t teach about good nutrition, but it teaches children that life is more interesting when you try new foods.
Because I never found an appealing, completely true, children’s book about good nutrition, I wrote The
Adventures of Junk Food Dude. It teaches about good choices and consequences—in food, at home, and at
school—through a fiction story. There’s a picture quiz at the end, and I tested it on children before publishing
it. It is my favorite of the 10 books I have written or edited/published.
I don’t plead, beg, guilt-trip, wheedle, cajole, or whine at my children about food—and I don’t reward those
behaviors in them, either. The rules are clear (after you state and enforce them the first 20+ times): they can
have what is served or skip the meal. They rarely, if ever, choose to skip a meal after that initial period of
testing limits.
Some say, “Well, you must just not have picky kids like I do.” In fact, three of my four kids tried out “picky,”
and the youngest two would be insufferably “picky” if I allowed it. Only one of my children has happily
slurped up vegetables since infancy. But they are, at this point, all “very good eaters,” as the saying goes.
The natural consequences of skipping a meal are hunger pains. It’s not abuse and, contrary to the strange
traditions you see all around you, you have no obligation as a parent to provide a junk food alternative to the
family meal. The natural consequences of eating a few bites of zucchini are that you then get to eat the rest of
the meal that you like better. Trust in natural consequences as a teacher. They’re “natural” if they’re the family
rules. Parents have the prerogative and even responsibility to create consequences. Before the mac-n-cheese,
junk food era, agricultural communities had these family rules for thousands of years: one meal was served,
and everyone ate it or had to wait until the next meal. You’ll spare yourself gray hair and a lot of irritation and
drama if you adopt this simple rule.
You might also incorporate what my mom did: we were allowed to have one food we absolutely refused to eat.
One, not two—and certainly not 90% of foods, like many of the kids I know. Most of us kids had the same food
we loathed: spinach soufflé. (Some of my brothers chose mushrooms as their won’t-eat food.) My mother
consequently raised eight children who will eat virtually anything.
Many parents allow each child to eat his or her own separate, customized meal. I believe this is an outgrowth of
modern dietitians, pediatricians, and parenting publications always talking about offering your toddler or small
child “options.” As in, offer them a bowl of processed mac-n-cheese or a bowl of steamed broccoli. Modern
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 13