The food rules
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 10:21PM 
There was an article in the New York Times last week about snacking and our children. (You can read it here.) Like the author of this article, I have found myself asking, How many times a day do our children really need a snack?
And are these snacks providing the nutrition that children need? Especially the ones eaten on the run, the cereal bars and snack packs and fruit-like pieces, rolls, leathers. The convenience items that are tossed so easily into mom's bag. Last year we came to a place where WJ was pretty consistently not hungry at meal times. When I really took a look at what he was eating over the course of a day, I was feeling like there were too many chances to say, “There’s no food in your food.”
So Dave and I sat down with WJ and wrote down a list of guidelines we call The Food Rules. Basically, it is a schedule of eating times and a few simple guidelines. The paper looked a little like this:
WJ’s Food Rules
Breakfast (must include protein)
Snack
Lunch
Snack
Dinner
Snack (yogurt or applesauce)
- If WJ is hungry at a time that is not a meal or snack time, he may have fruit, nuts, or bread.
- WJ decides how much to eat at meal times.
- Adults decide about treats; no arguing.
We added a few symbols to help WJ read the schedule so that we could go back to it when he started his begging routine. And we posted it in the kitchen. It is still there, a year later.
These guidelines eliminated a lot of the struggles we had about food in this house. Suddenly there was no more begging. No more little boy begging his parents for snacks. No more parents begging the little boy to eat his meals. Differentiating between snacks and treats helped a lot too. More on that later.
With The Food Rules, we all regained the power we were after. WJ has the power to decide how much he eats and I have the power to decide what is available. I have put my energy into making sure that our meals are balanced and that WJ’s snack options are as nutritionally sound as possible.
What are your solutions to the food struggles in your house?
*This post is part of SteadyMom's weekly 30 Minute Blogging Challenge. If you haven't met her yet, I encourage you to visit SteadyMom (and check out her new book). Post time: 23 minutes.
Reader Comments (9)
Your snacking post brought back memories of my childhood and my dad saying 'you better eat up, cause this is all you get until dinner' this could be why i had an unhealthy relationship with food growing up! but part of me thinks that life would be a whole lot easier if i put a little of that philosophy in my daily planning. stick to meals and maybe one organized mid-day snack... rather than lugging a bunch of food around so i can whip it out at the first plea from my hungry child! ...but then i am reminded of all the current thoughts on the benefits of grazing... oh vey.
Jen, When WJ was a toddler, it absolutely made sense for him to be grazing all day. Busy growing body, tiny little stomach. But as he has become a preschooler/school-aged child, I started to feel like things were upside down. Like the bulk of his food for the day was from the snacks and my carefully planned meals were ending up in the trash. When I started stretching out his meal/snack times and eliminated some of the grazing, he was eating so much better.... both in terms of variety of food and in terms of amounts at each seating.
I do want him to have a healthy relationship with food and to learn to eat when he is hungry. That is why there are built in options for if he is truly hungry and it is not a meal time.
Truthfully, the way these "Food Rules" play out is a modified grazing approach to the day. But these guidelines have changed my mindset a little, which is helping me feel less like I am raising Carb-Boy. The snacking we were doing before the rules was mostly on things that were quick and easy and portable, individually wrapped and heavy on carbs, sugar, sodium. Now I am spending less money and feeling better about the balance in his diet.
A post is coming soon on just what constitutes a snack.
Wow - fantastic idea. Really, so great. I need to think about this more and then try and come up with a similar concept for our boys.
When my now-adult children were kids, I held the line on sugared cereals. The only time they could eat sugar-added cereal was on Saturday, which was also the only day that they had unlimited (but not unsupervised) TV-watching. So they watched the sugar-coated commercials while eating the sugar-coated cereals. Oh, and I banned chocolate cereal, period. That's not food, it's candy, and they had much better choices for candy than cocoa puffs.
Today, one daughter eats no red meat, the other eats only organically grown meat and feeds her son only organically grown produce. I like your food rules -- and the balance of control that is the basis for the rules.
You bring up some great ideas to consider.
We also have 'snacks' just built in as part of our routine and I think that helps the kiddos know that food IS available periodically through the day (just not ALL day)
We also cut down on juices which also has a high caloric content that filled them up before actual meals.
AND we only allow a few crackers as a snack after the evening meal if they've not eaten well (because more often than not we were finding a snack was requested due to not eating the eveing meal because they didn't 'like' it)
Great ideas! I need to do something like this. Last night we had such a great family dinner. Everyone was eating, I was thrilled. And I realize it's because they were actually hungry. My boys will eat things they won't normally eat when they are hungry enough! I'm going to consider doing something like this to eliminate battles with food and keep my kids healthy.
This was very helpfu. My three year old is starting to just want to snack all day. Even though he has healthy snacks it has been making things tough at dinner time. Thank you.
I figured my kids were saying they were hungry because they wanted some attention... got them busy and they weren't asking for snacks... you might like to see what my kids snack on over a week... here is a week of eating in our house: http://www.se7en.org.za/2009/01/20/how-to-feed-se7en
Have a good week!!!
I am a school nurse and one of the most impressive programs that I have come across is the alliance for a healthier generation. http://www.healthiergeneration.org/ They give some very practical advice.
I made some Mediterranean country bread that took three little effort days and I thought of you. Slow, very slow.