“Restricting foods can put these foods on a pedestal, make them the so-called forbidden fruit,” said Nimali Fernando, paediatrician and founder of the Doctor Yum Project, a nonprofit that helps children and families achieve better nutrition.
It can make that food too alluring, too much the stuff of fantasy and even obsession. In fact, the research shows that food restrictions and prohibitions of this kind are actually associated with higher BMI in children, and even with disordered eating.
Here’s what else to know about forbidden foods.
Take advantage of the control that you have during the very early years
You move through different phases with your children. In the infant and toddler years, “parents are guardians of choices when we have the most control over what our children eat,” Fernando said, “we are developing a liking for more nutritionally dense foods – that’s when we’re putting the guardrails up.”
You’ll encourage your child to sample a wide variety of healthy foods – and small children often need to try foods many times before they like them. You should teach them to recognise fruits and vegetables and offer them every day, and explain that these foods help make their bodies work well.
Talk about the difference between foods you eat all the time and foods that are for special circumstances.
Later, when children are going out into the world – which can mean anything from visiting a friend to a trip to the amusement park – it’s more important, Fernando said, to start talking it through with your child, and to help your child integrate some of those foods into certain meals and certain occasions. “That might mean bringing them into the home or talking about enjoying them outside the home like at a birthday party.”
You can acknowledge celebratory and special-occasion foods, but don’t create a hierarchy in which certain foods are rewards while others are obligations: “If you eat your broccoli, you’ll get a cupcake!” That sets up a behaviour pattern that can lead to trouble later on, in which children use particular – and usually not particularly healthy – foods to make themselves feel better (sound familiar?).
But we can acknowledge the joys of special-occasion foods (and grandparent visits can be a special occasion) and foods that everyone consumes in more limited quantities, and emphasise the pleasure of eating them together. Making – and eating – a holiday treat together can connect children to family members and family heritage. You don’t want them to think of eating as something solitary, or something done in front of a screen; you want connection, community and happy memories around the table.
Find ways to talk about the different choices that other families make
As children go out into the world, they are likely to come back with questions and observations: in this family, all the Halloween lollies get eaten right away, or in that family, no one eats any meat. Be careful to frame the discussion in a way that doesn’t denigrate other people’s food choices, or create a hierarchy that will leave children believing that other families are doing something wrong. This shouldn’t be about judgment or disapproval, but about re-emphasising the reasons behind your own house rules, and talking about how much good healthy foods do for your body.
Let your kids see you making the good choices you want them to make
Model good choices: that you turn to the kinds of foods that you hope your child will choose, that the foods on the pantry shelves and the family dinner table reinforce the messages you want your child to hear.
This is about nutrition and the pleasures of fruits and vegetables, of course, but also about the pleasures of eating together and appreciating what you eat and making memories that connect food with family. It’s also an argument for involving children in the buying and preparation of food, and for helping them enjoy the same foods that the grown-ups are eating, and letting them see that grown-ups also eat special foods on special occasions.
Save hard-and-fast rules and prohibitions for where you really need them
There are certain circumstances in which you do have to absolutely rule out foods – most notably when a child has food allergies, and a particular food poses a danger. Parents really do need to hover, to question what’s being served at the birthday party, to teach a child to ask questions – are there nuts in this? – or help a child learn to watch other children eating strawberries without taking one.
There are also religious and cultural preferences that parents may want to make sure that their children observe, with regard to food and with regard to other everyday behaviours. This is an opportunity, again, for conversations about who we are in our family and why we make the choices that we make.
The ultimate goal is for us to raise children who can make these decisions on their own
Never forget that the whole point of this is to help kids grow up into young adults who can – and will – make good choices and enjoy a healthy relationship with food. That means conversations – not absolute rules – and looking for teachable moments, and yes, probably also a certain amount of experimenting. And then more conversations.
The guardrails will come down, the training wheels will come off. With food, as with many other aspects of family life, parents need to be sure that small children are safe and protected, while also equipping them to take steps out into the great wide world, where they will need to make their own decisions. The great and rich menu of life will spread out before them – and you will have helped them understand how to choose.
